3 Malled to Death (16 page)

Twenty-two

• • • 

Leaving Grandpa with
some misgivings—even though he’d been able to escape from Cuba during the missile crisis and had handled himself okay in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, he
was
in his eighties now—I returned to the mall, hoping Iona Moss could tell me where Tab Gentry lived or where he might be working. With my luck, he was from Hollywood and had returned there when he was fired.

“No,” Iona assured me when I asked. I’d found her in the production office, looking like she’d stayed up all night; her complexion was pasty, and putty-colored circles puddled beneath her eyes. “He was a local hire.” She pushed a hank of hair off her face and told a passing gaffer to be careful when he bumped the Oscar statue perched atop a pile of
Mafia Mistress
posters. She grabbed it up and cradled it in her arms.

“Is that a real Oscar?” I asked. I’d never seen one up close; Ethan’s movies raked in the bucks, but they weren’t the gloomy, arty kind that reeled in Oscar nominations. He said he didn’t care that he didn’t have an Oscar, but I thought nothing would make him happier than to be recognized by the Academy.

“Van’s,” Iona said. “He takes it with him on every shoot. Says it’s his good luck charm.” She polished the golden head with the tail of her shirt and set the little guy on the table she used as a desk. She yawned.

“Rough night?”

Iona nodded wearily. “A few of us got together to hoist one for Zoë. The funeral’s going to be in Wisconsin or Wyoming—one of the W states where her folks live—so we put together an impromptu celebration of life, you might say. Which makes it ironic that I feel like death warmed over this morning.”

So, while my parents were being shot at, the movie crew had been partying. “Was Margot there?”

Iona wrinkled her brow and winced. “No more tequila shooters for me. Early on. But then she got weepy and went up to her room.”

Then Margot was unaccounted for when someone used my parents for target practice. “Was the cast there, too?”

“No. It was mostly crew who have worked with her on a few films. Me. Grayson for a while, but he said something about a toothache and took off. A toothache? Please. Margot, like I said. Bree was there to start with.” She named a few others I didn’t recognize. “Oh, and a couple of agricultural machinery salesmen from Dubuque horned in around midnight.” Her hazel eyes lit up. “Hey, did you hear what happened at the Jarretts? Someone shot at them.”

“I heard.”

Leaning closer, she murmured, “Publicity stunt is what I think. That and the whole river incident where Ethan had to ‘rescue’ Anya.” She winked. “Not that Ethan wouldn’t pull someone from a burning building, if need be, but this was a little too convenient, don’t you think, with all the photogs standing by?”

I stared at her, taken aback by the idea. “You think—?”

She smirked. “Happens all the time in Hollywood. Anyway, to answer your question about Tab, I don’t know where he’s working now, but he might have gone back to King’s Dominion. Someone said that’s where he was working before he got cast in
Mafia Mistress
.”

King’s Dominion was a theme park this side of Richmond. They had shows of some kind, I vaguely remembered, in addition to the standard amusement park fare of roller coasters, rides, junk food, and crowds. This time of year, they were only open on the weekends, but since this was Saturday, I figured Tab might be at work. “You don’t happen to know the name of the show he’s in?”

“Sorry,” Iona shrugged.

I thanked her and was turning away when I heard Kyra’s voice call my name. I turned to see my friend bearing down on me, beaming. She looked more like a movie star than a mall store manager with her dark hair floating loose down her back, her height and splendid figure, and a bronze blouse casting a flattering glow on her complexion. “I was actually looking for Ethan,” Kyra said. “I haven’t laid eyes on the man and I want him to know that my feelings are hurt. He’s been hanging out in this mall for a week and he hasn’t come up to say hi.”

That earned her a stare from Iona. “You know Ethan Jarrett?”

Before Kyra could explain how she knew Ethan, which would give away our relationship, I burst in with introductions. “Iona, this is Kyra Valentine. Kyra, Iona Moss.” The women shook hands, Iona still looking puzzled.

“How do you know—?”

At that moment, Ethan strode in wearing his cop costume, accompanied by what looked like half the movie crew: Van, Anya Vale, Bree Spurrier, Margot Chelius (who must have left the hotel almost immediately after I did), Grayson Bleek, the actor playing the hit man, and various others, including Ethan’s new bodyguard.

Ethan’s face lit up when he saw me and Kyra. “Kyra!”

