“Now follow the mortar joint across the top row. You should be able to loosen each block and lift them out one by one.”
It was slow going, but it worked. I felt the sweat pour down from under my hardhat, down my neck, and under the coveralls. Dust from the mortar stuck to me. For the first time in days, the only thing on my mind was the project in front of me, not the missing women, not Tex’s troubles, not the paint names for Paintin’ Place, not what to do with the apartment building. Ah, the Zen of renovation. Forget Eat, Pray, Love. The title of my book would be Eat, Swim, Demolish.
Halfway down the wall, Hudson and I traded places. I handed him the chisel and the hammer.
“It’s your turn now. Take your best shot.”
“I’m saving my best shot for later,” he said, and smiled. I smiled back. He took the tools and picked up where I’d left off.
I’d forgotten how well Hudson and I worked in tandem. When the last of the glass blocks were down, I used the industrial vacuum to suck up the residual dust and glass that might have fallen. Hudson tore down the paper walls and balled up the drop cloth. We’d been so absorbed in the project that neither of us noticed Dan standing in the room behind us. His lips moved but I couldn’t hear what he said. Hudson pulled off his headphones and I remembered the ear plugs. I pulled them out.
“Have you been standing there long?” I asked. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Long enough,” he said. “You two are quite the team. When Cleo said this wall had to come down, I couldn’t stop thinking about people living in glass houses and throwing stones.”
“There’s not a whole lot that can’t be accomplished with a little TLC,” I said. I cut a glance to Hudson. Dan didn’t miss it.
“Madison, can I talk to you for a second?”
“Sure. Hudson…?”
“I’ll start stacking these blocks in the truck.”
I stepped over the pile of tools on the floor and followed Dan down the hallway and out the back door. “Is something wrong?”
“I wanted to apologize for firing you. Truth is, I was sure that police lieutenant had something to do with what happened to Cleo, and your friendship with him put me over the edge. But now Cleo tells me that you were worried about Jake being here.”
“Dan, nobody would blame you for being angry about what happened.”
“When Cleo was in the hospital, she said you told her Lt. Allen took a bullet for you. Maybe he is a good cop, if there is such a thing. I’ll never like the police, not after how I saw my brother change after he joined the force. He was dead inside before that accident ever happened—that’s why he drank so much. Couldn’t deal with what he saw every day. After he died, I joined a support group for families of police officers, but considering the circumstances, they shunned me. When I heard about Cleo, I wanted blood.”
I looked across the pool at Cleo, who was holding a toy above Rocky and Daisy’s head. The two dogs stood on hind legs trying to get at it. She tossed the toy into the yard and flipped her long red hair over her barely covered shoulder while they raced away.
“Madison, my wife hasn’t been faithful to me for our entire marriage, and she isn’t the type of woman to keep her indiscretions to herself.”
“Doesn’t that bother you? That she’s unfaithful?”
“Sure, it bothers me. It makes me damn near crazy. But I love her, and I’d do almost anything for her.” He pushed his hand up through his crew cut. “I was almost happy she was abducted. That was the first time in years she needed me to come to her rescue.”
The idea that Dan Tyler could think of his wife’s abduction as anything other than what it was made me ill. I smiled weakly. “I’m sure it will take a while before she can fully recover.”
“I’m counting on that,” he said, almost more to himself than to me. He watched her talk to Hudson by the pool while Daisy and Rocky ran around their feet. “Excuse me,” he said. He left me by the back doors and approached the two of them. He put his arm around Cleo in a territorial manner. Even from a distance of fifteen feet, I saw her flinch with the contact.
Something was off about Dan. What he’d said felt practiced, like he’d rehearsed a speech to deliver to me so I’d understand his animosity. I couldn’t blame him for how he felt after losing his brother, but he wasn’t laying any of the responsibility on George for driving under the influence or causing the death of two innocent girls. It was as if he’d absolved his brother from any ownership of the actions that had led to his death.
With Jake in the garage and Cleo, Dan, and Hudson out back, I went further into the house. The scope of my decorating job included everything in the house save for the master bedroom, but now hardly seemed the time to concern myself with floor plans and rooms off limits.
The door to the bedroom was closed. I turned the knob and eased myself inside. The bed had been made in a haphazard manner, pajamas tossed onto the pillows on top of the blanket. An iPad sat on one nightstand, a sound machine sat on the other. A small dog bed was next to the side of the bed, and I recognized Daisy’s toys in the center of it.
I moved to the closet and slid the mirrored doors to the left. Diaphanous pool cover-ups and a collection of jersey wrap dresses filled that side. I slid the closet doors to the right and found Dan’s business suits. Nothing unexpected. I started to slide the doors shut when something unusual caught my eye. I reopened the closet and looked at the garment hanging behind the business suits.
A dark blue policeman’s uniform.
THIRTY
I closed the doors and went outside. Dan stooped down on the ground ruffling Rocky’s fur. Watching him play with my dog left me feeling dizzy. I dropped the hardhat and it fell to the deck with a clatter. Hudson rushed over to me. I smiled weakly.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“We need to get out of here,” I whispered.
