Desperate Measures

by Fern Michaels

  Maddie snorted. “Because she was stupid. The electrician offered her love, and that was more important than this house. She’s probably living in the Bronx in a six-floor walk-up.”

  “This floor is real brick, laid one by one. That costs,” the ever practical Janice said. “Picture the kitchen with copper pots that shine and loads of green plants in clay pots. Use your imagination, Maddie.”

  “I’m going to hire a decorator. I want the best. Let’s go check out the bathroom and bedrooms. There’d better be one with its own bath for you. We’ll decorate it together for when you come up to visit on weekends.”

  “Oh, Maddie, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Janny hugged her friend. “I’ll bring wine and cheese like they do in the movies. We’ll always be friends, won’t we, Maddie?”

  “Of course we will. You’re better than a sister, Janny.”

  “I feel the same way.”

  Arm in arm the two friends climbed through the deep pile on the stairs to the second floor. “Look, Maddie, you can look down into the living room. It’s wonderful,” Janny gushed.

  “A sunken tub. It has two steps!” Maddie said in awe. “It’s a whirlpool. Big enough for four people. My God!”

  “This is luxury. You can decorate this bathroom with any color you want. This sandy beige tile will go with any color.”

  “Six bedrooms, two with fireplaces. White carpet,” Maddie said, moving from one room to the next. “Take your pick, Janny.”

  “This one. Oooh, it has a sunken tub too. Who’s going to bring in the firewood?”

  “Our butler.” Maddie burst out laughing. “You can keep clothes here and everything. That way, you can leave right from the office and take the train here and not have to worry about your things. Maybe our housekeeper will serve us breakfast in bed.”

  “Now you’re getting the hang of it,” Janny said, dropping to the floor. She hugged her knees and stared dreamily out the window. “You love Pete, don’t you, Maddie?”

  Maddie sat down next to her friend. “I still can’t believe he loves me. I’m just ordinary. He’s so . . . so worldly, so educated, so ... different.”

  “Are you putting yourself down, Maddie Stern? Because if you are, I’m going to slap you. It’s Pete Sorenson who’s the lucky one to have found you. Don’t you ever forget it either,” Janny said loyally.

  “Okay, I won’t. You’re a good friend, Janny.”

  “Now that we have that all sorted out, let’s check the garden, the pool, that four-car garage with the apartment on top, and then go get some lunch. Does it have a pool house?”

  “Pete said it does. It has indoor plumbing so you don’t have to come into the house to use the bathroom. Since neither you nor I know how to swim, I suggest we gloss over the pool area.”

  “We’re going to learn to swim. All you have to do is tie Clorox bottles to your upper arms and you can swim.” Janny giggled. “I saw that on television.”

  “After you learn, I’ll give it a try. I could really go for a big, juicy hamburger with lots and lots of onions and a slice of tomato. A big plate of greasy french fries and a strawberry sundae for dessert.”

  “You are a kind friend, Maddie. I’ll leave the tip.”

  “We have to stop by the realtor, drop off the key and leave a binder check. I guess I have to sign on the dotted line or something like that.”

  “I’m happy for you, Maddie. You deserve this and more,” Janny said, hugging her friend.

  A light, misty rain was falling when Maddie dropped off Pete’s car at the underground garage. Steam rose from the sidewalk. It seemed cooler in Connecticut. That would be a plus in the summer. The only problem was, she’d be spending her days here in the city.

  Tillie greeted her the moment she opened the door. In the blink of an eye the cat was in her arms, nuzzling her neck and purring loudly. “Missed me, huh? Well, how about some salmon and some nice warm milk. I’ll put a scoop of ice cream in it, and we’ll never tell Dr. Lowe we did it, okay? She thinks cats shouldn’t have milk or ice cream. What does she know, she’s just a vet,” Maddie said, cuddling the cat. She rambled on and on as she prepared Tillie’s dinner.

  While the cat ate, Maddie made a pot of coffee. She was pouring the cream into her cup when the phone rang.

