Blue Blood: A Debutante Dropout Mystery (17 page)

“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?”

“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.

M
olly 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.”

“You don’t have to convince me, Mol,” I assured her, wishing I could leap past the clear partition and give her a hug. “I’ve believed from the beginning that you’re innocent. So does Malone,” I added, sensing after my last conversation with Brian that this wasn’t stretching the truth anymore. “You have to trust us. We’re doing all we can to fix this mess.”

“I know you are, Andy,” she said, but didn’t appear any too encouraged. “And I can’t thank you enough for that.”

I leaned nearer the Plexiglas, as if I could whisper my next words to her instead of breathing them into the receiver. “I got the job at Jugs,” I informed her, and her eyes widened. Though I left out the sob story about my pretending to be alone, penniless, and pregnant. She might think my artful lie was imitating her life a tad too closely. “I started yesterday, and I’m working the dinner shift today.”

“Have you found out anything new?”

“A few possibilities.”

She leaned forward, eagerly. “Spill.”

I hardly needed prodding. “Well, for one, you’re certainly not the only waitress who felt Bud was an octopus. I met Rhonda, Christie, and Ginger, and each of them had stories about Hartman coming onto them, despite his so-called relationship with Julie Costello.”

“It’s like I said, Andy.” She frowned, tension pinching her features. “Bud was a big guy. He was physically powerful. If he wanted something, he just took it. What a waste of nice packaging. If only he hadn’t been such an ass on the inside.”

“Well, someone other than Julie must’ve ignored what was beneath his slick-boy exterior. I heard about a girl named Sarah who worked at Jugs for two weeks, then abruptly disappeared. The other waitresses said she had a thing for Bud.”

Her brow wrinkled in concentration. “Yeah, I remember her. Cute girl. She was young, maybe eighteen.”

“Bud bait,” I repeated what I’d been told. “How well did you know her?”

Molly pursed her lips. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to her too much. I mostly worked the late shift, which can be crazy. Lots of guys coming in after softball games or hanging out to watch sports. But, the few times I did speak to her, she seemed too anxious for me to like her. Like she was desperate for a friend.”

“Did she really follow Bud around like a puppy?”

“Some girls have no taste.” Molly smiled shakily. But it was short-lived. “Sarah was supposed to help Bud close the restaurant one Friday night a while back. I was actually scheduled to work with her the next day. But she never showed. All Bud would say was that she wasn’t coming back, but I had a feeling something happened between them when they were alone.”

“Do you recall her last name?”

“Oh, damn.” She squished her eyes closed, and I crossed my fingers, hoping she could retrieve the information from wherever it was buried in her mind. Then she opened them and said, “Sarah Craven. Wait, no. That wasn’t it. Carson? Something like that, anyway.” She looked crestfallen. “I’m sorry, Andy. We’re pretty much on a first-name-only basis at the restaurant.”

“It’s okay,” I assured her. That shouldn’t be too tricky to find out.

“I just wonder . . . ,” she said, but the words trailed off.

“Tell me, please.”

She whispered into the receiver, “I wonder if what happened to me, happened to Sarah. Only what if she didn’t get away from him?”

I had been wondering the same thing. Yet, I figured that, if Bud had actually assaulted Sarah, she would have filed a police report. Which, I assumed, she hadn’t. Otherwise, the cops would’ve taken Bud in, and, the way the grapevine moved at Jugs, everyone would’ve heard about it. There’s no way Bud could’ve hushed that up.

Maybe there was nothing nefarious about Sarah’s no-show at Jugs at all. What if she’d been convinced not to return by a sweet-faced woman in the parking lot?

“What do you know about the Mothers Against Pornography?” I suddenly asked her, thinking of Peggy Martin and her contingent of female crusaders. “Are they harmless? Have they ever kidnapped anyone? Like the people hired by parents to snatch brainwashed kids from cults?”

“Kidnapped?” The tension in Molly’s face eased, and her mouth twitched, like she wanted to chuckle. “My God, Andy, I doubt they’d abduct a girl just to keep her from doing her shift in hot pants. I mean, the worst they ever did was corner me in the parking lot and try to convince me to quit degrading myself by serving beer ‘half-naked,’ as they put it.” She smiled weakly. “One of them even offered me a job at a doctor’s office, filing papers for seven-fifty an hour.” She shrugged. “It was annoying sometimes, but I actually felt safer when they were there. I never had to worry about some creep lurking around my car.”

Although a lurking Mother can be creepy enough, I thought.

“Did you know the shopping center security guard, Fred Hicks?”

She shrugged. “I saw him around sometimes. He’d tip his hat to me. Usually when I left, he was hanging out at the Zuma Beach Club. Sometimes he’d be talking with a few MAP members in front of Jugs.”

Did Peggy Martin know Fred Hicks? I wondered.

Molly’s eyes suddenly darkened, and her forehead puckered. “Oh, man.”

“What?”

“I just realized something. If I’d gone home after my shift, the Mothers would have been around. But since I stayed to help Bud close, all the Moms Against Porn had packed up hours before. Too bad, huh? Because otherwise one of them might’ve seen something or someone . . .”

“Or clobbered Bud with a protest sign,” I remarked.

Molly brightened. “I could’ve sold tickets for that.”

“Standing room only.”

She nodded, her gaze drifting off for a moment, so I could tell her mind had shifted elsewhere. Not surprisingly, she asked, “How’s my baby?”

Beyond the ache in her voice, it was plain in her face how much she missed him.

“He’s doing great.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s the newly crowned Go Fish champion at Mother’s house,” I told her, causing a smile of pure delight.

“The kid’s a con man.”

“You’re telling me.”

She chuckled, eyes bright for a moment before the sadness crept back in. “He’s the best thing that ever happened to me, Andy. He’s the only thing I’ve done right. I can’t let myself imagine not being able to hold him again. It’s too awful to even consider.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and I felt my throat constrict as I watched her brush them away with the back of her hand.

This wasn’t right, I kept thinking. It wasn’t right at all.

I changed the subject, as much for my sake as for hers. “You don’t happen to have the password for Bud’s computer, do you?”

Molly blinked. “You’re planning to break into Bud’s system? You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

Why did she look so surprised? Computers were my forte, not serving beer in tight shorts to guys who thought every woman’s name was “babe.”