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

by Vallere, Diane

  I knotted a pink cotton robe over my nightgown. According to the starburst clock in the hallway, it was after nine. Under normal conditions, I would have been up for the past three and a half hours. Then again, nothing about the past few days had been normal.

  I listened for sounds that would prove I hadn’t dreamt the whole encounter with Hudson and his niece last night. The house was silent. I went straight to the bathroom, did what I needed to do, and went to the kitchen. A pot of coffee sat on the counter, anchoring a handwritten note. Madison—I took Heather and Nettie to the World Aquarium. Help yourself to anything you want. I’ll be back around four. Had an idea for you. –H.

  I poured a cup of coffee and sat in the breakfast nook. Out back, Mortiboy wandered the perimeter of the yard. Rocky ran up to him, then ran away. The wooden fence provided an enclosed area for both of them to explore. I knew Mortiboy had been on the road with Hudson for the past few months. He must have been happy to be back in his environment if he was tolerating Rocky’s attack-sniff-retreat routine.

  I finished my coffee, took a quick shower and changed into a geranium red dress. After applying my daily slathering of sunscreen, I secured my hair into a high ponytail, slipped black ballerina flats on my feet, and collected Rocky. Mortiboy seemed unconcerned that we were leaving. I added a note to Hudson that I’d see him later.

  It was too late to bother with the pool. Not only would the lanes be overflowing with lap swimmers who had slept in, but the sun was already hot, and there was only so much my sunscreen could do. I wasn’t about to risk skin cancer for a late workout. I’d be back in the pool tomorrow.

  Rocky and I headed to Mad for Mod. I unclipped his leash and he went straight to my office. By the time I caught up with him, he was on his dog bed fighting with his rope bone. Snarls and growls came from the floor while I checked my messages.

  There was one from Joanie Higa, who ran Joanie Loves Tchotchkes, a local thrift store. She claimed to have acquired a collection of vintage melon, yellow, and aqua Spaghetti String glasses and a matching pitcher with my name on them. The second message was from Richard Goode, the head volunteer who ran programming at the Mummy Theater. He wanted my opinion on the tackiness level of planning a night of kidnapping movies. The fact that he was asking the question told me he already knew the answer.

  The third message was from Sgt. Osmond. I called him back first.

  “Sergeant, this is Madison Night. Do you have any leads on Cleo Tyler?”

  “Ms. Night, that’s not why I called. It’s starting to look like you might have been the last person to talk to Mrs. Tyler, so can you tell me anything else about yesterday morning? Did you ask her to go to the paint store?”

  “No, in fact, I don’t know why she was there. We’ve discussed swatches that I took to her, but it’s my job to order the paint and supplies, not hers.”

  “Do you do all the work yourself?”

  “I do as much as I can, and what I can’t do, I freelance out. I have a network of contractors that I like to work with. Hudson James is on the top of that list.”

  At the mention of Hudson’s name, Rocky looked up from his rope bone and yipped. I reached down and tugged the toy out from under his paw and tossed it into the hallway. He charged and retrieved it like a pro.

  “Is Mr. James working with you on this job?” Sgt. Osmond asked.

  “He will be. He was out of town when I first took the job, so I called around to the other contractors he recommended.”

  “Do you have a list of these other contractors?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “It seems that after you left her, she drove to the paint store, where she was abducted. We don’t know if she was followed from home or picked out at random in the parking lot. We’re following up on everything she did, everybody she might have interacted with. It’s thin, but we’re looking at it all.”

  I glanced at the list of contractors. I’d left messages for most of the men. Emil Lyndy’s name was at the bottom. “Sergeant, I can email this to you if you’d like. There’s only one on the list who I actually spoke to, and he showed up here before I called him. His name is Emil Lyndy.”

  “Know where I can find him?”

  “I only have a phone number.” I rattled off Lyndy’s digits. Sgt. Osmond thanked me and hung up.

  Ever since taking the job with Cleo and Dan Tyler, my studio hours had been limited. Considering what they were paying me, I could have closed my doors to new business and still been financially secure. But the decorating business was a game of feast or famine, and being closed to new business wouldn’t work out well for Mad for Mod in the long term.

  I tried to reach Dan Tyler again. This time he answered.

  “Hello, Dan? This is Madison Night. Have you heard from Cleo?”

  “The police tracked me down this morning. I’m heading back now.”

  “I just spoke to the police too. They’re following up on everything they can. They’re going to find her.” I spoke with more confidence than I felt.

  “You don’t get it, do you? Those cop friends of yours don’t care what happens to her or to any of those women. They want to protect their image and look good. It’s up to me. By the time they’ll treat her like a missing person, she could be dead.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to mobilize a team to help me find my wife and I’m going to tell that woman on the news what I know about how the Lakewood Police Department operates when it comes to protecting their own.”

  “Dan, they’re trying to help.”

  He cursed. “Mind your own business, Madison. And consider your services terminated.”

