Still eyeing Jack, who was talking to some lady next to him, Lucy quickly left the table and sidled up behind the new arrival in line at Sbarro. Seconds later, Lucy distracted her target with a nudge, and while pointing at the menu and asking a question to divert her attention, she lifted the girl’s cell phone out of her large open purse. The teen clearly had no idea how vulnerable the phone was—much to Lucy’s good fortune.
Lucy nodded at the girl’s reply and smiled inwardly at how easily she’d solved her problem. With sleight of hand, she unobtrusively dropped her prize into her own small bag while pressing the Off button. Wouldn’t do to be caught holding the phone in case a call or text came through.
Cell phones yielded a ton of information. Information that would help her find Cassie; she felt it in her bones. This girl now ordering a slice of pepperoni pizza was somehow key, considering the way the other three had responded to her when she’d sauntered up to their table. Their reverence was subtle, indicating respect, and Lucy’s experiences on the street had taught her that that kind of respect usually meant one thing. She was the leader of the pack.
The line moved and soon her victim moved forward to pay, wallet in hand. Seconds later, after watching her stuff the wallet back into her purse, Lucy pointed to the sausage pizza and said, “I’ll have one of those.”
Yep. She hadn’t lost her touch. Picking pockets was a necessary skill to possess when living on the streets. The girl had no idea her phone was missing and probably wouldn’t until she needed to make a call or text. And by then, Lucy planned to be long gone. Once it revealed the information she needed, she’d figure out a way to get the phone back to the girl. After all, she didn’t like “borrowing,” but desperate times called for desperate measures.
Now if only Lucy could figure out a way to get rid of Jack without tipping him off to her little trick, she’d be home free. She didn’t dare tell him she’d lifted a phone. He’d disapprove, since he always played by the rules. And rules, in her opinion, were meant to be broken, especially those rules the haves created and put in place to keep the have-nots down. She’d learned early on that some even manipulated the rules to take better advantage of the downtrodden. While homeless, she’d been one of those people. Without Cassie, she’d either still be living on the streets, or worse. Dead.
Now back at the table, she ate and discreetly watched her prey, while also listening. Every now and again she glanced back at Jack, who was still stuck in the McDonald’s line. Jeez. You’d think he’d go somewhere else if the line was so long. Thankful not to have his scrutinizing attention, Lucy fingered the stolen cell phone, dying to pry inside the device for answers. But first she had to deal with Jack.
Lucy jumped up, deciding to waylay him in line with an excuse. Nearing the spot where he stood, she smiled. “They aren’t saying anything useful in public and I’m beginning to think this is a wasted effort.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s getting late. Besides visiting Reecie’s mom, I wanted to drive into Louisville to check out Cassie’s apartment.” She threw out her most begging mien. “Can we just go once you get your drink?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
She exhaled a relieved sigh and while Jack ordered, her gaze swept the food court. Her breath caught in the back of her throat when she spied Mike Gillespie standing near the entrance, giving the place a once-over. Damn. That’s all Lucy needed after their confrontation that morning. Praying Mike wouldn’t see her, she spun around and paid an inordinate amount of attention to the menu. No telling how he’d respond if he caught her here with Jack.
Finally, Jack paid for his drink and glanced her way. “Ready?”
Without turning around, Lucy nodded. Her head then indicated the opposite direction from where Mike last stood. “But let’s go out the other entrance, so the girls don’t see us.”
“Fine.” He waited for her to go ahead, and less than a minute later they were halfway to his car. Thank God they’d gotten away without being seen. Lucy didn’t have the time or the inclination to smooth Mike’s ruffled feathers again, much less the patience.
Her partner’s earlier warning about Jack resurfaced and she frowned. As much as Lucy dreaded calling Mike to grovel once she ditched Jack, she had little choice. Tailing the girls required his help. Dismissing her concerns with a shrug, she slanted a covert glance at Jack. She could deal with Mike’s overzealous attitude toward satisfying his active libido. Hadn’t she been doing exactly that since she’d reconnected with him?
