Die Buying (2 page)

“EJ! You are not going to believe what’s happened. I—”

“Looking for this guy?” I forestalled him by holding out the bearded dragon, who hadn’t seemed to mind traveling by Segway.

“Dartagnan! Where’d you find him?” Kiefer accepted the lizard from me, and it scurried up his arm to perch on his shoulder.

“Fernando found him by the men’s room.”

“We’ve got to find the others.” His dark eyes flicked to either side, as if hoping to spot . . . what?

“What others?” I asked, an ominous feeling growing within me.

“Look.” Kiefer turned, flannel shirt flapping, and hurried into the Herpes Hut.

The shop looked much as always: glass terrariums lined the walls, pet food and bedding and whatnot occupied shelves running up the middle of the store, and a short counter supported a cash register about midway back. A musty wet smell hung in the air, a scent I knew came from the turtle habitats. On the surface, everything looked normal, but something didn’t seem right. As I turned in a two-hundred-seventy-degree arc, I realized what was missing. No rasp of scales across rocks, or slither of heavy bodies through leaves on terrarium floors, or skritch of lizard claws on glass. The only sound was a faint humming from the fluorescent bulbs. I looked into the terrarium closest to me. No inmate. And none in the enclosures above it or on either side. My gaze met Kiefer’s.

“Gone,” he said bitterly. “Every single one, except the turtles. Whoever did it left this.” He thrust a sheet of paper at me.

Brows arching into my bangs, I took it by one corner, careful not to smudge any possible fingerprints, although Kiefer had probably ruined them already. I read the hand-printed note. “We have liberated our opressed reptile brothers (and sisters). Sincerely, Lovers of Animal Freedom.” LOAF? There was an animal rescue group that called itself LOAF?

First things first: “How many?” I asked Kiefer.

Rotating his head from side to side so his neck cracked, he said, “Twenty-one lizards, two tortoises, and fifteen snakes, including Agatha.”

“Agatha?” I said with dismay.

He nodded grimly.

Great. The last thing the mall needed was a fifteen-foot python surprising customers in dressing rooms or contesting right-of-way in the food court. Agatha wasn’t for sale; she was more a mascot who drew customers into the store. Kiefer had owned her for years, and I could tell by the way he shifted from foot to foot that he was worried about her.

“Anything poisonous?”

“EJ!” He looked offended.

“I had to ask.” I keyed the radio and told Joel to let the other security officers know to be on the lookout for reptiles of various shapes and sizes. The Fernglen Galleria Security Force doesn’t have a permanent dispatcher; one officer is assigned that duty for the day and handles the radio and any phone calls that come in. Today it was Joel Rooney.

“Come again?” Joel said incredulously, his South Carolina drawl wringing three syllables from each word.

“Reptiles,” I repeated. “Lizards and turtles and snakes, oh my! There’s been a mass escape at the Herpetology Hut.”

I heard Joel relay the news to whoever else was in the office, and a babble of voices sounded from my radio. I sighed. The phrase “get my gun from my truck” came clearly above the chatter, and I quickly added, “None of the reptiles is poisonous—”

“Agatha just ate last week,” Kiefer interjected, scrunching his face anxiously.

“—or dangerous.”

Kiefer’s look of relief made up for what might have been a white lie.

“Call Animal Control, too,” I suggested to Joel.

“Wilco.”

I turned to Kiefer. “Any idea who might have done this?” I asked, strolling past the empty terrariums lining the store’s east side. It was kind of sad not to see anything scurrying around, no beady eyes staring back. I was by no means a reptile-o-phile, but I could see why people kept them as pets. “Anyone in here the last two weeks who struck you as a bit ‘off’?”

“Jesus, EJ,” Kiefer said, “this is a mall. The place is filled with strange people.” I gave him a look and he hastened to add, “But I know what you mean. There was a couple in here last Friday—a boy and a girl, maybe eighteen, nineteen—who stuck around for the better part of an hour. They just walked up and down the aisles, looking at stuff.”

“Why’d they stand out?” We had made our way to the rear of the store, and I inspected the back door, the one leading to the utility hall that ran behind the shops, as Kiefer thought. Splintered wood around the lock told me an unsophisticated bandit—someone with a crowbar rather than lock picks—had gained access this way. I snapped a couple of shots with the digital camera I kept on my utility belt.

