Blue Blood: A Debutante Dropout Mystery

by McBride, Susan

  The preacher did another watch check. “Oh, my, I didn’t realize it was so late. I’ve got an appearance to make at the Parents for Public Morality luncheon at the Adolphus, and then I have a board meeting with my wife’s diabetes foundation.” He touched his wedding band. “I’m sorry, ladies, but I must go.”

  He nodded at me, then grasped Julie’s hands. “Be brave, my child,” he told her. “This is not the end.”

  “You know it’s not.” She tipped her pretty face up toward his.

  He let her go.

  She frowned, her eyes following his imposing figure as he sauntered off, black robes snapping at his heels.

  Her small hands clenched to fists at her sides, and I noticed the red imprints of his fingers on her white skin.

  Ouch.

  “Have you ever seen Mrs. Jim Bob?” Julie asked out of the blue, her gaze still fixed on the doors that the minister had disappeared through.

  “No,” I said, because I hadn’t. Unless she was the woman with the purple beehive on his cable show.

  “She looks like somebody blew her up with a tire pump,” Julie said and sounded pleased as punch. “That’s probably how she got diabetes, from eating too much sugar.”

  “I don’t think . . .”

  She didn’t let me finish. “Walk me out to my car?” she asked brightly.

  “Sure.”

  She picked up the brass pot from the table amidst the lilies and nonchalantly tucked it under her arm.

  “Let’s hit the road.”

  I followed her outside while she babbled on about the pretty flowers, the lovely service, and how tickled Bud would have been to hear Reverend Jim Bob paint him in such a positive light.

  “You’d have thought Bud was Mother Teresa,” she said with a giggle. “He would’ve gotten a real kick out of that.”

  Once past the glass doors in the lobby, the humid air hit me hard, and I felt my breath catch in my throat. Within seconds my clothes stuck to my skin, and perspiration molded stockings to flesh. I could only imagine the temperature inside my Jeep.

  Hot enough to roast a turkey.

  “Where’s your ride?” she asked.

  I hooked my thumb across the lot toward the Wrangler, its black hard top baking beneath the sun.

  “Four-wheel drive?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bud had a Cherokee,” she said and sighed. “Now it’s on probation.”

  On probation?

  Did she mean in probate?

  I cleared my throat, working hard to keep a straight face. Sometimes I couldn’t tell when she was doing her dumb blonde routine and when she was serious.

  Julie’s red Corvette sat right out front, but the white Lincoln was gone from its reserved parking spot.

  “Hey, I’ve got a favor to ask you,” she said and paused beside the driver’s side door. She dumped the brass pot none too gently on top of her sports car and left it there while she dug her keys from her purse.

  “What kind of favor?” Hadn’t I done enough do-gooding for one day?

  “Tiffany called me this morning and told me she couldn’t make her shift,” she replied and scrunched up her face. “Says she’s sick, but, knowing her, it’s nothing contagious. Just PMS. Which is just as well, because she scares the customers when she’s in hormone hell. Can you fill in?”

  Another shift would give me more time to poke around. “Sure,” I told her. “No problem.”

  “You’re a doll,” she squealed, and I wanted to laugh, that coming from a woman who looked like Barbie. “I’ll see you later then. Oh, and Junior, too!”

  “Right.” Ha, ha. I was getting tired of her “Junior” routine already.

  She hesitated for a minute and tipped her head, squinting at me over the roof of her car. “You look different today, Andrea. Though I can’t put a finger on it. Thinner, maybe? Must be the black.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I think.

  With a shrug, she dove into the Corvette and slammed the door. The engine roared to life, and the car started to back up when I realized she’d forgotten something.

  “Julie, stop!” I shrieked at the top of my lungs.

  Luckily, she did.

  I ran over to the Vette and removed the brass pot, which had skidded precariously close to the edge of the roof, the hot pavement below.

  She lowered her window, and I shoved it through.

  “Oh, hell,” she said, then raised the window and drove off.

