Blue Blood: A Debutante Dropout Mystery (24 page)

It was one of those questions that would forever remain a mystery.

Like cats without hair.

Or crop circles.

T
here was a message from Malone on my voice mail when I got home. He sounded jazzed and asked me to return his call just as soon as I could. Whatever he’d gotten from Hi-Tech must’ve been good, I mused as I dialed the number for Abramawitz, Reynolds, Goldberg, and Hunt, then asked for his extension.

“Malone,” he said in a brisk lawyerly tone.

“It’s Andy.”

“Oh, man, wait’ll you hear what I’ve found out. You’ll never believe what Hartman was into,” he said in a verbal wind sprint that nearly left him out of breath.

“First, listen to this,” I said, derailing his excitement for long enough to tell him about my visit to the Women’s Wellness Clinic down on Walnut Hill and what Peggy Martin had said—or rather, what she hadn’t said—about Sarah Carter. I didn’t leave out my suspicions that Bud had scared Sarah into hiding and that, perhaps, she’d dropped by the restaurant the other evening to settle the score with him. Maybe it was a simple act of revenge.

Malone made appropriate “uh-huh’s” and “maybe so’s,” but I could sense he was itching to give me his news.

“Now what did you want to tell me about Hartman?” I asked, figuring that there was nothing about Bud that would surprise me.

“The subpoena threat did the trick. I got the Hi-Tech guy who sold Hartman the equipment to open up like Old Faithful. And when he finally started talking, he wouldn’t stop. I think he wondered himself what Hartman had up his sleeve.”

“C’mon, Malone, spill,” I prodded, tired of listening to him yap without saying much of anything.

“I’m getting to it, Andy.”

“Well, do it faster.”

“Okay, okay.” He paused for effect, I was sure, because I wanted to scream. “Hartman hired Hi-Tech to install digital surveillance equipment in the locker room at Jugs and in the bedroom of his condo.”

Cameras in the bedroom hardly seemed shocking, what with Bud being such a creep. But the locker room?

I wondered if Julie knew about this.

“Why?” I squeaked.

“Because he, uh, wanted to tape himself having sex with different women,” Malone offered rather timidly.

“You think?” That part I didn’t need pointed out to me. “No, I mean, why the locker room at Jugs?”

“Uh, to see women undressing?”

I sighed noisily. What had I expected? Malone was a man. He just saw the obvious. “There has to be more to it than that. Hartman was sleazy, but he was also slick.”

“All I know is he made the guy show up at four o’clock in the morning so he could rig up the equipment without anyone knowing it was there.” Papers rustled, then Malone surged ahead. “There’s a lightsensitive infrared camera up in the ceiling fixture of the changing room. It has a wide-angle lens so it picks up everyone and everything inside those four walls. He had a wireless transmitter sending signals to a recording device, basically a VCR hidden in a locker, so he got every moment on tape. All Hartman had to do was pop in fresh tapes every few days. Then he could play them at his leisure.”

“Or someone else could,” I said, thinking of all the stories I’d heard about landlords putting hidden cameras in their tenants’ bathrooms to catch them naked and then doing a little “pay per view” on the uncensored Internet.

Was Hartman selling his homemade movies or even the live feed to voyeurs online?

Had anyone else known about it, if he were?

His partner, Jim Bob, for instance?

Could the Reverend Barker have wanted out of his business ventures with Bud, only to find himself trapped? Wasn’t that enough motive for murder?

“The technician said he set up pretty much the same equipment in Hartman’s bedroom,” Malone kept talking, and I felt sick to my stomach. “Probably cut down on his visits to the back room at the video store.”

Brian was kidding, I knew, but the joke wasn’t funny. Not to me.

Was I on the tape in the locker room, in and out of my clothes?

My mouth went dry at the thought.

“Andy, are you okay? You went quiet all of a sudden.”

“Bud Hartman really was an animal,” I said, a bad taste in my mouth. “Maybe he did get what he deserved.” I echoed what I’d been hearing over and over the past few days. I gripped the telephone receiver tightly, hearing the anger in my voice, feeling it in my body. “It wasn’t enough just to harass his hired help, he had to play Peeping Tom, too. And who knows what he did with the tapes.”

“He told the guy from Hi-Tech that the setup was for security reasons, to make sure no one stole from the lockers.”

