Enemies Closer (27 page)

Iverson ignored the comment. “Sir, where were you bringing the redhead?”

“A restaurant around the corner. Gigi’s Bistro.”

A few minutes later, when Iverson got off the phone, Tanaka was waiting for an explanation. He’d overheard enough to know it was an important call. His partner gave him a quick overview and then said, “Either Michelle Perkins was driving that car or she has a twin out there. And Susan Burns was in the backseat of that cab when it happened.”

“Michelle?” said Tanaka, his excitement turning to dismay. “Not Eddie?”

“It was Michelle all along and Susan Burns knew it.”

Joe Bailey had obviously still been in bed when Carlisle and Kincaid banged on his door. They had caught the security door downstairs when another tenant was leaving and gone straight to his apartment on the second floor.

“Yeah, okay, come in,” he had said when he saw them. Joe was not nearly as gracious as Harry had been, but Carlisle could hardly blame him. He stunk of booze and clearly had a hangover. His tiny apartment was a mess and Joe had to sweep textbooks and chip bags onto the floor before he could find himself a seat on the couch. He didn’t offer them the same courtesy and Carlisle perched on the arm of a loveseat while her partner elected to stand.

“Yeah, we were fucking around,” said Joe, without any sign of the boyish charm he’d shown in their first interview, “but she put an end to it.”

“When?” Kincaid boomed from above the young man.

“Last night, man. So I went out and got wasted after work.”

It was pretty clear that the drinking hadn’t stopped after he had come home. There were empty beer bottles covering the coffee table. Joe saw her looking. “A couple of buddies came over here after the bars closed.”

“We’ll need their names,” said Kincaid.

“Why?” asked Joe, looking alert for the first time since they’d arrived. “What happened?”

“Eddie Perkins died last night and it wasn’t from natural causes.”

Joe blinked and searched the coffee table until he found half a bottle of water amid the beer bottles. “Well, I didn’t do it,” he said before taking a long drink. “I was working, then I went to a few bars with my friends and then we came back here. I passed out after that.”

“Were you angry when Michelle dumped you?” asked Carlisle.

“She didn’t dump me. She wasn’t my girlfriend. So when she ended it I was like, what the fuck? I mean she’s all sweet and horny as hell one minute and then she’s like, ‘It’s over.’ Just like that. I wasn’t angry, man, I was just annoyed.”

Carlisle’s phone rang and she checked the caller ID. “I’m gonna take this in the hall,” she said to her partner and walked out.

When she came back in a minute later, Joe Bailey was saying, “Michelle told me it would be better if
I
mentioned it to you. I asked why she couldn’t just tell the cops Eddie was sleeping with the floor manager, but she said it would just make you suspicious of her and she didn’t have time to deal with you any more than she already was. I felt bad for her. She’s running that place on her own and she’s fried.”

Kincaid turned to his partner and one look at her face told him it was time to go.

“Where are we going?” asked Kincaid as they made their way back to the car.

They had left the bartender with a stern look and a promise to check his alibis and rushed out the door. Carlisle filled in Kincaid as they drove toward Maddy Gardner’s condo. “They brought the cab driver in and he identified Michelle Perkins and Susan Burns from a photo line-up. Michelle
kidnapped Maddy in Eddie’s sports car and killed Susan when she found out she was a witness to it. She probably killed Eddie too.”

“You think Susan tried to blackmail her?”

“It’s the only reason I can think of for keeping it from the cops. And she wasn’t exactly a beacon of integrity.”

“And if Michelle knows Maddy is alive, she might go after her.”

“If she saw the news this morning, and I bet she was watching to see whether Eddie’s death would make the headlines, she would have seen the story about Maddy’s rescue. But it would be a suicide mission to go after her now, especially with the man she tried to frame already in the morgue. Still, I don’t want to take the chance.”

They arrived at Maddy’s building and pulled in behind the patrol car. Before going in, Kincaid asked the officer inside if he’d noticed anything suspicious.

“Nope. My partner just went up to check on everyone. Only movement was when the sister’s boyfriend came over this morning.”

Kincaid thanked him and followed Carlisle into the entryway of the building. He rang the bell and the door buzzed open almost immediately. They went up, crossing paths with the other patrolman on their way into the elevator. He carried a Tupperware container of something that smelled really delicious and confirmed that everyone was fine upstairs. “She’s cooking. Says it soothes her.”

The elevator opened onto the sixth floor and the scent of melted butter and cheese wafted through the open door. Clara stood on the threshold and ushered the detectives inside.

Madeline and Ben stood on opposite sides of the kitchen island. They both stared expectantly at Carlisle and Kincaid without uttering a word.

“Maddy,” Carlisle began, “can we all sit down?” She gestured toward the living room and they sat, uncertainty and suspicion clouding their faces. “Eddie Perkins was not the person who kidnapped you.”

Maddy leaned forward in her seat, her eyes going very wide. “No.”

“Pardon me?” said Carlisle, surprised by the response.

“It was Michelle.”

Clara turned sharply toward the detectives. “Michelle?”

“We believe so,” said Kincaid. “We have a witness who saw Maddy getting into Eddie’s BMW Z4 on Monday night. And he saw Michelle in the driver’s seat. He identified her photograph. I’m sorry.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A
patrol car radioed Tanaka and Iverson in their unmarked car: Michelle Perkins’s car was parked near Dovetail. Tanaka called in two squad cars to meet them there and then called Carlisle to tell her they were getting ready to take Michelle. “They’ll meet us outside,” he told his partner. “They’re at Maddy Gardner’s apartment, a few blocks away.”

