Better Read Than Dead

  Andros clapped his hands together and barked out a laugh. “You are exceptionally gifted, even better than Madame Jarosolov. Now, here is my concern. I had a dream last night that my cousin had sent me a gift, only this gift was a horse carved out of wood. I opened the gift and it exploded. Can you see where I’m going with this?”

  “You’re afraid your cousin has sent you a Trojan horse,” I replied easily.

  “Exactly. The thing I remember most from the dream, other than the bomb, is that I opened the present with a letter opener in the shape of a police badge. I think these two are not who they say they are. I think they are Feds.”

  My heart was beating fast and furious. I looked back at Dutch, who refused to meet my gaze. He wasn’t going to give me anything to go on, and I understood that I now held his life in my hands. My mind whirred, and I pretended to close my eyes and concentrate, but what I was really looking for was an explanation that would fly with Andros. A memory drifted up to me. It was the day Dutch had taken me out for lunch, and the memory was of him holding the ticket he’d gotten for parking illegally in front of my building. I snapped my eyes open and looked quickly at him. He was wearing the same suede coat he’d worn that day. My eyes drifted to his pocket, and I sent up a silent prayer as I took a huge chance. “Yeah, you’re right, Andros. This one over here,” I said, waving a finger at Dutch, “he’s the one with the badge in his energy.”

  Dutch’s eyes returned to me, and if looks could kill I’d’a been toast. I swallowed hard and continued, begging with my eyes for him to trust me. “Now, the weird thing is that I’m not picking up the badge in connection to what he does, ’cause they’re showing me a no-parking sign, and then the badge . . . like, I don’t know, like he’s gotten a parking ticket recently or something like that.”

  Dutch’s eyes relaxed a fraction, and he said, “Your whore’s got talent, Andros. I’ve got the ticket in my jacket pocket.”

  I knew we were just putting on a good show, but the fact that Dutch had just called me a whore made me want to pop him one. I held my cool, however, while one of the thugs reached into Dutch’s coat and pulled out the parking ticket, handing it over to Andros.

  Andros took the ticket and inspected it carefully. “You should be more careful where you park your car, Mr. Wilson,” he said, and tossed the ticket onto his desk. Turning back to me he said, “Now what about the dream, Miss Cooper? Do you think I can trust my cousin after such a dream?”

  I had to step carefully here. “Well, the feeling that I get is that this is an opportunity for you to make some good coin. This gun deal . . . it’s pretty lucrative, right?”

  “Possibly,” Andros said.

  “My sense is that there’s going to be a big payoff here, and you’re going to have to trust your cousin a little bit to get the payoff. The dream, I think, represents more of your fears than your reality. Dreams can often be a reflection of what we fear, rather than a prophetic vision. You say you suspected your cousin of betraying you in the past, correct?”

  Andros nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I believe he did.”

  “Then there you have it. The dream is just your subconscious working out your fear of being betrayed again. It simply means you’ll need to keep your eyes open. My feeling is that these two are who they say they are.” For effect I turned to Dutch and asked, “Wilson, right?”

  Dutch nodded curtly at me, the scowl on his face deepening.

  “You deal in heavy artillery, right?”

  Another curt nod. Liar, liar . . . pants on fire . . .

  I turned back to Andros and explained: “I’m good at knowing when people are lying, and this guy’s not flagging my radar. So my advice to you is that you can trust them. Make your deal with your cousin and enjoy the profits.”

  Andros had reclaimed his seat in the chair, his elbows on the desk with his hands coming up into a steeple, which he rested against his lips, deep in thought. He was weighing everything I said, and I was praying he’d buy into it. Finally he waved to his thugs and said, “Untie them, and have them wait outside for me while I finish with Miss Cooper.”

  Dutch and Joe were untied and led outside. Joe’s lip curled slightly at me, and she reached out to grab Dutch’s arm as the two were escorted out of the room. I didn’t care. For now Dutch was safe, and that was all that mattered to me.

  “So have I passed your ‘test’?” I asked smugly.

