Die Buying (11 page)

“Hon, if money’s an issue, you know I’m more than happy to—”

“Did you read about the murder in my mall?” I changed our script.

“A murder?” Concern and surprise sounded in Dad’s crisp voice.

I told him about the case, pleased by his interest, even though I knew he was mentally sorting through the story elements, testing them for inclusion in a script. “Have you apprehended the perp yet?” he asked.

I sighed, irritated as always by his lame attempts at cop lingo, a habit he’d picked up when his first series,
Roll Call
, was such a success. “Nope. And I won’t get to,” I said. “The Vernonville PD’s got this case.”

“The stiff in the display window would make a great opening shot,” he mused, “but I don’t think we want him nude. That would pull an ‘R’ rating for sure. Maybe if wardrobe could dress him in a woman’s bathing suit . . . Oh, your mom wants to talk to you.”

“Hi, Mom,” I greeted her.

“Oh, poor baby, did you get turned down by another police department?” Her soothing voice flowed over me, and I pictured her on the lanai at their Malibu house, expertly dyed blond hair slicked back under a sun hat, relaxing on the poolside lounger.

“Yep.” I’d given up long ago trying to figure out how she could know what was happening in my life based on a single word like “hi.” Must be some kind of mom ESP. Maybe Kyra had a book about it. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Of course not.” So we chatted about their upcoming visit to Virginia, my brother’s work—“I think he’s in Malaysia, now,” Mom said. “I do hope he’s careful if he’s interviewing terrorists again”—and her charity work. Mom might look like a typical Hollywood spouse—blond, sleek, and fashionable—and she might come across as a bit ditzy, but she could mobilize volunteers like no one else and had raised hundreds of millions for cancer research over the years after her mother died of ovarian cancer.

“How’s your grandfather?” she asked with a bit of trepidation. “I hope he’s been behaving himself.”

“He’s great,” I said. “And of course he’s behaving.” I crossed my fingers.

“Well, that’s good,” she said doubtfully. “It would be nice if we could get him interested in bridge, or maybe bird-watching. A nice, quiet hobby.” One that didn’t get you beaten up. Or land you in jail. Or require the purchase and use of deadly weapons. She left all that unsaid, but I heard it in her voice.

Yeah, good luck with that.

We said our good-byes, and I ate my soufflé in front of the television with a bottle of Potowmack Ale. Afterwards, I strummed on my guitar for a while, practicing the Rodrigo
Fantasia
I’d been working on for some weeks. I concentrated ferociously enough to push all thought of the murder from my head. Fubar still hadn’t returned when I was ready for bed, but that wasn’t unusual. I left a light on in the hallway for him—yeah, I know cats can see in the dark, but it just seemed friendlier—and went to bed. Some time later—my clock said almost midnight—I was awakened by a thump. Caught in the throes of my recurring nightmare, with the whump of the armored Humvee next to mine exploding as it rolled over an IED in Aghanistan, it took me a moment to orient myself. The thumping came again—definitely not part of my dream. I sat up in bed. “Fubar?”

Thump-thump-thump!
I recognized it as knocking. Pulling a robe on over my nightgown and easing my Beretta nine-millimeter from my bedside table, I headed for the front door, only to realize the knocking was coming from the back. Stranger and stranger. I cut through the kitchen, leaving the lights off so I didn’t silhouette myself as a target. Skirting the pallet of tile on the floor, I flicked on the patio light and illuminated a tall figure pressed up against the window. Hastily, I set my weapon on the counter and unlocked the door. Grandpa Atherton stumbled in, almost tripping over Fubar, who shot past him, eager to be in on the unusual midnight activity.

“Hello, Emma-Joy. Hope I didn’t wake you.” He gave me a smile that turned into a wince and pressed a hand to his forehead.

A cut on his forehead was dripping blood, so I grabbed a paper towel, dampened it, and pressed it to the wound as I led him to the kitchen table. “Grandpa! What on earth—?”

“The operation didn’t go exactly as planned,” he said.

I shushed him while I cleaned the cut—not very deep—on his forehead, swiped it with antibiotic ointment, and stuck a Band-Aid on it. “There. I think you’ll live.”

“Thank you,” he said. He leaned back in the chair, looking tired and old. His all black clothes—windbreaker, turtleneck, and slacks—drained the color from his skin. “Could I bother you for a spot of whiskey?”

