Lady Killer

by Lisa Scottoline

  Mary knew that name, heard it like an echo from her past. It was a name that Bobby always called himself when he felt dumb. His stupid alter ego. He’d be struggling with his declensions, and when she quizzed him and he got the answer wrong, he said it was Marty Slewinsky. She didn’t know if anybody but her knew the nickname. Bobby wouldn’t be telling his fellow mobsters about his insecurities, and by the time he’d grown up, he’d be masking those feelings with vodka. She reached for a thick packet of papers and opened the trifold. The yellow one on the top was a purchase agreement for a Ford 150, 4WD, also in Marty Slewinsky’s name. She remembered what the realtor had said, no four-wheel drive and no flannel.

  Bobby would need that truck in this terrain. So this was his house. His bills. His new identity, just waiting for him whenever he left the Mob. But where was the truck? Had he driven it back to the city? And what was his grand plan, anyway? Trish would leave her mom, friends, and job for a cabin in the middle of the woods? And if he had proposed that to her, what had happened?

  Then Mary remembered about the cheating, and Trish’s nooners with Miss Tuesday Thursday. Had Trish told him she’d been cheating? Had he found out? What would he do to her if he did? She shoved the bills back inside the drawer and went over to the lamp, broken on the floor. She examined the shards without touching them, bending over, which was when she saw it, on the jagged edge of one of the broken pieces. Red-brown droplets spattered against the light green. She looked closer. The flecks were dried blood.

  “Trish,” she heard herself whisper.

  Mary ran back to the car in the rain, hardly feeling the chilly drops. The sight of the blood had set something loose inside her. Her worst fears. She ached to find Trish. It wasn’t a lot of blood. It hadn’t been a mortal wound. Maybe she was still alive.

  Mary hit the gas. She had to tell Brinkley about the house and the blood. He would know what to do. She fumbled for her cell phone as she drove, then pressed in his cell number, heading for the main road, which she remembered was off to the left. The call connected, and she waited while it rang and rang.

  “Please pick up, Reg,” she said, but the call went to voicemail. She cursed to herself, then waited for his message to end. “I found Bobby’s house in the Poconos, but no Trish. Call as soon as you can.”

  She pressed End, taking one turn in the woods, then another. Should she call 911, for the local police? Did that make any sense? Maybe. She pressed 911 as she drove.

  “What is…emergency?” the dispatcher asked when the call connected, but Mary could barely hear her for the static and the rain.

  “I was just at 78 Tehanna Lane in Bonnyhart and I believe a woman may have been injured, if not killed in that house. She’s been missing for two days and her name is Trish Gambone.”

  “Did you…see…woman?” the dispatcher asked, breaking up.

  “No, but I saw her blood.”

  “Who…you, miss?”

  Mary filled her in, but couldn’t hear what she was saying. “Hello? Hello?”

  “Miss…you must…cell phone. You’ve reached the Bruman Police…New York.”

  “What?”

  “We must be the nearest…relay station…not a bona fide emergency…Pennsylvania State Police…they can follow up.” The dispatcher gave Mary the state police number, and she repeated it while she drove, then pressed it in and waited for it to connect.

  “Pennsylvania State Police,” the new dispatcher answered, and the connection was improved, but still not good. Mary had just begun when the dispatcher cut her off. “Excuse me, but we’re stretched pretty thin tonight with this weather, and it doesn’t sound like we need to send a car over there tonight.”

  “But you do. She could be in the vicinity, still alive. She could be hidden somewhere or even buried alive.” Mary had been spinning nightmare scenarios in the back of her mind since she’d seen that blood. “I almost got out and started looking myself.”

  “I’m sorry, but it sounds as if the Philadelphia police are handling the matter, and we wouldn’t interfere with them.”

  “But the house is up here. I think he brought her here, and I can’t reach anybody in Philly.”

  “Miss, please give me your name and number and we’ll call you as soon as we can.”