  “For now,” he answered, then reached into a drawer and pulled out a large manila folder bound by rubber bands and chock-full of paper. He looked at it thoughtfully for a moment, then pushed it toward me. “Here,” he said.

  I took the folder and looked at it curiously. It appeared to be old and weathered, and I didn’t really know what to do with it. “What’s this?” I asked.

  “It is my wife, Dora’s, missing-persons police file, or a copy of her file, plus a few of the leads Madame Jarosolov was able to produce. Over the years I’ve hired many private detectives, hoping to find her, and all of them met dead ends. Madame Jarosolov produced some of the best leads, but still nothing concrete. I want to know what happened to my wife, Miss Cooper. This is your project. Find her, or find out what happened to her, and we will see about your sister’s attacker.”

  My heart sank. I picked up the folder and I realized the “bargain” I’d struck with Andros was no bargain at all. “You’ve got to be kidding!” I said as I dropped the heavy folder with a thud.

  “You think I am trying to amuse you?” Andros said in a dangerous tone. “I assure you, there is no joke in my request. I want to find my wife, or find out what happened to her, and I’m a man with limited time left to wait for such things. You want information about your sister’s attacker? You will find Dora.”

  I ground my teeth for a minute, wondering what I’d gotten myself into, when my intuition began buzzing. Distractedly I picked up the message, which basically said, Take the file. . . . I questioned this message, but got it again more urgently, so, shrugging my shoulders, I stood up and carried the folder with me. “Fine. I’ll work on this, but I can’t guarantee anything. . . .”

  “Yes, that was Madame Jarosolov’s excuse as well,” he said so ominously that I got a chill all the way up my spine. Andros picked up his phone again and barked something Greek into it, and a moment later my driver reappeared. As I turned to leave Andros gave me a parting warning: “I trust your discretion about what you’ve seen here tonight, all right, Miss Cooper?”

  I turned back to him and copped an attitude. “Yeah, I’ve gone this long without reporting any of the bullshit you’ve done to me over the last week, but this is going to push me right over the edge!” Andros’s brow darkened, and I knew that I was playing with fire. “Listen,” I said more calmly, “you Mafia boys want to kill each other? Fine by me. The last thing I want to do is get mixed up in it, so trust me, I’m not going to dial nine-one-one anytime soon.”

  “It would be a grave mistake,” Andros threatened, his eyes forming small slits and his mouth in a hard, frightening frown. “I also know you have been helping the police in your town with their rapist investigation, and I will not tolerate any mention of me in connection to that case. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly,” I said, and turned toward the door.

  As the driver and I headed back through the house we walked right past Dutch and Joe, who were sulking in two wing chairs, surrounded by brutes and waiting to be summoned. I wanted to catch Dutch’s eye, but figured I wouldn’t be doing him any favors by visually checking in with him in front of so many witnesses. It was better to pretend I didn’t care, so I only stole a glance his way out of the corner of my eye. He looked ready to kill me, but I assumed it was all part of the act.

  In a moment we’d left them behind, and I privately crossed my fingers that he’d be safe tonight.

  Thirty minutes later I was back home, where I warmed up in a hot bath, complete with bubbles. I needed a little pampering tonight. Cat called while I was in the tub, and we talked b
riefly about her trip to Aruba.

  “So how was the flight?”

  “It was long, but totally worth it. We checked into the most gorgeous hotel, and Tommy has been so sweet to me. He’s been having the staff here wait on me hand and foot.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said, smirking. It was so good to hear my sister talking like her old self again.

  “Hey, has that client of yours given you any clues about the guy who jumped me?”

  “Uh . . . no . . . not yet. Actually, he’s had to keep a really low profile lately, but we’re supposed to meet in the next couple of days, and I’m sure he’ll give me something to go on.”

  Cat sighed audibly and said, “I’m just worried for the next poor girl who might not be as lucky as me.”

  My face pinched in guilt. I hated lying to my sister. “Yeah, I know. I promise you I’ll do my best to get what I can out of my client, okay?”

