With Vics You Get Eggroll (A Mad for Mod Mystery Book 3)

by Vallere, Diane

  A witness, one of the store’s cashiers, claimed to have seen a man in uniform approach a young woman in the parking lot and offer to help her with her packages. Her description of the man was light on details, save for the fact that he was fit. They’d walked to her car together, and then the cashier went back to work. That had been the last time anyone had seen Kate Morrow alive.

  Ever since the first abduction, the police had been warning Dallas residents to take extra care when driving alone. After the second missing person’s report, the police focused their warning toward women. No one knew who the killer was or what was driving him. He didn’t send cryptic notes taunting the police like criminals do in the movies. He didn’t drop a calling card or follow up with the media and take credit for his crimes. Weeks went by, then a month. Police beefed up their presence on the streets, but no new evidence turned up.

  And now, one of the missing women had been found dead and a witness linked her to the very people who had sworn to protect us. It seemed even with additional police presence in public areas, there was no way to protect yourself anymore.

  I moved to the chair in front of the TV and listened to what they were saying. Phrases like “based on what we know,” and “voluntarily turned himself in,” told me things were far from open and shut.

  Suddenly, Rocky raced to the door of the apartment and barked. His shrill yaps were meant to alert me that we were no longer the only people in the building. I double-checked the locks on the front door and moved to the bedroom where I could see the parking lot through my windows.

  Right now the building was mostly empty; the only two occupied apartments were mine and Effie Jones, a soon-to-be college graduate. She was looking for a job and didn’t want to take on the added stress of finding a new place to live. Plus, she had a thing for Rocky. Effie’s MINI Cooper was parked in a haphazard manner across two spaces. The door to the car was open but the young woman wasn’t there.

  I left Rocky in the bedroom and shut the door behind him, grabbed a can of pepper spray, and unlocked the front door. I crept down the carpeted stairs. Effie’s terrified face stared through the glass pane at the center of the back door. Her eyes connected with me. I couldn’t hear her through the window, but I read her lips. “Help me,” she said.

  I unlocked the door from the inside. She came in and slammed the door shut behind her, throwing deadbolts and securing the lone padlock. She threw her arms around me.

  “Madison, I didn’t think I was going to get away. He was after me! I thought I was going to be the next victim!”

  She shook like an electric toothbrush. “It’s okay. You’re here. He’s not going to get you,” I said.

  “But it’s not okay! He’s still out there!” She pulled away from me and looked behind her. “He knows where I live, Madison. He knows where you live too.”

  “Who?”

  “Lt. Allen—he tried to kill me!”

  FOUR

  Moments ago, I’d been watching a live report on TV. Tex had stood next to Chief Washington, who updated the press on the state of the investigation. There were very few things that I was certain of at the moment, but one of those things was the knowledge that Tex had not been Effie’s attacker.

  “Come upstairs with me. We can talk.”

  “But Madison, you don’t understand,” she said.

  “I think I do. Come with me and we’ll call the police.”

  “No!” She jumped back, fear filling her wide eyes.

  In the background, Rocky barked. Effie looked up. “Rocky’s here?”

  “Yes.”

  “C-c-can I see him?”

  “Of course.” I kept one arm around the young woman’s shoulder as we scaled the stairs side by side. I had questions, lots and lots of questions, but I knew not to ask them. An idea was forming in my mind and, as much as I hated what the idea would involve, I knew it might be the best thing for everyone involved.

  When we reached the second floor landing, I turned to Effie. “Do you want to go to your apartment first?”

  “No, I don’t want to be alone.”

  “Okay.” I unlocked the front door and held it open for her, locking it behind us. I led her to the sofa and asked her to sit, and then went down the short hallway to the bedroom and opened the door. Rocky charged out like he’d been released from a slingshot. He flew to Effie and jumped onto the sofa and into her lap. Her tears of fear turned to tears of happiness, morphing her from woman on the cusp of adulthood to girlishness. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his fur.

  I went to the kitchen and pulled two stemmed glasses out of the cabinet. Effie had turned twenty-two a month before I’d turned forty-eight. I figured we could both use a glass of wine. When I returned, she was staring at the TV. I picked up the remote and clicked it off.

  “That was him, wasn’t it? On the news. It said it was live. How could that be?”

  “Lt. Allen has been at the police station all day today. He’s been working this case, trying to find answers. I don’t know details, but something linked him to the woman they found yesterday. He went in voluntarily. There’s no way he could have been your attacker, don’t you see?”

  She nodded, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. “Effie, listen to me. I think we need to call the police and—”

  “I’m afraid of them!”

  I took a deep breath. “What if we call a woman? Someone you know?”

  “The police lady who used to live here?”

  “I wish I could call her, but she doesn’t live in Dallas anymore. What about Officer Nast?”

  Officer Nast—or Officer Nasty as I and half of the police department called her behind her back—was the last person I wanted to willingly call. She was a late twenties bombshell with long brown hair, curves in all the right places, and the kind of complexion that needs no tanning bed to maintain its glow. She and Tex had an on-again/off-again history. My own involvement with Tex had brought on at least one of the off-agains, and I figured that didn’t make me very popular in the world of Nasty. She was the only woman I knew who could put on a standard issue navy blue polyester police uniform and make it look like it came from Fredericks of Hollywood’s costume section.

