Blue Blood: A Debutante Dropout Mystery (28 page)

I must’ve passed out soon after—I have a very low pain threshold—because when I came to, Julie and Jim Bob were gone.

I
t took a few minutes to rouse myself to a state anywhere near awake, and a few more to unfurl my body from a fetal position. The hands of my watch were too blurry to see, so I had no idea how long I’d been curled up in the tub, soaking wet and shivering.

The shower was no longer running, but a puddle had formed beneath me. I spit into the drain as I drew my head up from the damp plastic mat.

Using my fingers, I pried my eyes wider and surveyed my surroundings. The white of the bathroom made me wince, and things seemed fuzzy at the edges. But at least the burning pain was gone. My mouth and tongue felt raw, and there was a horribly bitter aftertaste, like I’d chugged a bottle of Tabasco or swallowed fire. Which I guess I had.

I turned on the tub and cupped my palms to catch the water. I sipped and spit each mouthful into the drain until most of the nastiness was gone. I found a damp washcloth draped over the tub’s rim and blew my nose into it none too gracefully. It took several noisy attempts before I could breathe normally.

There. Better.

My legs shook as I gripped the handicapped bar and drew myself up. Water dripped off my clothes, and I could still smell the spray on the fabric.

I peeled off everything one piece at a time and turned the shower on, allowing a lukewarm drizzle to wash over me. Clumsily, I stripped off the wrapping on a tiny bar of soap and rinsed my skin thoroughly, wanting to get every bit of the chemicals off.

By the time I’d toweled off, I nearly felt human again. I cleared a circle free of condensation on the mirror and took in my reflection.

My eyes were puffy and red. My nose a shade closer to pink. My skin had a faint sunburned appearance, though basically it looked like I’d spent the night crying over a boyfriend who’d dumped me.

How the heck had this happened?

It all came back to me in a rush. My stupid attempt to confront Jim Bob and Julie, capped by a tussle on the bed and the blast of chemicals to my face.

My head hammered with a hangover I hadn’t earned. When I’d bought the pepper spray, I’d never imagined being on the wrong end of the nozzle. The instructions said it would floor an assailant for a couple hours, but they’d mentioned nothing about knocking someone unconscious. Maybe I was more susceptible than most. Then again, as a kid, the mere sight of blood could make me pass out.

Still, it was good to know the stuff worked. I’d just have to be more careful who it was pointed at the next time.

I’d set my wristwatch on the counter while I’d showered. I picked it up and studied the face carefully, able to read the hands well enough.

Eight-thirty.

That couldn’t be right, could it?

Had Jim Bob and Julie left me there overnight? In a pool of water in the bathtub, all by my lonesome? What if I’d croaked?

Or was that their intention?

Did they think I knew too much? Is that what had happened with Fred Hicks?

What if they came back for me?

I had to make like a banana and split.

But I didn’t want to put back on my wet, pepper-sprayed clothes. Would I have to sneak out of the Motel 6 wearing only a towel?

Oh, God. I was going to have to call Mother, wasn’t I? Then I’d have to tell her what had happened, how I’d put myself in grave danger by getting myself locked in a motel room with a couple of killers, or a killer and his mistress, anyway.

Another shot of pepper spray was almost more appealing, but there was no way around it.

I reached for the knob and turned. Pushed harder, finally getting my shoulder into the act, but the door wouldn’t budge.

No, no, no!

They’d wedged something against the knob on the other side. Probably the desk chair.

If I were at the Ritz-Carlton, I could use the phone beside the toilet, an amenity that Motel 6 obviously didn’t offer.

This couldn’t be happening.

My voice didn’t sound like much, more like a rasp than a howl, but I yelled as fervently as my lungs could bear and pounded on the door with my fists. When no one came to my aid, I began to bang on the walls. Surely someone would hear and call the front desk.

“Help, please . . . help!”

It was another fifteen minutes before I heard noises on the other side, and the door popped open to reveal a redheaded girl with a ponytail in a starched white shirt with a nametag that identified her as
NANCY AMES
,
ASST
.
MANAGER
. Alongside her stood a bemused older woman in a maid’s uniform.

“Good Lord, chil’,” the latter said, her drawl pure East Texas, “how in hell did ya get yourself stuck like this?”

