Better Read Than Dead

  Grabbing me by the elbow, he pulled me away from the double doors, across the room and into a small kitchen area. As he shoved me roughly into a corner by the microwave his face invaded my personal space and he hissed, “Why in the hell would you agree to perform for the Kapordelis family?”

  “Why?” I whined. “What’s wrong with the Kapordelis family?” I didn’t want Milo to know I knew about the family’s rather checkered connections.

  He was breathing hard, trying to control himself. I had never seen him get so angry before. He always played the good cop to Dutch’s bad, so this sudden switch was a tough one for me to swallow. Finally he said in a hushed voice, “Listen to me, and listen good. The Kapordelis family is not one you want to get too friendly with. When they invite you to a family function you politely decline, and then you change your number.”

  Oh, God, it was worse than I thought. “Why?” I whispered again, my eyes large with fright. I wanted Milo to say it, to confirm that I’d absently blundered into the lion’s den, so that I could ask his help in figuring out what to do with what I’d intuitively picked up at the reception.

  He straightened and looked around the kitchen area, his eyes suspicious and his jaw grinding. Finally he looked back at me and said in a hushed voice, “Let’s just say that even this police department isn’t immune to the influence of that family. If they invite you back for an encore, take a vacation. A very long, extended vacation. Got that?”

  I gulped and nodded my head. Thank God I hadn’t opened my big mouth and told him about the hit man. What if someone had overheard us? I was pretty convinced by Milo’s reaction that he thought the topic of conversation was not a safe one to discuss in public.

  Milo released the grip he’d had on my arm and dipped his head in the direction of the double doors again. “Come on. I’ll see you out.”

  This time I made it through the doors and double-timed it down the granite staircase. I wanted out of there bad. He had shaken me up, and I was scared. I’d seen a tinge of real fear in his eyes when he’d mentioned Andros Kapordelis. I wondered if he was the man I’d actually read. I didn’t think so, because the connection to the bride hadn’t seemed to me to be very strong, but who really knew?

  As I reached my car I fumbled with my keys, my hands shaking. I closed my eyes for a brief moment and concentrated, taking deep breaths and trying to calm myself. I got into my car and sat behind the wheel for a moment, thinking about what to do next. I was close to my office, so I decided to head there and think things through. Absently I turned the ignition and headed out of the police parking lot, thinking that I was probably overreacting anyway. So I read a hit man? So what? It wasn’t like I’d seen his face and could ID him; I mean, it wasn’t like I could pick him out of a lineup or anything. After all, I reasoned, hadn’t he tipped me? If the man wanted to kill me because I knew he murdered people for a living, why would he waste twenty dollars?

  It had been an arrogant gesture, not the kind of thing you’d do if you wanted to off someone later. Right?

  Besides, hadn’t Kendal and I gotten home without incident? No one tried to stop us from leaving the wedding, and no one followed us on the way home. I was blowing this all out of proportion. In fact, it was actually kind of funny when I thought about it.

  I had parked in my assigned parking space by the time I’d reached this conclusion, and I actually chuckled to myself as I reached over to grab my purse and got out of the car. I locked the door and turned around to walk to my office, still chuckling, when I banged smack-dab into a massive chest.

  Startled, I backed up against my car and looked up—and up and up—into the face of one of the biggest men I have ever seen in my life.

  “What’s so funny?” the massive man asked me, his speech thickened by what I assumed was his gigantic tongue.

  A chill had spread up my spine as I reclined backward against my car, unable to say anything and waiting for whatever would happen next.

  “I asked you a question,” the man said as his massive pronounced brow lowered over his dark eyes.

  “I . . . I . . . I . . .” was all I could stammer out.