  “Will you please be careful while you’re doing that? This Russian Mafia thing has me really worried about you.”

  “Oh, Cat, please,” I scoffed. “I’m perfectly fine. Geez, you and the drama of it all . . .”

  “I’m serious,” she insisted. “What if this man pointed these guys in your direction? I mean, what if someone without the best of intentions wanted to take advantage of your abilities? It could be very dangerous, you know.”

  I gulped at how close she was to the truth and said with a forced laugh, “My God, Catherine, have you been watching too much Court TV lately, or what?”

  “I’m just saying. . . .”

  “Well, don’t worry about it, sweetie. I’m fine, and I will remain fine. Listen, you guys get back to your vacation and I’ll talk to you in a couple of days, okay?”

  “Okay. Give Milo our number here for me, won’t you? I promised I’d call him when I got in, but if you could pass it along it would save me another phone call.”

  “Not a problem. I’ll take care of it pronto.” Liar, liar . . . pants on fire . . .

  There was no way I was going to make it easy for Milo to follow up with my sister. He was already too suspicious, and I didn’t want him to press her until I had the rapist’s description in hand. “Take care of yourself, Cat, and give Tommy my love.”

  We clicked off and I climbed out of the tub and got into my flannel jammies. The house seemed empty without Eggy, and I got a pang in my stomach from missing him. I missed Dave too, and as I trotted into my room and turned off the space heater before getting into bed, I wondered how soon before my life would get back to normal.

  I sighed as I puffed up my pillows and pulled the police file Andros had given me off the nightstand. I peeled back the rubber bands and opened up the folder, looking at page one. The paper was old and abused. After I’d looked it over a few times it dawned on me that I was looking at a copy of the police report taken twenty years earlier on the day of Dora Kapordelis’s disappearance.

  The report indicated that there had been a call to the Perry Drugstore on Fourth Street to investigate a lost child. The officers on the scene soon discovered that a little boy had been found wandering the aisles of a drugstore, looking frantically for his mother. The store had paged her over the intercom, but no one had come forward to claim the little boy. The child’s home number revealed a housekeeper, who said that the boy had gone off with his mother to run several errands, and had not returned home yet.

  I read through the police report a couple of times, then allowed my intuition to chime in. My eye searched the top of the page, and I was shocked to discover that the Kapordelis family once lived in Royal Oak, mere blocks from my office, in fact. I read on and saw that the little boy’s name was Demetrius, and remembered something about Andros telling me that Demetrius had had a rough time dealing with his mother’s disappearance.

  I flipped back through the folder and found a picture of Dora. I held it in my hand for a minute, looking at her picture. My first thought was that she’d probably been abducted and possibly murdered—I mean, Andros was bound to have enemies. But her picture didn’t reveal the flat plastic image that I usually got when looking at a dead person. I had to assume then that Dora was still alive.

  That was a pivotal revelation if it were true, because it meant that Dora had probably been responsible for her own disappearance.

  But why would a woman leave her children behind? Her youngest had been only a toddler. How could she be that cold? I stared at the image, and something popped into my head. I saw a map of the United States, and the state of Texas rose up out of the image. Hmmm. So there was a connection to Texas here. I wondered what it was. I also had an urge to turn to the next page of the report, which simply documented how the police had canvassed the neighborhoods around the drugstore, and short statements from possible witnesses. My eye drifted to the upper left-hand corner, and curiously I noted that the page began with the digit 3. I flipped back to the first page, which was numbered with a 1, then back to page three. Where was page two?

  I searched the rest of the file, thinking that perhaps page two had gotten rearranged within the folder, but it wasn’t there. Curious.

  I flipped back to Dora’s picture again, wondering if I could focus in on her energy, but my eyelids were beginning to droop, and I gave in to a tremendous yawn. Tiredly, I closed the file and vowed that tomorrow I’d concentrate on this again, and see what I could come up with. Already I felt like I’d made some good progress. The pressure was on, however, if I wanted to get a physical description to the police before Thursday rolled around again.