  Conversely, if anybody else out there believed in Tex’s innocence the way I did, it would be her. And since she was on the force, she’d be privy to information I couldn’t otherwise access.

  I waited for Effie to consider my offer. “She helped you out with your ex, didn’t she?” she asked.

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Yes, okay. I’ll talk to her.”

  I didn’t leave time for either one of us to change our minds. I reached for my cell phone and flipped through my contacts until I found hers. The only reason it was there was because she and Tex had spent a short amount of time living together, and when Tex called me from her phone, I’d programmed it in, labeled In Case of Emergency.

  Indeed.

  She answered on the first ring. “Madison?”

  “Donna?”

  “Shit. Things really are this bad, aren’t they?”

  “I know we could spend hours catching up on old times, but I have a young woman at my apartment who claims Lt. Allen tried to assault her earlier this evening.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “I know that and you know that but she’s pretty shaken up. I think she should talk to someone on the force. She’s afraid of anybody in a uniform, but she agreed to talk to you.”

  There was a slight pause, where I assumed Nasty was checking to see if hell had frozen over. “Where are you calling from?”

  “My apartment building on Gaston. The gate code is four-oh-three. Park in the back.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Effie, Rocky, and I waited
in silence. I hoped Effie would be ready to talk when Nasty arrived, but I couldn’t count on it. Closing in on ten minutes later, I heard tires on gravel to the east of my windows. When I glanced outside, I spotted a dingy green Saab pull through the gate and park in the lot.

  “I have to let her in. I’ll be right back,” I said to Effie. She hugged Rocky close and nodded. I pulled the door shut behind me and heard the locks being turned before I was halfway down the staircase.

  Nasty was waiting for me outside the door when I reached the bottom of the stairs. She stood back and looked at my legs. “You’re getting around pretty well,” she said. “Almost can’t tell you were injured.”

  Physical therapy had done wonders in healing my formerly twice torn ACL, but frequent trips up and down the stairs still left me with a soreness that only went away with plenty of ice and anti-inflammatories. It was a constant reminder of what could go wrong when you let down your guard.

  “I’m working toward a full recovery. I don’t like having a reminder of my past.”

  “You and me both.”

  Nasty wore a white sleeveless ribbed man’s undershirt over a black bra. Through the sheer cotton of the undershirt I made out the outline of a silver belt buckle by her waist. Red platform stilettos were on her feet. Clearly, she’d been off-duty.

  “Thank you for coming. I know this is weird.”

  She came inside and pushed the door shut behind her. “I’m here to help Lt. Allen. Now, who is this girl?”

  “Her name is Effie Jones. She lives in the building. She’s the only person who lives here besides me right now, and I only live here half of the time. She didn’t say much about what happened tonight except that Lt. Allen tried to attack her. But when we got inside and she saw him on the TV, she knew something was wrong.”

  We’d reached the top step. “Which is yours?”

  “This one,” I said, pointing at my door.

  Nasty tipped her head toward it. “You should go in first.”

  I fed the key into the lock and unlocked the deadbolt above it. When I opened the door it caught on the chain.

  “Effie? It’s Madison and Officer Nast.”

  “Just a minute,” she said. The door closed, the chain rattled, and the door reopened to let us in. “I’m sorry,” she started.

  “No need to apologize. I’m Donna. I understand you had a scary night?” Nasty said. She led Effie to the sofa and sat next to her. I sat in the chair across from them.

  “I was out with my friends. We like to go to the happy hour at the Landing, but my friend’s sister just got a job she really, really wanted, so we stayed later to keep celebrating.”

  “How many people were you with?”

  “Let’s see, Angie, Allison, Terri, Nancy, Olivia.” She ticked the names off on her fingers. “And Barbie, Angie’s sister. So six.”

  “Seven counting you,” Nasty said. “Did you stay until closing?”

  “No.” Effie’s eyes moved to the glass of wine on the table. “I left early. I have an interview tomorrow and didn’t want to be out too late.”

  Nasty kept her eyes on Effie. “That was smart.” She kicked off her shoes and tucked one foot underneath her. Her body language was as far from threatening as it could be, more like that of an older sister or friend who was just hanging out.

  “We were having lots of fun until Barbie realized her necklace was missing. It’s a gold chain with the profile of a trucker girl on it. She freaked out until somebody found it by the jukebox. I left the bar after that. A police officer approached me and I thought he was going to give me a hard time for drinking, so I rolled down the window to tell him I was fine. He stayed back from the car so I didn’t seem him real well. He told me I had a tail light out and asked if I wanted to see it.”

  A broken tail light. That’s what Officer Iverson had pulled me over for. With the news about Tex, I’d forgotten to take care of it. But now, it didn’t feel like coincidence.

