Now I understood why he'd said that a woman with a Texas accent had called his office about Amber, but I wanted to clarify that he was talking about Eve, and not Nadezhda. "You mean, Georgia."
He rolled his eyes. "Same thing."
Yeah, like honey and molasses. "After you saw Eve there, you decided to frame her for Amber's murder."
A conceited smile spread across his lips. "Actually, you gave me that idea when you asked about her mother. If I would've mentioned Eve before, it would've been too obvious that I knew more about Amber's life than I wanted to let on."
"Why didn't Eve report you to the police?" I asked, keeping an eye on the syringe still in his right hand. "Even if she didn't know your real name, she must've recognized you from the sugar bowl party."
He leaned back on his stool and crossed his arms. "She never saw me. When she noticed Amber onstage, she dropped the grocery bags she was holding and started screaming, 'Curaçao, what have you done?'"
So Eve had covered for Curaçao even though she thought that she'd killed Amber. Protecting her girls no matter what.
His lips curled with contempt. "While she was in hysterics, I slipped out the back entrance too."
I realized that the morning Veronica drove me home from the police station, I'd probably missed seeing Dr. Lessler leave by mere seconds. "How did Curaçao come to contact you, of all people, about buying the necklace?"
"She was one of my patients," he said with a flick of his hand. "After she stole it, I had my secretary call and schedule a cleaning appointment. When she came in, I casually mentioned that I was looking for an exotic gift for my wife for her birthday, and she fell right into the trap."
My blood began to boil at the mention of his wife because it reminded me that he had a young daughter too. But I had to keep a lid on my anger. Otherwise, my goose was cooked.
"We met at her place when her roommate was out." He laughed and shook his head. "She tried to play me by telling me that she had other buyers—a couple of Russians who supposedly knew the value of the amber and were willing to pay big bucks."
Eugene and Nadezhda.
"I pretended to go along with it, agreeing to beat the Russians' offer." He stopped and scowled. "But then she showed me a pendant that was obviously a fake, so I got pissed and offed her."
I squirmed in the chair. He was so cavalier about killing. "And you took her body to the club to make it look like Eve had killed her too."
He cocked a brow to match the cocky twist to his lips. "Pretty clever, huh?"
I didn't reply. We'd reached the end of his story, which meant that my story was about to end too.
He glanced at the clock, and the self-satisfied look left his face. "I've got to get a move on before that temp gets here and my next patient shows up."
"Wait," I breathed, winded from fear. "You don't know where the amber pendant is, and I do."
He slapped his knee. "As luck would have it," he said in a mocking tone, "Curaçao told me that she'd hidden it in that pigsty she called a house right before I wrung her naïve little neck."
For a moment, I thought that the dental chair had dropped a foot, but it was my stomach falling.
"I went there to get it, but her roommate was home, and then the cops started watching the place." He gave an apologetic smile. "Now that the killer has been arrested, though, you're the only thing standing in the way of me and that pendant."
Desperate for more time, I half-shouted, "Hold on. I still don't understand the Amaretto di Amore. Did you love Amber?"
He ran his hand over his lower face and jaw as though wiping a bad taste from his mouth. "I thought I did once. But after she left the club she cheated on me with one of her ex-johns."
Amber's death had been related to infidelity, after all.
"There's no such thing as love, anyway." He snorted. "It's like that bottle of amaretto."
"What do you mean?" I pressed, trying to keep him talking in case the police had gotten my call.
The corner of his mouth turned up, and he almost seemed sad. "You can give it a romantic name, but it's just plain old booze."
"Then why did you leave it at the crime scene?" I scanned the vicinity, looking for something I could use as a weapon.
"Lots of reasons." He sighed and rubbed his thighs. "For one thing, to remind Amber of what she'd thrown away."
I thought about the bottle Eve had seen Amber launch across the kitchen, and I knew it was from him too.
"And, you don't know this," he said, tilting his head toward me, "but my grann was Creole. She taught me to pay my respects to the voodoo loa, so I know better than to risk the wrath of Erzulie Yeux Rouges."