Kiefer shrugged. “I’m not sure. They wore those camouflaged things”—his hands brushed up and down in front of his torso—“but a lot of the kids do that.” His brow wrinkled. “I guess it was the way they
didn’t
talk to each other. Just walked around, looking serious. No ‘Oh, look how cute,’ or ‘I bet that one’s poisonous.’ Just . . . nothing.”

I straightened from my study of the door. Dartagnan had used a dreadlock like a ladder to climb atop Kiefer’s head and was staring me down with an “I’m king of the mountain” haughtiness. Maybe he thought he’d get more lizard chow now that all his cousins had vamoosed.

After jotting down Kiefer’s info, I slipped my notebook back in my pocket. “Okay. Give a holler if you think of anything else or if you see those two around. If I were you, I’d call up some buddies who aren’t afraid of your merchandise and go reptile hunting. You’ve got”—I checked my watch—“fifty-one minutes until opening. After that . . .”

“Thanks, EJ,” Kiefer said. “I’m on it.”

Outside the Herpes Hut, I mounted the Segway and made my way to the office, waving at a few geriatric mall walkers as I sped past. Fernglen, like many malls, opened early for walkers to get in their laps before customers arrived. I debated telling them to keep an eye out for stray reptiles, but decided that might start the kind of panic the mall’s management would just as soon avoid. I don’t know why, but some people don’t want snakes to be part of their shopping experience.

Fernglen Galleria sat just outside Vernonville, Virginia, halfway between D.C. and Richmond, about five miles west of I-95. It’s laid out in a big X, with the food court located on the ground floor where the four wings come together. Department stores—Macy’s, Dillard’s, Nordstrom, and Sears—anchored each wing, and kiosks selling everything from sunglasses to calendars to skin potions sprouted in the middle of the wide halls like mushrooms after rain. Lots of glass in the roof gave the mall a light, airy feel and encouraged the luxuriant hostas and ferns and other greenery planted in huge stone boxes that inspired the mall’s name. I couldn’t help but think the junglelike growths might attract some of the escapees. I peered into the planters as I passed, but didn’t spot anything with scales.

The security office was tucked down a side hall off the left spoke, the Sears wing, like something shameful to be kept out of sight. The mall’s administrative offices sat across the hall from us, and as I slowed down, Curtis Quigley, director of mall operations, the grand poo-bah in charge of making sure the retail space stayed rented, tenants’ issues got resolved, customers streamed into Fernglen, and the mall made beaucoup bucks for its investors, pushed through the glass door. He was clearly headed for the security office, but when he spotted me, he changed direction. Uh-oh. He hurried toward me with that “I’m holding a quarter between my cheeks” walk that Joel could imitate to great comic effect.

In his early fifties, I guessed, Curtis Quigley affected European-style suits tailored to hug his tall, narrow frame, and regimental ties. Sandy blond hair was slicked back from his forehead and tucked behind his ears, brushing his collar. He always wore starched white shirts with French cuffs and had a set of cufflinks for every day of the week. Today being Monday, oval cat’s eye stones glinted at his wrist.

“Officer Ferris.” Quigley summoned me with an uplifted hand.

I glided up to him and got off the Segway.

“What’s this I hear about a reptile invasion?” Quigley spoke with a faint British accent; rumor had it he’d picked it up during a college semester in London and hung onto it ever after, believing it made him sound cosmopolitan.

“It’s not an invasion,” I said. “The reptiles from the Herpes Hut are gone and—”

He scrunched his eyes closed as if in pain. “I wish you wouldn’t call it that. So déclassé.”

Repressing the urge to roll my eyes, I said, “Sorry. The Herpetology Hut. For all we know, the thieves took the reptiles with them.” We could always hope. Maybe Dartagnan the Bearded Dragon was wilier than his brethren and had escaped from the bandits. Yeah, I liked that hypothesis. It would make my life much easier if there weren’t reptiles loose in—

“OhsweetJesusit’sasnake! Killitkillitkillitkillit!”

The garbled screech came from behind me and around the corner. “Excuse me,” I said to Quigley, and darted back the way I’d come, feeling the jolt of every step in my stupid knee. I rounded the corner to see two elderly women I recognized as dedicated mall walkers slamming their outsized purses down on the tile floor.
Wham! Wham!
I didn’t know what they had in their bags, but it sounded like maybe a toaster and a ten-pound dumbbell.

