by Tracy Clark
I walked to her desk and picked up her phone. It was one of those frilly little gilded numbers that looked like it belonged in the home of a New Orleans madam.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling the police. Don’t get up. They can cuff you from there.”
“You think I’m afraid of being arrested?” She said it almost as if I’d amused her, like this was some kind of joke.
“Not the arrest,” I said, dialing. “The perp walk. Think of what that’s going to do to your brand.”
Only a second or two went by. “What do you want?”
I kept dialing. “What I want would get me life in prison. Stop talking to me.”
“Fine! I’ll answer your questions.” She spoke as if she had to force the words out of her mouth. “Sit.” I glared at her. “Please, sit.”
I put the phone down. She gestured to a chair across from where she sat, but instead, I took the seat behind her desk. I did it just to aggravate her, but it looked like it did more than that. I waited until I had her full attention.
“I want to know about Chandler,” I said. “Who is she? What is she? What hold she has on you. I know you two came from the same projects. That’s where you met her, isn’t it?” I searched her face. “Why would she kill for you?”
“Kill for me? What are you talking about?” I took a moment, cycling through all I’d learned. “The letters, the flowers, the deaths. All close. All personal. Who’s closer to you?”
“The police arrested Rogers. He’s . . .”
I shook my head. “It’s not him. He’s accounted for, for Sewell and Hewitt, besides he had no reason to go after them. He had no idea who you were until a couple months ago, so the Peetses and Dontell are out, too.” Allen began to shift in her seat, nervously. “And, of course, he couldn’t have known your mother.”
Allen looked as though I’d Tased her. “My mother? What’s she got to do with this? No, you’re trying to run some kind of game, but I’m not playing along. The police told me personally that he sent letters, flowers. Hell, he had a knife on him! He meant to kill me just like he killed them!”
“One letter, never mailed,” I said calmly “One bouquet sent, one brought along with him. Nothing else. He says he just wanted to meet the woman who gave birth to him. And he couldn’t have shot Chandler, because he was in custody by then. Think for a moment. You see the problem?”
She shot up from the couch. “You’re ridiculous. You expect me to believe Kaye is responsible for everything? How can she be? She’s right now lying in a hospital bed, lucky to be alive. Kaye may be . . .” She stopped.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You mentioned luck. I don’t think it was luck at all. Hewitt and Sewell were shot in the head point-blank. Whoever killed them made sure they ended up dead. Chandler’s wound? Non–life-threatening. She even had enough time to get to the phone and call for help. It’s inconsistent. And it’s telling that she can’t seem to recall a single helpful detail about who might have done it. After everything I’ve learned about her from people who should know, why couldn’t it be her?”
Allen began to pace around the office, furious. “You’re insane. I’m calling the police myself.” She stopped, turned. “And get the hell out of my chair!”
I swiveled a bit, my arms on the armrests, letting her stew. Granted, this meet hadn’t been my idea, but now that I was here and had access to her, it was a good thing. I could work things through in my head and watch her face to see if I’d nailed it. She didn’t seem to be her usual ice-queen self. She looked jittery, off her beam. Was it because she didn’t have Chandler here to make sense of things, boil it all down and feed it to her in small bites, or was it because she knew deep down that I was right?
“You don’t like problems. You told me so yourself. But you’re not the one who deals with them, are you? That’s Chandler. She runs your office. She runs your business. She runs you.”
Allen’s eyes fired, and defiance lifted her regal chin. “I run me.”
I looked around Allen’s glamorous digs. “I don’t think so. You’re haughty, and you’re cutthroat, but she got you here. You razzle-dazzle them, and she makes sure you rise, that every box gets ticked. She handles the messes, like the Peetses, Dontell, Hewitt, Sewell . . . and, again, your mother. You’re her pet project. Have been for years.”
“My mother wasn’t a problem.”
