Black Lace Read online

  Lacy returned to work a few days after the incident with her car. She was determined to get on with her life. It was obvious that the stalker intended for her to cower in her apartment wringing her hands and sobbing, “Oh woe is me,” but she was tougher than that, even if she had been having nightmares about the blood-covered car.

  According to a call from Detective Franks, there were no usable prints found on her car and the blood had been human. A blood bank was broken into a few days before the coupe was trashed, and Franks was positive the two incidents were related.

  When Lacy relayed the news to Ida and Janika, Ida’s face took on a look of distaste. “Human blood?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s awful.”

  Lacy thought so too.

  Janika asked, “Still nothing on Lenny Durant?”

  “Nope, or David Bales either.”

  After Ida and Janika went back to their desks, Lacy admitted to herself that she hadn’t heard much from Drake either. Although he’d been there for her on that awful day in the parking garage, the two of them had yet to reconcile properly.

  Ida reappeared in her doorway. “Rhonda Curry is on line one.”

  “Thanks.” She picked up the phone. “Lacy Green.”

  “’Morning, baby.”

  Lacy went still. “Good morning.”

  “I told Ida tell you it was Rhonda because I wasn’t sure you’d take a call from me.”

  Lacy was so glad to hear his voice. “How are you?” she asked.

  “Not too good.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I miss you. I’m worried about you, but mostly I miss you.”

  Lacy could feel tears stinging her eyes. “I miss you, too.”

  “Can we get together and talk?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Okay. How about I swing by your place this evening.”

  “That would be great.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  Lacy hung up, wiped at her eyes, and smiled for what felt like the first time in weeks.

  She was back to driving a rental car. After talking with her mother about what happened with the coupe, they agreed that selling it was the only option. Lacy had no desire to drive the car again, even if the dealership was able to clean it up, which they weren’t sure they could, so Val made arrangements to sell it back to the dealer. Lacy put the proceeds down on a new one. Silver. She’d be able to pick it up in a few days.

  After work, she and Walter had dinner, and were settling in for the night’s playoff game when the buzzer sounded. The two looked at each other. Lacy wanted the visitor to be Drake but kept her anticipation under wraps, in case it turned out not to be. When Walter went to the intercom and she heard Drake’s voice, she smiled.

  While they waited for him to come up, Walter told her, “I’m going to take off for a few hours so you two can have some privacy.”

  “That isn’t necessary, Walter.”

  He smiled. “His Honor says it is.”

  Lacy dropped her eyes. Drake’s knock sounded on the door. In response, Walter picked up his jacket and the keys to the rental car. He opened the door and told Lacy, “Drake’s going to drop you off at work in the morning. I’ve got a dentist appointment, so I’ll hook up with you at noon.”

  He walked out and Drake walked in.

  Drake closed the door behind him and stood there for a moment. Since her angry departure from his office, seemingly eons ago, his entire world had gone gray. Then, when her car was vandalized, his heart had broken watching her reaction to the gore the stalker had left for her to find. He’d wanted to scoop her up and take her to a place where she’d never be hurt that way again. Now, being here with her and maybe getting this straight so their relationship could continue to grow, Drake felt the sun reentering his life. “Hey.”

  She nodded. “Hey.”

  “Still mad?”

  “No.”

  “Then can I hold you….?”

  Lacy went into his outstretched arms and let herself be enfolded against his heart.

  It was the place she most wanted to be. She’d missed him so much.

  Relief washed over Drake like rain, and he held even tighter. “I’m sorry for the way I handled that meeting,” he whispered passionately. “Pulling you off the case wasn’t an easy decision, but I had no choice. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  The impact of his sincerity made tears slide down Lacy’s cheeks.

  He reached down and raised her chin. The tears in her eyes made them shine. “Not being with you has been killing me.”

  She gave him a small smile. “Hasn’t been fun for me either. You know what I missed the most, though?”

  “What?”

  “Your kisses…”

  Drake raised an eyebrow. “Oh really?” He took a moment to trace the lips that had been haunting his dreams. “Then let’s fix that right now.”

  He lowered his mouth to hers, and when they met, all the dammed-up feelings and emotions rose like a wild wind and swept them away. Kisses fueled by longing, solace, and acceptance melded with ones of welcome and joy.

  When they finally came up for air, Drake wanted to spend the rest of his life holding her against his heart in just this way. And Lacy’s thoughts mirrored his. She didn’t want to leave his arms ever.

  Drake confessed something that he couldn’t suppress any longer. “I’m in love with you, woman. Big-time.”

  She was in love with him too, had been since their long weekend in Holland. “Ditto.”

  He stared down. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled. “When did you know?”

  “Holland. You?”

  “Truthfully? From the first day we met. I still remember how mad you were.”

  “True dat.”

  He chuckled. “Guess we can call ourselves an official couple now, huh?”

  She nodded. “I think so.”

  He hugged her tight. “Damn, that feels good.”

  She grinned and held him tight too. “Yes, it does.”