  Shading my eyes with my hand, I watched the sleek red car skim across the parking lot and disappear into the street.

  “You look different today,” I mimicked and headed toward my Jeep. “Must be the black. Right,” I muttered and smoothed my fingers over the crepe fabric. The dress was a size six and still fit, so it must’ve been the too-tight Calvins yesterday that had her confused.

  Or else . . . my heart stopped.

  I glanced down.

  And realized something was missing.

  I could see all the way down to the Minnie Mouse bows on my shoes without obstruction.

  Uh-oh.

  Yesterday, I was Marilyn. Today, more like Twiggy. No wonder Julie had thought I’d lost weight. I was minus two full cup sizes, front and center.

  “Good going, Kendricks,” I said aloud and unlocked the Jeep.

  I doubted if Mata Hari had ever had to worry about stuffing her bra, for Pete’s sake.

  Chapter 15

  I headed back to my condo, mulling over my observations from the memorial service as I drove.

  What kept running through my mind was the sight of Reverend Jim Bob’s hand on Julie’s shoulder after the eulogy was over and the way they’d been speaking to each other in such hushed tones, heads bent together so intimately my gut told me there was more to their relationship than shepherd and sheep.

  Were Jim Bob and Julie having an affair?

  Was that what she’d meant when she’d suggested the televangelist and Bud had had something in common?

  Her, perhaps?

  I remembered, too, the way the preacher had gripped Julie’s hand so tightly before his departure.

  What the heck was that about? Was he angry with her for some reason? Was it a warning to keep quiet?

  Might it have anything to do with Bud’s death?

  I could be way off base, but I’ll wager I wasn’t far afield.

  Julie and Jim Bob Barker? I mused and shook my head.

  The more I dwelled on the idea, the less it seemed so far-fetched.

  I mean, why not? The Rev was a great-looking guy, though twice her age. And he certainly had enough money and power to appeal to her baser needs. For heaven’s sake, Bud had been two- or three-timing her, if what I’d heard from the other waitresses was correct. So what would have prevented her from taking another lover?

  But what if Bud had found out? What if he wasn’t big on sharing?

  Or maybe he’d seen dollar signs. A business opportunity.

  Maybe he’d tried to blackmail the preacher. He could’ve had Julie followed, come up with photos that would’ve tarnished the preacher’s squeaky-clean image. Could Julie have even been in on it?

  Well, it was possible, wasn’t it?

  And it was a damned good motive for murder.

  The theory sent a charge through me, a sudden surge of hope tempered only by my worrying whether or not Malone would think it was worth looking into. Or, worse, would he tell me I was grasping at straws?

  Once home, I changed out of my funeral attire and into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from Operation Kindness, a local non-kill animal shelter I’d done some pro bono web design work for. Peeling off the sticky pantyhose had taken a bit of doing, but it was pure joy to throw the damp wad of nylon into the trashcan and wiggle my bare toes in the carpet.

  Having skipped breakfast that morning for lack of time, I fixed myself a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich and considered it brunch.

  The phone rang just as I took a bite. I picked up the receiver and uttere
d a gluey “Hello?”

  “Andy? Is that you? It’s Malone.”

  Speak of the devil, I thought, as I forcibly swallowed down the lump of peanut butter and bread.

  “Anything new?” I asked, hoping he’d found some glitch in the prosecutor’s case, some way to get Molly out of jail so I could drop this Nancy Drew act and return to my slightly less theatrical existence.

  I heard him shuffling papers in the background. “I’ve been doing some digging on my own,” he said, “and I found out a few things about our friend Fred Hicks, the helpful security guard who so fortuitously spotted Molly running from Jugs just before one o’clock on the night of the murder.” Sarcasm edged his usually even-keeled voice.

  “And?” I twisted the cord around my finger, waiting for him to finish, knowing it had to be something good to have gotten a rise out of him.

  “He’s not as clean as the cops made him out to be,” Malone remarked, sounding triumphant, and I realized he wasn’t nearly as disinterested in this case as he’d appeared in the beginning. “Hicks has a record of two arrests for theft, though charges were dropped when he paid restitution.”