“Right,” I barked, clearly as skeptical as Malone. “And he had his bedroom done to make sure no one plumped his pillows when he wasn’t looking?”

Malone chortled. “The Hi-Tech guy figured he walked on the kinky side, but he said it wasn’t his job to ask questions of his customers. He mentioned that Bud seemed like someone destined for trouble, so he wasn’t too shocked when he saw on the news that he’d been murdered.”

“So why didn’t this geek go to the police when he learned about Bud’s death?” I demanded, because it was logical. Because the cops would’ve known about Bud’s surveillance equipment by now, which might’ve led them on the path to a suspect other than Molly.

“I asked him the same thing, Andy,” Malone assured me. “His answer was that it wouldn’t have made any difference at that point, especially since the cops seemed to have caught their killer.”

But it would make a difference now. I was sure of it.

“So what do we do with this information, Malone? Because we’re sure as hell not keeping quiet about it.”

“Whoa, Andy. I’m ahead of you there. I’ve already talked to the D.A.’s office and told them everything, including the fact that the videos Bud made might provide new evidence in the case. They’re getting their paperwork done now to go after the equipment at Jugs and in Hartman’s bedroom. There might be something on the locker room tape from the night of the murder that’ll give us a clue to what really happened.”

Renewed hope danced in my chest.

“You think Bud might have caught his killer on tape?” I suggested, sure that was exactly what he was thinking.

“I do believe we’re finally on the same page.”

“Did the D.A. tell you when they’d be at Jugs?” Because I wanted to be there, too, watching their every move, making sure they didn’t miss a thing.

“They’re looking to search his condo tonight. They’ll probably have the warrant for the restaurant by tomorrow morning.”

That was music to my ears. “We still on for a late dinner?”

“Definitely.”

I brightened up measurably.

“You want to go to the Mansion?” he asked.

Oh, Cissy would love that, wouldn’t she? She’d probably even put a bug in his ear about it. So it was up to me to toss in a little wrench.

“How about something less fancy?”

“Truluck’s on Belt Line?” he suggested.

I was already drooling, thinking of the fat piece of carrot cake with gobs of cream cheese icing I’d have for dessert, the restaurant’s specialty. “You read my mind.”

I knew there was something I liked about the guy.

“I’ll pick you up at Jugs after your shift.”

“How about I meet you there? I wouldn’t want Julie to see us together again. I think she already smells something fishy.”

“Seven o’clock?”

“Perfect.”

I hung up and grabbed a quick bagel with cream cheese to quiet my stomach’s grumbling. I had only fifteen minutes to curl my hair, apply the Miss America mask of makeup, and don my padded sports bra before I was off to Jugs to “suffer the indignity of wearing such skimpy outfits,” as Peggy Martin had so eloquently put it.

Hey, a spy’s gotta do what a spy’s gotta do.

At least that’s what I told myself as I shoehorned my butt into the purple spandex hot pants one more time, praying I’d never see another pair once this jig was up.

M
y mind definitely wasn’t on serving beer and buffalo wings.

All afternoon, I kept thinking of the things that weren’t adding up.

Bud and Jim Bob Barker’s partnership in Jugs and the ten-million-dollar insurance policy. The preacher’s oddly cozy relationship with Julie Costello. The disappearing waitress, Sarah Carter, and her connection to the Mothers Against Porn. Bud’s cameras in his boudoir and in the locker room (prompting me to dress in a bathroom stall) and exactly what he may have been up to with those tapes. And, last but not least, the security guard, Fred Hicks, who’d turned up comatose in his car near Love Field with a suitcase in his trunk.

It was enough to make my head spin, which might be why I had more than a few orders mixed up.

I found Julie’s eyes on me whenever I turned around, a funny look on her face, probably thinking she should’ve scheduled Tiffany for the afternoon shift, despite her dreaded PMS. Each time I blundered, she was at my side, asking how I felt, if I needed to sit down.

“I’m fine,” I kept telling her. “I’m not an invalid.”

“Well, sugar, you’re serving like one.”

Ouch.

At around five o’clock, she insisted I get something to eat and relax for fifteen minutes. I passed on the food, since I was meeting Malone in a couple hours for dinner at Truluck’s. But I did take her up on the break, heading back to the empty locker room to sit and think. This detective work was harder than I’d imagined. It wasn’t anything like the reruns of
Murder, She Wrote,
where suspects constantly blurted out confessions to Angela Lansbury at the end of an hour.

