Getting Rid Of Bradley

Chapter Two

The February wind cut at Lucy’s face as she set off at a dead run to find her car, her purse banging heavily into her hip. She’d almost reached the alley next to the lot when somebody grabbed her arm, and she swung around and fell against the brick wall of the building behind her.

It was the black leather from the restaurant. “Excuse me?” he said. “We need to talk.” He blocked her against the wall and reached inside his beat-up leather jacket. “I’m-”

“No.” Lucy shook her head until the street blurred. “I’m very busy. Really. You probably noticed me staring at you? That was a mistake. I’m sorry. I have to go.” She tried to slip away, but he caught at her arm again.

“I have to ask you about Bradley,” he said, and Lucy stopped pulling away. “I’m-”

“Bradley? Oh, you mean with my sister back there? Getting rid of him? That was a joke.”

He smiled down at her, and Lucy lost her breath. He was too intense to be handsome and too electric to be ignored. “I love jokes,” he said. “Tell me about it.”

I’d tell you anything, Lucy thought, and then she heard a sound like a car backfiring. There was a pinging sound and a chip of the brick wall behind them struck her on the cheek and the man swore and yanked her into the alley. He shoved her behind a trash bin and pinned her to the metal with his body, so close to her that her heart thudded against his chest. He was solid and a lot stronger than she was, and she tried to push him away, but he didn’t budge.

“What are you doing?” Lucy tried to push him off. “Let go.”

“Quiet.”

He eased himself off her slightly, reached inside his jacket, pulled out a gun, and aimed it carefully at the street.

Lucy froze, part of her mind marveling at seeing a real gun in the hand of a real felon, the rest of her mind in meltdown. Move, she told her feet, but she stayed frozen against him. She shoved her chin up his chest to get a better look at him, trying to decide whether he was just run-of-the-mill violent or totally deranged.

He looked big and tense and concentrated. His anvil-like jaw was clenched and his crazy blue eyes swept up and down the street.

Totally deranged.

She shifted again, and he whispered without looking at her, “Would you hold still, please?”

Please? At least he was polite.

She tried to shove him off her, but he weighed a ton, so she decided to fall back on her former strong suit: brains. “You’re squashing me,” she said, trying to breathe around his jacket, and he eased off her a little more, just enough to give her room to lunge for the street He caught her by the coat before she could take another step, yanking her back and yelling, “Are you crazy?”

“Me?” Lucy yelled back, trying to jerk her coat away. “What about you? Grabbing women? Let me go.”

“Listen, lady,” He tried to push her back behind the Dumpster. “I’m…”

“Let go!” She swung her purse filled with five pounds of physics book and connected with his solar plexus.

His gasp was an inverted scream, and his grip tightened on her convulsively. She jerked away again, and her shoulder bag swung up hard into his face, catching him solidly on the mouth and neatly splitting his lip. His head jerked up, and then Lucy slugged him along the temple, this time on purpose, not even wincing as his head made a thock sound when her book-filled bag connected. After the last blow, he let go of her and lurched back a step, and she ran down the alley in the opposite direction, propelled by so much adrenaline that when she finally rushed out into the next street, she almost ran into the patrol car that was cruising by.

“Some horrible man just grabbed me and dragged me into an alley,” she said to the two patrolmen who piled out of the car. She jabbed her finger behind her. “He’s big, and he’s got dark hair and a big jaw, and he’s wearing a horrible old black leather jacket, and he needs a shave, and he’s probably a drug dealer or something!”

The two men exploded into action, the taller, younger one pounding down the alley while the older, stockier one yelled at her to wait and then followed him.

Lucy paced back and forth beside the patrol car, vibrating with energy.

Wow, this was what Tina was talking about. Spontaneity. This was great. This was wonderful. She felt good. Of course, she couldn’t go around beating up every man she met, but…oh, she felt good. She felt really good.

She checked her watch. The police had been gone forty-five seconds. Einstein’s theory of relativity. Of course. Time passed slower when you were moving. Here she’d been standing still, watching her life rush past her, and all she had to do was do something and it slowed down and became this wonderful, rich…

Oh, she felt good.

Sort of.

She slumped suddenly against the side of the patrol car, her adrenaline spent. Maybe she’d killed him. He deserved it, but maybe she really had hurt him. That physics book was heavy. What had she done? What was she doing? She looked at her watch again. A minute gone now. She couldn’t stay there. She had to go. She couldn’t…

Lucy put her hand up to her face in confusion and when she brought it down again, there was blood on it. Her cheek. She was bleeding.

