All Sales Fatal (5 page)

“Thanks anyway.”

He gave me half a wink that told me he suspected I already had a weapon. I did. I practiced regularly with it at the range, wanting to keep my skills sharp for when I got back on with a police department.

“What’d you do before becoming ‘Pete’?” I asked.

“Owned a house-painting company.”

“Around here?”

Colin shook his head. “Texas.”

That explained the complexion like overcooked rawhide, if not his aura of awareness, the feeling he gave off of being half-cocked, ready to explode into action. “What brought you east?”

“Have you ever tried to use a paint sprayer while swaying atop a twenty-foot ladder in a west Texas wind?”

I shook my head, mildly amused by his sour expression.

“Take my advice: don’t. There’s a reason there are more wind farms than ranches in the Lone Star state, most of ’em in the west. Thirty-plus-mile-an-hour winds, six and a half days out of seven. I don’t miss Dumas one little bit.”

“So, selling guns and basketballs suits you?”

“It pays the bills,” Colin said somewhat grimly. “It pays the bills.”

Four

Going store to
store like this reminded me of the house-to-house questioning I’d done a few times as a military cop. Then, as now, it was tedious and largely pointless, but I belonged to the “leave no stone unturned” school of investigation, so I got on with it by Segwaying to the stuffed animal store, Make-a-Manatee. Walking under the huge pink whale just inside the entrance, I looked around for the owner. I spotted him midway back, surrounded by kids clamoring to get their animals stuffed. Mike Wachtel was about five-nine, with male-pattern baldness and his left leg in a cast from foot to midthigh.

“What happened to you?” I asked as he seated himself by the stuffing machine, a huge glass rectangle full of white fluff. A foot treadle pumped the fluff into the limp skins of soon-to-be-stuffed animals. “Skiing accident?”

“It’s a pain in the butt,” he said, wincing as a careless four-year-old bumped his leg.

When I asked about Celio, he apologetically said he
noticed children more than adults. Since he had a line of kids waiting to have their animals stuffed, and a rowdy birthday party had reached the cake-and-candles stage in the corner, I left. Across the hall, the nail salon’s owner said Celio didn’t look like the kind of guy who went in for mani-pedis, and my friend Keifer at the Herpes Hut looked doubtful. His bead-decorated, midback-length dreadlocks clicked as he shook his head. “This the dude that got killed?”

“Yes. The police are trying to build a timeline of his whereabouts before he got shot.”

“Can’t help you, EJ. Sorry,” he said, handing back the flyer. “When are the cameras going to get fixed? I’m tempted to short my rent unless they’re up and running by the first of the month.” A group called Lovers of Animal Freedom, LOAF, had “liberated” all Keifer’s stock earlier in the year, and he was justifiably concerned about the weak security. I told him the cameras should be online later in the week, and he offered to let me hold Dartagnan. I petted the bearded dragon with one finger for a few minutes before easing him back into his terrarium. I hadn’t much liked reptiles when I first started visiting the Herpes Hut, but Keifer had taught me to appreciate them, and I might actually have thought about owning one if it weren’t for Fubar. I suspected my cat would see them as hors d’oeuvres or especially entertaining kitty toys—no batteries needed—rather than as step-siblings or housemates.

Leaving the Herpes Hut, I tried Rock Star. The clerks in the crowded store pulsing with a loud pop score were too busy trying to keep tweenage girls from shoplifting cheapo necklaces, purses, and hair accessories to more than glance at Celio’s photo. When I insisted, the manager, who didn’t look much older than her customer base, glanced at the page. Her name was Carrie, and she was wearing half her product line, so she jingled, tinkled, and rustled with every
movement. “Well, maybe,” she said. “Could he have been with a girl?”

“Possibly.”

She nodded with more confidence, swiping magenta-tipped bangs off her forehead. “I think I saw him in here yesterday with a girl, maybe his girlfriend. Right after I came back from my dinner break, so about five? She bought a pair of earrings. They’re on special: buy one pair get the next one free.” She pointed to a basket near the register.