“I think she was. She wanted you to become a doctor and was steering you hard toward medical school, where you didn’t want to be. Problem. The Peetses had lost their lawsuit, but they weren’t going down quietly, and you needed them to shut up and go away. Problem. Dontell Adkins was about to blast your prima-donna ways all over the internet, right at a time when you were trying to get your magazine established. Problem. And Hewitt and Sewell, two flies in the ointment that Chandler wanted out of her own hair, but their removal helped you, too. Problem.” Allen looked sick. “Is there any reason she might consider you a problem?”
“Why would she? She’d have nothing if it weren’t for me.”
“You two argued weeks ago. About what?”
She began to rub her hands, as though they were cold. “You have no proof of anything you’re saying.”
“No, not yet, not indisputable proof, but I’m not giving up. Maybe the proof we need is down at the bottom of a sewer hole.” I stood up, relinquishing her chair. I liked my office chair better, anyhow. Allen quickly reclaimed the seat. “The person who did this to you hates you, resents you, wants to see you suffer and agonize, and then, I think, they want to see you die.”
She pushed a button on her desk. “That’s enough. I’m not listening to another word.” The busted door swung open on half its hinges, and Isabella entered. “Ms. Raines is leaving.”
“No I’m not, Isabella.” My eyes held Allen’s. “You asked for me, you got me. Why’s Chandler so attached to you?”
Allen’s eyes were molten globs of fire. A subtle head flick in Isabella’s direction, and the woman was gone again. “You forget what I can do to you.”
I reached into my bag and pulled out the balled-up legal paper Lenny Vine had shoved in my hands. I sat the ball on her desk, smoothed it out so she could see what it was. “This is all you can do. If you could do anything else, besides grab me off the street like a Hefty bag, you would have done it already. She won’t be in that hospital forever. She’ll come right back here.”
Allen got up, started to pace again. I could tell that I’d finally gotten through, that I’d worried her enough to truly listen to what I was saying. “No, he had a knife. He called the office, sent flowers.” She turned to face me. “Kaye wouldn’t kill me. I’m her meal ticket.”
“Tell me what you two argued about.” Allen hesitated, holding on to the last of her resistance.
I sighed. “C’mon. We’re past all that now.”
Allen sat again. “The new show. We argued about the new show. I’m transitioning all my efforts over to that. Closing down the magazine.”
“And she doesn’t want to give it up,” I said.
“She considers it her crowning achievement, her success.”
“But you’re making her an executive producer. Wouldn’t that be just as big an achievement?”
Allen looked shocked. “I told her that just to appease her. I have no intention of taking Kaye with me when the show starts.”
“When did she find out you were lying to her?”
Allen faced me. “She didn’t. She hasn’t. I planned a meeting with my advisors and my legal team this week. I was going to tell her there would be a very generous severance package for her.” Allen turned to stare out the window. “I needed to distance myself from her.”
Every part of me believed that Chandler had caught on to Allen’s deception. She basically ran Allen’s entire life. How difficult would it have been for her not to catch wind of a meeting convened for the sole purpose of giving Chandler her walking papers?
“You told her about closing down right about the time the letters started, didn’t you? Then you faked her out with the offer of the new job, so she figured she was still on the team. That’s when she started cleaning things up before the big move—Hewitt, Sewell. Somewhere along the line she found out it was all a lie.”
Allen lowered her head. “And now she wants to kill me.”
She turned, scanned her office mournfully, as if letting it all go. I’d have sworn that as I watched, Vonda Allen magically melted away and I was meeting Benita Ramsey for the first time.
Chapter 37
“You’re right. She’s from the neighborhood,” Allen said. “We lived a building apart at Robert Taylor. I don’t remember how we met, just that one day she was there. Everywhere I would go, there she’d be, so we started running together. My family was poor, but hers was poorer. The breaks never seemed to go her way. I had a chance at college. She never got close, but she was smart, resourceful. She always made things happen for herself.”
“Your mother?”
“She worked in the neighborhood, managing a dry cleaners. She was killed my senior year. She did push medical school, not maliciously, but I wanted this.”
“Chandler knew what your mother wanted?”
