I knew.
“So I did what he said. Only when I picked up the papers they were just copies of some junk he’d gotten off the Internet. I was really scared then and when I came back downstairs Delvecchi walked in with a gun and I was never so scared in all my life. I knew he was going to kill me. I knew it! If you hadn’t tossed that brick through the window—”
“Cell phone,” I corrected.
“Whatever. You saved our lives. I had to boost a car just to get away. I haven’t done that since I was a kid.”
“Interesting childhood.” I wanted to ask her where she’d grown up, but at the moment I had more pressing issues. “So why are you still here? Why didn’t you drive to New York?”
Her features tightened. “Al had them ship my car along with my furniture. Only, see, it isn’t in New York. I don’t know where my stuff is. There’s no apartment, no director waiting to interview me. It was all a lie. He planned to kill me.”
Fear pinched her features. She might be an actress, but I doubted she was acting now. She was squeezing her hands together tightly enough to draw blood.
“So you went to the bank pretending to be Elaine, withdrew all the money in her accounts and booked a ticket from New York to Nevada in her name. How did you manage to pull that off, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t do any of those things. I dumped the car in a shopping center, called Perry to come and pick me up and I’ve been hiding at his place ever since, trying to figure out what to do.”
“Who’s Perry?”
“A part-time actor I know. Does it matter? I did some checking and found out Al had lied about everything and I realized I was dead if I didn’t get out of town. I heard Al tell Delvecchi getting you involved had been a miscalculation on his part. I figured if you worried him, you could help me get away. You can, can’t you?”
I was trying to assimilate everything she’d said. Maybe I was nuts to believe her, but I did. I thought she was too scared to be lying. Heck, I was scared, too. As for getting her away…
“Why don’t you just go to the police and tell them?”
“Are you crazy? Al would kill me for sure.”
“They can protect you.”
“What are you? Some naive virgin or something? We’re talking about Albert Russo here. He’s got cops in his back pocket. He’s friends with the mayor. The only way I’m going to survive this mess is to get away. I’ve got some money set aside, but I don’t know how to disappear. Oh, hell, I made a mistake coming here. I figured you—”
“No you didn’t. Sit back down,” I told her sharply. “I just have to think this through. If you didn’t take the money out of the bank, that means Elaine Russo is still alive. But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would Russo go through this charade unless he was trying to make people believe she was alive when she wasn’t?”
“Maybe he thought she was dead.”
Out of the mouth of an actress.
“Except if Al wants somebody dead, they’re dead,” Nicole added. “Al doesn’t fool around.”
No. Al wouldn’t fool around. I was in kimchi up to my neck and sinking fast and I didn’t like the taste even a little bit. We couldn’t stay here and I couldn’t take her to my Dad’s place or the flower shop. Even my aunt’s place was out. It was bad enough when I only had the police looking for me. Now I had to worry about Albert Russo coming after me, because I was pretty sure Nicole was right. He’d want her dead whether Elaine was still alive or not.
Was Elaine alive? Or had he killed her after she’d gone to the bank and closed her accounts? And if she was alive, where was she hiding and why?
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to take you to stay with a woman I know. Russo will never find you there, I promise.”
Besides, I sort of figured Nicole deserved to meet Mrs. Keene. Mrs. Keene would take her in. Mrs. Keene loves company.
“But I don’t want to stay in Cleveland. I want to get away.”
“I got that, but I need time to make some arrangements.”
What arrangements, I hadn’t a clue, but right now the important thing was to stash Nicole until I could talk to Brandon—assuming he wasn’t under arrest for Delvecchi’s murder.
“Do you have a car?” I asked her.
“No. I had Perry drop me off.”
“Just out of curiosity, why can’t you stay with Perry?”
“His wife’s coming home tonight. She wouldn’t like having me there.”
Yeah. I could understand that. I changed Mama’s water, added some food and cleaned the litter box, to Nicole’s profound disgust. Then I hustled her outside. We didn’t bump into anyone I knew and there were no police cars, marked or unmarked, loitering around.
To my surprise, Nicole thought Frog was cute. She didn’t seem to mind riding around in the airy vehicle. I didn’t see any cop cars loitering on my dad’s street, but I pulled all the way up in the driveway to the garage out behind Mrs. Keene’s house. She greeted us on the back porch with a wide smile.
“Dee, how lovely. You brought company. Come in. I just baked an apple pie.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Keene. This is Nicole Wickley.”
Nicole shot me an angry look, but Mrs. Keene immediately gushed a welcome.
“Oh, yes, I recognized her. You’re that beautiful woman who does those annoying car commercials,” she gushed. “Please come in. It’s such a pleasure to meet you. You’re far more attractive in person.”
Nicole preened.
“Do come in,” Mrs. Keene urged again.
We did. The house smelled of fresh-baked pie. Nicole sniffed appreciatively. Too bad I knew it wouldn’t taste as good as it smelled.
“Dee, the police have been at your father’s house today looking for you. Of course, I told them I hadn’t seen you, but I was wondering if something was wrong.”
