Lethal Outlook

by Victoria Laurie

  Everybody seemed completely caught off guard by her sudden appearance, and two patrol officers moved fast to try to restrain her, but she somehow managed to dodge them and dashed forward toward the still-leaking car. “Kendra!” she cried, her voice ragged and choked.

  Detective LenDale managed to catch her before she could get to the car, and Mrs. Woodyard collapsed in her arms, wailing and flailing about.

  As much as I didn’t like the woman, my heart went out to her in that moment. The car was the clincher. It was one ominous sign too many that Kendra was no longer alive, and I knew that her mother was finally accepting that something truly terrible had happened to her daughter.

  Captain Ramirez helped his detective support Mrs. Woodyard, and all Candice and I could do was watch as the poor woman sobbed and shrieked and flailed her fists in agony.

  Once they’d calmed her down, they began to lead her away from the car, and that put us in her direct line of sight. This was unfortunate, because the distraught woman took one look at me, caught her breath, and planted her feet hard. Then she lifted a trembling arm to point straight at me as she asked the captain something. He glanced in our direction before replying.

  Suddenly, Mrs. Woodyard’s demeanor changed completely. She went from grieving mother to angry accuser, and I could hear snatches of what she was saying to the captain and the detective.

  “Uh-oh,” said Candice. “Why do I think this isn’t gonna end well for us today?”

  “Because it never ends well for us,” I grumbled.

  Sure enough, LenDale called to a patrolman, who took over supporting Mrs. Woodyard, freeing the detective to come back over to us. Stopping directly in front of me, she said, “Were you at Tristan Moreno’s home this morning?”

  “Yes.” I had no reason to lie.

  LenDale’s expression was mostly unreadable, but I still had the distinct impression she was seriously ticked that I hadn’t mentioned that minor detail.

  “We’ll need you to come down to the department and answer a few questions, Ms. Cooper,” she said, lifting up the crime scene tape and waving me forward.

  “I’ll come too,” Candice said when I hesitated.

  “No,” LenDale replied, her tone icy. “Just Ms. Cooper.”

  Great.

  “Really?” Candice asked, adopting an oh-so-friendly smile. “But I was at the house with Abby this morning too, Detective. And I’ve been investigating this case right along with her. So if there’s something you want to ask her, I’m sure I can corroborate her answers.”

  “And her alibi?” LenDale asked snidely.

  “If need be,” Candice told her, dropping the whole friendly shtick.

  “Fine,” LenDale said, motioning to her sedan parked on the far side of the crime scene. “Stick to the perimeter and get in that blue sedan.”

  “We’ll take my car,” Candice insisted, pulling me away from the tape and over to her car. “And we’ll meet you there, Detective.”

  LenDale glared hard at us as we began to walk away, and I saw her motion again to another patrolman to come over to her. “She’s gonna have us tailed to the station,” I said.

  “Yep,” Candice said without looking back.

  “This just got bad, didn’t it?”

  Candice grunted. “I’m pretty sure we bypassed bad, Sundance, and wound up smack-dab in the middle of shih tzu.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Candice and I were separated the minute LenDale got to the station. I had a feeling that might happen, and I had to suffer through a laundry list of questions and slightly veiled accusations by LenDale and another detective, whose only contribution to the discussion seemed to be a rather constant nodding of his head every time LenDale spoke.

  I had a serious grudge against him because the rat bastard had discreetly taken my cane on the pretense that it was in the way. What a flight risk I must have seemed with it. I badly wanted to leave, but they’d read me my rights and that’d rattled me a little. I didn’t think I was under arrest yet, but I wasn’t quite sure. The fact that Candice hadn’t burst into the room and announced that we were leaving also confused me. Was she under arrest?

  Until I heard from her I thought it best to just answer all the questions put to me and hope that my answers would finally satisfy these clowns and we’d both get to go free.

  But so far, my cooperative attitude had gotten me nowhere. “Help me understand this,” LenDale said, pretending to look back through her notes. “You say you had a vision about where Kendra’s car was dumped, but you don’t have any visions about who might’ve locked her in the trunk and drowned her, do you?”

