Die Buying (33 page)

“Holy crap!”

Jay was staring past me, over my shoulder, and I turned my head quickly. Agatha had slithered out of the planter and was making her way toward the fountain with smooth undulations of her heavy body, completely uninterested in us or the night’s excitement.

“That is one big snake,” Jay said, awe in his voice.

“Her name is Agatha,” I said. “Kiefer will be glad she’s turned up. Speaking of turning up”—I gave him a sharp look—“what brought you here in such a timely fashion?”

“I happened to be in the garage and I heard shots,” he said. “So—”

“You spend more time in garages than most cars.”

Jay ignored my interruption. “—so, of course I came to see what was going on.”

“Of course,” I mocked. “You know that most people—civilians—run
away
from bullets, not toward them?”

Before he could answer, what seemed like a horde of people descended on us: EMTs, uniformed police, Detective Helland, and Grandpa Atherton. The EMTs pushed Jay and me out of the way as they gathered around Catherine, the cops swooped down on Elena, another officer led Jay away, and Detective Helland approached me, immaculately suited even at this hour, with the look of a man about to wreak bodily harm on a completely undeserving mall security officer. Before Helland could reach me, Grandpa Atherton hurried forward and put a fleece jacket around my shoulders. I hadn’t even realized until that moment that I was chilled by the fountain water that had soaked me when we moved Catherine. “You okay, Emma-Joy?” he asked.

I nodded, putting my hand over his bony fingers where they rested on my shoulder. “You were right about it being a woman,” I told him. “Two of them.”

His blue eyes twinkled. “That Shakespeare fellow got it right when he said, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ ”

“It was William Congreve, actually,” Detective Helland said in a steely voice, his blue eyes boring into mine. I felt a tingle that wasn’t completely fear or cold zip down my spine. “And a woman scorned has nothing on a detective left out of the loop by a meddling, justice-obstructing, go-it-alone mall cop.”

Kyra’s voice followed
me out to the kitchen almost a week later as we waited for
Dancing with the Stars
to start. “I can’t believe the DA is going to let Elena Porter off with such a light sentence.”

I opened the fridge to get two more beers. “She’s testifying against Catherine Lang. She says it was all Lang’s plan and that Lang’s the one who shot Jackson Porter and Weasel. The police found the Christian graffiti under a layer of new paint on Lang’s MDX. The gun she used at the mall—the same one that shot Porter and Weasel—was registered to Wilfred Lang.”

“Is she admitting to it?”

“Heck, no. As soon as she recovered enough to start talking, she started blaming Elena. She says Elena came to her with the plan and asked for her help. She says she loaned Elena the gun and helped her with Porter’s body after the fact. A jury will have to sort it out.”

“What about Robbie?”

I returned to the living room in time to see Fubar swipe a paw at the last piece of sushi takeout we’d brought home for dinner. “I saw that,” I told him.

He licked his paw and pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about and wouldn’t eat sushi if we begged him to.

I handed Kyra a beer. “I guess we’ll never know for sure. Lang’s maintaining she had nothing to do with it, although Elena thinks she made Robbie shoot up at gunpoint.”

“How did Lang or Porter’s wife or whoever get a key to Diamanté?”

“Lang actually worked there when the store was a formal-wear rental place. I remember she told me once she’d met her husband at the mall when he was getting decked out for a wedding. She even said she met him ‘here’ when we were standing in Diamanté. I knew the store used to be a formal-wear rental place; I just didn’t put two and two together. Mea culpa.” The thought rankled. I’d had most of the pieces to the puzzle and just hadn’t fitted them together right until Catherine and Elena ambushed me. Thinking about that night brought Agatha to mind. “Did you see the crowds around the Herpes Hut today?” I asked.

Kyra nodded, grinning. “Kiefer’s really capitalizing on the whole ‘hero snake’ thing. Pretty clever the way he’s using the publicity to nudge the police into tracking down Dawson and his LOAF buddies. Think Agatha will have to testify if it comes to trial?” She chuckled.

“Unlikely.” I imagined the big snake in the witness box, flicking her tongue to point out Dawson as the culprit.

“Are the police going to go after that Lang-Quincy woman?”

“Aileen? Nope.” I plopped down onto the sofa, and Fubar leaped up beside me. “There’s no percentage in it. The death was ruled accidental, the body was cremated, and Catherine Lang stands by her alibi. If Aileen hired it done, the killer has been discreet for years and isn’t about to start blabbing now.”

“I’m sure the police don’t want to have to admit that they might have blown the investigation into Lang’s death, either,” Kyra said cynically. “Although I will say it was gracious of Detective Helland to mention you at the press conference: ‘Fernglen Galleria’s Officer Emma-Joy Ferris provided significant assistance to the police.’ See, I memorized it. I also clipped the article from the
Vernonville Times
if you want to add it to your scrapbook.” She grinned.

“Pass.” I wouldn’t admit it to Kyra, but I’d felt a tiny tingle of satisfaction at Helland’s praise. It somewhat made up for the way he’d chewed me out the night Catherine and Elena tried to kill me.

The familiar theme music came on and Kyra muted it. “I think you’re wrong about Jay, by the way,” she said as we watched the stars parade in with their professional partners. “He makes one dee-lish-us cookie, and he’s too laid back to be a cop or agent or whatever.”

“Really?” I eyed her, wondering under what circumstances she’d gotten to know Jay Callahan so much better. I hadn’t talked to the man since the night we captured Catherine and Elena. We’d crossed paths once or twice at the police station where we’d each been summoned for numerous interviews with detectives, DAs, and investigators, but we hadn’t had a chance to sit and chat. He might think that by helping me with Catherine and Elena he’d allayed my suspicions about his activities. He’d be so wrong. He might have Kyra snowed with his sweet talk and luscious cookies, but I was keeping an eye on Mr. Jay “Cookie Man With a Gun” Callahan. I was going to find out exactly what he was up to at Fernglen, and I knew darn well it wasn’t selling cookies.

“Not that I’m saying you were ever uptight, or anything,” Kyra added hastily, a mischievous glint in her eyes, “but you’ve relaxed a bit this past year. I think working at the mall is good for you.”

“Really?” I said again. I tapped a business-sized envelope against my thigh. The letter had come today, offering me an in-person interview with the police department in the bustling metropolis of Galax, Virginia, about four hours southwest of here, not far from the North Carolina border. With any luck, it’d be buh-bye Fernglen Galleria and hel-lo Galax before the summer.

But I knew Kyra would be sad at the thought of me moving, so I didn’t hand her the letter as I’d planned. Truth to tell, the idea made me a bit sad, too. Grandpa Atherton popped into my head, as did Kyra, Joel, and, surprisingly, Detective Anders Helland. I didn’t want to jinx the job by talking about it before it was a done deal, I told myself. Sliding the envelope unobtrusively under a stack of guitar sheet music, I slipped Fubar the last piece of sushi, cranked up the volume on the TV, and made a bet with Kyra about which of the male pros would find an excuse to take his shirt off on tonight’s show.