I marveled at the discovery that Dr. Lessler practiced voodoo, even though he'd said that witchcraft was "crap." When was I going to learn that anything was possible in New Orleans? "Were those your only reasons?"
"Not quite." He scooted his stool closer to my chair. "I knew that Amber's pimp had taught her voodoo, so I was trying to raise your suspicions about him too. The more suspects, the merrier, right?"
Slowly, I began to slide away from him. "That explains why you alluded to Amber's past as a prostitute and told me that she'd been wearing a mermaid veve."
"And it's the reason I left the rum and cigarettes for Baron Samedi, besides paying my respects, of course." He put his thumb on the end of the syringe. "But I'm going to have to skip the offerings this time since I have to kill you here in the office. I hope the loa don't mind."
I recoiled into the armrest. "If I were you, I wouldn't gamble on the gods."
His mouth turned down, as though annoyed by my impertinence. "You'd say anything to get out of a shot, wouldn't you?"
Especially one that was fatal.
He reached for my forearm. "As much as I hate to kill a fellow LSU fan—"
"A what?" Even on the brink of death, the Texas Longhorn in me was outraged.
"I was there when you stripped in those LSU tiger shoes, trying to lure the killer to the club." He sneered. "And now that I think about it, after that performance you deserve to die."
Since the day of my birthday, I'd endured countless injustices and humiliations—starting with turning thirty. But I was damned if I was going to continue to deal with the fallout from Glenda's stripping scheme.
Gripping the armrests, I kicked the dental tray as hard as I could, and it went flying into Dr. Lessler, instruments and all.
He shielded himself, giving me time to shove him away and leap from the chair. On the off chance that a patient had entered the lobby, I screamed, "Help!"
"Francesca?" My mother's voice was as shrill as a dental drill.
My head jerked toward the door from the shock of hearing my mom.
Dr. Lessler gripped my forearm with Superman-like strength and inserted the needle into my vein.
Stunned, I shot him a questioning look.
"Rock climber." He grinned.
The horror of what had happened hit me so hard that I fell backwards into the chair. Figuring that I had seconds to live, I knew what I had to do. "Mom, run! Dr. Lessler's the real killer!"
But even as I said those things, I knew that she wouldn't listen. When you threatened my mother's kids, she was half mamma bear and half mafia boss.
She rushed into the room and rose to her full five feet four inches with her claws and fangs bared. "What's happening?" she rasped like Vito Corleone. "What have you done to my daughter?"
Dr. Lessler turned to face her, and I cold-cocked him with the hanging light.
We sunk to the floor.
Nonna stormed the examining room holding her handbag like a club. "I can-a take-a him, Brenda!"
From a supine position, I watched as she pounded Dr. Lessler with her purse while my mom punched a number into her cell. Despite the chaos, I looked up at the dolphin poster and felt at peace.
The ketamine was taking effect.
My mother leaned over me and pressed the phone to her ear. "I told you that you should be more careful when ch
oosing a doctor, Francesca!"
Then my appointment abruptly ended.
24
"Get the hell up," a male voice demanded.
In my semi-conscious state, I realized I wasn't dead, but I knew Dr. Lessler wasn't done with me yet.
The peaceful feeling was replaced with primal fear as I remembered my mom and nonna coming to my rescue. What had he done to them?
I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn't. Did he inject me with a paralytic drug?
Two powerful hands gripped me by the biceps and shook me.
Summoning my strength, I forced my eyes open. Then I let out a hair-raising scream.
Carnie was standing over me in the Private Chicks lobby, her face practically purple with rage. And in her black strapless dress and spiky white wig, she was the spitting image of Ursula, the half-human, half-octopus villainess from The Little Mermaid.
"The police just held another press conference," she huffed with her hands on her hips. "It seems that my amber pendant has been found."
High heels came clattering down the hallway from Veronica's office.
"Are you okay, Franki?" Veronica asked as she and Glenda rushed to my side on the lobby couch.
"Divine." I pushed myself into a sitting position. "But get Ursula off my back, will you?"
Carnie's blue lids lowered and her red mouth frowned. "You'd best be talking about Ursula Andress, or you'll wish you were back in that dentist's chair."