Once their seat belts were fastened, Jack handed her his GPS. “Plug in Holloway’s address—238 Long Run Road. I’m not familiar with the road.”
“Me neither.” Lucy took the device and impatiently punched in the address. She had no choice but to wait until after visiting Mrs. Holloway to ditch Jack. Otherwise, he’d know something was up and then she might never get rid of him. “Sounds like a back road.”
Seconds later a map came up, along with directions. Jack pulled out of the spot and headed for the mall’s parking lot exit as the tiny device squawked, “Turn left on Oak Street in two hundred feet.”
Jack guided the vehicle into the left lane and when the light changed, they headed north on Oak for three point six miles. He continued following the GPS’s annoying directions, eventually finding Long Run Road, aptly named given the fact that a person could run for miles along the rural road without encountering a single car. As it was, they passed few houses.
“This should be it.” Jack braked the car to a crawl and turned onto a gravel drive. They hadn’t seen another dwelling in over half a mile.
What a dead end. Lucy peered at the dilapidated trailer on the property that looked ready to collapse and wondered about the people who lived there. There was an old falling-down barn in the distance. The property had obviously been a farm at one time. Now it was just overgrown with apathy and poverty.
Disappointment rose up, testing her impatience. Why were they even bothering meeting with Mrs. Holloway after seeing where Reecie lived? The dead girl would never fit in with Marci Banks or the others. Not in a million years. But then, maybe the drug-dealing rich bitches had lowered their standards.
The gravel crunched underneath the car’s tires, alerting anyone inside of visitors as Jack kept a steady pace to make it up the small hill without the wheels spinning out. Near the top of the rise, the gravel leveled off. He stopped a few feet back from the trailer’s rickety front porch, next to two clunkers, both perched on cement blocks and missing essential operating parts like wheels and windshields.
Jack turned off the ignition then looked out the window. “Definitely seen better days,” he said, his tone neutral and his expression blank.
“Yeah.” Lucy smiled. Weeds dominated the grass. The Holloways obviously didn’t own a lawn mower and garbage was strewn about, ending at a trash pile off to the side of the trailer. More junk was stacked there, building debris mostly, including a broken porcelain toilet and a rusted-out water heater. One man’s trash, another’s treasure and all that, Lucy thought, as a flash from her past entered her brain. A memory of crazy Minnie scavenging through garbage heaps like that one, looking for anything useful to use or to sell.
“Kind of sad, isn’t it?” she asked, pushing the thought aside. As depressing as this place appeared, it was still a step up from being homeless. “They must have it rough.”
“I try not to judge, but I could never live in a place like this.”
“Me neither.” Lucy seldom looked back on her past. Those memories were better off left buried. To this day, she still marveled over how she’d survived without basic necessities, especially now that she had a real home. Of course, her cushy life was bought and paid for with her job, which might vanish in a heartbeat if Gerald knew she was still trying to uncover proof that Cardello was responsible for Cassie’s disappearance.
She swallowed hard and glanced at Jack, praying he’d honor his promise. Investigating was all she knew, and even if her skill set wasn’t so limited, decent
-paying jobs were scarce right now.
Jack held eye contact for a long moment, then shook his head. “Come on.” He shoved his door open and climbed out. “Let’s go see if Mrs. Holloway is at home.”
“What does that look mean?” Lucy slammed her door shut, then hurried to catch up with him.
“Nothing.”
She was almost running by the time she met him at the bottom of the stairs. “It wasn’t nothing and you know it.”
He threw her another irritated grimace and shoved his keys into his pocket. “Hell. I’m surprised you’re not defending the lifestyle and spouting off about how we’re not all born with silver spoons in our mouths, as you put it. But silver spoon or not, labor’s cheap. I’d at least clean up the damn place.”
Ignoring his comment, she meekly followed him up the splintering wooden steps that hadn’t seen a paint job in decades, wondering if the rotten wood on the porch would hold their weight. This porch was a world away from its elaborate counterpart on Marci’s sprawling mansion. But not wanting to earn another dig about her past, she refrained from sharing her thoughts. Like the Banks, he’d never been without options, so how could he put himself in the owner’s shoes?
