Die Buying Read online

  “Thanks.” Helland pried off the lid and blew on his coffee. “I’d say our murderer has a sick sense of humor.”

  “Or he or she was really pissed at the vic,” I put in.

  They both turned to stare at me, the woman’s brows arching as she looked from me to Helland. About my height, she wore sensible pumps and a chartreuse blouse with her pantsuit and a round-faced Mickey Mouse watch on her left wrist. Reddish brown hair corkscrewed around her face. When it became clear Helland wasn’t going to introduce us, I said, “EJ Ferris. I’m with the Fernglen Security Force.”

  “Blythe Livingston,” she said with a smile. “Detective, Vernonville Police Department, by way of Boston PD.”

  As if I couldn’t tell by her accent. I returned her smile and we shook hands.

  “Let me have your key to the store.” Helland held out a peremptory hand.

  “No.”

  His eyebrows soared. “No?”

  I could tell he wasn’t used to hearing that word. “No. None of the security staff or mall administration has keys. Only the tenants do. For liability reasons—the mall doesn’t want its security officers or staff vulnerable to accusations of theft. I’ll have to call the store’s owner and get her to let you in.”

  “Do it.” Helland stepped to the grille and bent to examine the lock that bolted it to the floor. “Is there another door?” he asked, straightening.

  “Around there,” I said, pointing to the small hallway to the left of Diamanté. It led to the restrooms, a janitor’s closet, an outside door for deliveries, and the service hallway that ran behind all the stores on this side of the wing.

  Without a word, Helland disappeared down the hall.

  Blythe Livingston made a “what can you do?” grimace behind her partner’s back and followed him.

  I radioed Joel and asked him to get Finola Craig’s phone number and address. “Wait. Never mind,” I said, catching sight of the platinum-haired Finola apparently arguing with the cop blocking access to the corridor. A crowd of interested shoppers had gathered behind her and were craning their necks to see down the hall. No sign of reporters yet, but I knew they’d be along shortly.

  I hurried over and convinced the patrol officer to let Finola in.

  “Oh, my God, EJ, what’s going on? He said something happened at Diamanté?” Anxiety pinched her pale face with its heavy but tasteful makeup. Her eyes searched mine for some clue to what was happening.

  “Opening time was twenty minutes ago,” I said, putting a hand on her forearm to keep her from dashing toward her store. “Where’ve you been?”

  She flapped a harried hand. “Monica was supposed to open today, but she called at quarter to ten to say she was throwing up and couldn’t come in. It took me this long to cancel my dentist appointment, throw some clothes on, and drive over here.”

  Finola never looked like she “threw” her clothes on. Today’s pearl gray suit with a sapphire cami and clutter of chains and pearls around her neck was typical of her usual attire and of the clothes she carried at Diamanté.

  “Monica?” I asked.

  “Monica Goudge. She’s new. I hired her last week.”

  I made notes.

  “Was there a break-in?” Finola persisted. “I hope they didn’t vandalize the shop. You read about people doing such gross things when—. I’ve got to call my insurance company.” She pulled a tiny cell phone from her clutch bag just as Helland and Livingston emerged from the hallway. Spotting them, Finola dropped the phone back in her purse and broke away from me. She trotted toward the detectives as fast as she could in three-inch heels and a pencil skirt. “Hello! Are you the officers in charge? I’m going to need your report for—” She broke off as she came even with the display window.

  “What in—?” She stared incredulously and took a step toward the window. “Jackson! Oh my God!” She stood as stiffly frozen as the mannequins in her display window.

  “Ma’am, can you ID the victim?” Blythe Livingston asked, drawing Finola away.

  “It’s Jackson,” Finola said. A shudder rippled through her. “Jackson Porter.”

  “Your husband? Boyfriend?” Helland asked, observing her narrowly.

  “No!” She turned a shocked face toward him. “Nothing like that. He was a customer. A good customer. I need to sit down.” She tottered toward the bench where Gina Kissell still sat, but Livingston led her toward a bench farther down the hall. Helland headed toward Gina and the baby.