Pulling a bottle of Jim Beam, which Clint had left when he visited six months ago, from the cabinet over the stove, I poured a healthy slug into a juice glass. “Chin-chin,” he said, knocking back half of the amber liquid. His hand was shaking slightly, and I looked away, pretending I hadn’t noticed.

Fubar leaped onto the table and sniffed at the glass, wrinkling his muzzle with distaste. I shoved the cat off the table and sat beside Grandpa, my arms crossed on the table. “Now, would you like to tell me what’s happened?”

“You know the target was Earl Gatchel,” he said, recovering a bit as he told his story. “Address: 1338 Churchill Place. Divorced. Two grown kids. No pets. A million-four plus change in his checking account.”

“Suspicious,” I said, not wanting to know how he’d come by that piece of data.

“Especially considering his salary as a councilman wouldn’t pay for the gas in his Mercedes, and his flooring business has been losing money for three years.” Grandpa took another sip of his whiskey. His hand was steady now. He might be aging, but he was still sharp as a tack; he didn’t once refer to notes while reciting Gatchel’s activities. “I picked him up at his council office, where he argued with a woman, another council member, and then left with a box he placed in his trunk. I followed him to his home, where he spent most of the afternoon making phone calls to his ex-wife, his sons, the bank, a couple of friends, and a restaurant.”

“You tapped his phone?” I asked incredulously. I held up a hand. “No, don’t tell me.”

Grandpa just smiled. “At nineteen thirty he left the house to have dinner with his lawyer at the Shrimp Factory. I followed him there and then returned to his house.”

“You broke in. Oh my God.” I reached for the whiskey bottle and poured myself a shot. I knocked it back and coughed. Nasty stuff. Give me a good beer any day.

“Child’s play,” he bragged, clearly pleased with himself. “The alarm system—well, never mind that. I had just about finished downloading files from his computer”—he held up a thumb drive—“when I heard the garage door opening. Apparently, he didn’t sample the Shrimp Factory’s crème brûlée or stay for an after-dinner drink. In short, he returned much sooner than I had anticipated. Perhaps he received bad news from his lawyer and it ruined his appetite. At any rate, I was trapped upstairs.

“I’m getting on in years, you know,” Grandpa said with the air of someone sharing a confidence, “and my bones are a bit brittle for a jump from the second story. So I hid in a closet. It reminded me of that time in Bratislava—but that was a woman, not business. Anyway, I’d been up there an hour and seven minutes, getting stiff, when I heard a gun go off. I knew immediately what had happened.”

“A gunshot?” My eyes widened. “Please tell me the police didn’t find you.”

He frowned at me. “Really, Emma-Joy, give me a little credit. I ran downstairs and discovered that Gatchel had, as I suspected, killed himself. He’d blown his brains out in front of the television. There was nothing I could do for him. So I left the same way I came in, unfortunately bumping my head on the window frame.” He touched the bandage gingerly.

“Did you disturb the scene at all?” I leaned forward and searched his lined face. “Fingerprints? Shoe prints? Did anyone see you?”

“No one saw me,” he said testily. “I wore gloves”—he pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and dropped them on the table—“and I didn’t contaminate the scene; it was clear from the doorway that Gatchel was dead. You know,” he said, “it’s been a damn long time since I saw a body. At least, one that wasn’t laid out in a four-thousanddollar coffin and surrounded with lilies and carnations. East Berlin, 1982.” He lapsed into silence.

The outline of his skull showed beneath his skin, the dent where his temple curved in, the line of his nose that seemed sharper now than it had a few years back. Grandpa Atherton was getting old and I didn’t like it. I also didn’t like the way I felt protective toward him, like I needed to take care of him. He was the grandpa and I was the granddaughter, damn it—grandpas take care of grandkids, not vice versa. When I realized I was the catalyst, if not the reason, for him being at risk, I couldn’t sit still. I rose to pour him a glass of water.

“Here.” I put the glass in front of him. “You can stay here tonight. I’ll drop you at your place in the morning. Grandpa—”

“Oh, don’t be a worrywart. I haven’t had this much fun in decades.”

The impish smile he gave me almost persuaded me that housebreaking might be a better way to stave off old age dementia than crossword puzzles and sudoku.

