Naked Cruelty (11 page)

Tears pouring down her face, Amanda rushed to the front window to check on the glass teddy bear himself. Yes, yes, he was there, unshifted, unmarked, sitting on his black velvet box and apparently ignored by the Vandal.

What kind spirit had prompted her to leave her animals at home this morning? Fishing up her sleeve to find a handkerchief, Amanda Warburton knew in her heart of hearts that she had expected more trouble today; the dust and dirt of the previous assault had seemed—yes, definitely—unfinished. Today was a logical sequel to the first attack.

Having notified the police, checked that no other stores had been vandalized, and learned that the three banks the Busquash Mall harbored were all okay, Hank was now kneeling alongside the pile of glass, not touching anything, but eyes busy.

“Weird!” he exclaimed. “Miss Warburton—Amanda!—it is weird. As far as I can tell, nothing's been broken—or cracked—or chipped. Look for yourself. If I get the same cleaners back to pick up everything wearing gloves, you shouldn't lose much if anything. No, no, don't cry, please.” He hugged her, trying to convey comfort and sympathy. Miss Warburton was a lamb, she didn't deserve this malice, this—this
cruelty
.

By the time Ike Masotti and Muley Evans arrived, Amanda was in the back room, with Hank Murray persuading her to have a little of his emergency brandy.

“I have to notify Detectives,” Ike said on taking a look at the mound of glass. “May I use your phone, Miss Warburton? The air waves are full of flapping ears shouldn't be listening.”

“Please do.”

“There's definitely something weird going on,” Ike said to the phone. “You'd better come take a look-see, Morty. This is definitely not high school kids.”

They waited over an hour.

He couldn't help himself; he'd had to call in to the Shamrock Bar for a quick snort en route to the Busquash Mall and that persnickety bastard, Ike Masotti.

Nothing was improving, for all that Delia Carstairs kept telling him things had. She'd found him a great housekeeper, but he didn't want a housekeeper, and nor did the kids—
his
kids. They all wanted Ava back. Bobby and Gidget, the lights of his life, not his? It was typical Ava, that's all, to throw that one in. Only why had he decked her? So many years of knowing she played around—what was so different about that Saturday night? Except that he snapped at the taunt about the kids.

Now the kids cried all the time, he cried whenever he could sneak to the cells … He cried into his Jameson's too, and had to clean up in the Shamrock bathroom before he could nerve himself to do whatever Ike Masotti said at the Busquash Mall. His head was spinning, he had to stop and park for a few minutes to get some sanity back … Oh, Ava, Ava! Bobby and Gidget are
mine
!

When he shuffled into the Glass Teddy Bear the two patrolmen exchanged glances—the smell of liquor was overpowering, worse than it had been last Tuesday.

Morty gave the mountain of glass a cursory inspection and returned to the back room. “High school kids,” he said, shrugging. And, to the cops, “You're wasting my time, guys.”

“Less time to elbow-bend, you mean, Morty?” asked Muley when Ike wouldn't. No one made undeserved cracks at Ike.

“It's high school kids,” Morty maintained.

“It is not high school kids!” Ike yelled, exasperated. “This is nasty, Sergeant Jones. It feels wrong. No way that high school kids would pile up all that glass without breaking some, and none's broken—not even chipped. This stinks of vendetta.”

“I don't care what it stinks of, Ike. No real damage has been done, there's not enough here to put anyone up on charges.” Morty licked suddenly dry lips. “I gotta go.”

Blinking, Amanda sat listening as if in a drugged haze; she was conscious that Hank's hand on her shoulder had tightened its grip, and understood that the detective's indifference had angered him. As Sergeant Morty Jones disappeared, she reached up to pat the hand. Thwarted, Ike and Muley followed Morty out, gazing at her in mute apology.

“Would you mind calling the cleaning firm for me, Hank?” she asked. “I'll have to stay to supervise them—they won't remember whereabouts things belong, now I tore the plan up.” She gave a small squeak of distress. “To think I had to draw a plan even once! But to think I'd need it twice!”

