McCone and Friends (32 page)

The mall wasn’t very crowded that night, but it was only Thursday, and the merchants were still gearing up for a big, weekend sales push designed to lure in all those consumers who weren’t suffering too much from the recession—getting started early on the Christmas season by urging everybody to spend, spend, spend, in order to stimulate the economy. The sale banners were red, white, and blue and, really, they were making it sound like it was our patriotic duty to blow every last dime on frivolous things that—by God!—had better be American-made if Americans made them at all. Even I, much as I love to max out my credit cards, am getting totally sick of the misguided economists’ notion that excess is not only good for the individual but for the nation. Anyway, the appeals from the politicians and the business community probably wouldn’t meet with any more success with patrons of the Ocean Park Plaza this coming weekend than they had with downtown shoppers the previous one, and tonight they were having no affect at all.

When I got to Paper Fantasy I found I was the only browser—a decided disadvantage for checking out the possible angles from which Kirby might have taken the photographs of Lee. I checked anyway, under the suspicious eyes of the lone clerk. Over there was the counter where Lee had been standing when she’d five-fingered the jewelry, and from the way she’d described the pictures, Kirby would have had to be standing not only in front of it, but some three feet in the air. Impossible, unless…

Ahah! There it was—a surveillance camera mounted on the wall above and to the left of the counter. One look at that and I recalled the banks of screens in the security office upstairs, closed-circuit TV that allowed you to video tape and photograph.

I hurried out of Paper Fantasy—possibly provoking a call to security by the clerk—and headed for Left Coast Casuals.

Only two salesclerks manned the store, and there were no customers. I wandered up and down the aisles, scanning for the cameras. There were four, with a range that covered the entire sales floor. While stealing jewelry, Adrian would have had to stand around here, in plain sight of that one. For lingerie, camera number two would have done the observing. Stupid. How could the kids
be
so stupid?

Of course I knew the answer to that—anybody who’s ever shoplifted does. The cameras are there, sure, but you just assume they’re not recording your particular store at the time, or being monitored. And you’re certain that you’re being oh-so-subtle when actually you’re about as discreet as a moose picking its way through a bed of pansies. And then there’s the urge that just washes over you –ooh, that irresistible impulse, that heady pulse-quickening temptation to commit the act that will bring on that delicious soaring high.

Yeah, the kids were stupid. Like I’d been stupid. Like a drug addict, an alcoholic, a binge-eater is stupid.

“Ms. Kelleher?” the voice was Sue Hanford’s. “Can I help you?”

I swung around. She’d come out of the stock room and stood a few feet away from me, near the fake angora sweaters. “I was just looking the store over once more, before going up to see Ben Waterson.”

Her face became pinched, two white spots appearing at the corners of her mouth. “You won’t find him in the office. I know, because I just called up there. I’ll tell you, I’ve about had it with him not being available when I need him.”

”This happens a lot?”

“Well, yesterday morning around eleven-thirty. He said he’d come and talk about the problem I’ve been having with a gang of girls who are creating disturbances outside and intimidating my customers, but then he never showed up. I called and called, but he’d taken off without saying why. He didn’t come back until six.”

But yesterday morning around eleven-thirty I’d seen him just outside the store, arguing with Kirby Dalson. Waterson had claimed Sue Hanford was the one who was away, leaving him in charge. “Were you in the store all day yesterday?” I asked.

She nodded. “I worked a fourteen-hour shift.”

“And today?” I asked. “Waterson wasn’t available again?”

“Yes. He took off about half an hour ago, when he’s supposed to be on shift till nine-thirty.”

“I see.”

“Ms. Kelleher? If you do go up there and find Ben has come back will you ask him to come down here?”

“Sure,” I said distractedly. Then I left the store.

A taco, I thought. There was a taco stand down in the food concession area. Maybe a taco and a Coke would help me think this one through.

Okay, I thought, reaching for Gordito’s Beef Supreme taco—piled high with extra salsa, guacamole, and sour cream—somebody in the security office here has been getting the goods on the kids who are shoplifting and turning the evidence over to Kirby so he could blackmail them into working for him. If I wasn’t trained not to jump to conclusions I’d say Ben Waterson, because his behavior has been anything but on the up-and-up lately. Okay, I’ll say it anyway—Ben Waterson. Kirby was a good contact man for Waterson—he knew the kids, knew their weak spots, and after they ripped off the stuff he would wholesale some of it at school, keeping Waterson out of the transaction. Kind of a penny-ante scheme, though, if you think about it. Would hardly have brought in enough to keep Kirby, much less Waterson, in ready cash. And there had to be something in it for Waterson. But then there were the other kids—like Del—who didn’t work here but ripped things off for Kirby, maybe big-ticket items, here and at other malls as well. And there was the rented house on Naples Street.