  The man was suddenly in motion, grabbing me by the scruff of the neck and shoving my head forward as he practically lifted me off the ground. My breath caught as I was propelled forward; there was no chance to scream or fight. I’d been completely taken off guard. Before I knew it I was violently shoved headfirst into a car, where my brow hit the opposite window with terrific force. I barely managed to stop myself before falling forward onto the car floor, when I heard the other door close behind me. I scrambled up onto the seat and grabbed for the door handle, pulling at it frantically, but it wouldn’t open. There was only the sound of menacing laughter behind me.

  My head was pounding fiercely from its blow against the door, but my mounting panic overrode any attention I might have paid to it. I began to pound on the window as we peeled out of the parking garage, and I screamed for help through the tinted glass at pedestrians on the streets.

  I was still screaming when I was yanked by the shoulder and slapped so hard across the face I saw stars. I cowered in the corner after that, nursing my bleeding lip and swollen cheek, staring at my kidnapper as he instructed the driver in a language I didn’t know. I did catch one word, however, and that sent a fresh wave of fear along my spine. The word I heard was “Andros,” and it was then that, just like Jeffrey Zimmer, I began to pray for my life.

  Chapter Five

  It occurred to me several miles into the jaunt with my kidnappers that I didn’t know where the hell we were. I’d been too busy watching the giant goon who’d thrown me into the car, waiting for him to try to hit me again. He, on the other hand, seemed to be in some sort of trance, sitting calmly facing forward, ignoring me and not moving much. I supposed that to move that amount of mass must take a lot of energy, so this posture had to be a recuperative technique.

  After about fifteen steady minutes of watching him, I decided to risk peeking out the window, looking for any telltale signs of where we might be headed. My first observation told me that we were on I-75 headed south.

  As the tall columns of the Detroit Renaissance Center came into view, they confirmed the suspicion. Shortly after spotting the Ren Cen we exited the highway and entered a neighborhood that made me want to lock the doors, even with a seven-foot-tall goon in the car.

  Soon we were heading down several side streets, and the topography changed. As near as I could tell we were somewhere in the warehouse district, over by the Eastern Market. There were large dilapidated buildings closed off by fifteen-foot fences crowned by razor wire. Not much traffic cruised up and down these streets, and I knew that if these guys didn’t kill me, but let me go in any one of these neighborhoods, I was probably in for a day of trying to get my lily-white ass out of the heart of racially divided Detroit. Any way you sliced it, I was in trouble.

  Finally the car turned a sharp corner and pulled up to a small driveway with a call box. The driver, whose eyes I’d seen in the rearview mirror, lowered the window and pushed a button on the call box. A garbled voice responded, and the driver said something I couldn’t understand. A moment later the huge gate in front of the car began to creep open, rust making it screech in protest.

  When the opening was wide enough the car pulled forward and circled around the large warehouse. I could see men on the property; they were rough-looking types, mostly in jeans and light coats. None of them looked up at the car when it approached.

  We came to a stop in front of a side door, and my heart began to pound again. If they killed me here, no one would ever find me. I kept thinking about Cat, and how upset she’d be, holding out hope that I was still alive and wondering what had happened to me. I wondered too who would take care of Eggy.

  The driver clicked a button on his control panel, and I watched as the lock on my side flipped up. Tentatively I tried the door handle—it worked. Without being told I opened my door and got out, staring up at the
building and wondering what I was in for.

  Goon came around to my side and grabbed me by the collar, lifting me slightly as he propelled me forward. I walked quickly ahead on my tippy-toes, becoming more and more irritated as we moved up a few steps and into the building.

  Goon trotted me down a long dimly lit hallway, around a corner and into an office. There was a trashy-looking woman with overbleached hair sitting at a desk, filing her nails and popping her gum when we came in.

  Goon released my collar and stood in front of her. She smiled winningly up at him and picked up the receiver on her telephone, hitting a button and popping her gum a few more times before she said something into the receiver that I couldn’t catch. She then hung up the phone and pointed to the door behind her, smiling as we shuffled past.

  We walked through the door and into a large interior office, luxuriously decorated with thick shag carpeting, crepe-colored walls, black leather couches and a gigantic oil painting covering almost an entire wall.