Dan crossed the yard and put his hand on my upper arm, his grip biting into my flesh. He spun me around and forced me to the front of the house. “What’s the rush, Madison? Why are you in such a hurry to leave?”
I flung his hand off of my arm. “I saw the uniform, Dan. In the closet. It’s you. You kidnapped your own wife and set it up so you could rescue her. Why are you doing this? Where are you hiding the other women?”
Hudson stepped between us. “Madison, what’s this all about?”
“We need to call Chief Washington. Dan has a policeman’s uniform hanging in his closet. He could be the Lakewood Abductor. He said he went out of town the day Cleo was taken, and he could have left her stranded in the Casa Linda parking lot so she’d be found. He wants her to need him. He set it up so he could rescue her.”
By now, Cleo had joined us. Rocky and Daisy came with her. Rocky, in tune with my emotions, stood by my feet and faced Cleo and Dan in a show of solidarity.
“Dan? Is any of this true?” she asked.
Dan ran his hand over his short buzz cut hair and then turned to her, his back to us. “Cleo, baby, don’t listen to her.”
“But the uniform? And you being out of town when I was abducted. Does it mean what she said?”
Dan turned halfway toward us and stared me in the face. Hudson had moved closer to me. Dan looked at him for a second, and then at Cleo, and then back at me.
“That’s my brother George’s uniform. I’ve had it in storage for a long time. Being back here, having all of this drug up again, the anger came flooding back.” He turned to Cleo. “I know you want this house, and I know you wanted to work with Madison and Hudson because of their past, but I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Our past?” Hudson said to me. I put my arm out and shook my head, silently telling him not to bring that up now.
“Where did you go when you left town on Wednesday?” Cleo asked.
Dan hung his head. “There�
��s a support group in Austin. For families who’ve lost someone in law enforcement. I can’t attend the meetings around here. These cops—they took George long before he died in that crash. But I needed to talk to somebody. I had to find a way to deal with the anger.”
Cleo put her hand on her husband’s arm. “You could have talked to me,” Cleo said. “We’re supposed to be a team.”
“When’s the last time we felt like a team, Cleo? When’s the last time we turned to each other instead of turning to someone else?”
She ran her hand up and down his arm. “Maybe we should try to change that,” she said softly.
He wrapped his arms around her and she nestled into him and hugged back. I stood there, awkward, wanting to leave but still feeling like something had to be said. Moments later, their embrace ended. Dan turned to me.
“All things considered, I think it’s best if you hire another decorator,” I said. “I’ll put together a list of recommendations and refund the balance of your deposit.”
“No,” he said. “This is your job. I need to get over my demons. I promise I’ll stay out of your hair until you’re finished.”
With the confession of what it was he’d been trying to hide came a visible change in Dan’s appearance. His eyes looked wider, his shoulders looked softer, his smile looked more genuine. Was it the act of a psychopath who plays for the audience in front of him? Uncomfortable as I was, I needed to leave their property to process what had just happened.
“I think it’s best that we call it a night,” I said. I went inside, clipped Rocky’s leash to his collar, and collected my belongings. Hudson stood by the front door waiting for me. Dan caught up with us after I’d rolled the coveralls up and shoved them into my hardhat.
“Madison,” he called. “This whole Asian room is Cleo’s idea and I want to give it to her. How soon can it be done?”
“It’s going to take time to do it right.” I calculated the time frame. I was thinking silver walls with a gold hand-painted pattern, like custom wall paper. To achieve the level of depth I wanted on the walls, it would take about four coats of silver paint, which would take a day to dry. Add in the time it would take Hudson to hand paint the detail on top of the undercoat, another day. We wouldn’t even start on lighting until later in the week. Furniture and accessorizing would happen last.
“We could be done sometime next week,” I said.
“I want it done on Friday.”
“There’s no way I can do that. It’ll take twenty-four hours to do the basecoats and let them dry before Hudson starts on the hand painting. I haven’t even picked out the paint yet.”
“I thought you said silver and gold?”
“There’s more than one shade of silver and gold,” I said quickly.
“I’ll have Jake pick something up tonight.”
“No,” I said with more finality than I’d planned. “I have an account at Paintin’ Place, and I have some outstanding business to discuss with the owner. You know the store, don’t you?” I studied his face for signs of a tell, but he didn’t react.
“Jake can meet you at the paint store tonight,” Dan said. “That’ll shave some time off the job.”
“But—”
“Madison, either you can pick the paint tonight or Jake can pick the paint tonight. What time do you want him to meet you?”
There were few things I wanted less than to meet up with Jake at the paint store that night, but one thing I wanted more was to get out of there.
“Let’s play it by ear.”
“I’ll wait to hear from you.”
Hudson and I walked out together but climbed into separate cars and went opposite directions. I drove to the end of the street and called Tex. He didn’t answer. “Meet me at Thelma Johnson’s house,” I said. “It’s urgent.”
