by Lisa Jackson
Bang!
The gun’s report was a crack of thunder.
Her hand flew up, but he held her tight.
A wail, muted by something, pierced the night.
Oh, Lord what had she done?
The smell of cordite and blood filled the air.
“Retribution,” her attacker growled as he yanked off the blindfold.
Gina’s eyes adjusted to the light, a small bulb at one corner of a large pine-paneled room. “Oh, dear Lord, no,” she whispered as she saw what she had done. A big man with mussed white hair and a shocked expression was staring at her, the hole in his chest gaping, blood flowing.
She recognized him as someone she detested, the very man she’d hoped to appeal to for money, even if she would have had to grovel for it. A low moan of denial whispered over her lips as she watched Asa Pomeroy die. “No…oh, no, no, no.”
Shaking violently, she shrank back, tried to drop the gun, but the monster was still behind her, his erection still hard as a rock. His fingers tightened over hers again. She looked down at the gun, a pearl-handled Colt .45, just like one of the pair her husband owned.
As she watched, withering in terror, he twisted her hand, forcing it upward to her own temple. Her throat closed and she silently prayed for forgiveness. Lord, please, take my soul, she silently pled. Keep Wally safe…Wally, oh, Wally, I love you…
CHAPTER 17
Maury Taylor looked at the note in his hands and knew it was pure gold. He’d overslept, run through the shower, thrown on his jogging suit, bought his morning jolt from one of those drive-through espresso huts, then parked his old Toyota in the lot across from the station. He hadn’t had time for the morning paper, not today.
For the next hour, he’d sorted through the mail addressed to Gierman’s Groaners or The Luke Gierman Show. He’d shuffled through cards, sympathetic notes, some stupid gifts including a tape of an old show—like the station didn’t have them all?—the same old drivel. He was nearly finished when he’d found this gem in the pile and knew in an instant that his life had just changed forever.
For the better.
Big time!
The simple note had come to the radio station addressed to Luke Gierman, the dead man himself, and was encased in a plain white envelope with block letters and no return address.
Ever since Luke’s death, the station had gotten bags full of cards and letters and notes. Not to mention hundreds of e-mail messages daily. The guy was more popular in death than life, and the ratings for his show were through the roof, which was just fine with Maury. The station manager was talking about making Maury the permanent host and eventually changing the name to something like Maury Taylor Presents Gierman’s Groaners…it was a mouthful and would eventually become just the Maury Taylor Show, but, the eager station manager had assured him, they’d have to work on something a little memorable and personal. Taylor’s Trash Talk sounded pretty good, but was too feminine. He didn’t want to sound like some black chick…but things were looking up. Soon he’d get his due.
Too bad, Luke.
Ouch!
In Maury’s opinion, Luke had been a real jerk. A pompous pain in the ass. Nonetheless, Mrs. Taylor had raised no fool for a son, and Maury, despite his feelings about Luke, had gone along for the ride, playing the role of idiot, laughing uproariously at things that secretly offended him, even pushing the groan button at a particularly bad pun or statement.
Hell, who wouldn’t have taken the chance to be a part of a growing, popular show? Few people got rich being a radio jock, but Luke had broken through the barriers and, judging by the amount of flowers, cards, and calls that had arrived at WSLJ, touched a lot of people, who were either fascinated or repulsed by his show.
But now it was Maury’s turn.
Because of this.
Maury read the single white sheet of paper one more time.
REPENT
A L
God, he’d love to read that one single word on the air, stir up the audience by suggesting he’d had contact with Luke’s killer…imagine the ratings. His palms sweated at the thought. So the police would be pissed. Wasn’t that what the station’s lawyers were all about? He’d been flirting with jumping ship and taking a job over at WNAB, but first, he wanted to see how things were going to be handled here in the wake of Luke’s demise.
So far, it was lookin’ good.
And now he was holding the goddamned keys to the kingdom, if he dared use them.
What would Luke do?
That was a slam dunk.