I felt faint pricks of excitement. If the girl had used a credit card, I could get a name and have something concrete to give to the condescending Detective Helland. “How did she pay?”

“Cash,” Carrie said, dashing my hopes. “I remember because she asked that guy”—she nodded toward Celio’s photo—“for money, and he pulled out a roll of bills with a rubber band around them. I don’t see that every day. Little girls counting nickels and dimes from their piggy bank—yeah. Guys with rubber-banded money rolls—not so much.”

“Thanks anyway,” I said. “Can you let me know if you see the girl again?” I gave her my card with the security office’s phone number on it.

“Sure,” the manager said, tossing the card in a drawer beneath the register with a motion that told me I’d never hear from her. “You know,” she said as I turned to go, “it’s getting so I don’t feel safe here anymore. My dad totally wants me to quit this job. What with that man getting shot at Diamanté awhile back, and now this dude getting gunned down right outside our door practically, it’s like working in a war zone.”

I debated reminding her that neither Jackson Porter nor Celio Arriaga had been shot on mall property, or giving her a graphic word picture of what life in a war zone was
really
like. But then I focused on the worry in her mascara-rimmed eyes and bit my tongue.

“Me and Malia”—she nodded toward a Hawaiian-looking girl restocking a headband display at the back of the store—“are thinking about taking a self-defense class.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” I said, giving it some thought. “Maybe we could even start one here.”

“Really?” Her eyes lit up. “That would be beyond cool.”

The more I thought about it, the more the idea appealed to me. “Let me run it past Mr. Quigley,” I said, “and I’ll get back to you. Mornings, before the stores open, might be a good time to hold classes.”

A customer came to the register to purchase a boa molting purple feathers, and I left, pausing to think for a moment outside the shop. So, Celio Arriaga had been carrying a healthy amount of cash. Maybe his death was a robbery gone wrong after all. In which case the police should be doubly interested in interviewing the girl and guy who’d hung out with Celio in the mall; they’d undoubtedly known about the money, and that made them suspects numeros uno and dos, in my book.

Before I could finish canvassing the stores in the wing, Captain Woskowicz swaggered around the corner and beckoned me with a peremptory head jerk. I knit my brows, not used to seeing my boss actually patrolling the halls. He mostly spent the days holed up in his office, allegedly “doing paperwork” and “liaising” on the phone, but more often playing computer games or watching DVDs.

“Why the hell do I have to track you down to get a report, Ferris?” He jiggled a container of breath mints in one hand as he spoke. “Anyone see the punk?”

Somewhat reluctantly, I told him what I’d found out. A Captain Woskowicz who seemed interested in doing his job
made me vaguely uneasy because it was so out of character.

“Did the Pete’s guy actually see a weapon?” Woskowicz demanded.

“No, but—”

“Then what the hell makes him think the gangbanger was carrying?” Woskowicz snorted. “He probably had his hand around that roll of soft you mentioned.”

It wasn’t worth arguing about, but I was convinced that Colin Garver knew what he was talking about.

“Did the police tell you what kind of gun was used?”

I gave him a puzzled look. “You heard everything Helland said. I haven’t talked with him since.”

Woskowicz harrumphed and tossed half a dozen breath mints into his mouth. “I don’t know why the cops want to waste resources on this case anyway. Gangbangers offing each other. NHI.”

I looked a question at him.

“No humans involved.”

I fought down anger at his callousness. “Something else came up this morning,” I said, changing the subject. “One of the women who works here mentioned that she’s been thinking about signing up for a self-defense class. What would you think about my putting together a class?”

He snorted. “Waste of time,” he said. “Woman wants to protect herself, she should get a gun.” His eyes slid sideways as he checked out the legs of two women entering the nail salon. He turned back to me. “If you want to waste your time teaching self-defense to a bunch of nervous Nellies, it’s no skin off my nose. Just make sure you do it on your own time because it’s not coming out of my budget.” He walked away.