“First, your insurance agent,” Hank said firmly. “That lazy so-and-so of a detective didn't take any photographs, and someone should. If anything is damaged, you'll need proof.” He pressed Amanda's fingers gently. “From now on the Mall is going to be protected by a professional security company, something I've been saying to deaf ears since the Mall opened. But no, the owners didn't want to spend the money. Now, they have no choice. A bank robbery and a vendetta against a tenant with fragile stock. I mean, what if the Vandal had decided to target Quattrocento, down on the first floor? You can clean the filth off glass, but not off a fourteenth century credenza.”

“Who would do this?” Amanda asked for the tenth time, unable to get past her own violation.

“I have no idea.” Hank paused, then said, very delicately, “It's going to be a very long day for you, and you shouldn't be alone this evening, Amanda. May I take you to dinner?”

“Thank you, I'd like that,” said Amanda, sounding surprised.

The dinner with Hank Murray at the Lobster Pot went so well that the next evening, Saturday, he took her to Sea Foam.

Though she admitted that Hank was an ideal escort for a forty-year-old spinster, she wasn't about to let him put his shoes under her bed. An occasional man had enjoyed that privilege, but only one had mattered, and he was long dead. If her heartache was permanent, that was her business. Financially she was comfortable; she didn't need a meal ticket. Though, she couldn't say why, she had a feeling that Hank wasn't nearly as well off as the manager of a famous shopping mall ought to be. He paid the Sea Foam prices without a blink, yet when he fished for his wallet at the Lobster Pot, Amanda fancied that he was relieved she had indicated she preferred classy diners to up-market traps for gastronomes.

She had acquired Frankie and Winston, now three years old, as a deliberate ploy; with two cute animals in her window, her shop was visited by everyone who came to the Busquash Mall. No one else was allowed to have a pet; that Amanda was, was due to a clever sales pitch she had made to the Mall owners, a bunch of tightwads, combined with impeccably trained animals. At home the dog and cat were great company, though now that Hank had appeared, Amanda realized that no animal was a full-time substitute for a man. Hadn't Marcia said so? Yes, and had her head bitten off for her pains. Still, Hank might have worked out differently had he been a different kind of man—pushed for an intimate relationship, for instance. But he hadn't, and wasn't. Hank seemed willing to keep on an outer orbit, never close enough to get burned.

On Sunday night she worked late, though she hadn't told Hank. They hadn't made any plans for the evening because he was involved in the outfitting of a new shop only three doors down from hers. It had been a dismal, unsuccessful outlet for vacuum cleaners—not the kind of thing people shopping at the Busquash Mall were after. Now it was going to be full of American Indian goods—blankets, ceramics, paintings, silver-and-turquoise jewelry. Hank had high hopes for it, and Amanda understood why. Buying Indian wares east of the Rockies wasn't easy.

At eleven o'clock she locked up. On her way to the service elevators she poked her head in the back door of the Indian shop to give Hank a surprise greeting, but the place was a zoo of workmen, materials, tools and noise.

Only when she reached her neat little black Mercedes did she realize that her car keys were on the edge of her desk in the back room of her shop—oh, darn! How had she come to do that? A rhetorical question: the reason was a brown-wrapped box about the size of a Benedictine box that she'd had to squeeze into her bag, only to find it sitting smack on top of her car keys. She'd taken the box out, retrieved the keys, put the box back—and forgotten to pick up the keys. Darn, darn, darn!

The security firm was coming on board tomorrow night, but there was so much light and racket from the Indian shop that her journey back to her own shop was shorn of most of its fears. What fears were left? Crates, tools, cables and items of shop furniture all over the service corridor.

She flicked on the switch that sat alone and illuminated the area just inside her back door; the car keys were there, right where she'd left them.

Came the unmistakable sound of breaking glass from her shop. Outraged, Amanda never stopped to think. Dropping her big navy leather bag on the floor, she ran for the bead curtain, screaming shrilly to summon help from the Indian shop. A black-clad form wearing a ski mask stood on the far side of her counter, surrounded by the shards of what had been—she knew it well—an Orrefors one-off bowl. Above his head he held a Kosta Boda one-off vase formed like a surrealistic cat.