  Slugishly, I put the folder back on the nightstand and turned off the light, drifting off to sleep almost immediately.

  I don’t know what initially woke me—a sound, perhaps, or just the presence of another person—but in an instant I was wide-awake . . . and terrified. I strained to hear what had woken me, and I was too scared to move, because I knew someone else was in my bedroom.

  My heart raced with terror as I realized my alarm hadn’t gone off. My intruder had managed to bypass it, which meant that he’d probably also cut the phone lines. My mind whirred as I began to run through a list of ways to escape, my heart thumping so hard in my chest I thought it would certainly give me away. I couldn’t really hear above the pounding in my ears, and I was about to risk turning my head to look around the room when an arm snaked its way across my chest, and another covered my mouth to muffle my scream.

  I was pulled off the bed and onto the floor, but I was not pulled willingly. Fighting like a rabid cat I scratched and flailed and kicked, throwing my attacker off balance and gaining a small purchase on the floor. With all the strength I could muster I pushed up from the floor and heaved backward as hard as I could with my right elbow, making contact with a rib cage and sending my attacker momentarily backward. I didn’t waste any time clawing and scrambling my way out of the bedroom, my limbs working independently of each other in their effort to propel me away from danger.

  I could hear nothing but my own heartbeat and cries of terror as I made it to the stairway, still not having made it fully to my feet. Not pausing to stand up I simply launched myself forward, trying to get to the bottom as fast as possible.

  I rolled down the stairs, hitting my head, scraping my knee and banging my hand. I was oblivious to the pain, the terror of the man in my bedroom crowding out all else.

  Somehow I made it to the front door. I reached up to the handle and pulled myself up, snatching at the lock and yanking before I’d unleashed the catch. I sobbed as I struggled, aware that my attacker was close behind; then the door gave and I had a nanosecond of relief until a tremendous weight crashed into it, and the door was slammed shut as the body of my attacker hit the door frame and squashed me in the middle.

  “No!” I screamed, sandwiched between the great bulk of the intruder and the door. I wriggled and clawed and continued to pull at the door. A hand with a viselike grip grabbed my shoulder and spun me around; another hand grabbed my other shoulder, and I was shaken so hard my teeth rattled
. Finally the shaking stopped and I was let go, but I was dizzy from the manhandling and fell to the floor. Shuffling backward I pushed myself into the small space behind the front door and blubbered like a baby, “P-p-please . . . d-d-don’t hurt me!”

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Abby; now calm the hell down!” came a deep baritone.

  In the dark it was impossible to see the man in my house, but his voice marked him as distinctly as his face. “Dutch?” I said with a sniffle.

  “Well, who the hell did you think it was?”

  “Obviously not you!” I said, getting angry. “What the hell are you doing here, and why did you attack me?” I demanded.

  “I didn’t ‘attack’ you, and keep your voice down,” Dutch said, sternly kneeling down in front of me. Faintly I saw him rub his rib cage. “I think you cracked a rib,” he complained.

  “Do you know how much you scared me? Have you thought about . . . oh, I don’t know . . . calling me on the phone or ringing the doorbell instead of breaking and entering into my house? What are they teaching you guys at Quantico, anyway?” I snapped at him, the overflow of my terror fueling my anger.

  Dutch sat down next to me and said, “I couldn’t call or knock on your door. Kapordelis has your phone bugged, and your house is being watched. I had to get in through the back.”

  “How’d you bypass my alarm?” I demanded.

  “I’m not the only one who uses their birthday as a PIN,” he answered smugly. “Hey,” he said, looking around, “where’s Eggy? I was surprised when the little guy didn’t start barking.”

  “Kapordelis tried to poison him. He’s fine, but I’m keeping him at Dave’s until I can sort all this out.”

  “Which reminds me—what in God’s name are you doing getting mixed up with a guy like Andros? Do you know who you’re dealing with?”

  I sighed heavily. “Of course I know, but it’s complicated.”