I sighed, feeling depressed, and my eyes drifted to the ceiling, to the light fixture where the Hi-Tech nerd had told Malone he’d wired a camera.

Even when I squinted hard, I still couldn’t find it.

I glanced around me at all the yellow doors, wishing I could pinpoint which locker held the rest of the equipment.

Half of them had combination locks, but I wouldn’t know which belonged to Jugs’s waitresses and which Bud might’ve used. There were so many. I couldn’t locate any wires protruding from anywhere, even when I got up and poked around. Probably remote controlled with antennae and radio waves or something equally sci-fi.

Ah, well, the police would show up the next morning—if Malone had his facts straight—and, if we got lucky, Bud might have actually caught his killer on tape. Then everything else would be a moot point.

I realized the Dallas P.D. could well be at Bud’s townhouse at that very moment, going through those videotapes and uncovering more of the randy restaurateur’s dirty little secrets. Then it shouldn’t be hard to persuade them that there were plenty of motives to go around.

Revenge.

Blackmail.

Jealousy.

Insurance money.

Missing cash.

Just to name a handful.

When the cops heard what else Malone and I knew, they would
have
to start looking harder at other suspects. They’d
have
to let Molly go while they investigated further.

Wouldn’t they?

“Hey, are you okay?”

It was Julie.

I hadn’t heard her come in. She stood beside the bench where I sat with my head in my hands.

“You need some water, sugar?”

I peeled my fingers from my face and wet my lips, thankful only that she didn’t know what I’d been thinking in the moments before. “I’m fine, really.”

She didn’t look as if she bought it. She crossed her tanned arms beneath the large breasts barely concealed by the cut-off shirt. “You know, Andrea, there’s something not right about you.”

Uh-oh.

“What’s not right?” Had one of my falsies come unfastened, giving me unbalanced boobs?
Please, let it be that simple.

“You’re not on your game today.” She patted my shoulder. “It’s probably hormones, what with your condition. So why don’t you duck out early tonight and take tomorrow off? We’ll talk after that, see how you’re feelin’.”

“
No
.” I tugged my too-short shorts down from where they’d crept and stood facing her, nose to nose-job. “I don’t need any time off. Honest.” Oh, God, I couldn’t screw this up, not just when I was getting so damned close to finding out who’d really killed Bud. “I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, but I’ll try harder, I promise.”

“Maybe Junior needs his mommy to stay off her feet . . .”

“My feet are fine!” And besides, I wanted to blurt out, there
was
no Junior! “Look, Julie, it’s just that . . .”

I was tempted to tell her why I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t. To explain to her about Molly’s and my friendship, about David missing his mommy. Who knows? She might even want to help me out, to fill in some of the blanks that no one else could.

Unless she’d murdered Hartman.

Maybe she and Jim Bob had both wanted Bud dead. It didn’t seem at all illogical, the more I thought about it, recalling what I’d overhead between them when I’d barged into Jugs the morning after the murder. They’d mentioned “the money” and “last night” and something that was “not over yet.”

I couldn’t trust her.

For all I knew, I was standing a foot away from a killer.

I found myself studying the pretty painted face and trying to figure out if Julie had it in her to commit such a violent act. She’d been nothing but kind to me, though I’d heard that Jeffrey Dahmer’s neighbors had said the same thing about him.

“It’s just what?” she prodded.

“Never mind.” Now was not a good time to play confessional. There was still too much to be sorted out, and, if Julie really had killed Bud and I tipped her off, Molly might not be the only one whose life was at stake. “Unless you’re firing me, I’m heading back out there to finish my shift, and I’ll be here again in the morning.”

She shrugged. “Hey, sugar. I’m only lookin’ out for your own good.” She shook a pink-nailed finger at me. “You’re lucky I’m in charge now. Bud wouldn’t have been so sympathetic about your situation. He never would’ve hired you. The baby thing.”

“He didn’t like children?”

“No, silly.” She slapped my arm lightly. “Pregnant waitresses.”

“Ah.”

“You take it easy, little mama, and get back to your tables.” Julie moved down the rows of lockers and popped one open. “I’ve got to change and head out into that godawful heat.”