She drank some of the thick brew and pondered her mistakes again. She should never have allowed Bradley to get the upper hand. But she got smug, believing herself to be his superior, and let him get ahead of her. Now she had to back door it and find a way to get her partner back. At the same time, she had to prove Serena’s husband killed her for another woman. A lot depended upon Bradley’s relationship with the red-haired woman.
They’d never get a search warrant for the photographer’s house without probable cause; in fact, the cops were the ones who appeared to be wrong, because of the cell phone in the victim’s hand. Getting a look into the photographer’s house would require skill, and an expertise that Maude didn’t possess. Thinking that, she remembered her niece, Lilly Ann, the long-legged girl who had often modeled women’s clothing to help pay for an expensive education.
Lilly Ann is the perfect choice, she thought. She has an investment in Joe’s future, and is savvy where it counts. She had dated Joe off and on for several months, and the relationship had begun to look serious to the rest of the family. But best of all, Lilly Ann was Joe’s friend, and would do whatever it took to help him out of a bad situation. We can protect her from start to finish, and she won’t be in any danger.
A phone call later, Maude’s stomach settled some, and she considered driving home. She lived on the outskirts of town, near the county line, and the drive often saved her from doing something rash. But how could she go home with Joe still missing? She drove toward Bradley’s house, and parked on the street, a block away, close enough she could see his house, but not close enough for him to make a legitimate complaint about harassment. She curled up on the front seat facing the front door of his house and waited. An hour or so later, exhaustion closed her eyes, and she slept uneasily for a few hours. When she awoke, stiff-jointed and in pain, Maude continued the drive to her house, hoping Bradley wouldn’t make any rash moves if he thought he was under surveillance.
Two extra- strength ibuprofen pills relieved the pain in her knees, and she lay on the bed, angry at what she felt was weakness in not being able to stay awake. She began dreaming almost immediately. In her nightmare, Joe was being chased by alligators and try as she might, Maude couldn’t get a direct hit on any of them. One of them opened its mouth and grinned, and it was Thomas Bradley’s face she saw. Somewhere between firing her weapon, and grabbing Joe out of the gator’s mouth, the alarm went off, and her eye’s opened to the harsh light of early morning. Quickly she called dispatch, and was told there was no more information concerning Joe’s disappearance.
The coffeepot was ready for turning on. She had set it the day before, knowing ahead how much she would need the caffeine.
“Whoever roasted the first coffee bean is my friend,” Maude said to Stray. “Too bad you don’t know the joys of a fresh cup of Folgers. A little on the strong side is the way I prefer it,” she said, continuing to speak to the silent animal.
The ringing of the house phone got Maude’s attention as she sat on the back porch of her house. Even though the weather was mild, she had covered her shoulders with a light throw, and wrapped both phones inside it.
“Hello,” she said into the receiver. In a second or two, Lilly Ann acknowledged that she was in the neighborhood, and asked her aunt to unlock the door. “It’s open,” Maude replied. “Knew you’d be on time,” she said confidently. “Coffee’s on the burner.”
Lilly Ann had changed since her relationship with Joe began. She seemed older, smarter, if possible, but definitely more determined to save her own happiness. In her makeover, she forbade Maude to call her Lilly Ann anymore. “It makes me sound too young. Too unprofessional.”
“Okay, how about Lilly? Is that okay? Or do you want me to call you Lillian?”
“No, Aunt Maude, Lilly will do just fine. Now about Joe, where do you think he might be?”
She’s like me there, gets right to the problem without much small talk, Maude thought.
“Lilly,” she said, trying the shortened name, “Lilly, as I told you on the phone last night, I fear for Joe’s safety. I don’t know where he is, but I pray he isn’t badly hurt.”
Lilly sipped her coffee delicately. Her natural blonde hair shone in the early morning light, and Maude was, as always, taken aback by the natural beauty of her brother’s only child. A duplicate of the blue eyes that stared back at Maude in the mirror graced the girl’s pale complexion, giving her an innocent expression. Some seeing Lilly for the first time thought her to be the stereotypical dumb blonde. In the beginning, Maude had counted on it with Thomas Bradley.
