Crazy for You (22 page)

Pay dirt! Dozens of entries popped up, all of them newspaper articles. The first one was a
Milwaukee Journal
piece dated January 10, three years ago.
College Student Missing
, the headline read.

The search continues for eighteen-year-old Tippi Lennox, a student at Alverno College in Milwaukee. She was last seen entering a drugstore on North Fourteenth and Walnut Street the afternoon of January 7 and has not been seen since. Her dormitory roommate reported her missing when she had not returned overnight
.

I shifted my attention to the photo that accompanied the article. Tippi Lennox was pretty, with wide, trusting eyes, long brown hair, and a slight double chin that hadn’t quite been airbrushed out.

According to Ms. Lennox’s parents, their daughter had been admitted to the Kennison Clinic on the morning of January 7 for minor surgery. She was released from the clinic that afternoon, then took a cab to a Walgreens Drugs to have a prescription filled
.

“Tippi Lennox!” Juju breathed.

I looked up at her. “You know about this?”

Juju stared at me. “Everyone knows about Tippi Lennox. One of those great unsolved mysteries.”

“Three years ago I was a guest of the state. No TV or Internet.”

“Well, this girl just vanished. She was from a wealthy suburban family, but she went to a gang-infested neighborhood to have her prescription filled. It was way beyond
weird.”

I went back to the article, wondering where Alex Petrov came in to this. There he was—buried way near the bottom, almost as an afterthought.

Dr. Jared Kennison spoke with reporters inquiring into the student’s disappearance. “Patient confidentiality prohibits me from revealing the nature of the procedure Ms. Lennox underwent,” he said, “but it was a relatively simple outpatient operation that only required an hour. The postoperative went well and Ms. Lennox was given a mild painkiller, sipped orange juice, and engaged in conversation. I found her to be a lovely young lady and my thoughts go out to her family. All of us here at the clinic are praying that Ms. Lennox will be found safe and sound.”

Dr. Alex Petrov, the anesthesiologist for the procedure, confirmed what Dr. Kennison said, explaining that all of Ms. Lennox’s vital signs were normal at the time of her release. “Her parting instructions were to report any adverse effects and to return in a week,” according to Dr. Petrov
.

The Milwaukee Police Department and the county sheriff’s department are coordinating searches for the student. Authorities say that they are following up on several promising leads. Tippi Lennox is described as a white female, five foot six inches tall, average build, with brown hair and green eyes. She was last seen wearing a blue parka, jeans, and a striped cap and scarf
.

“So what happened to her?” I asked Juju.

“No one knows. She went into that drugstore and never came out.”

“Could she have just run away?”

“There was a theory that she ran off to Hollywood—she’d always wanted to act, and was enrolled in the college’s drama program. A lot of young girls go to LA—you know, thinking they’re going to be stars—but when they don’t make it in films they start doing porn flicks or turning tricks.”

“Do you think that’s what happened to Tippi?”

Juju cocked her head. “No. I think that if she was alive she’d have contacted her family. I think some creep murdered her.”

I searched for more mentions of Alex Petrov, but each article contained basically the same information, that he’d claimed Tippi Lennox was stable and fully recovered
when she was released.

“See if there’s video,” Juju suggested.

There were two videos. The first was taken by a camera mounted outside the Kennison Clinic entrance. It showed a girl walking out and getting into a Checker cab. She was bundled up in a parka and was wearing a striped knit cap and a matching muffler wound loosely around the lower part of her face. Was she covering up because of the weather, or because the surgery had been on her face? Collagen injections to her lips? Or maybe she’d wanted that flub of flesh beneath her chin removed? That information had never been released to the public.

The second video, the drugstore’s security tape, showed Tippi emerging from the cab, turning to pay the driver. She didn’t seem woozy or ill. She strode briskly into the store, the lower part of her face still concealed by her scarf, her cap pulled down to her eyes.

The scene switched to a reporter, a young Asian woman who looked as though she was trying to keep her teeth from chattering, doing a live report in front of the drugstore’s doors. “Although the store’s security cameras caught Tippi Lennox entering the store, they did not record her leaving the premises. The store manager reported that they have no record of her attempting to fill her prescription or speak to a pharmacist. Investigators believe the girl may have left through a rear exit that was not under video surveillance.”