  TWELVE

  I repeated Dan’s name a few times before accepting that he’d hung up on me. I set the top half of my donut phone back on the receiver, completing the circle, and sat back, staring at the notes on my desk.

  Cleo had said that Dan would be out of town for a few days. Now Cleo was missing and Dan was circumventing the police to try to find her. Did his anger toward the police run so deep that he would destroy the reputation of the department to get back at them for what happened to his brother? Or was there something else behind his actions?

  Like, did he know more about the abductions than he was letting on?

  Try as I might, I couldn’t relax, not completely. Watching the news had become a compulsion—waiting to hear if the police had any leads or, worse, if another woman was missing. I tried not to let it get to me, but everywhere I turned, I was reminded of my isolation. My client had been abducted. My last tenant had been approached by the abductor. My former clients were out of town, and I’d just been fired.

  As a single woman in Dallas, I should have been afraid to leave the house alone. Instead I found myself confronting latent feelings about two men. Was it the fear of the abductions that forced me to acknowledge what Hudson and Tex meant to me? Or a greater fear of sitting passively by, letting life happen around me? I was a woman with very few personal connections and that had been fine. Until now. But regardless of which way I went, I couldn’t turn my back on one person in order to have a life with the other. That went against my nature.

  What did I really know about the abductions? Not much, but that could change in an instant.

  I pulled up the internet news of the abductions and wrote each of the vics’ names on an index card: Linda Gull, Susan Carroll, Kate Morrow, and Cleo Tyler. I wrote the date each woman was reported as missing on the bottom, and then pinned them to the wall on top of the still-unnamed paint swatches. When I was finished, I had a timeline that spanned five weeks.

  If something connected these four women, I didn’t know what it was. They varied in ages, races, and economic backgrounds. Cleo and her husband had moved here recently, and Kate, an only child, had been in town visiting her mother. Linda had been
passing through on her way to Shreveport to meet up with friends, and Susan had been headed to the airport after a reunion weekend where she and her siblings celebrated their parent’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. The police had confirmed that they were all from out of town. So was there a pattern to the abductions, or was the pattern completely random?

  I sat up straighter and remembered Effie. There was no report of her attempted abduction in any of the papers. I wrote “Effie Jones” on an index card and thumbtacked it to the board to the left of the article about Cleo. But Effie didn’t fit. She had Texas plates on her car, and she wasn’t from out of town. Plus, as far as I knew, she was the only person who could give a statement about the attacker.

  The attack on Effie had come when Tex was at the press conference. That bit of odd timing had moved suspicion from him, even though her would-be attacker had worn Tex’s name pinned to his shirt. It was a pretty sloppy mistake if someone was trying to set him up.

  I leaned back in my chair and considered what that might mean. Did the same person approach Effie as the other women, or was someone taking advantage of the situation? Was her so-called attack a copycat crime?

  “What do you think, Rocky? Does anything stand out to you?” I asked. Rocky, tired of his bone, lifted his head and looked at me. I pointed at the pictures on the wall. He cocked his head sideways and then laid it back down on top of his paws.

  “If you think of anything, let me know. Lt. Allen is counting on us.”

  I stared at the wall again. The abductor clearly knew a thing or two about how the Lakewood Police Department conducted their business. How else would he know how to get Tex’s badge, or know what would pass as a believable uniform, or what to say to get someone to pull over and trust him? But these things were also the flaws in his plan. Why impersonate Tex, a homicide detective, who didn’t wear a uniform? Who didn’t pull people over and hand out traffic violations? Or drive an unmarked police car?

  That made me think it was a personal attack against Tex. Using his identity mattered more than the accuracy of the impersonation. That’s why he targeted women from out of town. They wouldn’t know who Tex was. The Lakewood Abductor could operate under relative anonymity while the entire police department was looking for him.

  I didn’t like the thought, but the more I tried to reason it through, the more it felt like I was onto something. I needed to bounce my thoughts off of someone. I considered my options and, regretfully, ended up with one person. For the second time in a matter of days, I called Nasty.

  “Donna, this is Madison.” I was met by silence. “Thank you for your help with Effie. She was really shaken up, and I don’t think she would have made a statement if you hadn’t gone with her.”

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  I pushed aside my petty anger at her rudeness. “I’ve been going over what I know about this case. I know you’re not on the force anymore, and I know we’re not exactly friends, but I thought we could put aside our differences to help Lt. Allen.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “No. I told you. That life—being a cop and being with Tex—is in my past. I’ve moved on.”

  “This isn’t about me, it’s about a man we both know, a man we both care about.”

  “You’re enabling him, you know that? You’re allowing him to manipulate you into helping him. You’re putting yourself in danger for no good reason. As long as you’re asking yourself questions, try to answer this one: what is it you get from this situation?”

  “Donna, four women have been abducted. One is dead, and three are still missing. Lt. Allen needs our help.”

  “No, he needs to help himself. Get any ideas of you and me working like partners out of your head. We’re not Cagney and Lacey.”

  And for the second time that day, someone hung up on me.

