Die Buying (8 page)

“Robbie?”

“Our son. He’s . . . difficult. He had a fight with Jackson two weeks ago, and we haven’t heard from him since. I’m so afraid . . .” She cut herself off with another glug of coffee. “But that’s not why I came. I was hoping you could tell me about finding Jackson.”

“Excuse me?”

“The police just said he was found at Diamanté, that he’d been shot. They didn’t give me any details.” She looked at me expectantly.

I wasn’t sure what to tell her. “A young woman discovered Mr. Porter’s body,” I said. “One of the mall walkers. She screamed and I responded. I could tell immediately that he was dead, Mrs. Porter, that he’d been dead for a while. There was nothing I could do.”

An elderly couple walked by, arms pumping, his fish-belly legs displayed by navy shorts, hers covered in blue sweats.

“Surely there’s more to it than that.”

I sensed a tension in her I didn’t understand. Was she looking for signs of negligence, thinking that I could have saved Jackson Porter if I’d responded more quickly, administered first aid or something? If so, that turkey wouldn’t fly; the autopsy would bear out that he’d been dead for hours before I came on the scene. “Not really,” I said. “That was about it. I called the police, and they responded very quickly.”

“No, no.” She brushed aside the police with a flick of her hand. “I mean, how did he look?”

Ah, I thought I understood what she wanted. “He looked peaceful, Mrs. Porter,” I said. In truth, he hadn’t looked much of anything other than dead, but she seemed to want to hear he hadn’t suffered. “I’m sure death was instantaneous.”

“It hurts me to think of him suffering,” she said, sniffing. Her eyes tracked a young man pushing a jog stroller with a laughing baby in it. “Did you take photos?”

The question caught me off guard. “I’m sure the police have all the photos they need,” I said, not quite sure why I didn’t want to own up to snapping some pictures. It was something about Mrs. Porter’s moist mouth and avid eyes that put me off.

“You did.” She stated it as a fact and put her coffee cup on the bench between us. “Let me see them.”

“Mrs. Porter, I really think—”

“I have a right to see them. He was my husband.” Her agitated voice attracted attention from the salesclerk hefting up the grille at the teen clothing store. The girl, decked out with multiple piercings, stared at us for a moment, then ducked under the metal bar and rattled it back down. “Jackson’s last moments are important to me.”

I didn’t point out that his “last moments” had occurred well before I took the photos. “Ma’am, I think you’d do better to remember your husband as he was the last time you saw him alive. There’s no point to dwelling on—”

“Have you ever had a husband murdered?” she asked, pushing to her feet and stumbling a bit as the kitten-heeled mule slipped out from under her foot. Without giving me time to answer—I guess she went with the odds—she added, “So don’t tell me what I should dwell on. I want to talk to your boss. I should have started with him in the first place.” She took off, a great ball of puffiness, headed back to the security office.

I caught up with her even though trotting made my knee ache. No way was I going to tag along behind her. She stiff-armed the office door and blew through just as Captain Woskowicz dropped a sheaf of papers on Joel’s desk. He was wearing sunglasses this morning and looked like a caricature of the crooked cinema cop who gets blown away by Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson by the movie’s end. Mrs. Porter was clearly impressed.

“Ooh,” she breathed. “I’m sure you can help me.”

“I’d be pleased to, ma’am,” he said, obviously admiring. He removed his sunglasses, revealing bloodshot eyes.

“This . . . your . . . she found my husband’s body yesterday and took photos, but she won’t let me see them.”

From her accusatory tone, you’d think I’d shot Porter myself. “Mrs. Porter, Captain Woskowicz.” I made the introductions, resigned.

“Elena,” she said, holding out her hand.

Woskowicz took it, but his gaze shifted to me. “Do you have photos of Mr. Porter, Ferris?”

“Yes.”

“Then share them with Mrs. Porter.” He made a “what’s the big deal?” gesture.

“I don’t think the police—”

“Did you take them while on duty?” At my tiny nod, a glint of triumph lit his eyes. “Then they’re mall property. Let’s see ’em.”