  So Lacy became, according to the newspapers, the First Girlfriend.

  Friday morning at work, Lacy’s phone rang. Ida came in. “There’s a woman named Melissa on the line. She sounds like something’s wrong.”

  “Melissa who?”

  “She says she met you at the Northwest Activities Center. She was there with Lenny.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Lacy picked up. “Lacy Green. How may I help you?”

  “Miss Green?” The female voice sounded frantic and scared.

  “Yes, this is Lacy. What’s wrong?”

  “This is Melissa Curtis. Lenny’s friend. You gotta come over here and get this tape.”

  “What tape?”

  “I don’t have time to explain on the phone.” Instead, she gave Lacy an address on the west side. “Please hurry, Miss Green. I don’t think we have a lot of time.”

  “Melissa?” Lacy said. “Melissa!” But she’d hung up.

  Lacy set the phone down and hollered for Ida.

  Because Lacy didn’t know the city well enough, Ida drove. A traffic accident on the Lodge made the trip much longer than it should have been, and by the time they found the street and then the large brick apartment building that matched the address, an hour had passed. Lacy walked briskly up the walk while Ida remained in the Caddy. The neighborhood was not a good one, and Ida didn’t want to have to shoot anyone dumb enough to try and jack her.

  Lacy pulled the door open and was almost knocked down by a man coming out. He reached out to keep her from falling. “’Scuse me, ma’am,” he whispered, then proceeded briskly down he steps. He had his coat collar turned up, so she didn’t get a good look at his face but his big fish eyes were hard to miss.

  Inside, she quickly walked past the mailboxes and headed to the elevator. A handwritten OUT OF ORDER sign was stuck to the doors with a piece of silver duct tape. Melissa had given her an apartment number on the
third floor, so she looked around for the stairs, found them, then headed up. Her cell phone rang. Since getting a new number, Lacy was no longer paranoid about answering it.

  Ida was on the other end. “Are you okay?”

  “So far. Did you see that man almost knock me down?”

  “The one with the big pop eyes?”

  Lacy reached the third floor. “Yeah. Okay, here’s apartment 32. Hold on.”

  She knocked, and it slowly swung open in response. Lacy stopped. Adrenaline began to pump. She knocked on the door frame and called out, “Melissa. It’s Lacy.”

  She looked at the other four apartment doors on the floor, thinking Melissa might be visiting a neighbor, but the doors were all closed. There was no way to tell how many were occupied, if at all. Pushing Melissa’s door open wider, she walked in. A TV was blaring from somewhere inside. “Melissa?”

  The narrow kitchen with its dirty dishes and pots of dried food on the stove led to a small living room with two windows facing the street. The place was in shambles, books and VHS tapes strewn everywhere. Furniture was turned over and there was broken glass on the floor. That’s when Lacy saw her. A wide-eyed, dead Melissa was lying on the green shag carpet in a widening pool of blood. Her throat had been slashed. Lacy’s stomach churned and she ran out of the apartment to the hallway. As her heart pounded, she fought the bile rising in her throat and drew in a few steadying breaths. Trembling, she raised the phone. “Ida, she’s dead. I’m calling 911.”

  The police and an ambulance arrived with sirens and flashing lights about ten minutes after the call. Detective Franks met Lacy in the hallway and took her outside to his car while his colleagues stayed behind to set up the crime scene. Lacy was shook up, and the detective let her take her time telling them the story. “She wanted me to come by and pick up a tape.”

  Detective Franks said, “What kind of tape?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He was writing on his small notepad. “Care to guess?”

  Lacy met his eyes, then told him about the visit she’d gotten from Lenny Durant and Bales. “It could be related to that, but I don’t know.”

  “This is Lenny Durant of BAD?”

  “Yes, and the name on the note left on my car.”

  “I remember that. Do you know where he is?”

  “No.” Lacy couldn’t get the image of the murdered Melissa out of her mind. The chills that coursed up her arms made her hug herself. Ida, who was seated next to her, answered the detective’s questions, but she had no more information to add about the mysterious tape.

  “Did you see anyone while you were entering? Did you pass anybody on the stairs?’

  Lacy told him about the man with the big eyes. “He almost knocked me down coming out, but he was polite and kept going.”

  “Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

  Lacy shrugged. “Maybe.”

  He then asked Ida. “Did you see the man too?”

  “I did. After he left the building, he went toward the corner, but I didn’t pay much attention to him after that.”

  “Think you might recognize him again?”

  “I’m like Lacy. He had his coat collar pulled up so I didn’t get a real good look at his face. Saw the eyes when he liked to knock her down, though.”

  “Okay. I need you to come to the precinct and look through our perp albums. Be a real help if we could do it right now.”

  Both women agreed, so a few minutes later Ida and Lacy trailed the detective back to his office.

  It took them over an hour to find him. “Bingo,” Lacy called out grimly. “Is this him, Ida?”

  Ida leaned over her shoulder. “Sure looks like him.”