“Bless you,” I croaked and planted a kiss on her gray-frizzed head. Then I gripped the hand of the assistant manager and nearly pumped her arm off. “I was getting claustrophobic.”

“Should we call someone for you? Maybe the police?” Ms. Ames tentatively asked. “Were you shut in on purpose? This room was registered to one of our regulars, Mr. Larry Jones, so if he did anything . . .”

Maybe I should’ve told her to ring up the police, but instead, “It’s just a small misunderstanding,” came out raggedly through my lips. An understatement of the year if ever there was one.

She looked skeptical. “If you say so.”

“I do.” I would talk to the cops about Jim Bob myself.

“All right, we’ll leave you alone then.”

She shooed the housekeeper from the room, the older woman muttering again about “these crazy kids.” I walked to the door, blinking at the piercing sunlight. I shielded my eyes with my hand and glanced across the parking lot to see my Jeep sitting a bit lower than it should have.

My gaze dropped to the tires, and I realized they were flat on the ground.

Son of a gun.

Someone—and I knew damned well who—had let the air out.

Did they think stranding me at the Motel 6 would keep me silent until they could get their stories straight for the police? Or worse, run off to Belize?

I bit my lip to keep from sobbing.

Slowly, I closed the door and retrieved my cell from the dresser where Jim Bob had flung it. I sighed with sheer joy when I heard the dial tone. Then I hit the button to speed-call Mother on her private line.

“Please, please, don’t ask,” I said the instant my mother picked up on her end. “Just grab some clothes and shoes I can borrow, and come get me.” To her credit, she made only a small noise of surprise when I told her my location. “Oh, and would you call AAA and tell them I have four flats?”

She didn’t say a word other than to assure me she was on her way.

Not even to chastise me, and the mess I’d found myself mired in, or to bemoan how my life would have been so much easier if I’d gone to SMU and pledged Pi Phi.

Under any other circumstance, I would’ve assumed Cissy’d been lobotomized.

But, for now, I was grateful.

M
other wasn’t nearly so quiet on the drive to the restaurant. I filled her in on the bare essentials of what I’d done: tracking down Julie and Jim Bob to the Motel 6 and accidentally getting doused with my own pepper spray. She didn’t need to know that I thought Jim Bob was a cold-blooded killer. Since she saw for herself that I was shaken up, but alive, it opened the door for a genteel drubbing.

“You should’ve had Mr. Malone accompany you, at the very least. What in heaven’s name were you thinking, going after those two alone?”

“
Mo-ther.
” I dragged the word out into two long syllables.

“You must take after your uncle Darwin on your father’s side, because the Blevins certainly don’t have any crazy people in our attics.”

Ouch.

“You should’ve known better,” she clucked. “I should ground you for a month.”

“You can’t ground me. I don’t even live at home.”

“Watch me.”

I sighed and stared out the window of the Lexus, wishing she would cease and desist, but there was little hope of that.

Whatever she doled out, I had to take. She’d ridden to my rescue again, extricating me from a bind tighter than Grandmother’s girdle. Not only had she taken care of my Jeep with a phone call to the mechanic who babied her Lexus—rather than AAA—but she’d brought me clothes from her own closet. The very back of her closet, I should say. I had on the navy blue short-sleeved silk sweat suit that I’d given her last Christmas, one she’d never worn. On my feet, a pair of her Ralph Lauren sneakers that were also brand new and half a size too small.

But I was hardly in a position to gripe. My wet clothes and shoes were rolled up and stowed in a plastic Motel 6 laundry bag in the trunk. My mother insisted on taking them to the dry cleaners for decontamination once I’d mentioned the pepper spray.

Before she’d let me into her car, she’d made me call Brian and relay the story to him via my cell phone. I felt like I’d been punished twice already.

“I told you to stay out of this from the beginning, didn’t I?” She rubbed it in, her usually smooth drawl crisp around the edges. “Instead, you had to stick your nose where it didn’t belong, and you nearly got yourself killed because of it.”

“It was only pepper spray, Mother.”