“It’s after eleven,” said Iverson when they arrived at Dovetail, “there might be customers inside. We’ll have to go in on our own first and have officers standing by outside. If we can catch her in the kitchen or office, we can take her. Otherwise, we’ll have to make sure she’s either willing to go quietly or far enough away from any diners to take her without collateral damage.”

“Do you think she would harm anyone?” asked Tanaka thoughtfully. It didn’t matter what they thought, Michelle had to be treated as a danger to herself and others, but it was good to think through the possibilities before walking into a potentially volatile situation.

“She might. If she feels trapped.”

They parked down the street from the restaurant and waited for the others to arrive. Carlisle and Kincaid would go around to the back door with two patrolmen and wait; Tanaka and Iverson would go in through the front door and the two other patrolmen would wait across the street from the entrance. If the homicide detectives needed back-up they would radio both teams; otherwise, they would take the suspect out through the front entrance.

Once everyone was in place Tanaka and Iverson crossed the street and entered the restaurant.

Three minutes later Iverson opened the back door and let Carlisle and Kincaid inside. Tanaka waved the other two officers in.

“We got a problem,” said Iverson. “She’s not here.”

“Maddy,” said Carlisle. She and Kincaid were already heading for the front door.

Clara was curled on the sofa, napping against Ben’s shoulder while he did the NYT crossword puzzle on his iPhone, and Maddy was sitting with Bea, reading through a short stack of
Saveur
magazines while a pan of shortbread baked in the oven. After the detectives had left Maddy had begun furiously kneading flour and butter and brown sugar together, then flattened it into a pan and threw it into the oven. She hadn’t uttered a word since being told that Michelle, her friend, her partner in the restaurant she loved, had thrown her into a dank, dirty hole in the ground and left her there alone and afraid for nearly a week.

Now all was quiet; even the traffic on Second Street seemed to have stopped. Maddy put down her magazine and let her vision blur. In the silence her senses sharpened. She could perceive the crackle of the butter and sugar caramelizing in the oven, the sound of the cat’s tiny exhalations, the rhythm of Clara’s heartbeat from across the room, the soft rustle of cotton against Ben’s neck as he turned his head toward the door.

And yes, there it was, the clink of a key turning in the lock.

Ben and Maddy jumped out of their seats; both Clara and the cat mewed their displeasure at being displaced and the front door swung open, revealing Michelle standing on the threshold, a revolver in her hand.

Panic gripped Clara as she fumbled to stand up. Ben’s mind began clicking through the next few moves. Bea ran under the couch.

But Maddy Gardner flew at the woman in the doorway. Using the same motion that had propelled her out of the chair, she vaulted over its side, took two bounding steps and leapt at her treacherous best friend and business partner.

The two women tumbled to the floor in a pile and the gun skittered away from them. Ben grabbed it and turned in utter amazement toward the struggle. He and Clara stood frozen as Maddy pummeled Michelle. Just as he stepped forward to break it up, Maddy stopped and pinned the other woman to the floor.

“You hateful bitch. It’s over.”

“Yes, it is,” said Kincaid as he and Carlisle appeared in the doorway. They had stepped off of the elevator unnoticed over the din of the fight. “Michelle Perkins, you are under arrest for the murders of Susan Burns and Edward Perkins and the kidnapping of Madeline Gardner.” He helped Maddy to her feet and read Michelle her rights while a patrolman flipped and cuffed her where she lay on the floor.

As the uniformed officer and his partner stood her up, Michelle spat blood and saliva at Maddy, missing her by several feet. “Pretty girls don’t always get what they want, Madeline. Someday your perfect world will crumble at your feet. I promise you that.”

“Get her out of here,” said Carlisle. When the patrolmen got her into the elevator, she turned to Maddy. “What happened here?”

“She had a gun,” said Maddy, her breathing labored in the aftermath of an adrenaline rush. “I didn’t even think. I was so mad I just jumped her.” She paused to take a few deep breaths. “What happened?”

“We got to Dovetail and she wasn’t there. She had unlocked the doors, put out the menus, and turned on the lights. When the line cooks and waitstaff arrived, they couldn’t find her so they just set up and started lunch without her.” Looking at the keys still hanging in the lock, she added, “She must have made copies of your keys before giving them to Clara. She came in through the back door by the trash and the officers outside never even saw her.”

“How did you know she would come here?” asked Clara.

“Just did,” said Kincaid. “I knew it the second we found out she had opened the restaurant and then left. She knew you were alive from the news broadcast this morning. She probably became suspicious when no one called to tell her. Maybe she thought the Rohypnol hadn’t totally erased your memory and you could identify her? I don’t know.”

Carlisle went on, “She downplayed her animosity, but we had a lot of witnesses convinced that something was off between the two of you. We overlooked that angle because all signs pointed to Eddie.” She sniffed the air. “Something’s burning.”

Maddy’s hair was in tangles around her flushed cheeks. “The shortbread!” she said and dashed into the kitchen, retrieving a smoking pan of blackened shortbread from the oven. She set it down and stood looking at it for a moment.

“We have to get to the station,” said Carlisle. “You all come down in an hour. We’ll need your statements.”

Kincaid regarded Maddy, standing in front of the stove, still breathing heavily. “You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah.” She nodded, looking him directly in the eyes. “In fact, I’m gonna be even better.”