  Nasty sat forward. I could tell she was absorbing Effie’s story, but I was surprised by how easily she related to the recent college grad. There was no police power play coming from her. No sense of “I’m in charge” like I’d seen in the past.

  “Did you get out of the car?” Nasty asked.

  “I swore, and then I apologized for swearing. I didn’t want him to think I was cursing at him. I asked which tail light it was. Instead of answering, he asked why I wanted to know, which seemed strange. He stepped closer to the car and I read his nametag. It said Lt. Tex Allen. I was going to mention you,” she gestured to me, “but then I saw something in his hand. It looked like some kind of hook. I threw the car into reverse and I think I hit him when I backed out of the space.”

  “Did you stop to check?”

  “No, I was too scared. I took off and drove straight here.”

  “Did anyone follow you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Effie, how well do you know Lt. Allen?”

  “I’ve met him a couple of times, once or twice when he was here to visit Madison.”

  “And you’re sure the man who approached you was Lt. Allen?”

  “I don’t think it could have been him if what I saw on the TV was true.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking. You’ve seen Lt. Allen face to face. Did the man who stopped you tonight look like the man you’ve met?”

  She looked at me, pleading me to help her. “Effie, it’s okay,” I said. “Officer Nast is trying to help.”

  “I don’t know. It was dark and I didn’t see his face. He could have been Madison’s lieutenant.”

  I cringed. Nasty scored even more points for not reacting.

  “Can you describe him?”

  “He was tall, at least I think he was. I was in the car so it’s hard to tell. He wore a hat so I couldn’t see his hair, and he had on mirrored sunglasses even though it was dark.”

  “Effie, why are you so sure it was Lt. Allen?”

  “His name was right there on his uniform. ‘Lt. Tex Allen.’”

  I looked at Nasty to see if she was thinking what I was thinking. We both knew Tex was a nickname. Besides that, Tex was a detective. He didn’t wear a uniform. They were little things, but they meant a lot.

  Nasty kept her eyes focused on Effie. “Can you describe the uniform?”

  Effie’s forehead scrunched up while she thought. “I think it was black or navy. Short sleeved shirt that buttoned up the front. I think it had epaulettes. The pants were the same color. He had stuff attached to his belt…a radio, a pair of handcuffs, and a club. There was a patch on his sleeve. It was dark with red edges and gold and white words in the middle.”

  “What about a car? Did you see one?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see a car. He walked up to my window.”

  “Is there anything else you can remember?”

  Effie shook her head.

  “You did a good job, Effie. You were smart. You did exactly what you should have done. Do you want to call your friends and make sure they’re okay?”

  “I called them when Madison went to let you in.”

  Nasty put a comforting hand on Effie’s arm. “Good. Are you going to stay in your apartment tonight?”

  “Can I stay here with you, Madison?” she asked. She kept her arm wrapped around Rocky’s neck, like Linus with his security blanket.

  I hadn’t been planning on spending the night at the apartment, but the last twenty minutes had been a schooling in things I hadn’t planned on doing. “Yes, you can stay here with me. Let me get a pillow and some sheets for the sofa.”

  I went to the hall closet and pulled out a yellow sheet set. I added a pillow and pillowcase to the pile, and a pale yellow blanket trimmed in satin. In the background, Effie and Nasty exchang
ed information. The truth was, Nasty’s presence had been oddly calming. Unlike my own encounters with the law and threatening situations, there had been something different tonight. I didn’t know what it was, but for Effie and Tex’s sake, I would do nothing to upset the apple cart.

  When I returned to the living room, Nasty stood up and looked at me with a funny expression. “Can I talk to you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Wait,” Effie said. “Madison, I hope you’re not mad, but I asked Officer Nast if she’d stay here too.”

  Nasty looked at me. I looked at Effie.

  It was turning into a freakin’ slumber party.

  FIVE

  My mouth tightened, paralyzed with numbness. I put a hand on the arm of the sofa for balance. “Is that something you feel comfortable doing?” I asked Nasty.

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “I don’t want to impose.”

  “It’s no imposition.”

  An awkward vibration of tension filled the air. “Okay then, it’s settled.” I looked around the living room. Aside from the sofa, there was the chair I’d sat in and a Danish modern coffee table that was great for the look of the room, but definitely not right for sleeping.

  “Effie, why don’t you take a shower or a bath? Donna and I can work out the sleeping arrangements.”

  “I can sleep on the floor,” Effie said.

  “Nobody’s sleeping on the floor,” Nasty and I said at the same time.

  “Come with me,” I said and led Effie to the bathroom. I pulled clean fluffy pink towels from the closet. “I can get your pajamas from your apartment while you shower. Officer Nast will be here, so you’ll be safe. It’s going to be okay, Effie. Really. Officer Nast was right. You did the right thing.”

  Effie told me where I’d find her keys and where I’d find the T-shirt and boxers she usually slept in. I closed the bathroom door behind me and met Nasty in the living room.

  “I’m going to tell Effie to take my bed. She’s had the hardest night of any of us and I think that’s the best place for her to sleep. That leaves you, me, and the sofa.”