“I have some misgivings, Lilly. I’ve changed my mind and want to talk you out of this. We can find an officer to do the job. You know I’m concerned for your safety.”
“I know, but I want to do it. Joe’s life may depend upon my ability to deceive this scumbag long enough to get something on him. So no, you can’t talk me out of it.”
An hour later, the phone rang at Thomas Bradley’s house. The number had been easy to get through police department records.
“Hello, is this Thomas Bradley?” Lilly did her best valley girl impression.
“Who wants to know?” Bradley was expecting law enforcement officers or the press to call him, and was prepared to give out his attorney’s number.
“This is Lillian De Los Santos. I saw your ad.”
“Oh, where did you see it?”
“In the Guardian. But also, my girlfriend had some pictures made for her portfolio and she said you were the best. Janie Culbertson, but she used to go by Janie Anderson, or Janie Schmidt, depending on whether she was married or living with her boyfriend. You know how that goes. Or maybe it was Heather that told me about you, but anyway, I found your name in the Guardian and got the phone number. I have some money, though not a whole lot. A thousand dollars. Depending on how far that would go with photo shoots and such.”
She heard the intake of breath when she mentioned money. Evidently, Bradley was short of funds.
“When can you come over?” he asked in a moment.
“Bingo,” Maude said, after listening to the conversation.
“He took the bait. We’ll work out the details and get you wired.”
****
She drove to work, and went directly to her captain to ask for funds to cover Lilly’s photo shoot. “We’ll get it back, I think. But if we don’t, it’s for a good cause.” Maude went on to describe the scam they hoped to play on Bradley. If we win, we win big, and if not, we lose a thousand dollars. Not a tough decision Captain.”
Patterson took a moment before agreeing. He was afraid of the backlash if Bradley screamed police harassment, but he knew he had to do everything possible to find his detective, and Maude was sure Joe was being held by the photographer. And it would look good to bust a murderer at the same time he saved his own employee.
“Nothing happened during the night, Maude. The lab left a message that the sock was Joe’s, but there were no prints on the wallet.”
“No break there,” she said. “But that’s Joe’s wallet.”
“Okay, if you say so. A few men reported in,” Patterson continued, “they said they did some questioning in the bars along Main Street, but no one remembers Joe coming in for a beer. We’ve come up empty on the van. Do you know how many people in Madison drive a dark, new model van? Well, it’s a lot more than I figured, Maude. We can’t interview them all without clearing it with the Chief. Although it may come to that, before it’s over,” Patterson said.
Maude knew the way her captain thought, and although sometimes she despised him for being a glory hog, she knew he was basically a good man. In addition to approving the listening equipment and the officers to operate it, he agreed to pull the thousand dollars from the evidence room, and she wasn’t surprised.
“So far we haven’t been served with a judge’s order, so we’re not breaking any court rulings to stay away from Bradley. If this goes south, I expect there will be a pocketful of them,” she add
ed. Musing over the possibilities of difficulty, she almost missed the captain’s last remark.
“Then you’d better work fast, before his attorney outthinks us.”
“Yes sir,” she said, gathering her thoughts. “Will do.”
****
At ten a.m., the taxi driver dropped her in front of the home of Thomas Bradley. She was in a hurry to find Joe, and had left Maude’s house without clearing her movements. As far as her aunt knew, Lilly had gone out for breakfast with a friend, and they would set up the time later in the day. Silently begging Maude’s forgiveness, Lilly made her own arrangements with the photographer, and went to an ATM several times to get the money she needed. She shook a little when she rang the doorbell, and was afraid her nervousness would give her away.
“My, you are lovely, Miss De Los Santos,” he said, inviting her in. “I’m Thomas Bradley.”