  “Theft of what?”

  “Cold hard cash.”

  “So how could he keep working as a security guard?”

  “He was an unarmed guard, Andy. Some companies still don’t do background checks these days, which is how pedophiles end up working in day care.”

  Fred Hicks was a thief.

  The tip of my finger went from blue to white, and I unwrapped the cord from around it as fast as I could. My heart was pounding hard inside my chest.

  “Do you think he went over to Jugs, found the door unlocked, and tiptoed in to rob the place? Maybe Molly was still in the locker room”—she’d said Bud had been watching her from the shadows—“so maybe Hicks slipped in, found the bag with the day’s deposits sitting there on Bud’s desk and tried to run off with it, only to get sidetracked when Bud attacked Molly. He might’ve witnessed the struggle before she ran out.” The more I talked, the less idiotic the scenario seemed. “So then Bud turns around and catches him with the loot in his sticky fingers.”

  Malone did one of those, “Whoa, Andys,” that he was getting so good at. “I agree that the police need to look at Hicks more closely, but let’s not jump to conclusions, okay? As much as I’d like to clear Molly, we have to approach this realistically. First off, how would Hicks have even known where Bud’s office was, much less that the day’s receipts would be sitting on his desk?”

  “You said he’d been working at the Villa Mesa shopping center for almost a year.” My brain clicked into overdrive. “The guy probably had the layout of every retail establishment down cold and everyone’s habits memorized. I’m sure he knew Bud left the restaurant with a full bank bag at around midnight or shortly after. Maybe he was desperate or greedy . . .”

  “Andy,” he tried to cut me off, but I didn’t let him.

  “And if he deposited all that cash in his bank account, we’d have him by the balls, wouldn’t we? So check his balance, Brian, that’s all I’m asking. You can do that, can’t you?” I was not about to let him drag me down when he’d just ripped a seam in the D.A.’s case.

  He sighed. “I’ll see what I can do, but it’s a long shot.”

  Geez, did the guy cry at parties? Did he talk about the divorce rate when he went to weddings?

  “C’mon, Malone,” I prodded, because even a long shot was worth aiming for. “If Hicks had tried to steal from Bud and he’d been caught red-handed, Hartman would have pressed charges. There’s no way Bud would’ve let the guy off with restitution. And I’m sure Hicks would have done just about anything to prevent that, like picking up the knife Molly had dropped and using it to stop Bud permanently. He could’ve worn the gloves they keep in the kitchen.”

  “Gloves in the kitchen? How would you know about that?” His voice cracked like a kid in puberty.

  “Oh, er, isn’t that standard these days after all those hepatitis scares?” I rushed in to rescue myself, hoping to avoid a train wreck. “Really, Malone, it would explain why no one else’s prints were on the murder weapon but Molly’s, and if you’d just for one minute pause and consider . . .”

  “There’s plenty I’m considering, but it’s hard to get a word in edgewise,” he grumbled. “If you’d quit talking long enough for me to tell you what I’m thinking, you might actually hear me say I agree with you.”

  “You do?”

  Really, I was stunned. Not quite speechless, but stunned nonetheless.

  “Yes, I do. About one thing, anyway. That Hicks may have been the one to take the bank bag, though I’m more inclined to believe he snatched it after the fact. When Bud was already dead and couldn’t put up a fight.”

  “After Bud was dead?” I echoed and my heart sank like a stone. Why did he have to be so damned logical? “Which hardly gets Molly off the hook.”

  “The cops think Molly took the money,” he said, “which gives her a motive for murder, right? So if we can trace the stolen cash to someone else, that’ll weaken the prosecutor’s argument. See, Andy, you and I are on the same side of this thing. We just seem to take different paths to reach the same conclusion.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” I remarked, buoyed a bit by the thought that, while we weren’t always on the same page, at least we were reading the same book. At least he sounded positive, for once. “It is nice to know I’m not working alone.”

  Dead silence.