Reluctantly, I pulled my camera from its pouch on my utility belt. Without speaking, I clicked until the first photo of Jackson Porter, sprawled on the lounger, came up. I handed the camera to Woskowicz, who shifted it from side to side to avoid the glare as he and Elena Porter looked at it. Tears filled the woman’s eyes and left tracks down her cheeks, and she put a tentative finger on the screen. “But he’s naked!” she gasped. “They didn’t tell me.” And with her hands at her mouth, she spun on her kitten heel and hurried out of the office.

“Good going, Ferris,” Woskowicz said, tossing the camera at me and striding back to his office.

“He’s a total a-hole,” Joel said, echoing my thoughts. The look in his eyes said he clearly wanted to see the photos, too, so I laid the camera on his desk and swiped the last bite of the cinnamon bun.

“Did you see the news reports this morning on the murder?” Joel asked without looking up from the camera’s tiny screen.

“No. What’d they say?”

For answer, he turned his computer screen so I could read it. “Local Developer Murdered,” the headlines blared. In smaller type, it read: “Councilman Questioned.” Now that was interesting. I scanned the article, learning that a number of witnesses had seen Porter Sunday afternoon lunching with Councilman Earl Gatchel, at Tombino’s of all places, and that Gatchel had been questioned extensively at police headquarters yesterday. “Sources indicate,” the article went on, “that Gatchel was under investigation for improperly influencing council members in favor of Jackson Porter’s development projects. Insider reports on his finances indicate that during weeks when the Vernonville council voted on zoning or other measures related to Porter’s projects, large sums of money flowed into and out of an account that has been traced to Gatchel. When contacted by this reporter, Gatchel had no comment.”

“What do you think?” I asked Joel, looking up from the screen to see him watching me.

“Gatchel did it,” he said positively. “They had lunch, Porter said something to set him off—maybe he offered to cooperate with whoever was investigating Gatchel to save his own hide—and Gatchel offed him.”

“I thought Finola was your front runner.”

He squirmed a little under my teasing. “You were right—she’s too small.”

“So why’d Gatchel pose Porter in Diamanté’s window?”

“Who knows?” Joel shrugged, obviously not considering it important. “Maybe to warn off other people who might be in a position to testify against him.”

“You make him sound like a mob boss, instead of a penny-ante local politician with a flair for bribery,” I said.

“Even penny-ante local politicians want to protect their asses,” he said.

“Good point,” I said, and he blushed.

Tracy Jensen and Harold Wasserman came in just then, and we exchanged greetings and speculation about the murder. After ten minutes, I left to begin my rounds; it was close on nine o’clock and merchants were beginning to filter in. My first stop on the Segway was the Herpetology Hut; I wanted to check in with Kiefer and see how many critters he’d recovered. Kiefer wasn’t there, but a girl who could have been his sister, his girlfriend, or a new employee was chopping lettuce and carrots on a cutting block beside the cash register. She told me he was in the food court. A glance in Agatha’s enclosure told me the python was still missing.

I waved to Fernando as I entered the food court and looked around for Kiefer. Weak sunlight poured through the glass panes in the ceiling, and the scents of coffee, tomato sauce, and stale grease permeated the air. White-topped tables with chrome legs awaited the customers who would trickle in around midmorning. I liked their clean shine at this time of day, before they got spattered with ketchup, streaked with hamburger grease, and dotted with crumbs. I spotted Kiefer, dreads draped over his shoulders, talking to a man I didn’t know at the Legendary Lola Cookies stand. He held a large cookie. As I motored closer, Kiefer saw me and beckoned me over. He wore the same flannel shirt as yesterday, over a purple tee shirt that read, “My python is smarter than your fifth-grader.” He smiled.

“Hey, EJ,” he said, “we rounded up thirty-three animals yesterday. One old dude found fifteen of them all by himself. He had some sort of motion detector gadget—it was bitchin’.”

Let’s hear it for Grandpa Atherton.

“We’re only missing four now. Two lizards, one snake, one tortoise, and Agatha. I guess that’s five.”

“That’s what I came over to find out,” I said, dismounting. “Are they okay?”

“One skink lost a tail, but other than that they’re cool. I wish I could get my hands on those dumbass LOAFers who turned them loose. Don’t they know reptiles need controlled temperatures and a special diet? They’re not rodents: they can’t make it on garbage and cookie crumbs. No offense, Jay.”

The man behind the counter smiled. “None taken.”