The first thing I did after arriving was to check for evidence that Tex had been there. The same number of beers were in the fridge; the same number of soup cans were in the cupboard. The sheets, pillows, and towels were as I’d left them that morning. As far as I could tell, Tex had moved out. I left him a just-checking-in message and headed upstairs for a shower.
It took three rounds of lather and a washcloth to get the dirt from the construction site off of my skin and two rounds of conditioner to detangle my hair. After the sudsing, I stood under the nozzle and let the hot water pelt me. The release of working demo on Cleo and Dan’s living room had been what I needed in order to think clearly.
And then, a color name popped into my head. One that I liked. And then another. Using my index finger, I wrote them in the condensation on the wall. When I got out of the shower, my normally fair skin was a bright shade of pink. I wrapped my head and body in towels and wrote the names on my mirror in a stubby pink lipstick.
They worked. I could hand them over to Mitchell tonight and cross something off of my list. Better yet, it was a something that had nothing to do with abducted women, cheating spouses, or police impersonators. It was something that represented Mad for Mod and me.
As a counterpoint to the coveralls and hardhat look, I dressed in a fitted black and white checked cotton dress that belted at the waist and ended just below my knees. The dress had a matching blazer lined in yellow silk. I added a yellow flower pin to the lapel and buckled a pair of black patent leather T-strap shoes on my feet. Even though there was a matching checkered hat on the shelf of my closet, I rooted around in a bin of ribbons until I found one that matched the lining of the jacket. I placed it under the back of my hair and tied it in a bow on top.
When I went downstairs, I found Tex in my kitchen. Rocky sat by his feet, and an open bottle of beer sat by his right hand on the countertop.
“I came by to return your keys,” he said.
“Keep them.”
He tapped his finger on top of a set of keys on the table and then slid them toward me. I made no move to take them. Behind me, the clock ticked off the passing seconds.
“Lieutenant, I think the abductions have to do with family. According to the newspaper, Susan Carroll was here to celebrate her parents’ anniversary with her brothers, and I found out today that Cleo Tyler’s brother is Jacob Morris.”
Tex registered surprise at this, but I continued. “Kate Morrow was an only child and she was killed.”
“What about Linda Gull?”
“I don’t know. The paper only said she was on her way to meet friends in Shreveport. If it turns out she’s an only child, then that could be the determining factor in whether these women live or die. Can you call the chief and ask him?”
Tex shook his head.
I didn’t understand his reticence. “You don’t think this is worth investigating?”
“I quit the force today. Effective immediately.” He held a hand out to stop me from interrupting him.
“But last night you said—”
“Last night I was a cop with orders to stay out of an open investigation. Today I’m not.”
“No!” I said, slamming my closed fist down on the kitchen table. Tex stood up and walked around behind me, looking out the window at the property next to mine.
“Somebody is destroying everything I stand for, and as long as I’m on the force, I have to sit on the sidelines and give up control. I can’t do it. There’s still one vic out there but we have no way of knowing this guy’s next move.”
“You have to trust the system.”
He picked up his beer bottle and threw it at the backsplash over the sink. The glass shattered and beer sprayed the counter. He put his hands down on the edge of the sink and stared at the drain. “The system’s not working, Night. I was the system. Now I’m just a guy.”
“Damn it, Lieutenant, you’re not just a guy. You’re the person who swore to protect the rest of us from whatever threats are out there. You’re th
e person who’s supposed to make it okay for the rest of us to sleep tonight.”
“Not anymore.”
“I don’t believe this for a second. Last night you told me you were a cop. You were always going to be a cop. You said even after you retired, it was who you were. What happened in the past twenty-four hours to make all that change?”
He yanked several paper towels from the roll, pushed the broken glass into a pile, and dumped it into a plastic bag. He wiped down the counter with the sponge from the sink, making sure the beer and the residual shards were gone. He was holding something back. His ability to turn off, to block me from his world when I was trying so hard to help him, infuriated me, and I raised my voice in a desperate attempt to get his attention.
“Don’t shut me out, Tex. I know what it feels like to be alone. I know what it feels like to think you have nobody.”
“Night, if I’d have met you twenty years ago when your parents died, I would have made sure you never felt like you were alone.”
“But I’m not alone anymore and that’s what matters. We all get to make choices.”
“And I made my choice today. Finding this guy is something I have to do. Now I don’t have to answer to the chief or to the city. I can’t risk anybody else getting hurt. That’s my choice.”
He stood up and let himself out the front door. The spare set of keys remained behind on the kitchen table.
THIRTY-ONE
If Tex had expected me to follow him outside or beg him to reconsider, he’d be let down.
I couldn’t force him into seeing things differently than he did. I could only hope that after this was over, he could return to the job that defined his life.
Just like I needed to return to mine. I made my color name choices slightly more official by writing them on Mad for Mod letterhead, smiled at all four names, and folded the paper in thirds. I slipped it into an envelope and into my handbag.
With Vics You Get Eggroll (A Mad for Mod Mystery Book 3) Page 22