Maury didn’t have a second’s hesitation. He walked to the copy machine in the backroom, nodded to Ramblin’ Rob, a wiry old fart of a DJ who still played platters. Rob was drinking a potful of coffee while working the crossword puzzle, his usual routine before he went on the air. He challenged himself to finish it, then have time for a last cup of coffee and a smoke in the back alley before he sat down at the mike, playing requests from his stacks of old LPs. In this day of digital music, computers, iPods, and downloads, Rob was into “keeping it real,” whatever the hell that meant.
Maury slid the note into the copy machine and pressed the start button. He did have one disturbing thought. What if the note proved to be a fraud? Just because he had a gut feeling about it didn’t mean anything. He didn’t want to come off as the buffoon. Not any longer. He’d played that role far too long as it was.
So how would he deal with that on the air later this afternoon…oh, hell, he’d just tell the audience about it, knowing the sender was listening, and then he’d bait the guy, force his hand. Maybe whoever wrote the note, whether he was a nutcase just looking for publicity, or the real killer, would respond. Especially if Maury jerked his chain a bit.
If so, the listening audience would go crazy. The buzz would be instantaneous. It wouldn’t matter if the note turned out to be a fraud or not. He thought about how it would play on the air and nearly got a hard-on.
The wheels in his mind were turning faster and faster, like a train gaining speed as the Xerox machine spat out his copy. He grabbed it and the original and was heading out the door when Rob looked up from his puzzle.
“Hey! You hear the news?”
“What news?” Maury stopped short, irritated by the interruption, but curious just the same. He hoped that Luke’s killer hadn’t been found, not yet.
“The kidnapping.”
“They find Pomeroy?”
“Don’t know.” The crusty old DJ pulled a face, all his wrinkles creasing more deeply. “No, I’m talking about Gina Jefferson, you know who she is?”
“The do-gooder? Involved in the Urban League, always clamoring to the city council about funding for her clinic, the woman who Luke wanted on the show so that he could publicly fillet her? That Gina Jefferson?”
“Yeah, that one,” Rob said, obviously disgusted. “And, ya know, do-gooder isn’t a dirty word. I know Gierman had a lot of fun knocking her, but she’s a great lady. Done a helluva lot for the city and the homeless and, you know, the people who are a few beers shy of a six-pack. Anyway, she’s missing, too.”
“Missing? Like Pomeroy?” Maury said. For a second he felt a pang of fear for the woman, but then the wheels in his mind began spinning again. Even more rapidly than before. Somehow this would make a great show…two of the city’s leading citizens missing, one a wealthy do-anything-for-a-buck industrialist, the other a bleeding heart who helped the downtrodden…yeah, oh, man, yeah. This was an incredible show in the making. “Was she kidnapped?” he asked and glanced down at his note.
Could this piece of paper have anything to do with the missing people? Hadn’t Luke been kidnapped? And the girl, Courtney LaBelle?
“Appears that way. No one knows for certain yet. There hasn’t even been a ransom note for Pomeroy and he’s been missing, what? Two or three days?” Rob thought long and hard. “Makes ya wonder what the hell is going on.”
The letter in Maury’s hand nearly burned him. He walked toward the door, afra
id Rob might get suspicious. No one could know what he was up to. Not the program manager, the station manager, or any of his other colleagues. “Sure does,” he called over his shoulder.
Gierman’s Groaners was airing in its usual spot in the schedule, but two other shows—“Luke’s favorites”—had been slotted in, at a different time each day, causing a freaking nightmare for the program manager, but sending the ratings into the stratosphere and keeping Maury at the station, helping with the cutting, editing, and airing for hours on end. The idea was to find more listeners, and though a few had been pissed, e-mailing in that they wanted their regular program back in its allotted slot, the advertisers were thrilled and the general consensus was that Luke’s regularly scheduled program, which was now Maury’s baby, was at the top of the ratings. Even more of a success than when good ol’ Luke was alive.