She nodded. “Kaye worked part-time at that same cleaners with my mother. After she was killed, I was free to go into whatever I wanted. Eventually, Kaye earned enough to go to community college and earn an associate’s degree. Things changed when I became pregnant. I withdrew from everyone—that included her. I moved. I cut all contact. I had the baby, considered keeping it, then didn’t. I came back, but not to Northwestern. I picked up where I left off. Kaye just popped up one day at my place. I don’t know how she found me, but I couldn’t shake her. When I got the job with Halliwell, she begged to work there, too. She was relentless. I was forced to put her name through. I was miserable the entire time.”
“And when you left to work with Devin?”
“I thought I could just go, leave her behind, but there she was again. As the years went on, I resented her more and more, and she held on tighter and tighter.”
“You could have ended it by going to the police,” I said.
Allen shook her head. “You don’t know Kaye.”
I thought of Chandler’s visit to my office the day of Sewell’s murder. It had seemed odd at the time, her wanting to hire me. But what if it’d been about something else? She’d been with me when Sewell’s body was discovered. Had she planned on me being her alibi? I remembered something else, too.
“She came to my office the day Sewell was killed. She told me you’d received another letter.”
Allen looked exhausted, deflated. “I haven’t gotten anything. I thought I could slowly, steadily push her away, assert myself. I thought that would make the break, when it came, much easier. Now you think because I lied, because I was breaking away, she’s coming after me next?”
“Unless she comes after me first. I’m the problem you have now, aren’t I? I’m the one digging up your secrets. Does she own a gun?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you?”
Allen nodded. “For personal protection. It’s in my safe.”
“May I see it?”
She appeared to brace herself. This was the diva, the game-player, the invented persona brought low, but this time she was alone. “Why do you need to see it?”
“I mentioned the gun down the sewer hole? That hole’s in the park, not far from where Chandler was found. I don’t think she would have tossed her own gun down there, do you? You’re taking the magazine from her. You lied to her and were planning on dropping her, ruining her. Maybe she planned on ruining you first? The great Vonda Allen, a victim of murder . . . or a suspect in a string of them. Would you mind checking?”
She looked like she was running through everything in her head, every time Chandler had come to the rescue or things had just “happened” to work out for her. She knew. Deep down, she had to.
I thought Allen’s days were numbered the second Chandler found out she’d planned on closing down Strive. That had to be when Chandler started terrorizing her. She wanted Allen to suffer, to fear for her life. Then Allen dangled a job in front of her, a job she must have found out didn’t exist. No more letters or flowers. Something else was coming. I could feel it. I think Allen could feel it, too.
Allen walked over to a framed oil painting of an old man in African garb and swung it open to reveal a wall safe with an electronic keypad. Her back to me, she blocked the pad before tapping in the code and opening the safe. She rummaged inside, moving things right, left, checking. Then turned around.
“It’s gone.”
“A Glock seventeen?”
“Registered to me. It’s been here in the same spot. I don’t . . .”
“Chandler has access to that safe?”
“It and everything else.” She closed the safe, swung the painting back. “All this time, all these years, she’s been standing right behind me, wanting to take my place, then plotting to kill me?”
“Or frame you for attempted murder. She doesn’t necessarily have to kill you to destroy you.”
Allen looked like she was in a daze, on overload. “All those people. My mother. She’s, she’s . . .”
“Yeah, she is.” I picked up the phone and called Tanaka.
* * *
I sat in Allen’s pristine kitchen, with Isabella watching me, smiling. Tanaka and another detective, named Grainger, were in with Allen and her lawyers. I was out here wasting time. No sign of the Stockys, naturally, but I wasn’t done with those two.
I drummed my fingers on the countertop, eyed my watch. They’d been in there now for over an hour, likely getting the same stunned stupidity that I’d gotten. I was supposed to stay put until they all got to me. That was how Tanaka had said it. “Stay put.” It’d rankled an hour ago, and it still did.
I grinned at Isabella; she grinned back. I peered down the long hallway toward Allen’s office, heard murmurs coming from inside the room, nothing more. It was times like these that I regretted not having a badge.