  The picture showed a light-skinned, pock-faced man with eyes like a fish. His name was Benjamin Madison, aka Fish.

  The detective asked them both, “You’re sure now?”

  They nodded.

  He smiled. “Good. Thanks. We have some papers for you to sign and then you can be on your way. We’ll keep you posted.”

  Ida and Lacy drove back to the office.

  From the window in his trailer office City Councilman Reynard Parker watched the cadaver dog and his handler making their way over the mountain-high landfill. The search had been going on for over two weeks. Parker’s anger over having them in his business was tempered by the pleasure that they hadn’t found anything, and if Fish was right, they never would, but there were other worries on his plate too.

  According to the newspapers, witnesses had seen a man leaving Melissa Curtis’s building the morning of her murder. Fish assumed it was the woman he’d run into at the door, but the papers hadn’t given up any more details. Fish had killed Curtis because she refused to give up Durant’s location. In an effort to find an answer, he’d rifled her apartment and found a VHS on the kitchen counter marked Parker. He also found her cell phone, both of which he brought back. The tape had a short, night-shot video of barrels being loaded. The next bit of footage had almost given Parker a heart attack. All of the dumping had been filmed. A hand suddenly came into the picture, lifted the plastic plate the crews used to cover the license plates of the trucks involved and showed the plate numbers to the camera.

  Parker had angrily shut if off. He didn’t need to see any more. The tape had enough evidence for the state regulatory commission to suspend his license and maybe send him to jail. Finding Durant had become critical. He was too smart to have had only one copy of the evidence. If Fish could find Durant, then Parker would know what he was facing. Right now he was in the dark. It was impossible to know what Melissa Curtis had intended to do with the tape, but the last phone call she’d made from her cell had been to Lacy Green. How the two women were tied together was a mystery too, but since Fish was the one who would be up for murder, it was his job to clean up this mess and make sure the witnesses weren’t around to testify.

  Parker was just about to leave the office and head downtown to take care of his council duties when he saw a big black car rumbling its way across the uneven ground toward the trailer he used as his office. Everything about the car screamed police, so he simply stood and waited. Before Wheeler’s death, his life had been smooth as glass. Now he felt like he was headed for a cliff.

  Lacy put in a call to Detective Franks. “Anything new on the investigation?”

  “Not really. You said she called you that morning, right?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “We can’t find her cell phone, and her bedroom had been tossed. Makes us think the killer was looking for something.”

  “Did your people find the tape?”

  “We found hundreds of them in her bedroom. Her mother said Ms. Curtis was also a computer geek, but there was nothing on any of the tapes worth her losing her life over.”

  “What about Madison?”

  “Nothing yet. We ran down his old parole officer and he gave us a lead on where he might be working. Some detectives went to check the tip out this morning, but his employer swore he hasn’t seen Madison in at least a week. You wanta guess who his boss is?”

  “Who?’

  “City Councilman Reynard Parker. Madison works for Parker Environmental.”

  Lacy felt the hair on her neck rise. “This is getting uglier and uglier, isn’t it?”

  “You got that right.”

  Lacy found it hard to think, but asked, “Is Madison the man who’s been calling me?”

  “Nothing points to that right now. Too bad law enforcement doesn’t store voice samples of felons the way it does fingerprints and face photos.”

  Lacy thought that would have been an immense help.

  “We’re tearing up the city looking for Madison, though. We faxed his picture to the airlines and the bus and trains stations in case he tries to skip town.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “Don’t worry, Ms. Green. It won’t be long before we catch him.”

  Lacy hoped he was right.

  Lenny was w
aiting for dark. He’d gotten the call about Melissa’s death and knew she’d been killed because of her ties to him. Melissa had come to the environmental movement by way of her older brother, Hugh. He’d served during Desert Storm and returned to the States sick as a dog from something the doctors couldn’t figure out. Melissa was a high school student at the time, and she was convinced her brother’s sickness came from his time overseas. The army denied any such association, and told thousands of other families with sick and dying vets the same thing. When Hugh died a few years later, fighting environmental hazards became Melissa’s whole world. And now she was dead.

  Lenny felt bad about that. Real bad. Angry too, because they didn’t have to kill her. Was life that meaningless to them? How could profits from trash hauling, of all things, outweigh a woman’s right to be on the planet? Her death answered all those questions, however. Once it got dark, he was going to cruise around until he got his hands on his weapon of choice, and then he was going hunting, just like in the old days when he and his old man used to hunt rats at night. Only these rats were going to be the two-legged kind.

  He had tried to work through the system by gathering evidence for the folks downtown to use, going to meetings and stuff, and Melissa’s death had been the result. Now he was going to do this his way.

  Seventeen

  Lacy was preparing to leave the office when the phone rang. Now that the police had a tap on her outside line, she felt secure answering it again. “Lacy Green. May I help you?”

  “’Afternoon, Ms. Green.”

  It was him!

  “Did you like my last present?” he asked with a low laugh. “Your car looked so stunning in red. Tell Lenny I need to see him or you may have to join Melissa.”