Blue Blood: A Debutante Dropout Mystery (7 page)

The metal door behind her swung open, and Molly visibly tensed. Her shoulders squared, and her chin went up. A prison matron in blue blouse and pants led a jumpsuited woman into the room.

Molly exhaled, slumping down in her chair. Her skin turned ashen. “I thought they were taking me back already.”

I leaned nearer the clear partition as if I could whisper to her without anyone overhearing. If I was going to put my scheme into action, I needed her help. And there wasn’t any time to waste. “Can you answer some questions for me, Molly? About the restaurant and the people you worked with?”

She wrinkled her forehead. “Like what?”

“Did Bud have a partner, for one? Or was he sole proprietor?”

“I heard he had a silent partner, but I don’t know who.”

“Did he keep his own books?”

“I guess so.”

I was on a roll. “And what about his relationship with that ex-cheerleader, Julie Costello? Was she the jealous type? Were there any other waitresses he was boinking? And do you know if he gambled or if he owed money . . . ?”

“Hold on a minute,” Molly stopped me, her voice low and suspicious. “What are you up to?” She was clearly worried. “Don’t get yourself involved in this mess any more than you are right now.”

“I just want to be prepared.”

“For what?”

Without further ado, I blurted out: “I thought I’d apply for your job.”

There, I’d said it.

Molly blinked. “What?”

I shifted in the plastic chair, saying aloud what I’d been dreaming up in my head. “Well, they’ve got to be short a waitress, right? And I’ll bet they don’t stay closed any longer than it takes the police to blow through the place. They’ll probably be open again by morning.”

“Oh, Andy.”

“It’s the only way,” I insisted, having tried to come up with another solution and finding no alternatives. “The police have set their sights on you, Molly. They’re out to convict you of murder,” I reminded her, though I doubt she’d forgotten. “They figure you did it, so they’re not wasting any time looking for another suspect. They’re busy piling up evidence against you for the prosecution to hammer you with. Once this gets to court, there’s no turning back. This is the best chance we’ve got . . .”

“All right, all right, you had me with ‘convict.’ ” She leaned against the ledge on her side of the window, shoulders concave, head bowed, seeming suddenly smaller and more vulnerable. She transferred the receiver from her right ear to her left. “As much as I want to tell you to go home and forget about this, I can’t. There’s no way in hell I want to take the rap for something I didn’t do.”

I felt victorious despite the flutter in my belly. It was all I could do not to rub my hands together. “Now about those questions,” I said into the receiver and started over, finding more to ask each time Molly responded to one.

When she’d told me all she knew about the general operations, I got down to the trickier stuff. “So how does a girl go about getting hired at a place like Jugs? Do I wear a G-string or spandex?”

A tiny smile played on her lips. “Jeans and a T-shirt should do just fine.”

“Tight?”

“Right.”

“Should I shovel on the eyeliner and lipstick?”

She laughed. “What do you think?”

“Hair up or down?”

“The bigger, the better.”

“Maybe I should invest in a Wonderbra,” I suggested, glancing down at my barely there chest.

“The bigger, the better,” she said again.

We both started to giggle, but the levity didn’t last.

The matron came up behind her, hands on her hips. “Time’s up,” she must’ve said, though I could only see her mouth move and hear the vague crackle of her voice through the line.

“I gotta go,” Molly whispered, adding, “Tell David I love him,” before she quickly hung up.

She looked like a skinny kid in oversized orange pajamas, I thought as I watched her being led through the door and away.

It hit me hard that this was for real, and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. This wasn’t the Game of Life that she and I used to play. It wasn’t even Monopoly.

Her future was at stake. The whole rest of her flipping life, no chance to “Get Out of Jail Free” with a roll of the dice.

And what about David? What would be his fate if his mother were condemned to hard time?

I got out of there as fast as I could, ignoring the air so warm and thick it nearly mugged me, trying not to notice the stink of urine that clung to every downtown building I passed on my way to the seven-dollar-an-hour Car Park.

Funny how easy it is to take things for granted when you have no fear of losing them.

T
he offices of Abramawitz, Reynolds, Goldberg, and Hunt were located on the tenth floor of a modern high-rise a couple blocks from Lew Sterrett.