She tore a piece of paper out of her address book, wrote her name, address and phone number on it, and left it under the windshield wiper of the cruiser. Then she went back to her car and drove home, still vibrating with the aftereffects of the adrenaline, stopping only once along the way, at a drugstore.

“SHE SAID YOU WERE a horrible drug dealer.” The young patrolman grinned at Zack.

“Arrest her.” Zack tried to breathe normally. He leaned on the wall by the alley, his gaze still searching the street. “Lock her in the back of the car until I can breathe again. She knows something about the Bradley job.”

The young cop snorted. “She didn’t look like she knew her own name.”

Zack looked at him with distaste. He was tall, blond, and reasonably good-looking if you liked the movie-star type, but mostly he was just young. “Look, Junior,” Zack said. “When you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ll find out that it isn’t what they look like, it’s what they do.” He touched his lip, and his fingers came away bloody. “Ouch.”

“And I heard you were a tough guy.” The younger cop grinned again.

Zack stared him down until his grin faded. “You know who you remind me of? The kid cop in Lethal Weapon 3. You know, the one who says, ‘It’s my twenty-first birthday today,’ and right away you know he’s dead meat? You knew the bad guys were going to drill him.” Zack squinted at him. “Of course, in your case, it’ll be friendly fire.”

“Ha,” the young cop said.

“So where’s my suspect?” Zack said. “Do not tell me you’ve lost her. She’s the only link we’ve got to an embezzler.”

“My partner Falk went to get her.” He grinned again. “He said he knew you, and that I shouldn’t shoot you even though you were obviously a dangerous drug dealer. They’re gonna love this back at the station.”

Zack glared at him, and he swallowed and said, “Really, he’ll be back any minute.” He looked over Zack’s shoulder, suddenly relieved. “See? Here he comes now.”

Zack eased himself off the wall with great care. Then he looked in the patrol car as it pulled up and straightened quickly. “Where is she?”

“Wait.” Falk held up his hand as he got out. He slammed the car door and waved a piece of paper at Zack. “The good news is, she left her address.” He handed it over to Zack, who had slumped back against the wall. “You want Matthews and me to go pick her up?”

“ ‘Lucy Savage,’ ” Zack read. “Well, the last name’s right. That woman’s damn near feral. No, I don’t want you to pick her up. The reason I have to go pick her up now is because the two of you couldn’t hold on to her. I’ll handle it.”

“You want us for backup? She must have been all of five-seven, maybe one thirty-five. You probably only got six inches and sixty pounds on her.”

“Very, very funny” Zack pushed himself gingerly away from the wall. “Call Forensics and get some lab people down here. There’s a bullet in this wall.”

“Your instincts tell you that?”

“No,” Zack said with obvious patience. “The chunk of wall that sliced that hellcat’s cheek told me that. Somebody was shooting at her.”

Matthews went over to the wall. “He’s right.”

“Well, of course, I’m right. Just what I need- infant cops checking my work. Will you call that in? Please?” Zack glared at the younger man, who stomped back to the car, grumbling.

“Was I ever that obnoxious?” Zack asked Falk.

“What do you mean, ‘was’? You still are. You sure they weren’t shooting at you? I’m serious,” Falk added hastily when Zack turned his glare on him. “Not everybody loves you like we do back at the station.”

“No,” Zack said. “It was her.” Zack looked back at the wall. “Helluva sloppy job, though. Broad daylight, not a chance of hitting her unless he was a lot closer. This guy is either a real amateur, or he was just trying to scare her and didn’t care if he picked off an innocent bystander. Like me.”

“You sure you don’t need backup on this?”

“Yeah.” Zack turned back to him. “I think I may just possibly be able to handle one medium-size woman by myself.”

“I don’t know. She did a nice job on you. I think you need us.”

“Oh, yeah, I need you and Junior here.” Zack jerked his head at the other cop who’d joined them again. “What was it, Falk? Nobody would work with you, so you stopped by the junior high for help?”

“Hey,” Matthews said. “I’m twenty. I got two years of college.”

“So do I,” Zack said, touching his lip again gingerly. “Fat lot of good it’s doing me here. Get on that bullet” He turned and walked toward the parking lot and his own car.

“Hey, Warren,” Falk called after him. “Did you have one of those famous instincts of yours right before she nailed you? Or right after?”

“All great men are persecuted,” Zack said and kept on walking. He knew he was right about this Bradley thing. And Lucy Savage was very shortly going to be very sorry that she and John Bradley had ever messed with him.

As soon as he took some aspirin and got some ice on his damn lip.