  At the opposite end of the office sat a massive creature squeezed into his leather chair and puffing on a smelly cigar. Andros Kapordelis was huge, but not in the same way that Goon was huge. He was probably close to six feet tall, with a thick salt-and-pepper beard and mustache, a receding hairline and squinty dark eyes. His chins numbered in the double digits, and his massive belly made his breathing audible from way back here.

  He wore a tweed overcoat and a red silk shirt, open several buttons to reveal tufts of black hair poking out as a large gold medallion was nearly swallowed by his chins. His arms rested on his belly, but kept slipping downward, and even from here I could smell his BO above the cigar. It was a struggle not to gag at the sight and smell of him.

  “Ah, Miss Cooper, thank you for joining us on such short notice. I see you’ve made a complete recovery from your sickness?”

  My brow furrowed for a moment in confusion. What the hell was he talking about? Then it dawned on me; I’d left the reception last night pretending to be sick. Looking at Andros I knew he was on to Kendal and me, and no amount of playacting was going to get me out of this, so I simply nodded.

  “Yes,” Andros continued. “I suspected as much. Come, come, now. Join me for a discussion, won’t you?” he said, waving one fat pudgy hand toward a chair in front of his desk.

  I hesitated, not wanting to get any closer to the smelly, unctuous man; then Goon had me up by the shirt collar again, wielding me forward and depositing me in a seat that faced Andros.

  This whole thing was really starting to tick me off, and I couldn’t understand what point these guys wanted to make before killing me. If they wanted to see me beg for my life first they were going to be sorely disappointed. I wasn’t afraid to die, just sad that I still had so much to do, and there was no way I was going to give these assholes the satisfaction of watching me squirm.

  “That’s better,” Andros said when I’d been shoved into the seat facing him. “Now we need to take care of some business, you and I.”

  Here it comes, I thought.

  “You see, you and your partner, Mr. Adams, greatly disappointed my daughter last night,” Andros explained while taking a puff of his smelly cigar. “Ophelia was embarrassed that the entertainment she herself had arranged for on the most important night of her life was ruined so abruptly.”

  Andros paused and regarded me, waiting perhaps to see what I might say. I continued to stare at him in stony, stubborn silence. I’d be damned if he thought there was any way I was going to apologize to him. After a moment he continued: “Not only that, but these two ‘professionals’ seem to have kept the money my Ophelia paid them to entertain her guests. What do you think about that, Miss Cooper?”

  That last statement caught me slightly off guard. I had forgotten that Kendal had promised to mail in a check to reimburse the bride for paying us in advance. I hadn’t seen any of the money, and I didn’t understand how all this was suddenly my problem. “Listen, Mr. Kapordelis, I had nothing to do with the money. Kendal was in charge of mailing you back your check, which I have no doubt he’ll do. If you’ll just try to contact him, I’m sure he can cut you a check for a full refund—”

  “Yes, well, that is part of the problem, Miss Cooper,” Andros said, cutting me off. “You see, we have discovered that Mr. Adams flew to Tampa early this morning, taking our money with him.”

  I looked at Andros with a mixture of shock and embarrassment. I was going to kill Kendal the next time I saw him. Quickly I said, “I see. Well, Mr. Kapordelis, the only resolution I can offer you is a personal check,” I said, reaching for my purse, which had dropped to the floor. Goon grabbed my hand before I could reach it and lifted the purse away from me. He dug around in it for a minute as I watched him with a flinty stare, then handed it back to me without a word. I glared at him, then fished around in my purse and extracted my checkbook. Flipping it open to the first available check, I began to scribble in the date. “Okay, so Kendal said that you had paid two thousand dollars for the evening?”

  Andros laughed and answered, “Yes, but you see, getting back only what I paid for is hardly adequate compensation.”

  “Excuse me?” I said, my hand pausing while I looked up at him.