“Glad to meet you,” she said, still shaking. “I’m really nervous. I’m not used to being alone with a man in his own house.” Better he think me a social drop-out, than be suspicious of my motives.
“No problem. It’s okay to be nervous, but I hope you’ll get over it soon,” Bradley said as he turned on some soft music. “You should photograph nicely. You have a lovely body. But before we start, can I see the money? Not that I don’t trust you, but women your age sometimes think they can buy services with their looks.”
“Oh, yes, I mean no, I wouldn’t do that,” Lilly replied. “Here,” she said, showing him the wad of cash.
“Would you like a drink? I know it’s early, but it might help you relax,” he said, headed to the liquor cabinet. “Just a little one?”
“Uh, sure, whatever you’re having,” she replied. “Do you want me to change clothes?”
“Not yet. Relax first--you’ll photograph better if you aren’t so tense.”
She sat down with the drink, determined to sip it to keep it from going to her head. The combination of the music and the alcohol relaxed her somewhat, and she smiled at him when he asked her questions. Later, she couldn’t remember what the questions were, but at the time they seemed quite reasonable, and her answers brilliant.
Some time passed, and Lilly woke in stuffy darkness. A few streams of light beamed like lasers through what appeared to be nail holes in her prison walls. Her hands were tied behind her back, and her feet and legs were bound. She lay in dampness that smelled of oil or gasoline.
“Where am I?” she screamed. “What did you do to me, you pervert?” Her head ached and she felt like vomiting, a sure sign she had ingested a drug.
Silence greeted her cries, scaring her even more. Trying to roll across the floor of her prison, Lilly groaned as her naked skin came in contact with a rough surface, either gravel or kitty litter, she hoped. She stopped moving, and felt along her back, wishing her captor hadn’t taken all her clothing.
The door opened, and Thomas Bradley stood surrounded by halo-like beams of sunlight. “Hello, Lillian,” he said loudly. “Thank you for the nice wad of cash. Though not as much as I would like, it will be enough for traveling money. It’s too bad we didn’t meet under better circumstances. We might have been friends.”
“You drugged me,” She said angrily.
“Afraid so. I don’t have the patience for a lengthy explanation. There are other places I needed to be, and you were in the way. It’s a good thing I checked for a wire--otherwise, I might not have seen your beautiful body. It’s even better you weren’t wearing one, or you’d be dead.”
“How did you know?” she asked, feeling more stupid than afraid.
“The Guardian. I haven’t had an ad in a year. Couldn’t afford it, my wife kept me broke,” he said, touching her ankle with his shoe. “I guess you came up with this scheme on your own. The police wouldn’t have sent you in, unprotected. Trying to get revenge for your boyfriend? Oh yes, I know who you are. I found pictures of you in his apartment.”
“You killed her, didn’t you?” She knew she shouldn’t ask, but if she was going to die, there were some things she wanted to know.
“My wife? Serena Ruiz Bradley, the great writer?” His voice grew louder, and higher in octave. “She got what was coming to her. Your boyfriend came along at a bad time. Good for me, bad for him. You see, I was on my way here--which as you can see, the garage isn’t connected, so I had to carry her here from the house-- when your cop boyfriend rode by on his bicycle. I knew he saw me out of the corner of his eye, because he turned back to look, just as I went through the garage door.”
“Did he come back and confront you?” she asked.
“No, but I didn’t give him long to consider it. You see, because of what I do, I know that the eyes are the body’s cameras. They snap pictures and store them in the brain. Your boyfriend saw something, but he didn’t consciously know that it was a body I was concealing. Given time, the picture would have made its way from his mind’s eye into his cognitive perception. In a nutshell, your boy would have shown up on my doorstep with a warrant to search my house and garage. We couldn’t allow that.”
“Did you…hurt him?” She couldn’t bear to consider Joe might be dead.
Bradley giggled. “Some. We thought about more.”
“We?” she asked.
“Yes, we,” he smirked. “Meet the love of my life, Jo Anna.” A red-haired woman of about thirty stepped into the light, and acknowledged Lilly.