LUCY UNLOCKED HER massive front door with its jewel-colored leaded glass and then crossed the vestibule to unlock the beveled-glass inner door. It immediately burst open under the pressure of the three dog bodies that were pressed against it.

“Easy,” Lucy said, still worn-out from her adrenaline surge. She dropped down onto the tiled floor to pet them, and they piled around her in the warm glow of the colored sunlight that streamed through the stained glass.

Einstein, the big sheepdog, flopped down beside her, but Heisenburg, the walking mop, and Maxwell, the little miscellaneous dog, both climbed into her lap to lick her face and burrow under her hands. She gathered them all to her, loving them and the warmth and color of her beautiful old house and, for once, herself.

“I beat up a mugger today,” she told the dogs. “He attacked me and I beat him up. I won.” The dogs looked suitably impressed. That was one of the many great things about dogs. They were easy to impress. Not like Tina.

But even Tina would be impressed with this. Carefully tipping the little dogs off her lap, Lucy stood and went inside the house.

Her house. Every time she walked into it, she felt safe. The living room was papered in huge flowers in shades of rose and edged with wide oak woodwork, and the floors gleamed in the soft sunlight that filtered through her lace curtains. The fat, worn, upholstered furniture was splashed with flowers, too, in roses and blues and golds, and the mantel and tables were crammed with pictures, and flowers in vases, and books. She sank into the big blue overstuffed chair by the wobbly piecrust phone table and looked through the archway into her dining room, warm with the glow of the stained-glass windows there.

Her house. She felt all the tension ease out of her. Her home.

Einstein barked at her for attention, and she remembered Tina. She dropped her purse and the bag from the drugstore on the floor and dialed her sister’s number, absentmindedly scratching behind Einstein’s ears while she listened to the ring.

“Tina?” she said when the ringing stopped, but it was Tina’s machine, so she left a message. “This is Lucy. I wanted you to know, I just beat up a mugger. I really did, and it was wonderful. And don’t worry, I’m okay. In fact, I’m great. You were right. I love you!”

And then she hung up and relaxed into the threadbare softness of her chair, hugging herself.

She really did feel wonderful. Sort of tired, but wonderful. Good tired.

Her gaze fell on the drugstore bag where she’d dropped it, and she stood, swooping it up as she straightened.

“Look at this,” she told the dogs. “I went to the store to get disinfectant for my cheek, and right there, in the checkout line, was a big display that said ‘On Sale! Discontinued! 1/2 Off!’ and it was this!” With a flourish, she pulled a box out of the bag. “So I bought it.”

Einstein squinted at the box, decided it wasn’t biscuits, and collapsed with disappointment. Maxwell contemplated the air. Heisenburg rolled over onto his back.

Lucy ignored them to study the photo on the box: the model’s hair was a rich cloud of midnight curls and she looked sultry and provocative. “This is the new me,” she told the dogs. “It’s time I changed. I just made a mistake with this blonde mess because I didn’t think it through. I’m not the blonde type, you know?”

Maxwell and Einstein looked at each other. Heisenburg stayed on his back.

“Oh, you may laugh. But I’m changing my hair and I’m changing my life. No more mousy, timid brown or brassy, tacky blonde. I’m going to change into a whole new Lucy. I’m going to be a brunette. Dark, fascinating, dangerous. Independent. All men will desire me. All men will fear me.”

Einstein sighed, Maxwell scratched, and Heisenburg stayed on his back.

Lucy looked back at the picture on the box. “Well, maybe not. But they won’t ignore me or stare at my hair in disbelief. And I feel tougher with this hair. I’ll take chances. I’ll date exciting men.” She remembered the last exciting man she’d been attracted to, the one who had mugged her in an alley. “Well, maybe not. You know, I don’t have very good taste in men. Maybe I’ll hold off on the dating for a while.”

Like maybe forever.

She looked down at the dogs who were staring at her now with adoration. Even Maxwell’s usually glazed eyes were shining with puppy love, and Heisenburg had let his head fall back so he could worship her upside down. “I should just stick with you guys. You’re the best.”

Okay. No men for a while, no matter how lonely she felt. But she could still change. She could still be independent and control her life. She could do it.

“I’ll tell you something else,” she told the dogs. “I’m really being independent. I’m even taking back my maiden name. In fact, I already did. I just signed a note with it. And not only that, later, when I’m done, we’ve got real fun. Do you know what we’re going to do?”

Einstein and Maxwell cocked an ear at the lilt in her voice. Heisenburg lay doggedly on his back.

“All right, all right,” Lucy said to him, giving in to canine blackmail. “Dead dog?” Heisenburg jumped up, delirious at finally being noticed.