  “Pete!” she cried happily. “Where are you? ... Tokyo! Did you walk down the Ginza? ... Is it warm there? It’s sweltering here . . . Tillie misses you, but not as much as I do ... I love the house. I can probably get used to a live-in housekeeper and cook. We need two gardeners. I don’t have a green thumb . . . I love you too, Pete. I’m counting the days too . . . Janny went with me. She’s going to help me paint the woodwork at Fairy Tales next weekend . . . No, I won’t forget my gum surgery . . . What kind of present?” She laughed. “You’re tormenting me, Pete . . . No, I absolutely will not kiss Tillie for you. No, no, no ... Oh, all right, but only because I can’t say no to you. When will you call me again? . . . ’Night, Pete. I know it’s morning there, but it’s eight o’clock here. I love you.”

  Maddie blew Tillie a kiss. The cat hissed at her before prancing into the living room.

  Maddie sat down at the table and drank her coffee. A shower was going to feel real good, maybe a glass of wine, and then twelve solid hours of sleep.

  “Mrs. Pete Sorenson. Mrs. Peter Sorenson. Madelyn Marie Sorenson. Mrs. Maddie Sorenson,” she trilled on her way to the shower. How wonderful it sounded. How positively wonderful.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “I’m miserable,” Maddie said on Sunday afternoon, after her gum surgery. “My face looks like one of those blow-up whatchamacallits. God, Janny, what if the swelling doesn’t go down by tomorrow? Pete hasn’t called in four days.”

  “You’re whining, Maddie. By tomorrow the swelling will be gone. Stop worrying. You can take two more aspirin and in thirty minutes you can take another pain pill. Maybe we should go out for a walk. The city is quiet. How about an ice cream cone? I could go for one,” Janny said brightly.

  “Maybe after I take the pain pill. I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet. I heard that on a western show on TV last week. It sums up how I feel,” Maddie grumbled. “I should have had the damn tooth pulled.”

  “Think in terms of three thousand dollars for a bridge you have to take in and out. Think of the appointments you’ll have to keep before you get that bridge. A day or so of pain, in my opinion, is the way to go.”

  “I like it better when you talk about stocks and bonds. What do you have now in your portfolio?”

  “Some of this and some of that. Little bits and pieces. Hey, I’m a working girl paying the rent, dry cleaning, and buying food. My investments are small and stable. I splurged and used my vacation money to buy Unitec. I now have a thousand shares. I bought seven hundred fifty at fifty cents. If it goes to ten, like I think it will, I’ll be rich. I’ll have enough to buy myself a little house somewhere in Jersey. I might even have enough to buy a used car, maybe a new one. It will give me enough to start a search for my mother. I know it’s going to go up. Just like I know the swelling is going to go down on your face by tomorrow.”

  “Come on, Maddie,” Janice said, “take your pain pill early and let’s go out for a walk. I can’t wait to get a macadamia-nut-crunch ice cream cone. With sprinkles. My treat.”

  The streets were blistering hot when the two friends exited Maddie’s building. They walked around the corner to the small convenience store owned by a pudgy Korean woman who lived in Maddie’s building.

  “Macadamia-nut-crunch. Double dip on a wafer cone,” Janny said happily.

  “Vanilla. Single dip on a wafer cone,” Maddie muttered.

  “It’s blissful in here. We should stay and eat it here. By the time we step onto the sidewalk these cones will be dripping all over us,” Janny said.

  “It was your idea,” Maddie replied, accepting her cone. “Remember how fast we used to lick them when they were melting? You were faster than a streak of
lightning.” She moved toward the door, held it open for Janny to follow her.

  Janny shouldered past two men directly in her path. Maddie stepped aside, saw the black car with the visored driver and two passengers in the backseat as the car slowed in front of the store.

  “Do you mind?” Janny snapped as she was jolted backward.

  Maddie’s tongue was stuck in a groove she’d made in the dripping ice cream. She eyed the occupants of the car before she stepped around her friend. She saw it all, the panic on the men’s faces next to her, the snout of the black gun, the mean little eyes of the man holding the gun. She saw a second gun a heartbeat later. Without thinking, she spun around, shoved at the convenience store door, dropping her ice cream cone in order to push Janny to the ground.

