Die Buying (26 page)

Well, shit. This
was not good. Blackness enveloped me now that the closed door kept all ambient light out. I clicked the flashlight back on, wondering if there was a door to the side yard I might have missed. Nope. My choices were raise the garage door and alert everyone inside with its rumbling, sneak into the house and hope there wasn’t someone standing in the kitchen to call the police, or spend the night in the garage and hope I could sneak out when they raised the door in the morning. Or, maybe . . . I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Grandpa’s number.

“I’m trapped in the garage,” I said when he answered. “I need a distraction, something that will get them to open the garage door or leave the house for a few minutes.”

“We’re on it,” Grandpa said. He hung up before I could ask what he had in mind.

Time seemed to crawl in the cold, dark garage, but it wasn’t more than ten minutes by my watch before the door jerked and grumbled upward. Hidden by the van’s bulk, I rolled under the door before it was a quarter of the way up. I stood pressed up against the garage’s brick exterior, listening with a smile to the playacting going on inside.

“I don’t know how your cat could have gotten in here,” the young man’s voice said. “Dolly was in here, and she doesn’t much like cats.”

“But I’m sure I saw my naughty little Clementine slip under the door,” Theresa said in a dithery voice not at all like her usual manner. “She’s such a naughty kitty.”

“Which house did you say you’re in again?” the man asked. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around the neighborhood.”

His voice seemed closer, and I imagined the three of them bending to look under the van and peering into the garage’s dark corners, trying to find the imaginary cat.

Theresa stepped out of the garage and paused on the driveway. “That one over there,” she said, pointing vaguely. “We’re visiting family, isn’t that right, honey-bunch?”

“Absolutely,” Grandpa said, joining her. “And it wasn’t my idea to bring the dang cat—you can believe that,” he said, apparently to the man who was still out of my line of sight. “Traveling with a carsick feline yowling the whole way is nothing but torture. If I’d had my way, we’d have left her at that rest stop in South Carolina.”

“Now, Ralph, you know you don’t mean that,” Theresa said, batting at his arm playfully.

“Well, she doesn’t seem to be here,” the man said, emerging from the garage. He was on the short side, maybe fivenine, and light brown hair hung to his shoulders. He looked even younger than he sounded, no more than twenty.

Deciding it was time for me to play a role, I stepped out of the house’s shadow, saying, “Gran, Gramps, we found your kitty. She’s safe at home.”

Theresa turned toward me without missing a beat and said, “Thank goodness. I guess we disturbed this young man all for nothing.” She winked at me.

“No prob,” the man said, hitching up the cargo pants threatening to slip off his skinny butt. His tee shirt proclaimed “Jesus is Lord” over the image of a rising sun. “I’m just glad your cat turned up.”

“Hey, haven’t I seen you at the mall?” I said, studying the man’s narrow face with its slightly pug nose and thin lips. “At the Fernglen Galleria?”

“Uh, maybe. I shop there sometimes,” the man said uneasily, glancing over his shoulder at the van.

“I think you do more than shop,” I said, still pleasant. “In fact, our cameras captured you spray painting a car just this evening.”

“No way! We know where all the cam—” He cut himself off, his gaze going from me to Theresa to Grandpa. “Hey, what is this? Mary Beth!”

Before I could explain who I was, the front door opened and a plump girl about his age, dressed in identical chinos and tee shirt, stepped onto the stoop. The porch light glowed on a frizzy halo of blond hair. She held a dripping cherry Popsicle in one hand. “What’s up, Murph?” Her voice was sweet and young, and she was wide-eyed as she took us all in. Dolly pushed her way out from behind the girl and trundled over to greet me.

I patted the dog absently as I introduced myself, deliberately not mentioning Grandpa or Theresa, in case the taggers took it into their heads to report us for trespassing or something. When I said I worked in mall security, Mary Beth and Murph exchanged nervous glances. “I know you’ve been tagging cars in our lot,” I said. “We’ve got your latest artistic effort on film,” I added with a look at Grandpa who gave a confirming nod.

“It’s our calling,” Mary Beth said, apparently unperturbed at having been found out. She drifted toward us, licking the Popsicle as she walked. I noticed she was barefoot. Brrr. “We evangelize through our art.”

“Using other people’s vehicles as your canvas,” I pointed out. “That’s known in certain circles as criminal vandalism.” The similarity in sound between “vandalism” and “evangelism” struck me.

“Jesus didn’t believe in the concept of personal property,” Murph put in. “He was all about share and share alike. Remember the feeding of the five thousand with the young boy’s fish and loaves?”

I was a bit hazy on Bible specifics, but I didn’t remember Jesus saying anything about being in favor of vandalism. I didn’t pursue the point, merely saying, “I have something serious to ask you.”

“Are you going to arrest us?” Mary Beth asked, slipping an arm through Murph’s. I noticed the slim gold band on her ring finger and thought that this young, spacey couple didn’t seem to go with the solid suburban home. “Because we’re ready to go to prison for our evangelism, just like Paul did.”

“No. Actually, I’m willing to forget the whole thing under two conditions.”

“Yeah?” Murph asked suspiciously. He seemed a bit more pragmatic than Mary Beth.

“First, that you stop tagging cars at Fernglen. It really pissed off my boss when you got his Karmann Ghia earlier this week.”

“That was Matthew 7, wasn’t it Murph?” Mary Beth asked. “‘Do unto others’ is one of my favorite texts,” she explained.

