by M. Z. Kelly
I left Bernie with one of the residents and quickly ushered Natalie and Mo out of the Stardust before they could corner Buck. We walked down the street to a little café about a block from the retirement home. We found seats on an outdoor patio and settled in. After ordering I asked Mo how Roma was holding up.
“She’s gone to stay with a friend for a couple of days. Me and baby sis are trying to run the place.”
“I’m the head of security,” Natalie said. “Gonna get me a whistle and a billy club, try and tame the old farts. I might even deputize Morty.”
“Good luck with that,” I said.
“So tell us about this Buck bloke,” Natalie said after telling me that she was still seeing the DA, Tom Kincaid. “We want all the nasties. Is it true that cowboys do it like they’re in a rodeo?”
“I wouldn’t know. We’re just working together.”
Natalie looked at Mo who’s expression was akin to a prosecutor. “You need to level with us,” Mo said. “Remember our motto.” I did remember something about a motto once but we’d all been drinking. She went on, “Sistas before mistas. You need to give it up to us girls.”
I laughed. “There’s nothing to give up. I’m not even sure Buck is…I don’t even know if he has a girlfriend.”
“Maybe he’s gay,” Natalie suggested. “Could be his Willy is look’n for a Wally.”
I shook my head. “He’s not gay.”
They went on for another ten minutes about how I needed to hook up with Buck until our food finally arrived. The discussion turned serious as Mo talked about her niece. “Sammy’s been on the case like fleas on a dog.”
“That’s an apt description,” I said, thinking sleazy Sammy just might have fleas.
“He’s done some checking on Derek Shaw, the guy Maddie shot. He thinks Shaw might have been into some kinky sex stuff.”
“Really,” I said, playing dumb but at the same time my ears perking up. “What kind of kinky stuff.”
“Don’t know exactly, but Sammy thinks he and a local attorney were up to no good. He said it could even involve prostitutes.” Mo broke down, telling us that she was afraid for her niece. It was unlike Mo to show her emotions so Natalie and I gave her a few moments to regain some composure.
After she brushed her tears away I asked, “Did Sammy tell you the name of the attorney Shaw was working with?”
Mo blew her nose and nodded. “He said he used to work with Clay Aster. The guy’s name is Brillo or something like that.”
“Brill,” I said, correcting her without thinking.
“You know about this guy?” Mo asked. “If you know something that will help Sissy you need to level with us.”
Considering Mo’s emotional state I saw no harm in telling her what we’d learned. “All I know is that Harvey Brill and Clay Aster were partners a few years ago. Brill supposedly skimmed money from Aster to cover his gambling debts. I’ve also heard rumors about him being into kinky sex but don’t know how or if that ties to Sissy and the other girls.” I hesitated, but then decided I had nothing to lose by asking about Sissy’s boyfriend again. “Did Roma ever say anything more to you about Josh Robbins, the boy Sissy was seeing?”
Mo shook her big head, her purple wig shifting. “I don’t think my sis wants to think about her baby girl dating.” She regarded me. “What about Robbins?”
“He’s a loser but from what I heard Sissy thought she was in love with him.”
“Maybe me and baby sis need to pay the kid another visit, use a little persuasion.”
“I know judo,” Natalie said. “Did you know there’s over a dozen ways to whack a nut sack?”
“No and I’m not sure I want to know.” I turned back to Mo, deciding that I needed to tell her about Derek Shaw. “Peter Roth and I talked to a girl who roomed with Sissy and the other girls at the detention center. She said that Derek Shaw was a street wingman, someone who recruits girls for the sex trade.”
“God help us,” Mo said. She wiped her nose, controlled her emotions, then levelled her eyes on Natalie. “We also need to find this Brillo character. Lean on him real hard until he gives up what he knows.”
Natalie made a judo chop in the air. “I’ll put the big shime-waza on him.”
“The what?” I asked.
“A choke hold.”
I looked at them both. “You two need to back off and let me handle this. Like I said, I don’t know if Harvey Brill is involved, but if he is he could be dangerous.”
Mo chewed on her chicken salad sandwich, swallowed, and then said, “There’s only one chance baby sis and me will stay outta this, Kate. Same chance that you’re gonna swim back to the mainland naked, towing a barge with a rope between your teeth.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Help me.”
Grace desperately wants to answer the girl who cries out to her but she can’t. Her throat burns like it’s on fire, her voice stolen by the hours she’s gone without water.
The door.
Maybe she should try the door again. If she runs into it maybe it will break like she’s seen on TV.
Grace’s body is weak but she finally manages to get to her feet, holding onto the boards covering the window for support. She takes a deep breath and lurches forward, stumbling and falling across the room until she bangs against the door. It doesn’t budge. She falls to her knees, sobbing. A thought surfaces. This is what it’s like to die alone.
The girl’s voice on the other side of the wall is silent now. Maybe she’s also given up. Grace wishes she could somehow reach out to her, hold her hand so that they could die together. The thought is strangely comforting as her mind drifts off into the inky abyss again. Her mind sinks lower, letting go of everything she knows. Even the numbers that she once found so comforting are of no help now. She is in a place beyond reason. A place where she’s left behind the one thing that has sustained her for hours—hope.