Glenda swallowed a sip of the celebratory sleuthing champagne she'd been drinking since Dr. Lessler's arrest the day before. "What's the matter, Miss Carnie?"
She pointed a red-lacquered fingernail at me. "Your partner in cracking crime here gave my family heirloom to Detective Sullivan."
"I didn't give it to him," I protested. "He figured out that I knew where the pendant was at Amber's funeral."
Carnie raised a McDonald's Golden Arch–shaped brow. "Then how the hell did he end up with it?"
I massaged my temples in preparation for the headache she was about to give me. "When he came to interview me in the ER yesterday, I cut a deal to let him find it in exchange for dropping the battery charges against Bradley."
Carnie gasped. "I paid you to find the amber for me!"
"And I did!" I threw up my arms in an I-give gesture. "It's not my fault that it's evidence in the case against Dr. Lessler."
Veronica smoothed her skirt and took a seat beside me. "Franki was legally bound to inform the police about the pendant, Carnie. So it's nice that something good came of it, don't you think?"
In reply, she looked at Veronica like she was considering biting her with her venomous beak.
"There, there," Glenda said, patting one of Carnie's massive shoulders, "you'll get it back after the trial."
"But that could take years!" Carnie cried as she collapsed onto the opposing couch.
I wanted to tell her not to get her padded panties in a knot, but I held my tongue. After narrowly escaping the clutches of one madman, I wasn't willing to get caught in the tentacles of another.
Glenda sat next to Carnie and kicked up her heels. "Where was the pendant, Miss Franki?"
As I got ready to relive the events of the past twenty-four hours, I pulled a cushion into my lap for comfort. "In a matryoshka doll on a shelf in Maybe's living room."
Carnie, who'd turned her head away to sulk, stole a glance in my direction. "How did you know it was in a nesting doll? Did it have something to do with that nasty Nadezhda?"
I smirked as I shook my head. "It was partly because of Glenda and partly because of the nonne. When we were at the St. Joseph's Day altar, the nonne covered her up like the Virgin Mary. Then when my nonna was shooting the lemons at me, a statuette of the Virgin Mary broke in half, and it reminded me of the nesting doll because it was hollow inside and because the doll depicted a stripper. Since Curaçao was a stripper and the amber was Russian, I just knew that was where she'd hidden it."
Glenda winked. "Glad to know my body could be of service, sugar."
I took a deep breath as I prepared to say something that I never dreamed would pass my lips. "Your near nudity was a huge help. Thank you."
She raised her flute in a salute. "Speaking of naughty matryoshkas, what's going to happen to Nadezhda?"
"At the initial press conference yesterday, the police said others would be indicted." Carnie fluffed her odd updo. "You know that Russki's one of them."
Veronica cleared her throat. "I'm sure they'll charge Nadezhda and Eugene both if they can prove they conspired to steal the necklace."
The creases in Glenda's brow deepened. "And Miss Eve?"
"She confessed to withholding evidence, so she'll face prosecution." Veronica looked down at her lap and shook her head. "If she'd told the police that she'd seen Curaçao at the crime scene, they would've taken Curaçao into custody—and she might still be alive today."
Regardless of what she'd done, I felt bad for Eve. In trying to protect Curaçao, she'd more than likely contributed to her demise. And I knew that was the last thing she would have ever wanted to do.
Carnie shifted and crossed her ankle over her knee, despite her dress. "What I don't understand is why that dentist knocked you out instead of killing you."
I shot her a long look—making sure to avoid the area below her torso. "According to Detective Sullivan's theory about what happened, Dr. Lessler needed to make it look like I'd died under anesthesia."
My story stopped as I made the sign of the scongiuri. Given everything I'd been through, I wasn't completely cured of my curse conviction yet.
"So he gave me ketamine, which is what dentists usually use for oral surgery, but just enough to knock me out for fifteen minutes or so. In that time he could've hooked me up to an IV to make it look like the drug had been administered normally and then cut off my air supply." I shuddered at the thought—and at the fact that I still had to get my permanent crown done.
"What a sick, twisted man," Glenda said, staring at her glass.