“Ladies!” I said, as a plump woman in pink reared back, preparing to whack her purse down again. “What’s the problem?” I surreptitiously scanned the floor nearby but didn’t spot a flattened reptile. However . . . was that a tail peeking out from behind the concrete urn dripping English ivy? The tail twitched and slithered farther behind the urn. I moved so my body blocked the women’s view.

“A snake!” the rounder one in the pink velour tracksuit said. She had improbable red hair and big-framed glasses like Dustin Hoffman wore in
Tootsie
. “I’m pretty sure it was a rattler.” She nodded for emphasis.

“Don’t be silly, Pearl; it was just a little garter snake or some such,” the taller woman said. “If it isn’t just like you to overreact.”

“Like you weren’t just as scared as I was!” Pearl replied hotly, looking like she might take her handbag to her walking buddy.

It took me five minutes to calm them and explain the situation. When I suggested Kiefer might be offering rewards to people who found and returned his reptiles
unharmed
, they got all excited and went to round up some of their friends for a snake hunt. I took a deep breath and blew it out forcefully, checking behind the urn—the snake had made good its escape—before returning to the security office. Curtis Quigley was gone—thank goodness—but I walked smack into Captain Woskowicz.

At least six-two, with bulging muscles I suspected came from steroids, a shaved head, and a lumpy nose, Woskowicz decked his uniform with enough epaulettes, badges, and medals to be mistaken for a Middle Eastern dictator or the head of a South American junta. None of them were military medals or insignia I recognized; they looked like he’d found them in Cracker Jack boxes. He had the personality and paranoia to go with the look. He rattled a box of breath mints in one meaty paw.

“Ferris,” he barked. “Why haven’t you given me a report on the break-in? Quigley was here wanting to know the details.”

“I was just coming to fill you in,” I said. I didn’t add the “sir” I knew he expected. In my book, you got a “sir” or “ma’am” until you proved you didn’t deserve it; Woskowicz had supplied that proof within thirty minutes of my signing on at Fernglen.

“Well, I’m sure a military hotshot like you, a commando or special forces killer or whatever you call yourself, could have this wrapped up in no time,” he sneered. He dumped half a dozen Tic Tacs straight from the container into his mouth and crunched down on them.

“I was with the security police,” I told him for the nine thousandth time. Woskowicz had never been a sworn officer of any description—military, city police, sheriff’s deputy—so he’d had it in for me ever since I got hired on after my convalescence and medical retirement from the air force.

“Well, you’re not a real cop anymore, are you? You’re a mall cop like the rest of us. So get on the horn to the Vernonville PD”—he jerked his thumb toward the phone—“and get a patrolman out here to make a report. We’ll need it for insurance purposes.” He stomped back toward his office where he spent most of the day playing computer poker, I suspected, and guzzling from the bottle of Maker’s Mark I’d seen once in his lowest desk drawer.

“I already called them,” Joel said as soon as Woskowicz was out of earshot. “Although I know you could investigate as good as they could. Better. Just look how you figured out what was going on at the Hat Factory.”

“Thanks.” I smiled and sank into the rolling chair across from his desk. Joel was our newest hire, an eager twenty-three-year-old with curly brown hair, puppy-dog eyes, and residual baby fat padding his large frame. He managed to make the security officer uniform we all wore—crisp white shirt with insignia, black slacks, and black “Smokey the Bear” type hat—look rumpled and comfortable instead of stiff and official. He had, for some reason, decided to hero-worship me just a little bit, although I was less than ten years his senior. I had to admit that it was gratifying, but a little embarrassing, as well. Lord knows, I was no hero, not with a bum knee that kept me from getting a job with any of the eighteen police departments I’d applied to, and not with the nightmares from that last firefight that kept haunting me. I massaged my knee for a moment, then stood. “Guess I’d better get back on snake patrol.”

Joel grinned, digging dimples into his chubby cheeks. A smear of cream cheese glistened on his chin. “I’ll let you know when the Vernonville cop shows up.”

“Great. You missed a spot,” I said, pointing at my chin, and left as he reached for a napkin.

Although there were still ten minutes until official mall opening time, the place felt busier than usual with Kiefer and a herd of his employees and pals, armed with long-handled nets, combing through the planters looking for escaped merchandise, and the usual morning walkers—moms with strollers and the geriatric contingent—getting in on the act. Word had apparently spread. When I bumped into him in the Nordstrom wing, Kiefer said they’d recovered eight animals already. His burnished mahogany face shone with hope. “Maybe we’ll have ’em all rounded up before lunch.”