The hollow sound echoed after he knocked on the cheap gray door that might have been white in an earlier life. Lucy couldn’t tell the exact color under all that grime. Maybe Jack had a point. At one time, she’d never noticed grime. Now her standards were higher and if this were her door, she’d paint it or at least wash it.
The door opened an inch, a heavy chain visible in the narrow space.
“Yeah?” said a crusty looking woman with a lit cigarette hanging out of her mouth. The stench of stale and fresh tobacco smoke followed the monosyllabic greeting.
Jack smiled, obviously going for charming given his warmth when he asked, “Mrs. Holloway?” When the woman nodded, the brightness of his smile increased at least a thousand more watts. “I’m Jack Finnegan and this is my colleague, Lucy Maddox. We’re investigating a missing friend and think your daughter’s death may have something to do with her disappearance, since we came across your daughter’s name in her files.”
“I already talked to them cops from Loo’ville. Read the report. Nothing’s changed in a week.”
“Maybe, but we’d still like to talk to you and see if there is anything they might have missed.” Jack had electronically obtained the report of Reecie Holloway’s drug overdose from a friend who owed him a favor. The information was excluded from Cassie’s file. “Our friend’s life hangs in the balance, so we were hoping you’d at least talk to us, maybe tell us a little more about your daughter’s death.”
“Don’t know much, other than what they tell me and what I see with my own eyes.” A trail of smoke rose from the cigarette still between her lips as she unlatched the chain. A humongous cloud of smoke escaped the trailer when she opened the door wider and the stench of it almost knocked Lucy back down the rotten stairs.
Lucy bowed her head and used her hand to block the smell so she wouldn’t gag.
“Ain’t no mystery that she died, though.” Mrs. Holloway inhaled a hefty pull from the cigarette before taking it out of her mouth. Exhaling, she added, the words coming out in puffs of smoke, “The high-and-mighty bitch thought the rules weren’t for her ’n ran away. Got in with a bad crowd. Good-for-nothing jezebel got what she deserved.”
Lucy kept her expression blank and held her tongue. The comment about Reecie running away confirmed what they’d already uncovered. Yet now, after hearing a mother talk about her dead child in such a way and looking at the filth behind the woman, she started to understand why Reecie might have actually chosen to live on the streets. During her homeless stint, she’d hung out in a couple of vacant, rotting houses in the area that most street people knew about and flocked to when the weather got too cold…or too hot. This place made even the worst house she’d ever utilized seem like the Ritz.
“Getting back to our missing friend, we think she was here. Cassandra Harding, a reporter from Louisville. Do you remember meeting her?”
Lucy stared at Jack, not believing her ears…or her eyes. No hint of the disgust he’d shown when he’d stepped out of the car was reflected in his voice or on his face.
Mrs. Holloway nodded. “Yeah, she was here.”
“Good. We were hoping you could help us figure out where she might have gone,” Jack said. “That is, if you can spare the time to answer a few questions.”
The guy sure knew how to cover up his thoughts and turn on the charm when it suited him.
And like most women, Mrs. Holloway wasn’t immune to it, given the way the woman almost gushed, “Sure. Come on in.” She opened the door wider and stepped to the side. “These days I ain’t got nothing but time.”
Lucy followed Jack inside, keeping her arms close to her side to avoid touching anything. Standing next to a worn old sofa, Mrs. Holloway stuck the cigarette back into her mouth, and using the same hand, shoved crap to the floor. Then she cleared another spot on a chair across from it. Taking the least offensive of the two, Lucy sat, touching as little of her butt on the edge of the chair as she had to without falling on the floor.
To give Jack credit, he sat as if nothing bothered him, his killer smile still in place as he said, “I’d think you’d be a little more torn up with your daughter’s death.”
“Course I’m torn up.” Mrs. Holloway’s incensed voice rose. Then she hacked out a loose cough and once started, she didn’t seem to be able to stop. When her coughing fit eventually died, she offered an apologetic smile, displaying a couple of rotten teeth. “She was my daughter. But that doesn’t change a goddamned thing about acting like a piece of trash.”