“And?” Murph prompted.

“And you tell me about the car you tagged last Sunday. You only do one a day, so—”

“We do eight a day,” Murph said proudly, “at different malls.”

Damn! Why had I never thought to check with other malls to see if they were having the same graffiti problem we were?

“We want to spread the word as widely as possible,” Mary Beth said. A line of cherry juice trickled toward her chin, and she swiped at it with her tongue. “We go from outside Richmond to Quantico.”

“Why do you want to know?” Murph asked. “Heel, Dolly!”

Dolly gave up sniffing at Grandpa’s shoes and ambled toward Murph.

“She’s diabetic,” Mary Beth explained, “and needs insulin shots every day. That’s why we’re dog-sitting while Murph’s parents are on a cruise. They didn’t trust the kennel to—”

“Why?” Murph asked again.

I explained about the murder and my theory about the murderer’s car.

“So we could help catch a murderer by telling you about the car?” Murph asked.

I nodded. “Maybe.”

“That was the red Lexus, wasn’t it?” Mary Beth said, wrinkling her forehead. The last bit of Popsicle broke off the stick and made a cherry splat on the driveway. Dolly snarfed it up with a move a striking cobra would envy.

“Nah, the Lexus was at the Short Pump Town Center. Fernglen was the black SUV.”

“Second Corinthians,” Mary Beth nodded. “But it was dark blue.”

“Black.”

“Blue. Or maybe dark green.” She faced me. “It was hard to tell because we blessed that car so late and it was blacker than the devil’s heart in that parking lot.”

“What time was it?”

“About eleven,” Mary Beth said just as Murph declared, “Just before midnight.”

They glared at each other and I interrupted. “Do you remember what model?”

They looked at each other doubtfully. “CR-V?” Mary Beth offered, tapping the Popsicle stick against her lip.

“I thought it was something more upmarket than that,” Murph said, brow wrinkled in concentration. “An MDX or Cayenne.”

Mary Beth shook her head, making her frizzy hair tremble like dandelion fluff. “No, it was a CR-V, or maybe a Highlander. And it was definitely not black.”

Murph faced me squarely. “Black.”

“Not,” Mary Beth muttered from behind him.

“Where did you write the verse?”

“At the Fernglen Galleria,” Murph said, giving me a “duh” look.

“I mean, on what part of the car?”

“The hood,” they said together. “In orange and yellow with lime green accents,” Mary Beth added, swishing her hand through the air as if wielding a can of spray paint.

“Okay,” I said, convinced that they’d told me all they could. Besides, I was getting darn cold and I noticed Theresa shivering. “Thanks for your help.”

“So we’re good?” Murph asked. “No police?”

“Not this time,” I said. “But if any more cars in my lot get ‘blessed,’ all bets are off.”

“Deal.” He stuck out his hand and I shook it.

With a final pat on Dolly’s head, I trailed Grandpa and Theresa back to the van. “Thanks for tracking them down,” I said.

“I’m afraid you’re not much better off than you were before,” Theresa said.

“Well, I wish they could’ve been more specific, but at least we know the murderer drives a dark-colored SUV. That rules out a lot of vehicles. You were fantastic back there, by the way.”

“Community theater,” she said. “You should see my Norma Desmond.” She struck a dramatic pose with the back of one hand against her forehead.

“
Sunset Boulevard
is one of my favorite movies,” Grandpa said. “But the musical—”

I left them to it. I wanted to be long gone before Grandpa broke into his rendition of “C’est Moi.”

I swung by the auditorium on my way home to try to catch the end of Kyra’s bout, but she was already gone. By the time I got to my house, it was after eight and I was beat. Fubar met me at the door and twined between my ankles. “Nice to see you, too,” I said, picking him up. Cradling him in my arms, appreciating the weight of his solid body and the feel of his fur tickling my chin, I headed for the kitchen. I found a single Sam Adams at the back of the fridge and made a mental note to go grocery shopping tomorrow. I put Fubar down to open the beer, and he scampered off as I pried the top from the bottle. He probably figured that thirty-seven seconds of cuddling had fulfilled his quota for the week.

After scrambling an egg with some chives and feta cheese, I wandered into the living room and sank onto the love seat, putting my plate on the ottoman. I ate distractedly, my mind turning over everything I’d learned this week. Finished with my dinner, such as it was, I pulled my lap desk onto my thighs and started writing down my thoughts, connecting some with circles and arrows. When I was done, I had a list of suspects for each killing and possible motives:

I wished I had access to the alibi information Detective Helland had no doubt collected. Surely he’d managed to rule out some of the suspects? I also wished I could get hold of vehicle registration records and find out what kinds of cars the suspects owned. I knew Velma drove a black CR-V, and I’d seen a dark MDX parked at the Porter house, but I didn’t know who it belonged to. A hazy memory of a green SUV of some kind parked in front of the college museum made me wonder if it belonged to Dyson Harding. Tomorrow, I’d call Helland and tell him what I’d learned from Mary Beth and Murph. Maybe then he’d share some of his information with me.

 

 

“This is an
open police investigation, thanks to you,” Detective Helland said when I called from work Monday morning. “And—”

“Thanks to
me
? How is it my fault you haven’t sewn this up yet?”

Ignoring my interjection, he continued, “—and we don’t share police files with the general public.”

“Even when a member of said public provides you with valuable information about the vehicle that the murderer used to dispose of the body?” I made no attempt to soften my bitter tone.