Had Tippi sneaked out through the back door, into a dangerous neighborhood? Had she arranged to meet someone there? A boyfriend? A drug dealer? Reading subsequent news articles, I learned that the police had scoured the neighborhood for gang members, sex offenders, drug dealers, and guys who could make a girl disappear in the instant it took to shove her into the back of a van. They’d also questioned a store employee who had a police record for assault and battery.

“But none of this has any connection with Rhonda,” I growled, glancing at the clock. My break was almost up.

Juju dumped a bag of coffee beans into the grinder and turned it on. The grinder went into its usual badly-tuned-motorboat impression. “Maybe Rhonda was a patient at that clinic,” Juju suggested. “Isn’t it possible she met Tippi there?”

“But Jared told me Rhonda was never his patient.”

Juju’s eyebrows shot up. “And you believe him?”

“Well … why would he lie about it?”

“Doctors lie all the time.”

This was true. Dr. Umhoffer, who’d been my pediatrician, always told me that the shot he was about to administer wouldn’t hurt. But it always
did
hurt. Doctors told you that you might feel some “discomfort” after getting your tetanus booster, when in fact tetanus shots made your arm feel like it was about to fall off.

Then I remembered the thing that had been niggling in the back of my mind for the past couple of days. “Rhonda’s ex-husband told me she’d had a procedure done by ‘that pretty boy Kennison.’ ”

“What procedure?”

“I don’t know. He was half-bagged at the time—maybe he was mistaken.” At the time, I’d been focused on Frederick’s alibi, and hadn’t been paying close attention to his recital of Rhonda’s nips and tucks.

“Call him. Find out.”

“I can’t just—”

“Fine.
I
will.” Juju consulted the phone book, found the CRS number, and dialed it.

“Yes, hello, this is Ms. Danda from Latte Unlimited,” she said to whoever answered, her singsong fake Thai accent abruptly vanishing, replaced by crisp, National Public Radio–sounding English. “I’m interested in having my business reviewed on your site. Excuse me? No—I’m afraid I must insist on speaking personally with Mr. Cromwell.”

Juju winked at me. I mimed applause.

Juju listened for a few seconds, then thrust the phone at me.

“Hello?” Frederick Cromwell’s rumbling baritone.

“Frederick?” I said. “It’s Mazie Maguire. I don’t know if you remember me—”

“Course I do.” He sounded upbeat, hearty. “How’s it going, Mazie?”

“Fine. Umm, I wonder if I could ask you something personal.”

“What the hell, shoot. I have no secrets.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking of having a cosmetic procedure done, and you mentioned that Rhonda had once had some surgery at the Kennison Clinic—”

“Don’t!” he barked.

“Excuse me?”

“The guy who runs it—that Kennison quack. Don’t let that idiot anywhere near you with a scalpel. My sister is best buds with a nurse who used to work for Kennison. Said this guy couldn’t slap a Band-Aid on his own butt.”

“Seriously?”

“His job is schmoozing the ladies. Most of the surgeries are done by these foreign docs Kennison hires on the cheap. Let’s see, I think there’s a Pakistani, and one from Iran, and—”

“Did Rhonda mention a doctor named Alex Petrov? Russian, maybe Polish?”

“Nope.”

“Did she know someone with that name?”

“Doesn’t sound familiar. Why do you want to know?”

“It’s complicated. But you’re certain Rhonda had a procedure at that clinic?”

I heard the clink of ice against glass in the background. Sounded like Frederick was getting an early start on the Chivas. “Rhonda was always having stuff done. I lost track. It was a few years back, while we were still married, but yeah—I’m pretty sure she had Kennison do something.”

“Did he screw it up?”

“Well, she never showed up with her boobs on backward, if that’s what you mean. I really can’t remember. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

“Did Rhonda know Tippi Lennox?”

“The name sounds familiar. Hold on a sec—that college girl, the one who disappeared? Nah, Rhonda didn’t have any women friends, and she wouldn’t have hung around with someone twenty years younger, anyway.”

I asked him a few more questions, but Frederick started sounding impatient. I thanked him and hung up, discouraged. A real detective would have known exactly what probing questions to ask. Turning back to the computer, aware that I’d already overstepped my break time, I ran the video again, the one of Tippi Lennox walking into
the drugstore. I watched it carefully, then paused it, then ran it again, scowling at the screen.