The irony of the thing was, Maury planned to keep Luke among the living, at least on the airwaves. When the show became his, he’d dedicate a segment to Luke, play some bit from a previously recorded program, and pay homage to the master. It kind of galled him, but it would work; Maury knew it would. Luke Gierman was going to become like Elvis was in death. More alive, more visible, more audible than ever.
And this piece of gold, this letter from the killer or whoever, was going to start the ball rolling. Maury planned to read the letter on the air, tell the listeners he thought it “might be” from the killer, but believed the letter could well be a hoax, sent by a fraud, thereby baiting the guy who wrote it, hoping the jerk would be stupid enough to call the show. Wouldn’t that be the ticket? All Maury had to do was sucker the note writer in. Only then would he place a call to the police.
That should get the audience going. As he walked along the long hallway from the kitchen, leaving Rob still huddled over his puzzle and racing with the clock, Maury couldn’t help smiling. Deep in his bones, he knew his time had finally come. He had a degree in journalism, for Christ’s sake. He was tired of playing second string; it was time to join the A-team.
“You’re kidding!” Abby couldn’t keep the frustration from her voice. She was on the phone to the fourth security company she’d rung up today. Leaning against the desk in her small office in the heart of New Orleans, she slowly counted to ten and tried not to lose control of her temper.
“No, ma’am, I’m not,” the gravelly voice on the other end of the connection assured her. “Our next free time is…let me see…” She heard pages flipping and wondered why Stan’s Security Service didn’t have all their appointments on computer. “…looks like two weeks from Monday, but something might open up. Ya never know. Trudie, our secretary, she’d know way better’n me, but she’s on a break right now. When she gits back, she can tell you what’s what. She should be back in ten, fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you, I’ll call back,” Abby said and hung up. Who would have thought trying to get a company out to install a simple security system was tantamount to breaking into Fort Knox? She stared at her computer screen, where the latest edition of the Internet yellow pages was glowing, seeming to mock her with the list of security companies and system installers.
Why bother?
She was going to sell the place anyway.
Sean Erwin, the persnickety spiked-haired man who had said nothing nice about her place, was coming over for yet another “looksee” later in the afternoon. This time, along with his tape measure, he was bringing a list of dimensions of his furniture, and a sketch pad on which, he’d informed her, he’d plotted out the layout of his favorite pieces, the things he “absolutely couldn’t live without.”
She thought it was a waste of time, but had agreed to meet him after she’d finished working here in the office, where she’d made phone calls, paid bills, sent out reminders to those clients who were behind, and in general, caught up on her paperwork. She’d eaten lunch on the run, all the while trying to forget about Our Lady of Virtues and the weird sensation that had lingered with her long after she’d left the campus of the hospital. She’d also tried to push Luke’s gruesome death and Detective Reuben Montoya out of her head.
Why the sexy cop kept messing with her mind, she really didn’t understand. It wasn’t as if she were looking for a man, for God’s sake. In fact, until she moved to the West Coast, she’d planned to forget about dating, men, and sex altogether.
But the detective with his crooked smile, dark eyes, and nearly indecent laugh had managed to infiltrate her dreams and her waking thoughts as well. Which was just no good.
All things said and done, it would be far better for her to move and move quickly.
Before it was too late.
It already is, Abby. You’re hooked. Face it.
Okay, then. Before she did something stupid.
Oh, honey, her mind taunted. We’re beyond that. Where Detective Montoya is concerned, you’re well on your way to stupid central and you damned well know it.
Laura Beck was furious.
She drove her Lincoln Continental with a Manolo Blahnik–encased lead foot. That wasn’t really true, she thought ruefully. The leopard print sling backs weren’t really Blahniks, but they were damned good knockoffs and they’d cost over two hundred bucks, so she wasn’t happy that she’d have to walk through the rain and muck and chance ruining them.
Growing up a poor kid in Appalachia, she’d learned the value of a dollar at an early age, and it was only through smarts, grit, and yes, sleeping with the right men, that she’d come close to getting what she wanted from life.