“You are spoiled rotten,” Lucy told him. “Now as I was saying, do you know what we’re going to do?”

The dogs waited.

“We’re going to get rid of Bradley!” Lucy said, flinging her arms wide.

The dogs went wild with joy.

“My sentiments, exactly,” she told them and went upstairs to start transforming herself.

AN HOUR AND A HALF later, Zack pulled up in front of the address Lucy Savage had left on the patrol-car windshield.

It was in an older neighborhood, close to the university and in the throes of gentrification. Some of the big old Victorians were completely restored, some hadn’t been touched, and some were in transition. The Savage house was one that someone had begun to make an effort with.

Zack sat in his car and checked the place out. The three-story cream brick house, like all the others around it, was on a hill bisected by the cracked concrete driveways that consumed the narrow side yards separating the houses. A small blue Civic, its windows rolled up tightly in the February cold, sat in the driveway to the left. The drive to the right was empty.

There was no one in sight.

Great. This is why he needed a partner with him so he could say, “It’s quiet…too quiet.” So where was Anthony? Chasing brunettes. You couldn’t trust anybody these days.

He got out of the car and climbed the concrete steps to the house.

He twisted the knob on the antique doorbell, and its hellish scream echoed through the big rooms of the house, followed by the barking of what seemed like a thousand dogs.

His grandmother had once had a doorbell like this one, and he remembered how wonderfully godawful it had sounded, the kind of ring that went right up your spine and out the top of your head. Then one day, his grandmother had had enough and put chimes in instead, and he hadn’t felt the same way about his grandmother’s house since.

Or his grandmother, for that matter.

And now Lucy Savage had the same godawful doorbell. It figured. Savage woman, savage doorbell.

He twisted it again. A thousand dogs barked again.

The door opened.

She was a brunette, sort of. Actually, she had the blackest hair he’d ever seen in his life on anyone. Or anything. It was the kind of dead, dull black that seemed to absorb light and air, and her face was surrounded and overwhelmed by it. For a moment, he wasn’t even sure it was the same woman, and then he recognized the pointed chin and the big eyes, now widening in startled recognition. She started to slam the massive wood door, but he put his foot in it to block her. forgetting that he was wearing canvas shoes, not leather. She slammed the heavy door into his foot and yelled, “Go away. I have vicious dogs. I’m calling the police!”

“I am the police!” Zack clenched his teeth against the pain. He shoved his badge in against the shoe-width crack in the door. “Do you know the penalty for assaulting a police officer?”

“What?” She stared at his badge and then slumped against the doorframe, letting the door fall open. “I don’t believe this. I just don’t believe this.”

“Believe it, lady. Can I come in, or do you want to beat on me some more?”

She stood back so he could go in, her eyes wide in her woebegone face, and Zack would have felt sorry for her if he hadn’t been in so much pain.

“Thank you.” He limped past her into the vestibule. She closed the door behind him and then opened the vestibule door, and the dogs attacked.

The big sheep dog was the first to reach him. It immediately leaned heavily against his leg, shedding all over his jeans and drooling into his shoe. The little skinny brown one draped itself over Zack’s uninjured foot and stared off into space at nothing in particular. And the one that looked like a floor mop barked at him once and then rolled over onto its back with all four short legs in the air and lay there, motionless.

“These are vicious attack dogs?”

“I thought you were a mugger.” She shoved her impossible hair out of her face. “And they sound vicious.” They both looked down at the dogs. “Sort of.”

“What’s wrong with the mop?” Zack asked.

“He’s not a mop. That’s Heisenburg and… Never mind. Am I under arrest for beating you up?”

“You did not beat me up, lady. The only reason you hit me at all is that I wasn’t defending myself because I didn’t want to hurt you.” Zack looked down at Heisenburg. “Is he sick?”

“No,” she said. “It’s a dog joke. It’s the only one he knows.”

“A dog joke.”

“Yes. You feed him the setup, and then he does the punch line. Like a knock-knock joke.”

“You taught this dog a joke?”

“No.” She looked down at the mop with pride. “He thought it up on his own.”

Zack looked around the spotless vestibule and through the open door. The next room was spacious, with high ceilings and hardwood floors covered with worn Oriental rugs. It was Ml of sunlight and comfortable, threadbare, overstuffed furniture, and he could hear a fire crackling cheerfully somewhere close. He looked at the woebegone brunette gazing down at her three dogs, and at the two dogs gazing back adoringly. And finally he looked at the third dog, Heisenburg, waiting patiently on his back for his setup line.

If this woman was a crook, he was Queen of the May. He grinned at her so suddenly that she blinked. “You’re not a criminal, are you?” he asked, and she shook her head.