  Janny’s screams rang in her ears as bullets smashed into the men and through the plate-glass window. She saw the Korean woman’s fearful face before her own face smashed into the floor. She smelled ripe fruit, shoe polish, and licorice. Fear made her roll over. She felt rather than saw Janny scramble over her, shrieking, or maybe it was Mrs. Ky shrieking. She thought her heart would pound itself right out of her chest.

  Both young women cowered back against a metal rack of Lay’s potato chips. Everywhere she looked she saw blood. She forced herself to look at the two prone men in the doorway. “Call the police!” she screeched. “Now! Do it now, Mrs. Ky! Nine-one-one! Hurry!”

  “Oh my God!” Janny said, smashing herself against the metal rack. She felt it digging into her back, but didn’t care. “We were almost killed. If you hadn’t shoved me out of the way we’d be dead. Dead! Do you hear me, Maddie, we’d be dead! Now I owe you for that too!”

  “Shut up, Janny. You would have done the same thing for me. I saw the guns. I didn’t know bullets made such big holes. I never saw so much blood.”

  “Oh my God, it’s all over my clothes. Yours too. We have to throw away these clothes,” Janny babbled shrilly.

  Behind the counter Mrs. Ky was crying into her hands. Maddie forced herself to inch away from the potato chip rack toward Mrs. Ky. For the first time she saw the little cakes on the rack, Twinkies, Ring-Dings and Sno Balls. She liked all of them. Anything with sugar was her favorite. She smelled the overripe fruit and licorice again and wondered where it came from. Maybe a cleaning solution, since no fruit was sold in the store. Later on she would ask. She was in shock, she thought, as she stumbled to her feet.

  Behind the counter with her arms wrapped around Mrs. Ky, Maddie stared at the bodies in the doorway.

  “This is murder,” Janny gasped. “We witnessed a murder! Merrill Lynch isn’t going to like this. We’ll be on the front page of tomorrow’s paper. Think about your store, Maddie. You’ll get all those looky-looks. Oh God!” Whatever else she was about to say was cut short when a police car screeched to the curb. A second police car followed, and then a third with an ambulance, its siren blasting, double parking next to the first police car.

  The women huddled together in fear as the police swooped into the small store.

  “Someone tell me what happened,” a uniformed officer said gently.

  Maddie spoke haltingly. “We were leaving.... This car ... was going slow, the window was down.... It was so hot, I remember thinking . . . I can’t remember what I thought.... I think the two . . . the two men were coming into the store.... I saw the gun . . . two guns.... I dropped my ice cream and . . .”

  “She pushed me out of the way and saved my life,” Janny said hysterically.

  “Did you see the person with the gun?”

  “Very clearly,” Maddie said. The moment the words were out of her mouth she was sorry. Her life was changing, right here in front of her eyes.

  “What about you, miss?” the officer said, addressing Janny.

  “I saw him. He had lots of hair. It all happened so fast. Blood splattered everywhere. I thought the broken glass was going to gouge us.”

  “Ma’am,” the officer said to Mrs. Ky, “did you see anything?”

  “No, I see nothing. I see nothing outside, only two mens fall down. Much blood. Too much blood. My husband go home to sleep. We open all night. He much tired. Is okay if I go fetch him?”

  “Not right this minute. We have to take your statements. I want you to stay right where you are until Detective Nester gets here. Try and remember everything you saw, the minutes before it happened, when it was over, everything, no matter how unimportant it might seem to you.”

  “Who can think at a time like this?” Janny cried.

  “It’s going to be all right, Mrs. Ky,” Maddie said. “They’ll let you fetch your husband soon. They have to ... to do all these things. This,” she said, remembering words she’d read in newspaper articles, “is a crime scene now. We can’t move. They have to make chalk marks and put up a yellow tape or ... or something. Why don’t we make some fresh coffee for the officers. It’s something to do,” she concluded lamely.

  “It’s a dumb idea,” Janny muttered. “They’re . . . stiffs now. When someone gets killed like this, they call them stiffs.”

  “Are they gangsters?” Mrs. Ky whispered.

  Maddie looked at Janny. Gangsters meant crime families and underworld figures. “Oh God,” she said.