What foiled her was the counter. As she ran to one side to get around it he threw the vase not on the floor but at her, turning her scream into a howl of pain as the heavy object struck her on the hip. Down she went, while the black figure raced for the big sliding door at the front of the shop. Men were spilling into her back room as the Vandal tore off down the Mall proper, and was lost in the shadows.

Hank! Where was Hank?

“Here, Amanda,” came his voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Working late,” she panted, and moaned. “Oh, he hurt me! Where were you?”

“Getting another plan from my office.”

By this time the lights were on and Amanda realized that her glass stood in more danger from her would-be rescuers than from the Vandal.

“Please!” she cried, struggling until Hank lifted her to her feet. “Mr. Murray will deal with this now. Thank you, thank you for coming.” I sound like a happy hostess after a dinner, she thought, and cried out in pain. Someone thrust her chair under her, and she sank into it, sitting side on, as the workmen gradually left.

“Luiz, there's your plan,” Hank said, indicating a rolled up blueprint on the floor. Then, to Amanda: “Will you be okay while I use your phone to call the cops?”

“Wheel me with you,” she said.

For some reason that amused him; he laughed. “Oh, Amanda ! What did he do?”

“Broke my Björn Wiinblad bowl—a one-off,” she said, her hand grasping his belt as he wheeled her at her side rather than from behind. “He threw the Kosta Boda pussycat at me, so I suppose that's broken too. Oh Hank, this is awful!”

“He might have killed you,” Hank said grimly, making her as comfortable as he could. “Ambulance first, then cops.”

“Make sure the ambulance uses the service corridor!” she cried in alarm. “I won't have a gurney in my shop.” A small pause, then: “And I won't have Sergeant Jones.”

Hank picked up the phone. “Nor will I,” he said.

The call was patched through to Carmine at home. Though as a captain he was on permanent call, he and his two lieutenants took turns on matters that came in after hours, and tonight chanced to be Carmine's turn, a double whammy: he was taking Abe's calls as well until he returned from Hartford.

“Captain Delmonico.”

“Oh, thank God, someone senior! Captain, I absolutely refuse to let Miss Warburton have any further dealings with that drunken moron, Sergeant Jones!” said an irate voice. “I understand that a detective will have to come to the Busquash Mall—just don't send him. The previous attacks were vandalism and so is this one, but tonight Miss Warburton was injured. I want the bastard caught, and all Sergeant Jones can catch is a cold.”

Carmine finally managed to get a word in. “Your name, sir?”

“Henry—Hank—Murray, manager of the Busquash Mall, and a personal friend of Miss Warburton's. It's her shop, the Glass Teddy Bear, that's been vandalized. And the first time the Vandal struck, we had $50,000 taken from the Third Holloman Bank as well. Sergeant Jones is supposed to be dealing with that too, but he's done nothing.”

Carmine decided to go himself; if the theft of $50,000 from a bank was being neglected, his division was in big trouble—why didn't Corey mention it? I've seen not a word on paper! What is going on with Morty Jones? “Drunken moron” sounds as if he's drinking on duty. By rights I should send Corey, but I have a feeling matters have already gone too far for that. Nor can I be sure that Corey would give me a truthful account of Morty's situation. The only one who tells me anything is Delia.

“Must you go out?” Desdemona asked in the hall. “If Julian wakes and realizes you're not here, he'll get up.”

“At a quarter of midnight? He won't wake, lovely lady.”

“He might.”

“Think best, not worst.” He kissed her. “If he does wake, tell him I'll be back in five minutes with a switch.”

“Carmine!”

“It won't happen, Desdemona. Go to bed yourself.”

I can't wait for Prunella Balducci to arrive, Carmine thought as he backed the Fairlane on to East Circle. Why didn't I sense that my wife was as green as grass when we had Julian? She was stuffed full of theories, and that's what they were—theories. Julian needs far more exercise than he gets, but Mommy is stuck with a second baby. Now she's lumbered with an under-exercised, strong-willed child who pushes her around because she's permanently tired. Nag! I never understood that toddlers could nag until I met my own son. Julian the defense attorney.