  “When will that be?” Mary sensed she was pressing a lost cause but she couldn’t help herself.

  “Tomorrow, business hours. That’s the best I can do for you, miss.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Mary gave her the information, then hung up, and when she set the cell on the passenger seat, she looked up and realized she didn’t know where she was. She slowed to a stop at an intersection of two gravel roads, disoriented in the woods and the rain, then pulled over and flicked on the interior light to read the realtor’s map. She traced the route from Bonnyhart with a finger, then looked around for a road sign. Rain pounded the windshield, and she could barely see outside. There were no street signs. She couldn’t use the map if she didn’t know where she was.

  She set the map aside, switched off the light, and drove farther, sensing that the main road had been in this direction. She tried to plug the street name into the BlackBerry but didn’t have enough info to retrieve the map. Last, she tried to call Judy to tell her what was going on and ask her to help, but there was no answer and the phone kept cutting out. Fifteen minutes later, Mary still hadn’t hit any paved road. She must have been wrong. She started to panic a little. Where was she? How had she gotten so turned around? She thought the turnpike was off this way, but she’d been mistaken. She checked the dashboard clock. Almost midnight.

  Brinkley still hadn’t called her back. She took a right, then another right when she saw some lights through the trees, then kept on the roads that headed toward the lights, vowing to buy herself a navigation system when she got back to the city. In another half hour, she saw the lights getting closer. They were the lights of a snowmobile and used-tractor dealership, but up ahead twinkled new lights.

  “Yay!” Mary shifted upward in the seat and hit the gas, feeling reassured as she took a right onto a paved road, which counted as progress. Ahead was an auto-body shop and a hunting-supplies store, both closed, but at least she was out of the woods. The sky glimmered gray up ahead, and she guessed it was the reflected lights of a town or maybe from the turnpike. She breathed easier and accelerated, and when she took a left turn, found herself behind another vehicle, an old red Jeep.

  “Mirabile dictu,” Mary said, a little Latin for the road, and honked to get his attention. She wasn’t too proud to ask for directions, but the Jeep driver must have misunderstood her, because he sped up. She honked again, more lightly this time, and the driver stuck his hand out the window and flashed her the bird.

  Mary kept heading toward the light, growing brighter in the sky. On the left, down the road, was a blinking sign for a cheesy motel that read EZ-Stop, which she took as a good sign that she was going the right way. Another car pulled out from a side road in front of the Jeep, and she began to relax as they slowed to a stop to permit the car to turn onto another dirt road.

  Mary glanced idly at the motel, left over from the sixties but trying to be modern. Its sign read AIR COND, C BLE TV, in front of the space-age building, and its rooms overlooked the parking lot. The all-glass office was barely lit, though the lot was almost full, probably with travelers too wise to drive on such an awful night. Mary squinted through the rain, and her eye caught one of the cars parked near the front. Its distinctive European grille stuck out in a lot crowded with older American SUVs and trucks. It was a new black BMW.

  Mary wiped the steam off her window and double-checked. The shiny grille winked at her from the parking lot. She had been right, but she didn’t know if it mattered. There were lots of black BMWS in the world, and if not in this part of the world, then easily off the turnpike.

  But when the Jeep took off, Mary turned left into the motel lot.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Mary entered the lot and pulled
into a parking space beside the BMW, then cut the ignition, eyeing the car. It glistened darkly, its inky hood slick with rain, and it had been parked by reversing into the space with its grille facing front. She looked at the other cars. All of them had been parked the normal way, with their back bumpers facing front. She herself never reversed into a space because she was the world’s worst reverser. Why would somebody park that way? To hide the BMW’s license plate.

  She peered through the porthole she’d made in her window. She couldn’t see inside the BMW because of the darkness and rain. She checked the lot behind her, which was quiet, and there were only a few lights on in the rooms. The place was silent and still, with mostly everyone asleep. She grabbed her trusty flashlight, switched it on, and shined it on the front seat of the BMW, then the backseat. The circle of light wandered over plush black leather upholstery and gleaming chrome appointments on the console, and ended in a crowded ashtray, slid partway open.