“No, they just want to ask me some questions about something that happened on one of my cases. I’ll get it straightened out shortly, but I was wondering if Nicole could spend the afternoon with you. I need to make some arrangements and she needs a place to hide from a stalker,” I improvised. “Unfortunately her stalker isn’t like yours. Her stalker is dangerous, so there is some serious risk involved.”
“Oh, you poor dear. That’s horrible! Don’t you worry about a thing. You’ve come to the right place. Dee knows I’ll keep you safe. Our Dee here is an excellent investigator. She’ll help you just like she did me. She lives such an exciting life.”
My cell phone rang before I could interrupt. Caller ID showed it was a pay phone. It didn’t seem likely that the cops would call me from a pay phone, so I took a chance.
“Hello?”
“Dee?”
I’d never been so relieved to hear anyone’s voice in my life. Brandon sounded exhausted.
“Where are you?” I demanded.
“Same place I was the last time I needed a ride.”
“This is definitely one of those habits you need to break.”
“Very funny. Can you come pick me up?”
Aware of my audience, I was careful of what I said. “Things are more complicated this time.”
“You aren’t alone,” he said after a second’s pause.
He was good. “That’s right.”
“Should I call Julie?”
“No. We really need to talk, but I’m avoiding your friends at the moment.”
“I could catch a bus to Westgate Shopping Center. We could meet in the men’s department, where we went last time.”
“Alone?”
“Sans tail, got it. I’ll head over there now.”
“Great. I’ll meet you there.”
Relieved, I disconnected and smiled at the two women watching me. “I’m going to pick up Brandon,” I assured Nicole.
“He’s such a nice, helpful young man,” Mrs. Keene put in. “He’s her partner, you know.”
I didn’t bother to correct her. “You two s
tay here and I’ll be back in an hour or so, all right?” To my astonishment, the actress nodded easy acceptance. Rattled, I turned back to my father’s neighbor. “Uh, Mrs. Keene, don’t mention Nicole’s presence to anyone, all right?”
“Don’t you worry, dear. I’ll take good care of Miss Wickley. We’ll have a bite of lunch and she can tell me all about her exciting career and all the famous people she knows.”
Nicole sat down with all the grace of a queen and crossed her legs. Why, she was actually planning to enjoy this! I felt a flash of panic, but since I didn’t know which one of them needed the warning, I smiled reassuringly and made a hasty exit.
As a normally law-abiding citizen, it felt wrong to be dodging the police, but I told myself as long as they didn’t know I was dodging them it would be okay. I expected to have to wait for Brandon at the department store, but he must have caught a bus to Westgate almost immediately after we hung up. I was fingering an oxford shirt in the men’s department when he came up behind me, took my arm and began escorting me through the store at a rapid pace.
“Keep walking. I’m not sure how well I lost my tail.”
“The police want to talk to me,” I said nervously.
“You haven’t talked to them yet?”
“It didn’t seem advisable until I talked to you.”
He gave me a half grin. “Good thinking. Where’s Binky?”
“I left him with Ted. I’ve got Frog.”
“Frog?”
“You’ll see.”
He did. The moment he spotted Frog he muttered something under his breath that Mickey probably wouldn’t have approved of.
“You couldn’t have found something brighter? Maybe neon orange would have been more noticeable.”
“Hey, he’s small, and it’s not my fault. I think Ted may be color-blind. Or else he gets some tremendous deal on paint.”
“From an enemy? He’s not painting Binky is he?”
The thought sent a shiver straight down my spine. “God, I hope not! Get in.”
“How? I’m six-one.”
I shrugged. “It didn’t come with a shoehorn, sorry.”
“You do realize if I climb in there with you, your father is going to consider us engaged.”
“Very funny. Get in before someone notices us.”
“Dee, no one in the world will miss us in this.”
He muttered something else under his breath and proceeded to fold himself into the roadster.
“Put the top up,” he ordered as I climbed in beside him.
“There isn’t one.”
He gave me a hard look.
“It’s not my fault. This was all Ted had.”
Briefly he closed his eyes. “Don’t you dare tell me to duck.”
I started the car and suppressed a grin. “Fine, but you could bow your head.”
I got us moving with a minimal grinding of gears.
“Prayer does seem like a good idea. You do know how to drive a stick shift, right?”
“Binky’s a shift,” I reminded him. “Frog’s gears stick. Quit complaining. I have things to tell you.”
“I have a few things to tell you, as well.”
“I already know about the gun. Julie and Mickey came to see me.”
He swore.
“Mickey says we aren’t allowed to say that. And we only have an hour.”
“What happens in an hour?”
“We have to go back and pick up Nicole Wickley. I stashed her with Mrs. Keene. She hired us to keep her alive and get her out of Cleveland.”
I could feel Brandon staring at me, but I had to concentrate on my driving while struggling to keep the hair out of my eyes as we bounced out of the parking lot.
“You win,” he said. “You talk first.”
“I’m starving. Let’s grab a sandwich at the drive-through. That way we can sit and talk in the parking lot and not be overheard.”
“Because, of course, no one can overhear us talking in an open-air minicoupe painted a bright neon green that would draw the attention of a blind person.” He closed his eyes. “I remember when life used to be simple. Back when all I had to deal with was drug pushers and perverts and cop haters.”