I decided it couldn’t hurt to drop in on Brian Malone and see what information he’d managed to dig up so far. Maybe he’d seen the final version of the police report or heard something from the medical examiner’s office.

My espadrilles shuffled over pink marble tiles as I crossed the foyer toward the elevators. A crowd of business-suited men and women waited quietly beside me until a light blinked above one of the four sets of doors. A gentle ping sounded as the doors slid open to disgorge a horde of people who looked not unlike the ones who pressed inside the mirrored space alongside me.

“Ten, please,” I said, because I’d been pushed into the far corner and couldn’t have reached the buttons unless I’d had the wingspan of Shaquille O’Neal.

A few cleared their throats, but no one said a word as we rose upward. The blend of colognes and perfumes in the cramped space made me dizzy so I breathed through my mouth instead of my nose.

The elevator stopped on practically every floor, and I felt more than a tad claustrophobic by the time it reached level ten.

A glossy plaque on a pair of glass doors identified the offices of Abramawitz, Reynolds, Goldberg, and Hunt, and I slipped in and headed toward a kidney-shaped reception desk in a lobby that was dimly lit with mauve walls, leather sofas, and area rugs. I heard the faint strains of a Mozart piano concerto being piped into the room.

The woman behind the desk wore a headset over the pale blond of her hair, and I listened to her put half a dozen callers on hold before she looked up with a white-toothed smile, asking, “May I help you, ma’am?” Something about being called “ma’am” always needled me. Made me feel as if they were talking to my mother. I nearly glanced over my shoulder, expecting to find Cissy standing there.

“I’d like to see Brian Malone, please.”

“Name?”

“Andrea Kendricks.”

She scrunched up her tiny nose and peered at the computer screen, her fingers tapping on the keyboard, and then she glanced at me again, this time without the toothpaste-perfect smile. “You’re not listed on his schedule, ma’am. Perhaps I can make you an appointment for next week?”

“It’s important that I . . .”

“One moment, please,” she interrupted and raised a pink-tipped finger as the telephone buzzed for her attention. “Abramawitz, Reynolds, Goldberg, and Hunt, one moment, please,” she rattled off in staccato quick succession. She put the line on hold and looked up again. “If you want to see one of our attorneys, you’ll need an appointment, ma’am.”

“Andy?”

Turning at the sound of his voice, I sighed with relief at the sight of Malone standing in the mouth of the hallway, a cup of coffee in his hand. “I was just taking a break, and I thought I saw you out there.”

“Yep, it’s me all right.” I gave the receptionist a little smirk as I left the front desk and walked toward him. “You have a few minutes?” I asked.

“I can spare about ten. I’m proofing a brief for one of the senior partners before a meeting with a client.”

“Thanks.”

I followed him out of the mauve lobby and through a maze of hallways with wood panels and wildlife prints that reminded me of a series my dentist had on the wall across from the spit sink.

I peered into the offices we passed, noting shelves floor-to-ceiling with books, patterned area rugs, and big dark desks behind which sat a succession of mostly white male occupants.

So much for diversity.

“Here we are,” Malone said, stopping outside a door at the end of the maze. His nearest neighbor, I noted, was an enormous copy machine currently spewing out collated papers at about a page per second.

He ushered me inside and gestured at a barrel-backed chair opposite his paper-cluttered desk. I had a feeling the firm’s interior decorator had bypassed his office entirely. Or maybe that was an incentive for making partner.

There were no windows, but the room was well lit, and someone had deposited a large closet plant in the corner so there was living green amidst the grim palette of deep blues and browns. Brown shelves, brown floor, faded blue dhurrie, brown chairs, brown desk, navy drapes. I glanced at Malone and wondered if he’d color-coordinated his attire of brown suit and blue striped tie.

He set his Styrofoam cup down atop a stack of manila folders and leaned back in his big chair, setting his hands in his lap. “Now, what can I do for you?”

Though I realized he had to be about my age, he appeared so boyish with his tousled hair and clean-shaven jaw. His eyes were clear and wide behind his glasses. A part of me wished he were older and grayer, but he had an earnestness about him that I found appealing.

“This isn’t a social call, is it?”