  Hmm. Other than the cigarettes, there was nothing to link the car to Bobby, and lots of people smoked. She got out her purse hat, her nice Coach bag practically ruined, checked behind her car again to see if anybody was watching, then climbed out with her flashlight. She let her car door close softly, slipped between the two cars, and sneaked to the back of the BMW, where she checked the license plate: FG-938. It was a Pennsylvania plate, which made sense, and the number meant nothing to her, since the Mean Girls hadn’t known Bobby’s plate number. The car could have come from anywhere. Pennsylvania was a big state. She directed the light to the back of the car and the shimmer of the chrome plaque surrounding the license plate. De Simone BMW. Marlton, NJ.

  Mary considered it, shivering in the cold rain. Marlton was right outside Philadelphia, over the bridge to Jersey. People from South Philly shopped in Marlton and its environs all the time. They usually bought their cars in the South Philly Auto Mall, but the Auto Mall didn’t have a BMW dealership. So it wasn’t impossible that the BMW was Bobby’s. But then how did it get here, to this lot?

  Mary slipped out from behind the BMW, scurried across the lot to the motel office, and yanked open the glass front door, leaving a hardware-store Open sign swinging on a plastic suction cup. But it didn’t look open. The front counter, a dingy white with a rounded edge, was cluttered with tourist brochures that flopped over in little wire racks, and there was no one behind the desk. She cleared her throat and leaned over, which was when she looked into an office behind the counter and saw a middle-aged woman sleeping in a beach chair.

  “Hello?” Mary called out, and the woman stirred, fluttering her eyes.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” Mary said quickly, running on adrenaline. “Sorry to wake you. I just have a question or two.”

  “Question?” The woman rose and stretched, soft as a teddy bear in a Bon Jovi sweatshirt and wide-legged jeans. She wore no earrings or makeup, but her long brown ponytail gave her a fresh, cute look and swung a little as she stretched and ambled over to the counter. “You don’t want a room?”

  “No. I’m wondering about that black BMW in the lot.” Mary pointed, but the clerk didn’t bother looking. “I assume that it belongs to a guest?”

  “Guess so.” The clerk shrugged sleepily. “I only work the night shift. I checked in a lot of people tonight, and I expect more’ll be coming if the storm keeps up. There’s flooding, I hear.”

  “Is there a way we could look up whose car it is?”

  “No.” The clerk shook her head, and her ponytail swung back and forth like the Open sign. “We don’t have ’em write down the plates or anything. Most people come here, stay the night, and get back on the turnpike early next morning. Or they stay an hour or so, if you get my drift.”

  “Do you think I could get a look at your register, if you have anything like that?”

  “Nah, we don’t, and I couldn’t let you look at it, anyway.”

  Mary figured as much, and the clerk was looking at her funny, now that she was fully awake. Her small brown eyes glinted with suspicion.

  “Why do you care whose car it is?” she asked.

  “My old boyfriend has a BMW like that, from the same place, and I’m wondering if he’s here.” It almost wasn’t a lie.

  “Gotcha, but I can’t help you there.” The clerk grinned wearily.

  “Then there’s only one choice. Can I get a room in view of the parking lot?”

  “It’s the only view we got, hon,” the clerk said, and they both laughed.

  So Mary bought herself a $68 motel room, which included olive green patterned chairs, a matching bedcover and ratty rug, and complimentary dust mites. She turned on the forced-air heater, which smelled like burning hair, and kept an eye on the BMW while she kicked off her wet shoes and made herself a cup of coffee in the one-cup coffeemaker. After it was ready, she turned off the lights and took up permanent residence in a chair in front of the window, peeking through the curtain in the dark.