“Not unless you arrest me for mugging you. I deserve it. I know I deserve it. But you scared me.” She frowned. “Why did you drag me into that alley?”

“We need to talk.” Zack held out his hand. “I’m Detective Zachery Warren.”

She took his hand and shook it. “I’m Lucy Savage, and I’m really sorry I beat you up. Your lip looks awful.”

“You didn’t beat me up. Would you feed this dog his line so we can go sit down?”

“Oh, no!” Lucy said, with so much enthusiasm that Zack looked to see what was wrong. “Dead dog?”

Heisenburg rolled over and jumped to his feet and barked.

Zack looked at Lucy. “That’s a dog joke?”

“What did you expect? ‘That was no lady, that was my wife’?”

“I don’t know,” Zack said, confused. “Can we go sit down? My foot is killing me.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions before I explain about the alley,” Zack began when he was finally sitting on the rose-colored love seat across from the blazing fireplace in the living room. So far, he’d turned down coffee, tea, soft drinks, aspirin, and ice for his foot from Lucy, and affectionate approaches from Heisenberg, who wanted to sit in his lap. Now he was anxious to cut to the chase and get some answers before one of the other dogs began a soft shoe or tried to sell him magazines.

“Sure,” Lucy said. “Whatever.”

She was sitting next to him in a big, ugly olive-green chair that didn’t seem to go with the rest of the house, and she looked swallowed up by it somehow, her knees higher than her waist, her shoulders bowing in a little like folded angel wings.

“Are you all right?” Zack said. “You seem… depressed.”

“I went to court to get divorced today, and my ex-husband stood me up. Then my sister decided to change my Me. Then a drug dealer tried to mug me, so I beat him up, and I thought, at last, I’m doing something right, and then he turned out to be a cop. You.” She blinked. “I’m having a bad day. I’ll get over it.”

“You didn’t beat me up. I wasn’t even trying to defend myself.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

Zack gave up. “Tell me about Bradley. Everything you know.”

“Bradley?” Lucy sat back, confused. “That’s what you said on the street. Why do you want to know about my ex-husband?”

“If he’s the man we’re looking for, he embezzled a million and a half in government bonds from the bank where he worked.”

Lucy’s mouth dropped open and she sat up straight. “He embezzled from his bank?”

“Banks are the best places to embezzle from,” Zack said. “They usually have the most money. Now, when and where did you meet him?”

“He picked me up at the library,” Lucy said, still dazed from his announcement. “I was working on some lesson plans, and I looked up, and there he was, and he asked if he could sit down, and he talked to me and bought me a juice from the vending machines, and then he walked me to my car, and two months later we were married.”

“That fast?” Zack said, writing everything down.

“Well, I had my reasons.” Lucy sank back in her chair and closed her eyes. “They were the wrong reasons, but I didn’t know that then.”

Zack wasn’t listening. This could be it. The dates matched. He looked over at Lucy, sitting lost in an ugly green chair, and he felt a sudden protectiveness for her that was totally out of character for him. The poor helpless kid was just an innocent bystander. That rat Bradley…

Bradley.

Zack started to tap his notebook again. “And exactly when did you meet him?”

“And besides,” Lucy went on, still lost in her own train of thought, “there was the second law of thermonuclear dynamics.”

“I’m sure there was. When did you meet him?”

Lucy came back to earth. “Sorry. We got married June first. We met in the middle of March.”

“And you got divorced in February.” Zack looked up from his notebook. “Any particular reason? Did he begin acting suspiciously? Did you find more money in your checking account than you could account for? Any…”

“It was the blonde,” Lucy said.

“Oh.” Zack winced for her. “Another woman? Sorry.”

“Girl, really. Very young. Maybe twenty.”

“That could be his wife,” Zack said.

“His wife?” Lucy said faintly.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry to drop it on you like that. He was married.”

“Oh,” Lucy said.

“Bianca Bradley. Also blonde and young, twenty-four. He must have a thing for blondes.” Zack looked at Lucy’s impossible black hair and looked back as his notebook. “So…”

“That’s funny,” Lucy said. “Her maiden name was the same as his Christian name.”

“No, her maiden name is Bergman. She…”

“Where did the Bradley come from?”

“What Bradley?” Zack said.

“Her last name.”

“When she married John Bradley,” Zack said, his patience wearing thin. “The same John Bradley you married.”

“I didn’t marry John Bradley.” Lucy sat up straight. “I married Bradley Porter. I don’t believe this. You’ve been asking me questions about the wrong Bradley. What’s going on?”