“VERY bad news.”
“She knows about Mother’s necklace,” Molly whispered.
“The one Gemma went off about?” Barry asked.
Molly nodded. Ali wasn’t sure what she supposedly knew about the necklace that maybe was or wasn’t missing, but whatever it was, Barry Handraker didn’t like it. The viselike hold on her wrist tightened. He leaned down and snarled directly in Ali’s ear, his breath hot on her cheek. “Tell me who you’re working for. Are you some kind of bounty hunter? Or did some of my former pals and business associates send you looking for me?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ali told him. “None.”
“Okay,” he said to Molly, straightening up. “That settles it. We need to get out of here now. With your mother on the loose, we can’t afford to hang around any longer.”
“What are we going to do, leave her here?” Molly gestured to Ali.
“No, she’s going with us,” he said. “One way or another, she’s going to tell me who she’s working for. Then we’ll get rid of her. Bring me the DB.”
“What’s DB?” Ali asked as Molly hurried out of the room.
“You ever heard of devil’s breath?”
Ali shook her head. “Never.”
“You will.”
Ali’s mind was reeling. When Barry Handraker said “get rid of,” she knew exactly what he meant-that she was dead meat. When she had come here alone with her few unanswered questions, it hadn’t occurred to her that she was walking into any kind of serious danger. As she’d rung the doorbell and stepped into the entryway, she hadn’t even begun to formulate the idea that Molly might have been involved in Gemma’s murder. Obviously, she was, and Ali had blundered into a potentially deadly situation.
Where could she look for backup? Stuart Ramey, her virtual partner, was the only person on earth who had any idea where she was. Unfortunately, he was completely out of reach. Her phone was lying probably broken on the far side of the room. Her Taser and iPad lay in a jumble on the coffee table, inches away but totally out of reach. Her Glock, however, was in the holster at the small of her back. There was a chance she might be able to get it out. No one here knew she had a second weapon. The problem with that, of course, was that she was right- handed, and that was the hand still trapped in Barry Handraker’s murderous grip.
Molly returned from the kitchen. In one hand, she carried a saucer with a tablespoon of white powder on it. In her other hand, she held a single straw.
“She’s not your mother. You don’t need that much,” Barry said when Molly set the saucer on the table. “About half should do it. Otherwise, she’ll be out all night.”
There was an empty ashtray on an end table. Molly dumped half the powder into that and then turned back to Ali.
“Be careful not to breathe it in when you do this,” Barry warned Molly. “I’ll stay with her until she goes under. You get the luggage loaded. We need a diversion that will give us a chance to get out of Dodge, and I’ve got just the ticket.”
Ali stared as the white powder-laden saucer came nearer. With a shock, she realized that whatever they were about to give her was the same thing Molly must have been routinely administering to Doris Ralston.
“Please let me go,” Ali said, struggling. “Please.”
“Shut the hell up,” Barry snarled, twisting Ali’s arm even more painfully behind her.
Whatever poison was coming, Ali understood they expected her to inhale it, so she did the only thing she could think of to do. Waiting until Molly was two steps away, Ali took a deep breath, quietly pulling air deep into her chest and holding it as long as she could. That was when Barry let go of her wrist long enough to punch her in the gut, pounding the air out of her lungs. She was bent over gasping for breath when Molly leaned down and blew the powder out of the saucer and into the air.
Coughing and choking, Ali was conscious of a bitter taste in her mouth as whatever was in the air crossed her tongue. She attempted to get to her feet, but by then Barry had her wrist imprisoned again, and he forced her back into the chair.
She was still coughing as the blackness settled over her. After that, she knew nothing.
26
Stuart Ramey was no prima donna. One of the reasons he liked working for B. Simpson was that his services were always acknowledged and appreciated. Up to now, the same thing had been true whenever he worked with Ali. In the past, when he contacted her with some piece of needed information, she got back to him promptly.
This time it didn’t happen. He had regarded the warning message about Barry Handraker as nothing short of critical. He didn’t know whether Molly’s husband was in town or involved, but Stuart couldn’t afford to ignore the possibility that he might be. Stuart had texted his warning to Ali at ten past two and had expected her to reply in a matter of minutes.
To keep himself occupied while he waited, he turned to his computer and busied himself studying all things Handraker.
The original information on Barry Handraker’s criminal past, including the mug shots Stuart shot over to Ali in the message, had come through reliable but not entirely legal channels. Had Stuart Ramey been a police officer, having that information wouldn’t have been a problem. Since he wasn’t, it was. So rather than chasing more information that had the potential of landing him in hot water, he shopped the Net looking for whatever was readily accessible. Newspapers in the Minneapolis area proved especially helpful.
Barry Handraker, a pharmacist with ten years of experience in the field, had been fired from his job a year earlier when it had come to light that he was systematically skimming from the store’s inventory of over-the- counter medications and using them in the manufacture of drugs that were far more lucrative out on the street. Even though money shouldn’t have been a huge problem, he nonetheless stopped paying his mortgage. As a result, the bank had foreclosed, but when the house came back as a bank-held property, it was essentially worthless, since it had been used as a meth lab.
Handraker’s venture into the illicit drug field had included manufacturing and distribution, and he had gained a reputation for being smart and ruthless. Tipped off by persons unknown, he had disappeared two months earlier, days before the DEA could carry out a planned raid to shut down his operation. Some of the petty criminals Handraker used as hired help had been caught in the raid, but the big cheese himself was long gone when the cops moved in. After his disappearance, he had been declared the prime suspect in two drug-related homicides and featured more than once on
Stuart found it interesting that Molly Handraker’s name was mostly missing from those newspaper accounts. The one time she was mentioned, she was referred to as “Handraker’s estranged wife, now living in Arizona.” The other references to her showed up in relation to her work with various battered-women’s shelters in the area. She was never mentioned as being a suspect in her husband’s crimes. The people writing the newspaper accounts seemed to assume that Molly Handraker was a good guy and Barry was a bad one.
Pulling away from his screen and keyboard, Stuart rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. It was now three-fifteen. Over an hour had passed since he sent the warning to Ali. She had told him that she would be doing an interview. In B. Simpson’s world, meetings with outsiders were sacrosanct and not to be interrupted. Stuart’s dealings with Ali were an extension of that, and as a consequence, her meetings were accorded the same courtesy. Still, Ali had said she had a “few more questions” for Molly Handraker. How long could that take? Stuart didn’t want to push panic buttons, but if Ali was in some kind of trouble, he didn’t want to be sitting around doing nothing, either.
Finally, at three-forty, an hour and a half after the original message, Stuart determined that he had waited long enough. Sacrosanct interview or not, he sent Ali another message. “I’m worrying here. Where are you? Call me. Or text. I need to hear from you.” Just to be sure, he dialed Ali’s cell phone. The call went to voice mail. He tried to keep the steam out of his voice as he left a voice message to the same effect.
When the clock on his computer showed four-ten, two full hours into Ali’s uncharacteristic silence, Stuart ran