  Shortly after noon, Rocky and I left the studio and drove to the Casa Linda shopping center. I circled the lot twice, looking for Tex’s Jeep. It wasn’t there. Just as I was about to leave, I noticed a long, flat pizza box jutting out of the trash. Go to Keller’s was written on the side.

  Keller’s Hamburgers was a drive-in burger joint a few miles away. Going to Keller’s was like going back in time. Dressed as I was in a secondhand dress from the early sixties, it seemed fitting. Tex’s Jeep was parked at the end of a row of cars and trucks. A few bikers on motorcycles idled around the front of the restaurant by picnic tables. My Alfa Romeo fit in perfectly. I parked next to Tex, and Rocky and I moved from my car to his.

  He looked at Rocky and then at me. “I ordered you a vanilla shake and a burger. Okay?” he said.

  “Sure. No fries?”

  He turned to the speaker. “Add an extra burger, no bun, and an order of fries.”

  “I was kidding.”

  He ruffled Rocky’s fur while we waited for the food. Rocky walked from my lap to Tex’s, turned around, and came back to me. He jumped down to the floor and curled up on top of my feet.

  When the food was delivered, Tex distributed the burgers and shakes and set the fries between us. He unwrapped the second burger and tore off a piece for Rocky. I covered my lap with napkins and bit into mine. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I stopped three bites in and caught Tex staring at me.

  “Did you want me to wait?” I asked.

  “Nope.” He unwrapped his burger and caught up to me. We finished our burgers and picked at the fries between sips of our shakes.

  “You didn’t go swimming this morning,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I was there.”

  “I forgot. You like to pop up from time to time.”

  “No, I was there. In the pool. Six o’clock.”

  “You went to Crestwood to swim? Lt. Allen, you surprise me.”

  “You were right. Being in the water provides a certain outlet for tension. It’s no shooting range, but it’s something.”

  “Is that where you normally go to let off steam?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not my number one choice, but it works. Besides, you had a good point about getting out of the car and changing my scenery. So, what, you had another job this morning?”

  “Not exactly.” I suspected Tex was looking for clues as to where I had slept. The memory of spending the night at Hudson’s was still too fragile to talk about. “How’d you sleep?”

  “Fine, once I got used to the pink floral comforter.”

  “Sorry. Would airplanes and fire engines be better for a big strong boy like you?”

  “Maybe.” He grinned. One last slurp of his shake gave evidence that the white Styrofoam cup was empty. He set it in the cup holder and bit off another fry. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “You ever wonder about your life? About all of the decisions that brought you to this place, right now? Do you ever wish you did things differently when your ex showed up?”

  Leave it to Tex to ruin a perfectly good vanilla shake and basket of French fries by bringing up my past.

  Brad Turlington was the reason I’d left Pennsylvania. While on a romantic getaway at the Poconos, on the top of a black diamond ski slope, in the middle of our torrid love affair, he told me he was married. I’d skied away. Skidded on the ice. Lost control and fell. Tore a couple of ligaments in my knee.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, two years later, he showed up in Dallas. The marriage, the whole confession, had been a lie. He claimed to be ready to come clean about the skeletons in his closet, and when I realized how much trouble he was in, I let him back into my life.

  “I should have slammed the door in his face. The whole thing was a manipulation. I spent two years building a life on my own in Dallas. Sure, he hurt me. But if I had one do-over, I wouldn’t have given him the chance to hurt
me again.”

  “Relationships hurt. That’s reality.”

  “You’ve been hurt by love? Mr. Love them and leave them? Who was she?”

  He sat back against the seat. “Night, there’s no ‘one who got away’, if that’s what you’re driving at. I just never met the right girl.”

  “Either you stopped looking when you were a fourteen-year-old Boy Scout, or you might want to rephrase that sentence and use the word ‘woman’ this time.”

  “You think I’m sexist, don’t you?”

  “I think you can do with a couple reminders of equality here and there.”

  He moved his hands from behind his head to his thighs. “I think that’s my favorite thing about you. You don’t care that I’m a cop. You’re willing to call a spade a spade.”

  He turned his head away from me and looked at a passing black Escalade.

  “Lieutenant, I don’t think you’re a spade.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then what am I?”

  I considered the question. “I don’t know what you are.”

  “Is that why you gave me a place to stay and are checking in on me twice a day? You’re trying to figure me out?”

  “I don’t know about that either.”

  He leaned close and I smelled the sweetness of the shake on his breath. “You’re here because you don’t understand what this is,” he said, moving his hand back and forth between us. “Just like me.” He sat back and looked out the window. “I realized last night when I was trying to sleep on your pink sheets that I don’t need to understand it.”

  I fought the urge to tell him where I’d slept last night. I didn’t know why I’d wanted to keep it a secret when I thought Hudson was out of town, but now, getting into the details would be plain old messy. Tex didn’t need that kind of drama, not when he was trying to find a killer. And I didn’t need that kind of drama, not when I was finally sorting out my life.