I slept fitfully the rest of the night, waiting for the police to knock on the door and demand that I turn over Grandpa. Nothing of the sort happened, however, and I dropped Grandpa at his cottage in the Serendipity Heights retirement community Wednesday before reporting to work. He was none the worse for his night’s adventures; in fact, he was scrambling me some eggs and toasting a bagel when I got up. He promised to sift through the data from Gatchel’s computer and let me know if anything interesting turned up.

“Anything interesting in the news?” I asked Joel when I got to the office. I didn’t get a paper delivered and hadn’t had time to check online. I sincerely hoped Grandpa hadn’t made the headlines.

“Well, there’s a short article about snakes being loose in the mall.”

Just what we needed. Quigley would be livid if our customer traffic went down.

“And Earl Gatchel was killed last night,” Joel said, his brown eyes avid. “Maybe someone offed him to keep him from spilling the beans. Maybe it was the same person who snuffed Porter.”

“What beans? Didn’t you think Gatchel killed Porter?”

“Well, yeah, but what if the conspiracy is bigger than the two of them?”

“Unlikely,” I said, trying to discourage Joel’s theorizing. “It’s more likely Gatchel committed suicide.”

“Yeah, that’s what the reports say,” Joel admitted, scrolling down with his mouse. “ ‘Probable suicide . . . pending autopsy . . . no note . . . distraught over financial reversals and his role as central figure in murder investigation’ . . . yada-yada.” He rolled back from his desk, lacing his hands over his stomach. “So, I guess that’s it for our murder. Case closed.” Disappointment sat heavily on his young face.

“Case closed?” I asked, surprised. “Why would you say that?”

Joel shrugged. “It seems obvious. Whatever bribery or kickback scheme Porter and Gatchel had going, it was about to blow up in their faces. Gatchel killed Porter to keep him from testifying about it and then shot himself when it looked like the police were closing in.”

I was about to point out that his scenario didn’t explain how Gatchel got access to Diamanté or why he left the body in the window, when Detective Blythe Livingston walked in. Her rust-colored suit jacket blended with the hair corkscrewing to her shoulders. Medium-heeled boots peeked from beneath her slacks. Her face was makeup free, but her strong brows and naturally reddish lips stood out. “Good morning,” she said, “I suppose you heard the news?”

We nodded. Pushing a curl off her face, she said, “Fernglen’s on my way to the PD, so I thought I’d stop in and let you know we’re releasing the boutique today; the owner can get back in and do her thing.”

“Finola will be glad to hear that,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Gatchel’s death wraps the whole thing up, so we won’t be doing anything more with the scene.”

“You’re closing the case?” I asked, avoiding Joel’s triumphant look.

“Ya gotta like it when the perp saves the state the cost of trying him,” she said, winking.

“But . . . if it was Gatchel, how’d he get into Diamanté? Did he even own a gun?”

She gave me a look that made it plain she was humoring me, but said, “Gatchel’s firm had the flooring contract for Fernglen. He might have had a key left from that installment. As to the gun, he owned a nine-millimeter, but since we don’t know where he killed Porter, we don’t have a bullet for ballistics comparison. There’s always a few loose ends.”

In my humble opinion, there were enough loose ends to weave a rug with, but I only said, “So you figure Gatchel committed suicide because his lawyer passed along some bad news?”

Her eyes narrowed. “How’d you know he met his lawyer last night?”

Oops. “I didn’t,” I said as coolly as I could. “But anyone in his position would be in touch with a lawyer.”

She seemed to buy it. “Well, you’re right. His lawyer told him the DA had gotten an indictment. Gatchel was supposed to turn himself in today. He called his family to say good-bye and then”—she shaped her thumb and forefinger into a gun and held it to her temple—“lights out.”

“Did he leave a note confessing to Porter’s murder?” I asked, wondering if maybe Gatchel had fallen on the note when he died, hiding it from Grandpa.

Annoyance creased Livingston’s brow. “No. Like I said, there are always loose ends.” She looked at Mickey’s face and raised a hand in farewell. “I’ve gotta run. Nice working with you.”

“You, too,” Joel and I chorused as she pushed through the glass doors.

“Back to business as usual, I guess,” Joel said.

“Mm,” I said noncommittally, mentally laying out the steps I’d take to find out who really killed Jackson Porter. The police might be satisfied that they’d solved their case, tied it up with a big bow marked “Rest in Peace,” but I just didn’t buy it.