"I'll say," I muttered. "But then, he's a dentist."
The office phone began to ring.
"That's probably my mom calling to tell me they're leaving." I rose to my feet, and the room began to spin. "Whoa!"
Veronica stood up and placed her hand on my back. "I wish you would've taken the day off."
"You know I couldn't do that." I sunk back into the couch. "My mom and nonna said they were going to stay until they were sure I was all right. And after getting to share my bed with my nonna last night," I grumbled, "I'm more then ready for them to go."
"You owe your life to your nonna, Franki," Veronica chided as she walked to the reception desk. "If she hadn't insisted that your mother bring her to that office..."
I grimaced. The fact that my nonna's meddling had not only helped me find the amber but had also saved my life was a particularly bitter pill to swallow—and one that would keep coming up over and over again, both literally and figuratively.
When Veronica reached for the phone, it stopped ringing. She brought the receiver to the couch and placed it on the coffee table.
Glenda drained her glass. "Why did your nonna want to stop by Dr. Lessler's, sugar?"
"She never told me." I chewed the inside of my cheek. "But if I had to guess, it was to try to marry me off to the man."
The phone started ringing again.
"I'll get it." I grabbed the receiver. "Private Chi—"
"Why haven't you been answering your phone?" Ruth growled.
I squeezed the couch cushion. "Well, apart from the fact that it was crushed by a homicidal dentist, I've been kind of busy fighting for my life. Maybe you saw something about it on TV last night?"
"If it's not on Nancy Grace, I don't know about it."
That was worrisome news.
"Now, as much as I'd love to sit here and chit chat about the ups and downs of your day," Ruth snarked, "I have work to do. This is a courtesy call to let you know that Jeff Payne just resigned from Pontcha
rtrain Bank thanks to your sweet grandmother."
As shocked as I was to hear that Jeff had resigned, I was even more astonished that my nonna had anything to do with it—and that she was "sweet." "Are you sure it was my grandmother?"
"Yes, ma'am," she crowed as she popped what sounded like a cork from a bottle. "About fifteen minutes ago, she burst into the board meeting with your mother. I didn't catch everything she said because she speaks like a female Father Guido Sarducci."
That was Nonna, all right.
"But I did hear her likening Jeff to a mafioso." She took a slurp of something. "Then she started passing out the compromising pictures."
"Hang on." I shot forward in my seat. "My nonna had compromising pictures? Of Jeff?"
Veronica and I exchanged a freaked out look.
"Did. She. Ever," Ruth syllabified. "She said she'd gotten them from 'the Madonna,' but I'll tell you what—the Virgin Mary don't know nothin' about the kinds of things going on in these pictures, even if she is looking down from heaven."
"What are you talking about?" I wheezed as the air left my lungs. "What was in the pictures?"
Veronica put her ear to the receiver, and I bowed my head to listen.
"Well, he was drunker than Cooter Brown on the 4th of July, but that ain't no big whoopty doo to a bunch of boozehound bankers," she said in a teetotaler tone. "What got them was that he was all tarted up in a stripper costume, performing for a gaggle of drag queens."
My head shot up, and I glanced from Glenda to Carnie—both of whom averted their eyes.
"And he was at a real swingin' cathouse, too," she said with relish, "because some of the pictures were taken in an all-pink room with a loveseat, others were in an all-red room with a small stage, and there was even one in an all-white room with a giant champagne glass."
My eyes zeroed in on Glenda.
Her lips spread into a slow smile. "Men find it hard to resist a free coupon for the VIP room, sugar."
"Actually, Ruth..." I paused and broke into a grin. "I'm friends with a Virgin Mary who knows all about those sorts of things—because she's anything but a saint."
As I slowed the Mustang to a stop in front of my apartment, I eyed my Mom's Ford Taurus. For the first time in days, the Psycho soundtrack was gone. It had been replaced with "When the Saint's Go Marching In"—the Louis Armstrong version. And when I got out of the car and headed up the driveway, I was mentally high-stepping and twirling a baton as I led the brass band playing in my head.
Franki Amato Mysteries Box Set Page 78