  Bobblehead nodded, and I rolled my eyes and sighed. We’d been at this for three hours already, and I was tired, and so hungry I could’ve eaten my own cooking. Also I had to pee something awful.

  “We all know she wasn’t in the trunk, Detective,” I replied tersely. They wanted to test me? Okay. Bring it.

  Bobblehead stopped nodding. Score one for the psychic.

  “Excuse me?” LenDale asked, lowering her reading glasses to peer at me.

  “You didn’t find Kendra in the trunk or anywhere else in the car. You’re bluffing. And the reason you’re bluffing is because you’ve come to the most obvious and easiest of conclusions, that Tristan has murdered his wife because he might’ve been interested in me. But you’re so far off base that while you’re coming up with lamebrain theories, Kendra’s real killer is somewhere out there living free from worry that you idiots will ever figure any of this shit out.” (Swearing doesn’t count when you’re being interrogated by the police.)

  “So why don’t you help us figure all this out?” LenDale asked, leaning forward like she couldn’t wait to hear everything I had to say. “I mean, you psychics know all, right?”

  LenDale’s big mistake was denying me food. I’d asked if they could bring me something from the vending machine about two hours before, but she’d said no and had hammered away at me until my blood sugar was well into the downright-snappish-and-rude zone. “Oh, we psychics do know all,” I said, flashing her a mocking grin. “For starters, I know that you’re currently having an affair with your captain—who’s married, I might add. Shame on you, Detective.”

  Bobblehead sputtered and ducked his chin to cough into his hand. I turned my focus on him. “You’re one to snicker. Does the department know about how you pulled some strings to get a buddy of yours out of some deep trouble recently? I’m guessing it had something to do with alcohol. A DUI, right?”

  Bobblehead’s shocked expression told me I’d hit it on the head and it also opened up his energy nice and wide for me to sift through. “Ah, I see that you also recently faked a back injury in order to take some paid time off. There’s a connection between that lie and the buddy you helped out of a DUI, isn’t there?” Bobblehead’s mouth fell open and he uttered a slight squeaking sound. “Hold on,” I said, grinning triumphantly when he didn’t seem to be able to answer me. “Was he a back doctor? I mean, he was a chiropractor, right? That gives a whole new meaning to you scratching his back, and he scratches yours, right, Detective? But I believe it also gives a whole new meaning to the word fraud, right, Detective?”

  LenDale gasped loudly, and her suspicious eyes turned to Bobblehead, whose complexion had gone so red that it was almost magenta. “Oh, so shocking, isn’t it, Detective LenDale?” I scoffed. “But not half as shocking as the fact that you knew your captain was married, with three young kids, and you still pursued an affair with him. I wonder what his wife must think of you? I wonder if you’ll be called in to the deposition for their divorce proceedings. I wonder if he’ll have a penny left once her lawyers get through with the two of you!”

  Both LenDale and Bobblehead just stared at me with big, horrified eyes, utterly speechless.

  “Yeah,” I said, sitting back and crossing my arms. “I’m done with you two. I told you that Candice and I had learned from the Morenos’ exterminator that he’d seen a stranger go into Ke
ndra’s house the morning she disappeared. I’ve given you the exterminator’s name and his contact information, but you two boneheads have yet to make that call. Instead you’re wasting my time and yours.”

  LenDale cleared her throat and nervously glanced several times at the mirror against the wall to my left. Her energy suggested that I’d seriously rattled her, but she somehow managed to collect herself enough to say, “I still don’t understand how you knew where Kendra’s car was dumped. Or why you think we didn’t find her body in it. I know you didn’t see inside that trunk. How do you know what we found? Seriously, Ms. Cooper, if you didn’t have something to do with Kendra’s murder, how do you know all these things?”