  Rain pounded against the glass and sluiced down in crazy rivulets, and Mary assessed her view with satisfaction. She was on the first floor, directly across and not fifty feet from the BMW, so she’d see the moment anybody crossed to it, if she could stay awake long enough. She hoped to God this wasn’t the dumbest thing she’d ever done, but even she was beginning to think it was crazy to keep driving in the storm. She kept her phone at hand in case Brinkley called and fought the impulse to leave him another message. She gulped the dreadful coffee and kept an eye on the BMW, babysitting an inanimate object.

  Two cups later, she was beginning to feel dangerously sleepy, but was too paranoid to turn on the TV. She kept slumber at bay by watching a car pull in to the lot. It pulled in slowly, and Mary played a guessing game with herself, trying to predict whether it would reverse into the space. But the car didn’t park. It idled in the middle of the lot, and she watched, her chin in her hand, her eyelids heavy. In the next instant a man got out of the car, opened up a blue-and-white golf umbrella, and ran around to the passenger side of the car. He let a woman out, which Mary thought was nice. So chivalry wasn’t dead.

  Then she did a double take. Mary couldn’t see the face of the man or the woman because they were hidden under the umbrella, but she’d know that fox jacket, tight pants, and stiletto boots anywhere.

  “Trish?” Mary sat bolt upright, stunned. The man and the woman crossed onto the pavement right in front of her window. The golf umbrella read Dean Witter. She ducked, and if she hadn’t, they would have looked right into her face. Then they took a right, passing her window.

  “Yikes!” Mary plopped down the coffee cup, jumped out of her chair, and went to the front door. She undid her chain lock at warp speed, flung open the door, and peeked out. The man and Trish were walking close together to a door a few down the row, then they were pausing in front of the door. Their bodies came close together under the umbrella, as if they were kissing.

  So Trish was alive, and this must be the guy she was cheating with! But what were they doing up here? Mary felt about a thousand feelings at once, notably, joy that Trish was still alive, followed quickly by rage that Trish had worried her to death.

  She squinted through a crack in her door as Trish disappeared inside the room, and the mystery man under the Dean Witter umbrella ran back to the car, opened the driver’s-side door, and climbed in, then closed the umbrella. Mary squinted but couldn’t make out any detail of his face or even build. She tried to see the model of the car, but it was too dark and rainy. It was a black sedan, four doors, a new-model something, and she wasn’t about to let it get out of sight.

  The car drove around the parked cars in the middle, heading for the exit, and Mary darted into the rain. She reached the exit a split second after the sedan pulled out, just in time to see his license plate.

  “RK-029,” Mary said aloud, so she wouldn’t forget it, but that wasn’t what struck her. Above the plate was an emblem she knew well. The car was a Cadillac.

  She flashed on Trish’s diary. Cadi
llac thinks he’s stealing. Cadillac said that my watch must have cost an arm and a leg. Cadillac keeps having his suspicions. Her questions rushed at her, one after the other. Was Cadillac the mystery man under the umbrella? Why was Trish running around up here with another man, not one day after Bobby’s murder? What the hell was going on, anyway?

  Mary turned on her heel and made a soaking-wet beeline for Trish’s door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Mary knocked gently, guessing Trish would think it was the mystery man coming back. The door swung wide open, and Trish’s expression morphed from delicious anticipation to abject shock. She had on a tight black sweater with sequins around its deep V-neck, and her makeup looked fresh as a tattoo. She’d expected a lover but got a lawyer, and it hardly seemed fair.

  “Mare?” Trish asked, her mouth a perfect circle.

  “What’s going on?” Mary pushed past her into the motel room, which reeked of burning cigarettes, rather than burning hair.

  “I can’t believe you’re here. How did you find me?” Trish closed the door behind them, and Mary turned on her, not bothering to keep anger or hurt from her tone.

  “Never mind that, Trish. You think I’m playing a game here? I’ve been worried sick about you. I thought Bobby killed you. So did the girls and your mom.”

  “Mare, calm down. I know what I’m doing.”

  “What? What’s going on? Do you know Bobby’s dead? Murdered?”