How many things can you find wrong with this picture?

Chapter Twenty-six

Good things come in naked packages.

—Maguire’s Maxims

I was being abducted.

I was trapped in the back of a white minivan. If I tried to resist, my captors warned me, they would strap me to the top of the van like a deer carcass. Like it or not, I was going to Hunk-a-rama, wedged between five over-excited, over-perfumed women passing around a bottle of chardonnay and singing “Take it off, take it off, take it a-a-all off” at the tops of their lungs.

They could kidnap me, I thought; they could force me into a lacey stretch top and short, swirly skirt, they could mash my feet into five-inch heels, but they couldn’t make me have fun. When they were distracted, I’d make my escape. I didn’t have time for frivolous stuff. I had a case to crack, an innocent man to save.

Every November, when Milwaukee males head up north for a week of deer hunting, beer drinking, and poker playing, Milwaukee women head to the Potawatomi Casino for bingo, slot machines, and the Hunk-a-rama Dancers.

The casino was on the south side of the city, a sprawling building whose exterior resembled a sandstone cliff dwelling. It was surmounted by a sixty-foot-tall fiery torch, that was probably visible from orbiting space stations. Juju found a spot in the Disneyland-sized parking lot and we trooped inside, our high heels beating out a staccato rhythm on the blacktop. Look out, world—hot babes coming through!

Inside, flocks of women were heading for the cabaret lounge. So much estrogen was being pumped out it could have been bottled and used for hormone replacement therapy. We found our reserved table near the front of the room. Servers—all of them cute young guys—came around handing out champagne cocktails, their stir sticks emblazoned with the Hunk-a-rama bull’s head logo.

Feeling cranky and cantankerous, I slumped into my chair, sipped my cocktail,
and cased out the place, searching for exits. There must have been two hundred women crowded into the room, mostly in their twenties and thirties, although there were a surprising number of twinkly eyed, white-haired ladies out looking for a bit of fun.

My coworkers had gone for broke on the glitter meter. Between us, we had enough sequins, rhinestones, and beads for a Las Vegas floor show. Heidi, who had a toddler at home and didn’t get out much, was excited simply at being able to stay up past eight o’clock. Carleen had three cameras slung around her neck so she could get some shots of hunks in the buff to pass around at her next book-club meeting.

“Excuse me, but would you ladies mind if I joined you?”

I turned. A tall blond woman had appeared at our table. She wore a leopard-print blouse, a tight black skirt, and chandelier earrings that dangled to her clavicles.

“Sure, no prob,” said Giselle, scooting over to make room.

The woman hijacked an extra chair from the next table, slid it into place between Samantha and me, and sat down daintily, patting her hair. A waiter hurried over and handed her a cocktail. Gazing around the table, the blonde caught everyone’s eye, held up her drink, and said in a baritone voice, “Cheers.”

Juju’s mouth fell open. “Oh my God—it’s Magenta!”

It
was
him! Why hadn’t I picked up on it?

“I catch your show at the Bling every Saturday night,” Juju gushed. “Hey, you guys—this is Magenta!
The
Magenta. He sings, he dances, he does Cher and Beyoncé and Madonna—he’s incredible!”

Magenta batted his faux lashes. “Oh, now you’re flattering me.”

“You’re a guy?” asked Heidi, who had probably read
Goodnight Moon
more times than was good for a functioning brain.

“Tonight I’m just one of the girls, sweetikins.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be here?” I asked.

“Last minute decision, doll. I took a cab here, then stood out in the parking lot and waited for someone to scalp me a ticket.”

The lights dimmed and a buzz of anticipation went around the room. A soundtrack blasted “You Sexy Thing,” a bit dog-eared around the edges, but pumping out a beat calculated to bring out a woman’s inner bad girl. Spotlights played across the
stage, red mist puffed from a fog machine, and then the Hunks ripped the curtains apart and strutted onstage.

My heart stood on its head and spun into a break dance. These guys
smoked
. There were ten of them, in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties, all colors, all races, a candy box of Y chromosomes guaranteed to please every taste, from boy next door to devil in disguise, all of it wrapped inside delts and pecs and abs and quads like the ones on comic-book superheroes.