“I’m curious.” Jack flashed another high-wattage smile, making Lucy wonder if his cheeks hurt from overexertion. “Why do you refer to her as trash, especially now that she’s dead?”
“’Cuz she was.” Mrs. Holloway inhaled another drag off the cigarette. Then exhaling, she stubbed the butt out in a glass with the remnants of what looked to be cola or coffee. “Comin’ in here all high ’n mighty with her new clothes and flashy jewelry, snubbin’ ’er nose at me like all that shit made her better’n me. All that shit cost money. Big money. And as you can tell by the décor, I ain’t got a pot to piss in.”
“Hmmm.” Jack stroked his chin, thinking. “She was flaunting newfound wealth?” He sent Lucy a pointed look. This was news to both of them and coincided with the conversation she’d overheard in the dressing room. “Where’d she get the money?”
His question paralleled the one in Lucy’s brain, only hers took into consideration Reecie was a high school dropout with no skill set to speak of. She had to be dealing drugs, which made sense considering dying of an overdose. Were the others into drugs too? Had they stumbled on to some kind of teenage drug ring, the same one Cassie uncovered only to be kidnapped for her efforts?
“She told me she was working.” Mrs. Holloway snorted. “Frickin’ bunch of bullshit, if you ask me. Cops say she was into drugs. Hell, she had enough Oxycontin in her system to kill ten people.” The woman grimaced, revealing more black empty spaces next to yellow-stained teeth. “But she weren’t no druggie. That’s bullshit too. She was always on my ass to quit smokin’, saying how secondhand smoke caused wrinkles and was bad for the body. Like I give a shit about this body?”
Another deep cough followed when she chuckled at her own joke. Once the hacking died, she nodded. “But my Reecie weren’t like me. She had one helluva body and she’d never desecrate it with drugs, as she used to say. She weren’t no dealer either.” Mrs. Holloway reached into her pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, then tapped the pack so that a couple came out. After extracting one, she lit it and sucked deeply, before sticking both the lighter and cigarettes back into her pocket while exhaling. She took another long inhale, then said on the exhale, “Them cops don’t know squat. Not like me, and I wasn’t about to tell them anything. And how do I know you
’re any better?” Her glare said it all. Why should she enlighten them?
“Because we think our friend the reporter was on to something.” Jack waited a heartbeat, then asked, “Remember her?” When Mrs. Holloway nodded, he added, “You mentioned she was here.”
“Yeah, so what?”
“Well, we believe she was investigating your daughter’s death and that’s why she’s disappeared.”
She mulled his revelation around in her brain for a moment. When she seemed to be stalling, Jack prodded, “We only want to help and find out the truth. You mentioned the police not knowing what you know. Can you elaborate?”
“I’ll tell you what I should’ve told your friend, who also thought my Reecie was mixed up in some kind of upscale drug ring with a bunch of namby-pamby upper-class bitches. She weren’t into drugs, but she was gettin’ money from somewhere. And knowing Reecie like I do, the only kind of work that’d bring the kind of money she flaunted was on her back, spreading her legs like a goddamned whore. And no daughter o’ mine was gonna sell her body for a buck and live in my house.” She pounded the arm of the sofa and added, “So I kicked her ass out. And if you ask me, the jezebel got what she deserved.” No one could miss the disgust in her voice or the anger her glare emitted.
Wow. Lucy sucked in a deep breath and swallowed the words on the tip on her tongue. Nothing good would come from chastising the lady, so why waste the energy?
She’d never considered herself lucky, but after looking at Mrs. Holloway, that realization was undeniable. During her homeless years, she’d heard horror stories from those girls worse off than her about what they’d endured at home before running away. And once on the street, too many had also suffered more abuse, both physical and sexual. Some had sold their bodies to survive. Others had abused drugs to deal with the mental pain. Through luck and quick thinking, Lucy had escaped both kinds of harm.
Killer Romances Page 76