So no low-life squatter was going to ruin the best deal she had going. No way. No how. She’d been in the diamond club of Respected Realty Company for the past eight years, selling over ten million dollars in real estate each and every year, in good times and in bad.
Now, she had a chance to buy out the owner of the realty company and she planned to expand the business to other cities. But even with all the cash she’d squirreled away, she still needed Asa Pomeroy’s account to make it happen.
Damn the man, where was he?
Why the sudden vanishing act?
As she drove along the winding road to his hunting lodge, she had a premonition that he might be dead, and if so, lawsy-mercy, all of her plans would go up in smoke…well, unless she talked to his heirs. Fortunately the eldest son, Christian, hadn’t been around for years, but Asa still had a couple of bitter ex-wives, two daughters who were uptight bitches, and another son who was a blithering idiot and thought he was God’s gift to women. Jeremy Pomeroy had come on to her often enough. Practically at every chance he got. A big bore of a man, Jeremy took after his self-involved daddy, though Jeremy hadn’t been born with his father’s brains or work ethic. And those kids of his! Holy terrors. Just the thought of Asa’s grandsons set Laurie’s teeth on edge. As bad as their swaggering, good-ol’-boy father and as cold as their mother, those two adolescent half-wits were damned scary.
She shuddered thinking how she’d had to put up with the entire Pomeroy family last Christmas, smiling and laughing at off-color jokes, feeling her butt being pinched by too-friendly fingers, getting caught under the mistletoe at every turn.
All because she wanted a piece of the Pomeroy fortune.
She and every other real estate agent in Louisiana.
She turned off the rural road and onto the long gravel lane that ambled through the estate, past century-old trees, and over leaf-strewn ruts. Brush and brambles obscured the view of the lodge from the road, but she noticed that the gates had been left open. Weird. Though the maid service and gardener didn’t have the keys, they knew to close the gates.
It seemed as if nothing about this listing was going right!
“You can pull this off,” she said then caught herself as she heard a bit of her Appalachian twang, the speech pattern she’d spent years disguising. It wasn’t the part of the country that embarrassed her. Lord, some of the nicest people she’d ever known lived in the mountains and hollers of West Virginia, the breathtakingly beautiful country
filled with God-fearing, music-loving, hardworking people. It was the poor part of her past that made her skin crawl and caused her to spend her life running from that poverty.
She glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror. She still looked good, even though the big four-oh loomed just over next spring’s horizon. Her hair was a vibrant red with perfect gold highlights, her green eyes wide and sexy, her body toned by a strict regimen of salads, low-fat dressings, sugar-free yogurt, and two hours in the gym every morning at five. Two cups of black coffee and she was wired for the day.
God, she loved her work.
But not when some idiots tried to sabotage it.
She’d gotten a call from a neighbor that there was a car at the lodge…and on tour day! At first she’d thought it was the groundskeeper who had been scheduled to clean up the place, but the neighbor assured her no work was being done on the estate and the car was not the usual beat-up green pickup. Great, she thought angrily. Just…freaking great!
She’d already had the interior of the place cleaned to a spit-polished glow, and her car was filled with two thermoses of coffee, a fruit platter, and a basket of minibeignets for the other agents who were planning on driving all the way out here as part of the weekly tour. The first of the lot were due to arrive at the Pomeroy hunting lodge in less than two hours. How the hell was that going to happen now?
“Damn it,” she muttered as she spied the old Buick in the drive. The neighbor had been right. Well, whoever was here was going to get the hell out.
Careful, Laura. Tread carefully. Remember what Mama used to say: “You can’t tell a book by its cover.” Maybe whoever is here is interested in buying the place. There could be an armada of Mercedeses and Porsches or Ferraris in this guy’s garage.
No way.
The neighbor had called two hours earlier and Laura doubted a prospective buyer would hang out for hours just waiting. It wasn’t someone here early for the tour and the Regal sure as hell didn’t look like someone’s idea of a hunting rig.