Those storage sheds in the backyard—sheds full of Ron Owens’ mother’s things that Owens claims were worth quite a bit—I’ll bet all of that got fenced, and then they filled up the sheds with new merchandise while they tried to find a buyer for it. Not hard to find one, too, not in this town. Neighbors said a lot of people came and went at Naples Street, so it could have been a pretty substantial fencing operation.

I know a fair amount about fencing, courtesy of Willie Whelan, who in recent years, thank God, has “gone legit,” as he puts it. So far the scenario made sense to me.

The taco was all gone. Funny –I’d barely tasted it. I looked longingly at Gordito’s, than balled up the wrappings and turned my attention back to the case.

Where does Adrian fit into all this? Last spring she starts to change, according to her school friends. She’s been taking her five-finger employee discount for a while, oblivious to what Kirby and Waterson are up to. Then Kirby comes to her with pictures, and suddenly he’s got the upper hand in the relationship. Adrian’s still pretty demoralized—the father leaving, the mother who’s always spouting phrases like “potential to be”—so she lets Kirby control her. Did she steal for him? Help him with the fencing? Had to have, given that she was familiar enough with the Naples Street house to walk in and plunk her backpack down in the living room. I’m pretty sure she slept with him—even the other kids know that.

Okay, suppose Adrian does all of that. Maybe she even glamorizes the situation as young women will do in order to face themselves in the morning. But fetching the condiments for the hamburgers of a young man who can damned well get them himself grows old real fast, and after a while she starts to chafe at what her therapy wall calls “white slavery.” So, as she tells her friend Anna, she’d decided to “blow the whistle and game will be over.”

How? By going to the cops? Or by going to the head of mall security, Ben Waterson?

I got up, tossed my cup and taco wrappings in a trash bin, and headed for the security office.

Waterson wasn’t there. Had left around six after a phone call, destination unknown, the woman on the desk old me. I persuaded her to check their log to see if Adrian Conway had reported losing her i.d. badge about a week before she disappeared, as Waterson had told Adah Joslyn. No record of it, and there would have been had it really happened.

Caught you in another lie, Ben!

Back down to the concession area. This time I settled for coffee and a Mrs. Fields cookie.

So Adrian probably went to Waterson, since she had the phone number of the security office scribbled on an envelope in her backpack. And he…what? Lured her away from the mall and killed her? Hid her body? Then why was her backpack at Naples Street? Waterson would have left it with the body or gotten rid of it. And would Waterson have gone to such lengths, anyway?

Well, Kirby was murdered, wasn’t he?

But would Kirby have kept quiet if he thought Waterson had murdered his girlfriend? The kid was a cold one, but…Maybe I just didn’t want to believe that anybody that young could be that cold. And that was poor reasoning—if you don’t believe me, just check out the morning paper most days.

Another thing—who was this person Adrian had talked about, who would take her side and not take any shit off of anybody? Maybe Waterson had played it subtle with her, pretending to be her protector, then spirited her off somewhere and—

The prospects for her survival weren’t any better with that scenario.

I was so distracted that I bit clear through the cookie into my tongue. Swore loud enough to earn glares from two old ladies at the next table.

Back to Ben Waterson. Kirby came to the mall the other day and argued with him—not about getting hold of Adrian’s back pay, as they both claimed, because Waterson had lied about Sue Hanford leaving him in charge at Left Coast Casuals. And right after the argument, Kirby stormed out of the mall and drove off burning rubber. Waterson took off around that time, too. And tonight Waterson left again, after a phone call around six—about the time the kids, Del preceding them, left All Souls. Did Del or another of them warn him that everything was about to unravel? Is Waterson running, or did he leave for purposes of what Sue Hanford calls damage control?

Damage control. I suppose you could call Kirby’s murder damage control…

I got up, threw my trash in the bin, and began walking the mall—burning off excess energy, trying to work it out. If only I knew what Kirby and Waterson had argued about. And where they’d each gone Wednesday afternoon. And why Kirby had asked me to meet him at the Naples Street house. Had Waterson found out about the meeting, gotten there early? Killed Kirby before he could talk with me? And what about Adrian? If she was dead, where was her body? And if she was alive—

And then I saw something. It wasn’t related to my case at all, was just one of those little nudges you get when you have all the information you need and are primed for something to come along and help you put it all together. I’m sure I’d have figured it out eventually, even if it hadn’t been for the poster that made the land look so parched and windswept and basically unpleasant that you wondered why they thought it would sell tours. But as it was, it happened then, and I was damned glad of it.

VIII

The Wreck and I sped through the night, under a black sky that quickly started leaking rain, then just plain let go in a deluge. The windshield wipers scraped and screeched, smearing the glass instead of clearing it. Dammit, I thought, why can’t I get it together to buy a new car—or at least some new wiper blades? No, a whole car’s in order, because this defroster isn’t worth the powder to blow it to hell, and I’m so sick of being at the mercy of third-rate transportation.