In her usual dramatic way, she flung herself at him and they exchanged a big hug and affectionate kiss while the entourage looked on with varying degrees of disapproval. A makeup woman bustled in nanoseconds after Ethan released Kyra and touched up his lips, frowning her annoyance. Ethan asked Kyra how she liked running the store and she made a face. Margot, looking subdued and red-eyed, adjusted the collar of his shirt, and Van announced, “Time is money.” He strode away and Ethan ignored him, busy catching up with Kyra.

After a few minutes, Ethan hooked his arm through Kyra’s and said, “Come watch this scene. You’ll like it. Bradley”—he nodded at the actor playing the hit man, who grinned back at him, looking much less villainous than during filming—“and I exchange shots in a stuffed-animal store and the animals get it. Stuffing everywhere. The special effects guys already have them rigged.”

Kyra made some noises about needing to get back to Merlin’s Cave, but went along with him, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t forget roller derby tonight. The Vernonville Vengeance is going to roll!”

I laughed, waved, and left the mall, intent on tracking down one recently unemployed actor: Tab Gentry.

• • • 

Two hours of
trekking around King’s Dominion reminded me why I hate amusement parks. I felt like the Grinch every time I even thought it, but it was true. They were beastly expensive—I could have paid my cable bill for two months for what it cost me to get in—and they were crowded and noisy. Tinny carousel music made me wish for earplugs. I wasn’t into the rides; I’d never been much of one for manufactured thrills. The food was too salty, too sugary, too fatty, and too expensive, and I hated being confronted with the opportunity to buy pricey souvenirs at every turn. The water park looked like it might be fun in midsummer, but I was unlikely to find Tab floating on an inner tube at this time of year. I sighed. I was turning into a curmudgeon and I was barely thirty-one. I resolved to at least try to enjoy the next show I went to. I’d already seen two of them, having to sit through the whole performances in case Tab came on stage at the very end.

I crunched to a seat, crushing popcorn and peanut shells underfoot in the covered but open-air venue. I was close enough to the stage to see the features of the performers clearly, but not so close they’d be sweating on me. I left that pleasure to a line of tween girls who were bouncing up and down in front of the stage, eager for the show to begin. Making sure there was nothing sticky on my chair, I settled in and wished I could take a nap. The couple arguing in the row behind me made that impossible, and I learned a whole lot more than I wanted to about Earl’s mother and the way she took over family holidays.

Tab Gentry was the first performer to take the stage in some sort of medley of pop songs. He had a decent voice and some good moves, and the tween girls in the half-full theater were going gaga over him. He had the appeal of a more grown-up Justin Bieber, I decided, then wondered if it was possible to use the words “grown-up” and “Justin Bieber” in the same sentence. I found myself bebopping to the infectious beat of the songs and was almost sorry when the show ended and I could fight my way through the exiting fans to the stage in an attempt to catch Tab Gentry.

“Gentry,” I called as he signed a twelve-year-old’s autograph book.

He turned my way with a half smile, ready to sign anything I wanted him to, I suspected. Harsh stage lights glittered on the clear sequins sewn onto his open-to-the-navel shirt. As I drew closer, his smile faded and a line appeared between his brows. I knew exactly when he placed me because his eyes narrowed and the line became a full-fledged scowl. “You’re the mall cop,” he said. “You threw me out of the mall.”

“I did not. I offered to buy you coffee and you left.”

“Same thing.”

Someone cut the stage lights and my face relaxed now that I didn’t have to squint. I made note of the fact that Gentry apparently remembered events in the way that best suited him.

“What are you doing here?” Curiosity won out over annoyance. Before I could answer, his face lit up. “Do they want me back? Did Bree send you to find me?”

I hated to burst his bubble, but I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine a scenario in which the assistant director would ask me to track down an actor, but I didn’t point that out. “No. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

“If it’s a bachelorette party, forget it,” he said, leaping easily down from the stage. “Since I left Chippendales, I don’t do gigs like that. I’m serious about my acting and my agent says that the bachelorette parties undermine my credibility as an actor.”

He said it like he was booked to play King Lear on Broadway next month and I bit back a smile. “It’s nothing like that,” I assured him, struggling not to imagine what “that” had involved and wishing Kyra were here; she’d be getting a huge kick out of this interview and would probably have insisted that Gentry give us details of his girls’ night out routine . . . or demo it.

“Then what?”

“Can you tell me where you were last night?”

“Why should I?” His tone was more sullen than hostile, but I could tell he wasn’t going to cooperate even before his eyes widened. “Last night . . . that’s when someone shot Ethan Jarrett!”

“Shot
at
.”

“You think I had something to do with that?” He backed away, hands up like he was warding off an armed mugger. “No way! Why would I want to shoot Jarrett? He was decent to me. You’re nutso, lady.”