  “It was a rubout,” Janny said hysterically. “They saw us. We saw them. We should have lied. Why didn’t we lie?”

  “We aren’t liars, that’s why. You’re supposed to tell the truth when something like this happens. Well, you are,” Maddie said defensively when she saw the look of disbelief on her friend’s face.

  “We’re dead meat!” Janny said dramatically.

  “Stop it this instant, Janny. You’re scaring Mrs. Ky to death. I mean, you’re scaring her witless.”

  A man in plainclothes entered the store. “Ladies, I’m Detective Nester. Is there a back door?” he asked. “I’d like us to go outside and talk.”

  Maddie’s first thought was, He’s so ordinary looking. How could someone so ordinary handle this mess? Then she looked at his eyes and changed her mind. Sandy hair, brown eyes, no distinguishing marks on his face, mustache. A little character there, she thought. Someone ironed his shirts; there was a crease in the sleeves. He was hot and sweaty, but he was still wearing a tie. He towered over them, six-feet-four, maybe -five. He looked like he either worked out or ran. Like Pete. “Do you run?” she asked, and didn’t know why she’d asked such a silly question.

  “Five miles every morning.” He didn’t seem to think it was a strange question at all. “After you, ladies.”

  The hot, humid air slapped at them when they walked out to the walled-in space behind the small store. Maddie’s jaw started to throb. She leaned up against a trash can, Janny on her right, Mrs. Ky on her left.

  “Now, tell me everything,” Nester said quietly.

  They were all dripping sweat when the detective ushered them back inside the store. Maddie almost collapsed with the blast of cold air. She asked for aspirin and gulped down four of them. The bodies were gone.

  Nester motioned to two of the uniformed cops. “Sanders, you take Mrs. Ky to her apartment, bring the husband back. Seal off this store entirely. You and Mendel stay here until you’re relieved.”

  “What about us?” Janny asked.

  “I have to take you downtown. You agreed to look at the mug books. We’ll bring you back.”

  “Can’t we change our clothes?” Janny asked. “Look at us ... I want to take a shower. Maddie’s in a lot of pain.... Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

  Maddie shook her head. “I can’t do it tomorrow. I’m having my grand opening. Look,” she said to the detective, “Janny’s right, we need to ... change our clothes. You can have one of the officers wait for us while we change.” The detective nodded when he heard the stubbornness in her tone.

  A crowd was gathered outside when a young officer named Melas escorted the girls around the corner to Maddie’s apartment.

  Tillie greeted them at the door, arched her back and hissed he
r disapproval at the officer’s shiny black shoes. “She doesn’t like men,” Maddie said tightly. She bent down to pick up the angry cat and marched to her room, Janny trailing behind her. She closed the door and started to rip at her clothes. “They go in the trash. I’m never going to wear them again.”

  “Blood doesn’t come out,” Janny said, by now having regained her usual composure. “Sometimes with seltzer it will, or is that club soda?” Janny’s clothes landed on top of Maddie’s. “You take a shower first. I’ll find us some clothes to wear.” She looked at the answering machine. “Shit! I bet Pete called while we were out.” She pressed the message button. She closed her eyes when she heard Pete’s warm, dear voice.

  “Hi, honey. Guess you’re not home. Stupid me, it’s Sunday afternoon. Bet you’re at the store with Janny or out seeing a movie. I miss you. If I eat one more wonton, I’m going to explode. Everything is going great on this end. I just wanted to call and wish you luck tomorrow. I know you’ll be beating off customers with a stick. Make lots of money so I can quit and you can support me. I’ll try and call tomorrow night to see how the grand opening went. I love you, Maddie. I can’t believe I found you in New York with all those thousands of people. I can’t wait to see you. I dream about you every night. Hiss at Tillie for me. Tell her I miss her too, and say hello to Janny. Love you, Maddie.”

  Tears dripped down Maddie’s cheek. “I love you too, Pete,” she muttered. She was still crying when Janny came out of the bathroom wrapped in one of Pete’s blue fluffy towels.

  “Your turn,” Janny said. “Was it Pete? Guess so by the tears on your face.”