My first thought was that he didn’t eat much of his product. He was average height, about five feet ten, and lean in an athletic way, with strong biceps showing beneath the short sleeves of his orange “Legendary Lola Cookies” tee shirt. Wavy, dark red hair grazed his collar, and hazel eyes showed a gleam of humor. I could see why Kyra thought he was hot even though he was shorter than she was. His gaze flicked between me and Kiefer, and I got the feeling he noticed a lot. He looked more like a firefighter or a soldier—someone active, used to making decisions—than a baker, and my cop antennae went up.

“You must be the new Lola,” I said, offering my hand.

“Oops, sorry,” Kiefer said. “EJ, this is Jay Callahan. Jay, EJ Ferris, our own supercop.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jay said with a strong handshake.

“What brings you to Fernglen?” I asked.

“A good business opportunity,” Jay said, gesturing at the display case filled with a dozen kinds of cookies. The glass-fronted oven behind him showed multiple tins of browning cookies, and the smell of vanilla and cinnamon made me realize my breakfast had consisted of nothing more than a stolen bite of sticky bun.

“Have you been in the cookie business a long time?”

“Long enough.”

Was he deliberately dodging my questions, or was he just taciturn? I couldn’t decide. I turned back to Kiefer just as he bit into the huge chocolate chip cookie.

“Did the Vernonville cop ever show up?”

Kiefer swallowed and flashed a crumby grin. “Yeah. Dude showed up about closing. Bought a corn snake from me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Did he do anything more useful than that?”

Kiefer shrugged. “Wrote it up. Gave me a report for my insurance.”

“Well, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for the rest of the escapees, especially Agatha.”

A worried look clouded Kiefer’s brow. “I just don’t know where she could be.”

My mind flashed to the
Harry Potter
movie where the basilisk lives in the plumbing at Hogwarts; there were miles of ductwork and pipes in the mall. I hoped Agatha hadn’t found her way into them. “I’m sure she’ll turn up,” I said optimistically. “She’s probably found some place nice and cozy to curl up.”

Waving good-bye to the two men, I resumed my patrol, making a mental note to see what I could find out about Mr. Jay Callahan, cookie-meister. I followed my usual route but found myself in front of Diamanté a few minutes earlier than usual. The grille was down, and yellow crime scene tape was threaded through it. The mannequins still sprawled where they had fallen, a poor advertisement for the expensive swimsuits they wore. They looked like co-eds who’d overindulged on a spring-break spree and collapsed in a drunken stupor. Poor Finola.

I was just debating whether to call Finola to see how she was doing, and maybe see if she knew the name of the woman Jackson Porter bought the cocktail dress for, when Grandpa Atherton came around the corner wearing a gray tracksuit and sneakers. An Orioles baseball cap partly covered his snowy hair.

“Emma-Joy!” he hailed me. “You didn’t tell me about the murder.”

“Good morning to you, too, Grandpa,” I said.

He waved aside the niceties. “You weren’t trying to keep me away from the action by sending me off on that lizard hunt yesterday, were you?” His sharp gaze fixed on my face.

I concentrated on looking innocent and added a soupçon of affront for good measure. “Of course not. But the police have that case well in hand. Kiefer tells me you did a fabulous job finding his stock.”

“Nothing to it with the right equipment. Fill me in on the murder.”

Accepting the inevitable, I gave Grandpa a brief rundown on the Porter case. “The police have a viable suspect,” I finished. “And they don’t want anything from us except access to personnel records and the security-camera data.”

Grandpa snorted. He didn’t have a high opinion of Fernglen’s security technology. “The dpi on your cameras is so poor, you’d be lucky if you could tell a sumo wrestler from a burlesque dancer.”

“Well, I don’t think the cameras showed any wrestlers, dancers, or murderers,” I said.

“An inside job,” Grandpa said immediately. “They knew how to avoid the cameras.”

I’d already thought of that. “It could be,” I admitted, “but it could also be that someone scoped the place out beforehand. It’s not that hard to spot the cameras if you know what you’re looking for.” I pointed at the camera lens clearly visible above the storefront we were passing. “The mall
wants
people to know about the cameras. They’re meant to discourage theft more than to ID criminals after the fact.”

“Tell you what, Emma-Joy,” Grandpa said with the air of a monarch conveying a boon, “I’ll tail this Gatchel fellow for you, find out what he’s up to.”