“Agh, this is crap.” I stood, waved good-bye to Isabella, and booked it. Tanaka knew where to find me if she needed me. I wanted to talk to Chandler while she was still a captive audience, before the police took their shot, before she figured everyone was onto her, and decided to run. I had a good feeling she had seized on Rogers’s desperation for contact and then, hoping to stir things up, had pointed him in Allen’s direction, which had almost taken Ben out, so we had personal business to settle.
But when I got to the hospital, Chandler wasn’t there. She’d checked herself out, and no one could tell me when, why, or how. I drove to her apartment, but I had a feeling I might already be too late. If she’d been desperate to leave the hospital with a fresh bullet wound in her side, she likely hadn’t gone home to take a nap. She could be halfway to Timbuktu by now, ahead of the law, beyond anyone’s reach.
I knocked at her door, but there was no answer. I tried the knob, expecting the door to be locked, and was surprised to find that it wasn’t. I pushed the door open, then stood there, listening. The apartment was dark, eerily quiet, and the air was so still I could almost hear my heart pounding. It felt empty, but I was still in the hall, not in Chandler’s living room. She could be hiding inside the apartment or dead inside it. I had no way of knowing. I looked up and down the hall. No nosy neighbors. Either I went in, or I didn’t.
“Chandler?” I called.
No answer.
“Great.” I could lose my license. I should really call Tanaka or even 911. Why didn’t I? Why was I standing here? Ben. I had to see this through to the end. I checked the hall again, then tiptoed in, leaving the lights off, listening out for anything I needed to worry about.
I crept down the foyer, and ended up in the front room, where I stopped, gaped. “Oh no.”
The room was a carbon copy of Allen’s livin
g room, the same color scheme, the same plants, the same paintings on the walls, the same doodads scattered around. This place was much smaller than Allen’s opulent aerie, but everything appeared to be here, only on a smaller scale. I eased farther in, then stopped when I heard a bell tinkling and spotted in a corner a white cat with green eyes, just like the cat Allen had.
A hall led to the back of the apartment. It was dark, and there was no one in it, but I could see doors on either side, rooms I’d need to check. I moved forward, keeping to the edges of the hall, left side, until I came to the first door. I turned the knob, pushed the door back. Bathroom. Empty. I closed the door, moved on. Next door, across the hall. Bedroom. It was a frilly explosion of white and purple, everything from the duvet to the elaborate bedspread and curtains. Did this mirror Allen’s place, too? I’d never made it to Allen’s bedroom, so I had no way of knowing. I checked everything, drawers, closet, under the bed, but found nothing but Chandler’s neatly folded clothes, shoes, and an expensive set of luggage. Maybe she hadn’t gone far? Or maybe she had more than one set?
The drapes were open; the sun was setting. I’d soon lose the light. I crept out of the bedroom, kept moving toward the back of the apartment. The kitchen was next. It was neat, looked barely used, everything in its place, no dirty dishes, nothing left on the counters. It was as if Chandler had been a ghost in her own home, barely leaving a mark behind.
I headed back up the hall, passed a small utility room full of mops and cleaners neatly lined on orderly shelves. There was just one more door to check, but when I turned the knob, it was locked. I stopped, stepped back. Who had a locked door in their house? What was that smell? Sickly sweet. Slightly off. Musty. It wasn’t the smell of death, which I was familiar with, but something I couldn’t quite distinguish.
I checked around me. Still the same quiet, the same emptiness. The place was clear, except for this one room, the room with the locked door. I inhaled, tried the knob again, shouldered it, felt a little give, stepped back to think it through. I’d wandered off the path of the righteous back at the front door. I was on shaky ground here anyway you cut it. I inspected the door. It wasn’t as thick as Allen’s. Tanaka was going to put me under the jail, and Marcus would be happy to visit me there, just to gloat. Whatever. I peddled back, took a running start, and rammed the door. The first hit appeared to loosen the lock and twist the hinges. The second one busted the door open. And there it was, Chandler’s shrine to Allen, the woman she had shadowed and harassed for years.