I finished canvassing the merchants, getting exactly what
I expected in Starla’s Styles and Jen’s Toy Store—nothing—grabbed a quick lunch from the Wok My World in the food court, and returned to the office to type up my notes. Telling Joel I’d take over the dispatch duties so he could patrol, I sat down in the seat he vacated and began composing an email for Detective Helland. I stared at the scant half page with discontent when I was done. I hadn’t come up with much: Celio Arriaga had flashed a lot of cash, might have had a gun, bought earrings, and was still in the mall at about five o’clock. No one was going to be making an arrest based on that information. For all I knew, Helland and crew had already rounded up a likely suspect, or gotten a solid lead from a snitch, and didn’t even need my paltry bits of information. My mostly unacknowledged hope that I could make enough of an investigative contribution so that the Vernonville PD would overlook my disability and offer me a job dwindled. With a sigh, I sent the email.

Hope sprang to
life again that evening when I walked into my house, hair still dripping from my swim. An official-looking letter lay under the mail slot, half covered with advertising circulars and a reminder that I was due for a dental checkup. The return address was Galax Police Department, a small PD in a small town in the southwestern part of Virginia. I’d applied with them a couple months back and gone for an in-person interview almost three weeks ago. Maybe, just maybe…

I took the envelope into the kitchen with me and pried the top off a local microbrew. After a couple sips, I slit the envelope with a paring knife. “Dear Ms. Ferris: Although we were impressed… blah, blah… wouldn’t hire you if you were the last sentient being on earth.”

Okay, it didn’t really say that last bit, but it might as well have. They didn’t want me. My knee would keep me from meeting their physical-fitness standards. The same old story I’d heard from almost twenty other police departments around the state since I was medically retired. Rather than cry, I tore the letter into strips, piled them into a cast-iron frying pan, and lit them with a kitchen match. Fubar emerged from the hall as smoke wisped out of the kitchen. “Mrrowf?”

“Sometimes a woman’s just got to set something on fire,” I told him. “Want to snuggle?”

With a twitch of his lip that seemed to indicate that snuggling was not on his agenda—Fubar’s a big proponent of the “suck it up” school of dealing with disappointment—he leaped onto the counter and nosed around the canisters as I rinsed the ashes off in the sink and ran the garbage disposal for good measure.

A knock at my back door made me whip around, feeling like I’d been caught out in some illicit activity. Grandpa Atherton stood on the back stoop, grinning in at me, his own white hair visible under a plaid motoring cap.

Unlocking the door, I invited him in and hugged him. “Done chasing Moldovan diplomats?” I asked.

“For the moment,” he replied with a smile that showed slightly age-yellowed teeth. He seated himself at my kitchen table, pulling off the hat. “What’s this I hear about another body in your mall?”

“Don’t make it sound like we have one a week,” I said, pulling ingredients from the fridge and pantry to make a shrimp pasta. “And this one was technically outside the mall, not in it. The cops think it’s a gang thing.”

“Nothing for me to work on?” Grandpa asked, disappointment in his voice. “I found these grand new gadgets—listening devices that look like insects—that I’ve been wanting to field test.”

“That gives new meaning to the word ‘bug.’”

“I bought a fly and a spider. You plant them in the target’s office or home; no one ever suspects that the fly on their wall is a wonder of modern microtechnologies.”

“What happens when your fly gets swatted?” I asked. “Or sprayed with insecticide?”

“The website says they withstand pressure up to a hundred psi.”

“How does that compare with your average swat?” I asked, curious despite myself.

Grandpa shrugged. “Fill me in on the murder.”

To humor him, I told him what I knew about Celio Arriaga, his death, and his last day at the mall. Grandpa listened and sniffed appreciatively as I sautéed fresh garlic in olive oil before dumping in frozen shrimp and some spinach. He waggled his bushy eyebrows when I mentioned the body was moved after the shooting.