I held my purse on my knees and fiddled with the strap. “I just came from the county jail,” I confessed, and he didn’t seem surprised. “I can’t believe they’ve got her locked up already. I mean, I know the wheels of justice are swift, but this is ridiculous.”

“I’m working as fast as I can.”

“Well, go faster, Malone. We can’t let this thing go to trial or the prosecution’s going to railroad her. I can see it happening as we speak.”

His chair squeaked as he bent forward over his desk. “Listen to me, Andy. Nobody ever knows how a jury’s going to react to a case before it’s presented. Not even the consultants who help pick them.”

“But it looks bad, even you said so.”

He shrugged, and his long fingers encircled his coffee cup. “It’ll depend on who they believe. Molly or the cops.”

“Great,” I groused, knowing who always came out on top in Texas. The cops were the good guys here, not like in L.A. where they so often seemed to wear the black hats. “Have you seen a copy of the final police report yet? How about the autopsy findings?”

“Preliminaries only,” he said and fished through some of the papers on his desk. He apparently found what he was looking for. “What do you want to know?”

So many questions came to mind that I wasn’t sure which to ask first. “How about the time of death?”

Malone skimmed the pages. “Estimated TOD is somewhere between midnight and three a.m. Rigor mortis had just started setting in, and the body temp had cooled by a couple of degrees.”

I felt a flash of hope. “So Bud Hartman could have been alive when Molly left like she told us. He could have been killed an hour later . . . maybe even two.”

“But the security guard saw her fleeing the scene just before one a.m. Guy’s name is Fred Hicks. He’s been working for Lone Star Security for almost a year. They have a contract with the Villa Mesa Plaza. In his statement, he said that he wrote down Molly’s plate number on instinct, but everything else seemed quiet so he went about his regular duties and finished his rounds. He was distracted for a while by a problem at the Zuma Beach Club, across the parking lot from Jugs.”

“Zuma Beach?” I repeated, easily imagining what the distraction might have been. The bar was popular with the college crowd. Some girls I knew from Hockaday who’d attended SMU or Texas Christian used to hang out there regularly on Saturday nights long after graduation. They’d called it the “meat market” back then, and I didn’t figure things had changed much over time. “Did some drunken frat boys cause a scene?”

Malone nodded. “Bingo. Hickman had to break up a fight between a couple kids who were blotto, then he called them both cabs. It was nearly three when he went back to Jugs and saw Hartman’s car still there. Apparently, that happened occasionally, but he did get curious enough to go over and that’s when he found the rear door unlocked. When he went inside, Hartman was lying face down on the floor with an eight-inch chef’s knife protruding from his back.”

I wasn’t about to give up. “That leaves almost two whole hours for someone else to have stabbed him. The killer could’ve come and gone while Hicks was taking care of those yahoos at Zuma.” I caught my second wind. “My God, Malone, anyone could’ve gotten into Jugs if the back door was open and no alarm was set. From what I’ve heard so far, Hartman was a real ass. He probably had enemies up the wazoo. Maybe a jealous boyfriend or husband came after him and took the opportunity to teach him a lesson he’d never forget.”

Malone patiently waited until I’d finished, then told me, “The cooks who worked the last shift at Jugs that night said they’d sanitized all the cooking utensils before going home. Molly’s prints were the only ones on the handle of the murder weapon.”

“The killer could’ve worn gloves.”

Malone sighed.

“Maybe this was premeditated,” I suggested, hating that he was so ready to give up because a shopping center security guard and a few fingerprints pointed in Molly’s direction. Besides, everyone knew how unreliable eyewitnesses were. All you had to do was watch a rerun of
Law & Order.

I pointed this out to him, adding, “Someone could have hidden in a closet, waiting for everyone to leave. Only Hartman went after Molly, and she picked up the knife to scare him off.”

Malone’s brows arched.

“Okay, so she nicked him a little, but she didn’t do the deed. What she did was leave enough evidence to make the cops believe she’s guilty. Now she’s accused, and the real murderer is walking around, scot-free.”

My heart pounded in my chest, and I realized I’d come halfway out of my seat. My purse had fallen to the floor, and I scooped it up and settled back into my chair, primly crossing my ankles.