“You got fired—”

“Yeah, well if I was going to shoot someone over that, it’d be—”

He cut himself off, but I finished the sentence for him. “Zoë Winters.”

“Well, I didn’t shoot her, either, or stab her, so get out of my face.”

“Tab?” A young woman had emerged from behind the heavy stage curtain. She wore jeans and a low-cut sweater instead of a spangled cheerleader’s skirt, but I thought I recognized her as one of the singers from the show.

“Coming, Leilani,” he said as she floated down the stairs and gave me a curious look. “Just a fan wanting an autograph,” he told her, his look daring me to dispute it. He gave her a kiss, wrapped his arm around her waist, and they walked up the incline toward the main entrance. Halfway up, he turned back and called out. “Check our performance schedule. I was on stage last night, in front of hundreds of people.”

Twenty-three

• • • 

The manager I
found backstage confirmed that Gentry had appeared in Friday night’s seven fifteen show and couldn’t possibly have driven to the Mount Vernon area, shot at my parents, and returned in time to take the stage for the nine o’clock show. It was coming up on four by the time I thanked the manager and hiked back to my Miata. My knee was aching from the unusual amount of walking and standing, and it was a relief to settle into the car and point it north toward Vernonville. I tried to get Grandpa Atherton on the phone as I drove, but he didn’t pick up, so I decided to drop by his place on my way into town.

Grandpa lived in a retirement community and had his own patio home with a glossy blue door. Leaving my car at the curb and striding up the short sidewalk, I noticed daffodil leaves poking up from mulched beds beneath the windows. For me, daffodils mean it’s really spring, and the first yellow blooms each year make me feel lighter somehow, like I’m taking off a heavy winter coat. Consequently, I wore a big smile when Grandpa opened the door to my knock.

“What are you so happy about?” he asked, gesturing me in. “Did you get something out of Tab Gentry?”

“Only a solid alibi for last night,” I said. I followed him into the cozy kitchen, where a pot of Campbell’s tomato soup bubbled on the stove. Like many older people, Grandpa preferred to eat early. There was a community dining room where he could have eaten all his meals, but on the evenings he wasn’t seeing Theresa Eshelman, his lady friend, he mostly heated himself some soup and ate it alone. I’d thought that was sad until he explained that conversation in the community dining room consisted of comparing colonoscopy results or arguing about which brand of denture adhesive worked better. He told me to shoot him if he ever offered to show anyone the images from his colonoscopy. After that, I completely understood why he preferred to eat at home.

Grandpa turned off the burner, divided the soup into two bowls without asking if I wanted some, and pulled a box of saltines from the small pantry. The tiny dining area off his kitchen was stacked halfway to the ceiling with boxes of gadgets he’d bought online, and two computers, ham radio equipment, and other electronics took up the entire table, so we took our bowls and the crackers into the living room. Filled with the relics of his travels—a hammered-silver wall hanging from Nicaragua, a Hmong quilt, a cricket bat, a display of Soviet military insignia, a piece of a jacket that supposedly belonged to a young Fidel Castro, and more—the room barely had space for a love seat, bookshelves, and a couple of folding tables that we set our bowls on.

I spooned up some soup, realizing I was famished. I didn’t even much like tomato soup, but I’d emptied my bowl before Grandpa finished crumbling crackers into his. “What did you find out?” I asked.

He slurped up a spoonful of soup before answering. “Aah. Hits the spot. Margot called a lawyer.”

“Smart move.”

He nodded. “She told him about Helland’s questions and supplied the names of a couple other women that Zoë had apparently been seeing on the side.”

“Worser and worser. She could have been stewing about Zoë’s infidelities for months and totally lost it when she followed her to Astrid’s.”

“Agreed.”

“Did you talk to Mom today?”

Grandpa finished his soup, stacked our bowls, and set them aside. “I called earlier. She said everything’s fine, but she sounded down. I think she’s ready to go back to California.”

“I can understand that.” Living a nomad’s existence gets old, even when you can do it in a luxurious manner. It’d been a while since Ethan had taken a role that required him to be on location for so long, and I knew they’d only done it because Grandpa and I were in the area.

“I got the results back from my FBI friend.” Grandpa reached for an envelope on an end table and drew out a single sheet of paper.

I drew my brows together. “Results?”

“On that letter your father got.”

I remembered . . . the love note on pink paper. “And?”