A long time later, on the distance shores of this forbidden land Grace senses something has changed. Her body is so weak that she can barely feel the arm that pulls her up. Even as the water is brought to her lips she doesn’t understand what’s happening.
Water.
Her body acts without any conscious thought or control, drinking in the precious liquid. It stirs something inside Grace, pulling her back from the desolate shore. Her mind starts to surface. She looks up and sees the young man holding the cup to her lips.
Joey!
He’s come to save her. As consciousness returns, Grace reaches out taking the cup in her own hands, gulping down the life-giving substance.
“Slow down.”
Joey’s words barely register. He pulls the cup back. She meets his eyes, then sees he’s smiling. “Slower, Grace. You have to drink slower or you’ll get sick.”
She nods her head, taking the cup again and drinking. “That’s it,” Joey says. “Nice and slow.”
After what seems to Grace a long time later, Joey takes the cup away. He sits down on the floor next to her. “Do you know why you’re here?”
Grace shakes her head. After a couple of tries she finds her voice again. “Nnn…oo…” Her throat still burns but not like before. “Did…did they…take…you…tt…oo?”
Joey smiles, shakes his head. “Listen to me carefully, Grace. What I’m going to say will determine whether you live or die. These are called the house rules.”
Why is Joey saying this? She doesn’t… Then, at once, she knows. Joey isn’t a prisoner. He’s the one who took her. Joey is holding her captive. The memory of him slipping the pillowcase over her head, something that she’s blotted out of her consciousness, returns now. Her eyes fall away from him, her heart sinking into despair.
He reaches out, lifting her chin up, until their eyes meet. “Rule number two: you will never try to escape. Rule number three: you will always, without question, do exactly what you are told to do. Rule number four: you will not talk to the others unless it is permitted.”
“Others�
�”
“There are other girls here, Grace. You have all been chosen for something very special.” He comes closer until she can feel his hot breath against her cheek. “You’re a smart girl. Follow the rules without exception and…” He moves away. “It might keep you alive.”
Joey stands up, turns away from her, and walks to the door. He stops and turns back. “I almost forgot rule number one, it’s the most important rule of all.” He comes back over to her and bends down. His voice is lower than before. “There will be some men coming. They will be wearing blue hoods. Do exactly what they say. Never cross them.”
Joey leaves the room. She hears the key turning in the lock, his footsteps as he walks away. Somewhere in the distance another door opens and closes. She thinks he might be gone.
What did he mean that she’s been chosen for something special? What is Joey planning to do? She thinks about the house rules, his words now fully registering. Other girls. How many other girls are here?
Grace moves back over to the wall, to the place where she heard the girl calling out to her before. She knows it’s against the rules but she calls out, “Hello.”
There’s no answer. She tries again, a little louder this time. There’s a shuffling sound, maybe someone coming over to the wall. Yes, there’s someone on the other side again. She can almost feel her presence.
“I’m Grace,” she says. “Who are you?”
There’s a long silence, more shuffling sounds on the other side of the wall, before she hears the girl again. Her voice is soft but Grace senses the desperation.
“My name is Sissy.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Buck picked me up at the Stardust late that afternoon. We drove to Clay Aster’s house to exercise the search warrant that had finally been issued. The Catalina detective didn’t waste any time needling me about what my friends had said.
“So how do you feel about rebound sex?” He laughed.
I purposely didn’t look at him, my cheeks feeling like I had a fever. “I’m not looking for a rebound or even a free throw.” I glanced at him. “In case you haven’t figured it out, my friends lack a certain amount of diplomacy.”
He smiled. “I know I probably shouldn’t ask but I can’t resist. What was your ex caught doing?”
“It’s a long story. Let’s just say that he was caught on videotape with his pants down. There was a secretary on her knees at the time, praising both him and God.”
He looked over at me, laughed, and had to make a quick correction as the road turned. “Sorry but it does paint a picture.”
“Not a pretty one,” I said as we pulled up in front of Aster’s two story mansion. An unmarked Crown Vic was in the driveway. “Looks like your buddies didn’t wait for us.”
We found Spencer and Baxter inside the residence with most of the late attorney’s personal belongings tossed on the floor, including clothing and paperwork they’d already gone through.
“We got a bunch of nothing,” Baxter complained, motioning to a stack of paperwork that had been tossed on the floor in Aster’s office. “Just a lot of legal briefs, bills, and assorted junk.”
“Sloan isn’t going to be happy,” Spencer said. “We’ve got a case going nowhere fast and no leads.”
Buck ran a hand through his hair, let out a breath. “I’m going to take a look for myself.”
“What, you don’t think we can toss a house ourselves,” Baxter whined.
“By the look of things, you’re an expert at tossing.”
“I don’t see any reason for us to wait around,” Spencer said, almost bumping into me as she turned. “You and Hollywood have a good time.” She and Baxter stomped off. In a moment, we heard their car leaving.
I walked over to Buck. “I’m really beginning to think Julie doesn’t like me.”
“She doesn’t like anybody. Let’s take another look.”