“Yeah. Don’t you just love being a P.I.?”
But he had a point, so we hit the drive-through at the nearest fast-food place and I took us down in the valley. There was an entrance conveniently close to Westgate and parking right there at the bottom of the hill. In the park we’d be just one more couple enjoying a late picnic lunch.
The valley is part of a chain of parks sometimes called the Emerald Necklace because it spans nearly a hundred miles of interconnecting roads through the Cleveland suburbs. There are always lots of people in the valley at any given time, so even though it’s police patrolled, I didn’t figure anyone would give us a second look.
I found a parking space near some empty cars and we sat and watched the muddy river tumbling past while we ate and defended our meal from the insect world. Even though I could see several expletives deleted, Brandon didn’t interrupt as I gave him the gist of my day.
“Nicole’s story is as screwy as everything else about this case,” he said when I finished.
“When did Elaine first call you?” I asked.
“Last Thursday. Why?”
“Because according to my source, Elaine closed out her personal bank accounts on Friday.”
Brandon nodded. “She was getting ready to run.”
“Looks that way. So Russo must have killed her after that to keep her from talking to you again.”
“Makes sense if she really did have some evidence that would have led the police to his front door.”
I swallowed a French fry and watched him bite into his hamburger. “So why didn’t she take this evidence to them? Why call you in the first place?”
“Fear. Unless she had firsthand evidence that would convict Russo of something, she had to know the police wouldn’t put her into protective custody. I’m guessing she wanted to hand the stuff over to me and disappear.”
“So Russo learns Elaine talked to you and kills her. He then has Nicole go through that elaborate charade to buy time?”
Brandon chewed thoughtfully and flicked aside an inquisitive fly. “Russo establishes a couple of things by having you take those pictures of the two of us. Proof that his wife is alive when she isn’t and that she and I are having an affair. Anything I tell the police afterward is suspect after he has Nicole go to his office and throw that tantrum over the pictures.”
“Okay, but Russo is still going to be a suspect in her murder even if he does kill both of you, isn’t he?”
Brandon stared out over the water. I could tell that wasn’t what he was seeing. He was thinking hard, trying to make the pieces fit.
“Not if the bodies don’t turn up. If Elaine and I both suddenly disappear without a trace, the cops have a whole new situation,” he mused. “Especially if it can be made to look like we ran off together. Remember the ticket from New York to Nevada? What do you want to bet Nicole was supposed to board that flight in Elaine’s name?”
“She didn’t say anything about that,” I told him.
“Maybe she didn’t know that was next.”
“It was only one ticket,” I pointed out. “What about you?”
His smile held no trace of humor. “Want to bet my car would have turned up in Nevada somewhere?”
I set down the French fry I’d lifted, no longer hungry.
“He was planning to kill you all along.”
“That’s why he had Nicole arrange to meet me at his house Thursday afternoon. I was supposed to die that day. Only you interfered.”
I crumpled up the remains of my lunch and stuffed them in the bag, suddenly feeling sick. “Delvecchi ran you off the road that morning,” I protested slowly. “What if you’d been killed then?”
“So much the better. Elaine’s car would have turned up in a parking lot in New York and it would have looked as t
hough she disappeared from there. Maybe Nicole would have picked up her ticket for Nevada and flown there in her place. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I’m sure that was the original plan. Either I died or was injured in a car crash and Elaine took off without me and then I would have died or disappeared later. Remember, Nicole had told everyone she was moving to New York. No one would miss her right away. And when someone did, where would they start the search?”
“But it still all leads back to Russo eventually. It was common knowledge that he was seeing Nicole and people have commented on how much she looks like Elaine,” I protested.
“Oh, the cops would have suspected Russo, all right, just like they suspect him of several other things, but where’s the proof? If everyone is gone, all they’ve got is conjecture.”
It made a horrible kind of sense that sent my insides roiling.
“But I screwed it up for them,” I said more to myself than him.
Brandon’s nod was sober. “You did. The minute you came to see me, Russo’s plan fell apart. He never counted on the two of us hooking up. I noted your license plate Monday when I started following Nicole to the shopping center. The car looked out of place in Shaker Heights and you both were heading to the shopping center, so I automatically noted it. When she wasn’t at the motel the following morning, I ran the plate and came up with your name. Then I remembered the woman who’d come inside Victor’s and used the ladies’ room and came up with—”
“Me.”
“You,” he agreed.
“Okay, but why kill Delvecchi in your bedroom?”
He took a minute to think about that before replying.
“Delvecchi failed twice to get rid of me. Russo now has two people running loose who are a considerable danger to him. Nicole, he can deal with. I’m a higher profile because cops know me. Russo can neutralize me or at least slow me down if the cops believe I killed Delvecchi. And Delvecchi has already shown he can’t handle the job anymore.”
“Whoa. Are you saying Russo himself killed Delvecchi? Or does he have another contract killer waiting in the wings? I know he’s supposed to have gang ties and all that, but how easy is it to hire a killer?”
D.B. Hayes, Detective Page 21