  “Because,” I said, placing both of my hands flat on the table and leaning forward so that she could really hear me, “I’m fecking psychic, you stupid—”

  At that moment there was a hard knock on the door and it opened abruptly. “Excuse the interruption,” said a familiar voice. My eyes snapped over to the door as in walked Special Agent in Charge Brice Harrison: my boss, Candice’s fiancé, and at that moment, my all-around hero. “Abby,” he said to me, cool as a cucumber.

  “Hold on!” said Bobblehead. “You can’t just barge in here!”

  Brice flashed his badge, and I thought it the shiniest, most glorious thing I’d ever seen. “I’d like to know why you’re questioning my profiler.”

  “This doesn’t concern you guys,” LenDale said after squinting hard at Brice’s badge.

  “Oh, but it does,” Harrison told her, holding out his hand to me.

  I got up and leaned heavily on the table on my way over to him but was immediately thwarted by LenDale, who stood up too and tried to intercept me. Harrison stepped forward to block her from blocking me, and that’s when Bobblehead made the most unfortunate mistake of putting a hand on Brice’s shoulder.

  In a move too fast for me to really follow, Bobblehead had his head mashed against the wall and his arm twisted behind his back. LenDale moved her hand to her gun, and into the room came Captain Ramirez. “Hey!” he shouted at all of us.

  Harrison tugged up slightly on Bobblehead’s arm and let him go. Stepping back, he reached out for my hand and helped me to him. “We’re leaving, unless you idiots want to do something stupid like charge her,” he said to Ramirez, who only glared at him. “I thought so,” Harrison added. “And let this be a warning to you, Captain Ramirez. If you ever haul in either one of my profilers again without my permission, I’ll bring a rain of shit down on you so fast, you won’t know what hit you. Clear?”

  “We’re clear, Harrison. Now get the hell out.”

  As we were leaving, I couldn’t help it. I turned back to Ramirez, and wiggling my finger back and forth between him and LenDale, I said, “Your wife knows about the two of you. Expect the divorce papers on your desk by the end of the month.”

  Harrison squeezed my hand and pulled me along.

  “Sorry,” I said when we moved through the door. To my delight, my cane was propped right up against the wall next to the door. I grabbed it and realized Brice was chuckling softly.

  “Don’t worry about it, Abby,” he said, letting go of my arm so I had better balance with the cane. “Come on. Candice is back at your place, and if we don’t get you home in the next twenty minutes, I’m pretty sure she and Dutch are gonna show up, waving a bunch of six-shooters and making threats that’ll get me in trouble with Gaston.”

  “Candice isn’t here?” I asked as we got to the elevator and Brice pressed the DOWN button.

  “Naw. She left after fielding questions from some lamebrain detective for a couple of hours. She tried to find out which room you were in, but no one would let her back here, so she called me and told me what was going on. I beat it down here to spring you before they did something stupid like file charges.” Ah, that explained why she hadn’t come to my rescue earlier.

  “Dutch didn’t come with you?” I asked next as we moved into the elevator. I was a little surprised and honestly just a teeny bit hurt that he hadn’t come with Harrison.

  “I ordered him not to,” he said, that amused grin back on his face. “If he’d seen what they were putting you through, he’d have hit someone for sure.”

  I laughed myself. “Yeah. You’re probably right about that.”

  Once we’d made it to Harrison’s car, he opened the passenger door for me and helped me into his SUV, which was at a tough angle for my weak hips. “Can we stop at a drive-through?” I asked when he got in.

  “I’ll do you one better,” he said. “Candice had Dutch order pizza. The delivery guy should be at your house with it any minute.”

  “God bless you three,” I said, laying my head back against the seat.

  We got home and I could smell the delicious pie from the sidewalk. I think I broke the gimp record for getting up the stairs and into the house.

  Dutch greeted me with a big hug and a plate of cheesy goodness. Did I have the best fiancé on the planet or what? “You okay?” he asked, kissing my forehead before placing the plate in my hands.

  I took a bite, chewed, and swallowed before answering. “I am now.”

  While I ate, I filled everybody in on my interrogation, even the part about revealing LenDale’s and Bobblehead’s secrets. “That’s sure to win them over,” Dutch muttered, but there was an amused grin on his face all the same.