“Well, it didn’t do a thing for your appearance. You look like something that Houston dentist ran over three times in her Mercedes.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

I’d removed my contacts and added some eye drops before I’d donned my glasses, and my skin wasn’t so red anymore. Whatever adverse effects I’d had from the chemicals had worn off, although the bad taste in my mouth remained. But it had little to do with the spray I’d swallowed.

Much as I hated to admit it, Cissy was right.

I’d screwed up.

I only hoped I hadn’t done too much damage. I knew Jim Bob had enough money to disappear for parts unknown with his paramour, never to be heard from again. Was it too late to call his prayer line and put in a bid against that happening?

I guess I’d know soon enough if Julie had fled Dallas with him, since Jugs was fast approaching. I could already spot the huge billboard that towered over the Villa Mesa parking lot.

It wasn’t yet ten o’clock, but at least one blue-and-white was already parked at the front of the building. Malone’s blood-red Acura was there, too, and a dark sedan I didn’t recognize.

Since it looked like the gang was all there, I asked Mother to slip the Lexus into a spot near the entrance.

She made a noise as she turned off the ignition. “Oh, pish, I nearly forgot.”

“Forgot what?” I’d unhooked my seatbelt but remained in the seat.

“You asked me to dig into the Mothers Against Pornography, so that’s what I did.”

I sighed, about to tell her it didn’t matter anymore, when she reached across me for the glove box, popped it open, and retrieved a black plastic box.

She dropped it into my lap. “I phoned that precious Cinda Lou Mitchell . . .”

“Precious?” I muttered, prying the box open to reveal a cassette marked with a label that read
MAP
and last year’s date.

“. . . and I asked her if she could help me with a project I was doing, researching women’s groups in the city that needed funding,” she went on, hardly slowing down. “I inquired about footage her station might have on Mothers Against Porn and their protest targets, and she had this tape ready for me first thing this mornin’.”

I wondered exactly what was on it, and if it was even worth watching at this point, but I thanked her regardless.

She put her hand on my shoulder as I reached for the door handle.

“Andrea, darling, I’m not done.”

I let go of the door and swiveled back around. “What else?” I whined, impatient to get inside.

“You wanted the story on the Women’s Wellness Clinic and Peggy Martin, and I’ve got it, chapter and verse.” She fiddled with a faceted rock on her finger that winked in the light spilling in through the windshield. “Peggy Martin used to be married to a prominent urologist at Medical City. Buffy Winspear’s brother-in-law saw him for prostate problems, though he swears the surgery was botched because he ended up impotent.”

I groaned. “Too much information.”

She sniffed, ignoring me. “Peggy Martin and her husband were divorced some years ago, and she opened the clinic after she went back to school to get her nursing degree.” She touched a pinky to her mouth, fixing her lipstick in the rearview. “Apparently, the money came from her settlement with Chet.”

“So she got divorced from a urologist named Chet Martin? So what?”

I didn’t see how this whiff of gossip would help Molly at all.

Mother reached for her Prada purse as she said, “No, honey, that’s her name, not his. Buffy said she went back to Martin after the split. Her married name was Carter.”

Carter?

My ears rang.

“Did you ask if they had a daughter?” I couldn’t bear drawing this out any longer. “Is she named Sarah?”

“Of course, I asked,” she snipped. “Buffy couldn’t recall the girl’s name specifically, but she did remember the Carters had tried to get the child into Hockaday. She was turned down, poor dear. You see, Donald Winspear was on the board and blamed Dr. Carter for the trouble with his, ah, equipment . . .”

She kept on a while more, but I no longer listened.

I’d already heard enough.

My mother’s girl talk with her pal Buffy Winspear had proven more fruitful than my trip to the Wellness Clinic. Now I knew that Sarah Carter wasn’t just another Jugs waitress whom Bud had taken up with. She was Peggy Martin’s daughter. Which made all the sense in the world. It explained Nurse Peggy’s strong resistance to telling me where Sarah was and what had gone on between her and Hartman.

I couldn’t wait to tell Malone.

Though I wasn’t sure how important it was.

With Mother not far behind, I stuffed the videotape in my purse, scrambled out of the Lexus, and strode toward the building’s entrance.

The double doors pushed open at my touch, and I led Mother inside the hallowed walls of Jugs, only half-listening to her critique of the abominable décor as well as the dress and demeanor of the customers she’d seen when she’d barged in the other night.