  “Malone, are you there?”

  “Wh-what exactly do you mean about working alone?” he blasted into the phone, a cannonball made of words shot directly at my eardrum. “Please, tell me you’re not doing anything stupid.” This time, he sounded more concerned than angry.

  “Aw, so you do care.” I grinned.

  No doubt his cheeks were red as Mother’s English roses. “Tell me what you’re up to, Andy. If you’re involved in anything that might jeopardize . . .”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” I stopped him midstream. “I’m not doing anything illegal and certainly nothing to hurt Molly. And, believe it or not, I’ve come up with a few things you might find interesting.”

  Talk about a pregnant pause. I pictured Malone removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose to prevent a migraine from attacking.

  Finally, he sighed. “Go on.”

  So I did breathlessly. “Bud’s got a secret partner.”

  “Not so secret.”

  “You know who it is?”

  “It’s a corporation. ERA, Inc., to be precise.”

  So Malone hadn’t been twiddling his thumbs while I hustled tips at Jugs and played the busybody. “Was there partner’s insurance?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Why did he always make me drag it out of him? “Did the corporation hold the policy on Bud Hartman?”

  “You bet.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten million bucks.”

  “Ten million?” My pulse banged against my temples. “My God, that’s like hitting the jackpot.”

  “A small jackpot these days.”

  But his remark did nothing to dampen my excitement at his news. “It’s worth killing for, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Possibly.”

  Oh, fudge, but he was a killjoy. “So what’s ERA?”

  “I’m working on that, Andy. There’s a lot of red tape involved. Somebody wanted to keep the information buried.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, dig fast, would you? We don’t have much time.”

  “Any more instructions before I go?”

  “Yeah, smart aleck,” I said because there actually was something I needed him to do. “Hold on a sec.” Wedging the receiver between my jaw and shoulder, I grabbed my purse and pulled out my notebook, flipping through the pages until I found what I was looking for. “Can you get someone to trace a license plate number?”

  “A plate number? Hell, Andy, what exactly are you up to?”r />
  “Do you really want to know?”

  A pause, then a soft, “Probably better for my health if I don’t.”

  “Ready?”

  “All right.” He caved. “Lay it on me.”

  I gave him the letters and digits I’d copied from the plate of the white Lincoln Town Car, repeating everything twice just to be sure. Then I asked him to call me ASAP when he had anything.

  “That’s it?” Why did he sound so anxious?

  “For now,” I assured him.

  “You stay out of trouble, you hear me? Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. Molly’s in deep enough already.”

  “I’ll do what I have to.”

  “Whoa, whoa . . .”

  “Goodbye, Malone,” I said and hung up.

  I finished my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, washing everything down with a glass of cold milk. Then I checked my mail, paid a few bills, and got a handful of invoices ready to send.

  Since I wasn’t working at Jugs until the late shift, I decided to go downtown and visit Molly. I doubt she’d had anyone come by that day except perhaps Malone.

  And I figured she could certainly use some encouragement after that.

  Chapter 16

  Molly looked worse than she had when I’d visited her two days before. But then being locked up at Lew Sterrett was hardly comparable to a pampering at the Greenhouse Spa.

  The shadows beneath her eyes had darkened. Her skin seemed gray, the line of her mouth more grim, though the hopelessness in her eyes lifted briefly as she caught sight of me beyond the Plexiglas barricade.

  “Don’t give up,” I said the instant she grabbed the black receiver and put it to her ear. “We haven’t lost the battle yet.”

  “Then why am I still here?” she demanded. “Why haven’t they caught the real killer so I can go home to my son? Or aren’t they even looking for anyone else? Oh, God, they’re not, are they, Andy?”

  “I’m looking,” I told her, but that didn’t seem to give her much more confidence than it had Malone.

  “I didn’t do it, I swear.” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, and she bit at her lip to fight them back. “Bud was a creep, for sure, but I didn’t murder him. He wasn’t worth my losing everything. Hell, he wasn’t worth the price of a burger.”