  “Trust me,” I told him. “At that point there was no winning. Thanks to Mrs. Woodyard and her uncanny crappy timing, they think I had something to do with Kendra’s disappearance.”

  “I think they were just fishing,” Candice said. “I let my interrogation go on only as long as it took me to figure out that the only things they’d found in Kendra’s trunk were a roll of duct tape and her headband.”

  “So where’s the body?” Dutch asked me.

  I shrugged. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, cowboy.”

  “You know,” said Candice, thoughtfully, “there is another suspect the police are looking at.”

  “You mean besides we fools?” I asked.

  Candice grinned. “Yeah, can you believe it?”

  “No,” I said truthfully.

  “Who is it?” Brice asked, reaching for another slice of pizza.

  “It’s a neighbor,” Candice said. “I overheard one of the other detectives tell the captain that there’s a registered sex offender in Kendra’s neighborhood and that she’d told her dad she was a little nervous being around him.”

  “There’s a registered sex offender living in that neighborhood?” I asked. The Morenos lived in one of the pricier parts of town, and their house, although it wasn’t huge, still had to appraise for between six and eight hundred thousand.

  “There’s a registered sex offender living in every neighborhood,” Dutch said, leaning in to kiss me on the cheek again. He was being super affectionate tonight. I wondered why until I remembered it was Wednesday. Hump day. As in—the freebie I always tossed him in the middle of the week.

  “The registered offender in that hood is a guy who got caught with the family’s underage babysitter a few years ago,” Candice told us. “At least that’s what the detective said to the captain before they caught me eavesdropping and shut up about it.”

  “Have you looked this sex offender up yet?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Candice said, stretching and stifling a yawn. It was almost nine and it’d been a long day for us. “I was gonna dig up his profile and take a run over to his house tomorrow. You in?”

  “I am,” I said. I had no clients scheduled for the next few days, as I’d purposely set some time aside in my calendar to devote to the case. “I’m free the whole day.”

  “Perfect.” Candice got to her feet and stretched tiredly. “I’ll pick you up at nine. Brice? You ready?”

  He eyed his half-empty beer like he wanted to stay awhile, but Dutch got up and began to gather the plates. Subtle.

  With a bit of throat clearing, Brice finally go
t the hint and hastened to follow Candice out the door. The moment the door shut, Dutch wrapped me in his arms and said, “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

  I smiled. “You always seem to love me so much more on Wednesdays.”

  “No,” he said, dipping his chin to kiss me sweetly. “I love you the same as all the other days; I just get to show you how much on Wednesdays.”

  I laughed. “Sure, sure. Okay, hot stuff, you may carry me off to bed.”

  “Thought you’d never ask,” he said, sweeping me into his arms to run me up the stairs. I’d share more of what happened next, but we’d lose the PG-13 rating for sure…ahem.

  The next morning before Candice came to pick me up, I had the misfortune of catching a glimpse of the news, which featured footage of Candice’s bright yellow Porsche and the two of us zipping out of Tristan’s driveway, before cutting away to the image of Candice’s car in the background while Kendra’s silver Toyota Camry was being hauled out of the lake. Then, after another cutaway, the footage moved to Mrs. Woodyard giving an interview to a host of reporters. “I am now convinced that my son-in-law had something to do with my daughter’s disappearance,” she said. “And I believe this because I’ve recently learned that Tristan is having an affair with a woman claiming to be psychic who came to my home and tried to convince us that she knows where Kendra is.”

  “I did not!” I shouted at the TV. Eggy and Tuttle came trotting over to me and wagged their tails nervously, wanting to make sure I was okay. I sat down on the couch, picked them up, and turned up the volume a little.

  “This woman is the most unscrupulous character I’ve ever met,” she said, that familiar mean glint in her eye. “She tried to distract us by telling my husband—who has terminal cancer—that he would soon get into a drug trial which would cure him. To prove that she’s nothing but a fraud, we called his doctor, and he assured us that there is no such clinical trial available for my husband.”