We spent the next hour going through rooms that were a disaster, thanks to our fellow detectives. Mounds of clothing had been tossed on beds and a couple of dressers had been overturned. In the bathrooms, I found that they’d pulled the drawers out of the vanities and dumped the contents onto the floor.
I met Buck back in the living room. “Anything?”
He shook his head. “Let me take a quick look in the garage and we’ll call it a day.”
I followed him into the garage where there was another mess. All the storage cabinets and been opened and everything dumped on the floor. A workbench had also been turned over. Maybe Spencer and Baxter thought Aster’s killer was hiding underneath it. I saw that Buck was using a stick, tapping on one of the interior walls.
“What gives?” I asked, coming over.
“Something’s not right. I worked construction with a cousin for a couple of summers when I got out of school. We remodeled a few houses.” He motioned to the garage. “If you look at where the garage meets the interior bedroom there’s a lot of dead space between the two rooms that’s not accounted for. It doesn’t add up.”
He continued tapping on the wall, listening to the results. After a couple of minutes, he seemed frustrated and let out a breath. “Don’t know. Something’s not right.”
I went over to the pile of trash in the middle of the garage and found a hammer. I brought it over to him. “You wanna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.” I motioned to the wall.
He took the hammer, hesitated, and said to me, “You can’t tell how good a man or a watermelon is ‘till they get thumped.” He knocked a couple of holes in the drywall. After a couple of minutes, he broke out some larger pieces of the wall and whistled.
“What is it?”
He took another swing, making the opening wider. “Clay Aster’s secret room.”
Buck worked on the opening for another ten minutes, finding a saw to cut away a large portion of the wall. He then found a light switch inside the space he’d opened up and flipped it on. I went into the room after him.
“The ultimate man cave,” he said, glancing around.
“More like a sex cave,” I said.
The room was narrow, maybe no more than ten feet across but was about twice that distance in length. There were shelves holding various bondage devices, including whips, chains, and restraints. A rack near a desk had an assortment of leather clothing, including pants and shirts. On the desk I found something else and held it up to Buck.
“It’s a hood, probably used in sex games.” The leather mask was blue, with cutouts for the eyes and mouth. I imagined that it gave the wearer a dominant, if not terrifying, look.
Buck shook his head slowly. “Looks like our homicide victim’s life was a hell of a lot more interesting than mine.”
I opened a laptop computer that was on the desk and turned it on. I saw there was a flash drive next to it, inserted it, and clicked the cursor opening it.
“Holy shit,” I said, taking a step back as I looked at the screen.
“It’s some kind of torture session,” Buck said, coming over to me.
We both watched as two men, wearing the same type of blue leather hood we’d found on the desk, brutally attacked a woman who had been chained to a wall. The torture session ended when one of the men stepped forward and strangled the victim.
“I’m no expert,” I said in disgust, “But it looks real to me.”
“The question is,” Buck said. “Is Clay Aster one of the men in the hoods. And if he is, who’s his partner.”
I was about to answer him when my phone rang. It was Natalie. “We need your help right away. Something bad has happened.”
“What? Where are you?”
“Sammy got me and Mo an address on that Harvey Brill bloke. We kept knocking on his door but nobody answered, so we went around to the back. Mo found an open window and we went in.”
“That’s breaking and entering,” I said. “You two can’t…”
“He’s been carved up like a Halloween pumpkin,” Natalie said, interrupting me.
“What?”<
br />
“Brill is tits up, Kate. He’s deader than me granddaddy’s nuts.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
After calling for a police unit to secure Clay Aster’s home and the evidence we found there, Buck and I headed for Harvey Brill’s house. I drove because Buck said he needed to make some calls. A heavy fog had moved in, cutting the visibility to just a few yards as we drove up into the hills of Avalon.
Along the way Buck talked to Julie Spencer, telling her about Aster’s secret room. He asked her and Baxter to meet us at Brill’s house, along with the medical examiner. I could hear part of the conversation because Spencer raised her voice, defending their search of Aster’s house, and telling Buck that the room must have been well hidden for them to miss it.
“She doesn’t sound happy,” I said when he ended the call.
“The problem with Julie is that she needs to learn to never miss a chance to shut-up.”
“That also goes for her partner.”
His phone chimed again and he took a moment to answer the call. I only heard part of the conversation, Buck telling whoever was on the line that things would work out. He also said something about him having lots of room at his place. He ended the call by saying,” You too.”
I had the impression that the caller had said, I love you, and he’d returned the sentiment. My spirits sank at the realization the call must have been from a woman. It occurred to me that maybe he was in a relationship that he didn’t want to talk about.
“Female problems?” I asked after he put his phone away, deciding I had nothing to lose by asking.
“All problems begin and end with females. It’s just a matter of sorting out the details.
“That sounds like a sexist statement.”
He shook his head, grinning. “Just stating the facts, ma’am.”
I didn’t respond, still feeling gloomy about the phone call. I realized that Buck McCade was still a mystery to me. I didn’t even know if he’d been in a relationship after he and his wife divorced. For all I knew he was living with someone or intended to.