Slapping the paper against his thigh, he said, “Bupkes. No fingerprints, no DNA since we didn’t have the envelope which the sender might have licked. The only thing Francine could tell me was that the stationery was from Crane—sold in stores all over the country—and the perfume was something called Shalini.”

“Pricey stuff,” I said. I didn’t have much of a nose for perfume and never wore the stuff myself, but I’d had friends in high school who were walking cosmetics counters and I knew Shalini was in the Joy and Chanel No. 5 realm when it came to price.

“So our mystery note writer probably has a middle-aged husband who made a fortune in insurance or oil, and she’s sitting home, bored with organizing charity galas and shopping, feeling neglected, and watching Ethan Jarrett movies, while her husband works eighteen-hour days to keep their coffers filled.”

“That’s pretty sexist, Grandpa.”

“I’m just going with the odds, Emma-Joy.”

I glanced at my watch. “Speaking of going . . . I’ve got to run or I’ll be late for Kyra’s bout. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.” I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and dashed, wishing I had time to check on Jay before meeting Kyra. I’d call him later.

• • • 

The Vernonville Vengeance,
the roller derby team Kyra had skated with the past two years, held their bouts at the city auditorium. I pushed through the double doors and a blast of crowd-stirring heavy metal music assaulted me. The bass beat thrummed up through my feet. The scent of old cigarettes, released from the decades-old walls by the day’s high humidity, mingled with the sharp smell of new varnish. Crossing the small lobby to the event area, I found a seat on the metal bleachers to my left, a bit above where the Vengeance’s skaters were assembled. The oval track was laid out with tape boundaries at a slight angle to the long axis of the hardwood floor. Rope under the tape let the skaters know when they were going out of bounds. A projector flashed the score and the time remaining on a screen over the stage at the auditorium’s far end. Big speakers on the stage shook as they continued to blast out a song I didn’t know, undoubtedly by a band I’d never heard of. The league had padded the hard edges of risky wall corners and stationed volunteers—grinning young men—at two side entryways as “girl-catchers” to stop off-balance skaters from sliding out of sight and into possible harm.

I spotted Kyra right away—not hard to do since she’s a six-foot-tall black woman and was wearing her purple uniform and helmet. I’d been skeptical about roller derby when she first told me she was going to try it, but it wasn’t what I expected. The women ranged in age from about twenty to almost forty and, like Kyra, were into it for the fun of skating and being part of a competitive team. Some of the women were bruisers, some were almost waiflike. Many sported tattoos, some didn’t. Kyra had explained the game to me and although I was no expert, I knew that each team had a skater called the jammer who tried to complete more laps around the rink than the other team’s jammer. Other skaters blocked for their jammer.

The bout kicked off with a rich-voiced announcer calling out the names of the skaters. Each skater adopted a roller derby name. They were long on double entendres and violence: Killer Kitten, Natasha the Smasher, and the like. Kyra was Vengeful Valkyrie. I’d helped her think it up. As the women whizzed around the track, with the jammers trying to lap the opposing team, I admired the way they worked together, the way a skater would scramble up if knocked down. These women weren’t whiners, not even when a nose got bloodied, a finger got jammed, or a hip got bruised in a fall.

Along with the other fans, I pounded my feet on the bleachers to make a racket as the Vengeance’s jammer racked one lap more than the Danville Demolishers. In the last minutes of the bout, a sprite of a woman on the Danville team hip-checked Kyra out of bounds and into the wall. The skater behind her didn’t have time to swerve and the two of them went down in a tangle and it looked like Kyra’s head whacked the floor. She popped right back up but the other skater grabbed at her ankle, her face saying she blamed Kyra for the fall. Kyra tried to shake her off, but the other skater scrambled to her feet and smacked a meaty hand flat against Kyra’s shoulder. Kyra almost fell, but kept her balance and lunged under the other skater’s outstretched arms. Dropping to a squat, Kyra rolled under the arch the woman’s body made as she dove toward her. The woman fell splat on her ample stomach. Kyra extended her body and used her strong thighs to power her back onto the track and into the midst of the skaters as they came around again. Her opponent gave a middle finger salute to Kyra’s back, and shouted something I couldn’t hear over the music and PA system.

The bout ended thirty-four seconds later and I hurried down the bleachers to where Kyra sat, surrounded by teammates who were sad or irate about what turned out to be a loss. The music cut off abruptly and I swiveled my jaw from side to side to pop my abused ears. “Are you okay?” I asked Kyra, moving a pair of skates so I could sit beside her. “You took a hard fall. That woman was seriously pissed at you.”