  “Yes, I think it only fair if some punitive damages are applied. After all, my Ophelia was quite distraught on her wedding day. You and your partner were the one blemish to an otherwise perfect evening. I think that double your original fee is more than adequate, don’t you, Miss Cooper?”

  What little blood was left in my face drained right out. His question was less “question” and more “demand,” and I knew it. I also knew that by handing over four thousand dollars to this man, I’d be left with less than five hundred dollars in my bank account. It had been a very long time since I’d had so little liquid cash on me, but what choice did I have? I inhaled a huge breath and wrote out the check to “Cash,” for four thousand dollars, ripping it off angrily and handing it to Andros, who inspected it for errors, then tucked it away into his pocket. He regarded me for a long moment as I wondered what the next move between us would be.

  “There is one more thing that you will need to do for me to square up your debt.”

  “Of course there is.” I sighed as I glared at him.

  “My associate tells me you are quite a remarkable psychic.”

  Shit, I was in trouble.

  “I would like a reading, please, before you go.”

  He had to be kidding. He wanted a reading . . . now? This SOB had kidnapped me, roughed me up, dragged me down to an old warehouse, extorted four thousand dollars from me and now wanted a reading? No fucking way. “Sorry, Mr. Kapordelis, but I’m afraid that Goon here,” I said thumbing toward the giant behind me, “has given my third eye a black eye, so I will be unable to comply with your request.”

  “I see,” Andros said, pulling the fat cigar out of his mouth and eyeing it with amusement. “Leave us for now,” he said, looking at Goon and waving him toward the door. On lumbering footsteps I heard Goon leave, the door closing quietly behind him. Andros turned his attention back to me and sized me up for a long time before saying, “Miss Cooper, you may not understand the powers of persuasion that I am capable of invoking when it comes to getting my way.”

  “And you may not understand how the pressures of duress conflict with my ability to intuit information,” I said smartly, making a point to caress my swollen cheek.

  “Ah, yes,” Andros said, “I am sorry we had to include a degree of force with our invitation, but it was imperative that I see you.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “That is what I’d like you to tell me,” Andros said, and waited while I pondered that.

  Just for the sake of curiosity I took a tiny measure of his energy and knew right away what he was getting at. Impulsively I said, “So how long have the doctors given you?”

  I had passed the first test; Andros smiled broadly at me. I noticed distastefully how yellowed and uneven his teeth were. “
Not long. They want me to undergo some experimental procedures. I don’t think they will work.”

  I scanned his energy a little deeper now, sucked into the question, and said, “You’re right. I’m surprised you’re still standing.”

  About a year ago I’d spent a little time working with a medical intuitive, who had taught me how to scan the body for disease. I had practiced on several of her clients, and had come to understand what several common diseases “felt” like, including cancer, which to my sixth sense “felt” like gray sludge. The more intense the cancer, the thicker the sludge.

  Andros’s body was riddled with thick, dark gray goo—cancer. Most of it was concentrated in his lap, so my guess was that his prostate and lower intestines were engorged with it.

  “What else?” he encouraged when I said nothing more.

  Moodily I obliged. Hell, I was already in the middle of it anyway; why not finish it? “Well, there’s also something about a huge family conflict. Like a crisis connected with your death. The feeling I get is that there is some kind of family rift going on here, and neither side trusts the other, and you’re trying to repair this rift before you go. Am I on the right track?”

  Andros was nodding his head at me, puffing away on his cigar, “Yes. Please continue.”

  “Okay, so I get the feeling your half of the family and the other half of the family are about to have a meeting of some kind, like one side wants to offer the other an olive branch, and it’s an opportunity to heal this huge rift, am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there have been several missteps in this process, like no one wants to swallow their pride, and you can see an opportunity to make peace, but you’re not sure if the other side will come to the table, right?”

  “Correct,” Andros said, his beady eyes watching me closely.

  “There is some sort of business deal that is coming up that could solve this matter and bring the two sides together again. But it takes a lot of trust on your part, and you’re not sure if they’re telling the truth.”