“Sorry, he really isn’t a bad guy,” she said. She reached out and touched Bradley on the arm. “I’m afraid she knows too much. And she’s seen me.”
Lilly coughed from the fumes coming off the concrete. She was miserable, ashamed of her nakedness, but angry at the two who stood in judgment over her.
“So you’re going to kill me, like you did your wife?”
“Somewhat, but not with half the pleasure,” Bradley said, snuggling with Jo Anna. “Enjoy your last few minutes.” He turned to walk away, but Lilly yelled, “Wait. At least tell me what you did with Joe?”
Bradley laughed, and refused to answer, making her more afraid for Joe than she was for her own safety. “Please God, don’t let him be dead,” she whispered as the photographer followed his girlfriend, and co-conspirator out of the room.
They had stripped her clothing to search for a sending device on her person, but even the smartest criminal makes mistakes. In her left ear, Lilly wore the newest gadgetry for recording and sending information. She had brought it from the university where she worked in surgery. The doctors used it to connect with the rest of the hospital in a hand’s free environment. The size of a small, in-ear hearing aid, Lilly’s long hair had covered it successfully after being told that most people who wear the traditional wire are caught by the people they are trying to record. If only she could get to it, and turn it on.
Aunt Maude must be wondering what happened to me. I wish I had driven, instead of taking a cab. Someone might have recognized the car. Lilly’s thoughts ran wild as she worried over her situation, and her head hurt like blazes, from whatever concoction he had given her. Probably scopolamine, or an agent similar to it. I’m glad the perv didn’t over-administer it, and kill me in the process.
Getting untied was her major objective, and Lilly hoped the photographer figured her for being a light-weight, and not Maude Roger’s niece. If he tied the rope loosely, she might be able to get out of it; otherwise, she would be forced to find another way to stay alive.
The rope was loose. Yay! She could feel the slack in the loops that circled her wrists. Now if only she could use her nimble surgeon’s fingers to manipulate the knots near the tips of her fingers. What I need is time to untie the ropes and call for help before the lovers return, she thought.
Chapter 9.
Maude left the captain’s office, and hurried to make arrangements to get the cash out of the evidence room. While she was there, she asked to see the latest collection of evidence found at the landfill in the Serena Bradley murder. Also she remembered to get on the phone with Mace Sherman, and
explain why city cops found the body on city-county property, and didn’t include the deputies in the dispersal of information. The potential for a jurisdiction war between the two agencies needed to be quickly set aside. How she wished for the good old days when no one was particularly interested in what another agency did.
By the time she finished soothing the sheriff’s feelings, and directing him to the police chief for further questions, an hour had passed, and Joe was still missing. She wondered where Lilly was, but assumed the young woman had gone out to pick up a few things. No one answered the phone at the house, and Lilly’s cell went directly to voice mail.
“She must be out of range,” Maude said to the empty homicide desks. The rest of the detectives were gone, and she was alone, except for the clerks in the back offices.
The notification on her phone told Maude she had a text message coming in, but there was too much to do to stop and stare at the screen. Besides, Joe never texts, she thought. Putting the phone in her pocket, she headed to the car, hoping to run into Calhoun on the way out the front entry of the Cop Shop. Her knees hurt like heck, so she popped a couple of ibuprofen, and dry swallowed them, as her hands found the seat belt, and connected the two ends.
Suddenly, Calhoun Monroe ran from the elevator of the parking garage, intent on jumping into the car with Maude before she drove away.
“Wait, Maude. I’m going with you,” he said huffing.
She stopped the car quickly, glad to see Calhoun’s buck-toothed grin.
“You took your time,”’ was all she said.
“Yes ma’am, I told my trainer I was supposed to be with you today, and he didn’t know the difference, so he told me I could go. Sorry to take so long getting here. They were just going to teach me some things about filing reports today. Ugh.”
The Maude Rogers Murder Collection Page 81