The woman’s teammates were leading her toward the locker room, but she twisted away and came toward us. “You did that on purpose. Lexie the Leprechaun doesn’t take that crap from anyone. This is what I’m going to do to you.” She dropped her red-and-white helmet and kicked it toward the doors. Four of her teammates grabbed her and steered her away. I couldn’t imagine anyone less leprechaunish, except maybe Shaquille O’Neal.

“Thank goodness for helmets,” Kyra said, removing hers, apparently unperturbed by the threats. She swiveled her head from side to side. “I’ll be achy tomorrow, but what’s new?”

“Do you feel up to dinner?”

“I could eat a horse. Just let me change.” She headed for the locker room.

I remained on the bleacher, thinking through the week’s events, as the crowd of a 150 or so cleared out. Soon, I was the only one left in the cavernous room, although I could hear voices from the lobby area. It seemed to be taking Kyra longer than usual and I began to wonder if we’d crossed wires: maybe she thought I was waiting in my car. Poking my head into the locker room, I called her name, but got no response, so I retraced my steps to the entrance.

I said good night to a couple of people loitering in the lobby, apparently waiting for another skater, and pushed through the double doors into the parking lot. It was full dark by now, and I shivered in my sweater, wishing I’d thought to bring a heavier jacket. A sliver of moon didn’t cast enough light to outshine a Winnie-the-Pooh night-light, and the two lampposts in the lot created more shadows than they dissipated. A tall figure that had to be Kyra walked toward a car parked on the far side of the lot, not far from where a chain-link fence held back a profusion of dogwood saplings, kudzu, and other shrubs that grew wild in the empty lot that bordered the parking area. In the dark, the mass of vegetation blurred into nothing more than mounded lumps atop the fence.

“Kyra,” I called.

She started to turn when a dark figure zipped out from behind a parked car in front of her. It collided with Kyra and my friend went down. Her startled yelp floated to me and then I was running toward them. The assailant’s arm rose up and a streak of light on metal gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as the knife plunged down. My knee sent jabs of pain up my thigh and jolting into my ankle, but I kept moving. I screamed as I ran; I’m not sure I formed any actual words, but I hoped the loudness would summon help and scare the assailant.

I was still twenty yards away when Kyra rolled under her SUV and the attacker scrambled up and ran, vaulting over the low chain-link fence and disappearing into the shadowy woodland beyond. As I came up to Kyra, I heard a motor start in the distance, followed by the squeal of tires as someone drove off quickly.

I dropped to my knees beside the car. “Kyra! Are you okay?”

“Is she gone?”

“Yes,” I said, so relieved to hear Kyra’s voice that I took in a gulp of air and started hiccupping. “Come out.”

Kyra dragged herself out from under the SUV. Her hair snagged on something on the undercarriage and she tugged it free, wincing. I threw my arms around her and hugged her as she struggled to sit up.

“Ow,” she said.

I pulled back. “What?”

“My arm. I got cut.” She held out her left forearm and I could vaguely make out a darker line against the red of her long-sleeved tee shirt.

“I’m taking you to the hospital,” I announced, helping her to her feet.

“It’s no big deal. I don’t want—”

“I don’t care.” Guiding her to my car, I beeped open the door and stood there, arms akimbo, until she got into the passenger seat. I’d done my share of wound bandaging for the week; Kyra was going to get a real doctor to sew her up whether she wanted one or not.

• • • 

When we emerged
from the emergency room two and a half hours later, Kyra had ten stitches in her forearm and a neatly applied bandage. We’d told our story of the attack to the cops who responded to my cell phone call and the hospital’s report of a knife wound. Our descriptions of the attacker were sketchy at best.

“Shorter than Kyra,” I said, closing my eyes to bring up the image of the figure lunging at my friend. “You said it was a woman, Kyra—how did you know?”

“I did?” Kyra carefully kept her eyes on the police officers so she wouldn’t see what the physician’s assistant was doing to her arm. She’s fearless in many ways, but squeamish about needles.

I nodded. “You said ‘Is
she
gone?’ when I came up to you. Do you think it was the skater—the one who was so pissed off?” I explained to the police about Lexie the Leprechaun and said they could easily find out the woman’s real name from the team’s roster.

One of the cops took over. “Did you see her face, ma’am, or maybe her hair?”

“I don’t think so,” Kyra said, wrinkling her brow. “Maybe she felt like a woman? You know, felt lighter than a man that height would or something. I really don’t know. She was wearing all black, including a ski cap or something that hid most of her face and her hair. If it really was a her. That’s all I can remember. I’m sorry.”