  “You should know—” I started to say, but Helland stopped me before I could tell him about the snakes and lizards colonizing the mall.

  “We can take it from here,” he said. “You can go back to patrolling the halls or helping shoppers find their cars or whatever it is you do. We’ll be in touch if we need anything.”

  His casual dismissal sent a ripple of icy anger through me. What a supercilious jerk! He didn’t want to hear what I had to say? Fine! I hoped he tripped over Agatha and she strangled him.

  Unfortunately, I tripped over Captain Woskowicz before I could get away from the scene. He ambushed me outside the police tape just as I was climbing onto my Segway. Grabbing my upper arm, he leaned in close so the evergrowing crowd couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  “Ferris! What the hell is going on here and why wasn’t I briefed? I am the director of security, after all. I need to know what’s going on in my mall.” His nostrils flared, and he breathed minty bourbon fumes on me.

  Stone-faced, I filled him in on what I knew. “The police have it in hand,” I said. “They don’t want our help.”

  “Of course they don’t. Why should they?” He stared at me a moment, and then a mean smile curled his lips. “Hurt your feelings, did they? Didn’t want assistance from a broken-down war hero?”

  I folded my lips in to keep from saying anything. The fact that he read me that easily made me wince, but I was determined not to show it. I caught sight of a TV camera over his shoulder. For once, I was glad to see a journalist. “There’s a reporter. She probably wants to interview you.”

  “Where?” He jerked his head around, spied the reporter, and started toward her, fixing an oily smile on his face. Woskowicz wallowed in publicity like a warthog in mud. I’d once heard him tell someone that “the babes are hot for TV personalities.” Since he had the personality of a wolverine, I didn’t figure any amount of TV exposure would turn him into a babe magnet. Although, he had three ex-wives, so you just never know.

  Massaging my arm where he’d grabbed it, more to rub off his cooties than because it hurt, I made my getaway on the Segway. I decided I deserved a quick break after coping with escaped reptiles and a murder, so I radioed Joel to tell him I’d be at Merlin’s Cave, my friend Kyra’s shop, for a fifteen-minute coffee break.

  “I thought you might check in here,” Joel said, a pout in his voice. “I got bagels with that cinnamon cream cheese you like.”

  Poor Joel. He was clearly desperate to get the scoop on the activities at Diamanté. “I’ll swing by before lunch,” I promised him.

  Smiling at the shoppers I passed, I almost made it to Merlin’s Cave before a woman with an anxious expression flagged me down. I slowed reluctantly. “Do you need help, ma’am?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. She was matronly looking, with saltand-pepper hair, a plump figure, and two shopping bags hooked over her elbow. “I think a man is following me!” She cast a flustered look over her shoulder. “He was behind me at Macy’s, and I spotted him again when I stopped for a pretzel and now there he is again! Do you think he’s a thief, that he’s after my purchases?”

  Since her bags were from a lingerie boutique and a cookware shop, not a jewelry store or an electronics place, I doubted he was interested in stealing her merchandise. Probably some innocent shmoe, doing his shopping, who happened to cross paths with this woman once too often. “Which man is it, ma’am?”

  “He took a photo of me, too,” she said indignantly. “At least, I think he did. Do you think he’s a pervert
? That’s him, over there.” She jerked her head three times, trying to be discreet but failing miserably, at a man standing with his back toward us, staring into the window of a card shop. He was tall, slightly stoop-shouldered, and seemed to have white hair under a navy beret.

  I studied his back and felt my ire rising. I’d accomplished nothing all morning, but this I could deal with. “You go on, ma’am,” I told the woman. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t follow you. Let me take care of it.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she whispered. “I’ll go to my car now. I’m supposed to meet my daughter for lunch.”

  She bustled away, looking back two or three times and hugging her bags close to her body, as I left the Segway and stalked toward the man.

  I tapped his shoulder, and he gave a realistic start. “Don’t pretend you didn’t see me coming,” I said sternly. “I know you were watching my reflection in the window.”

  He turned, showing me the seamed face of a man in his eighties, but with bright blue eyes that seemed much younger. They twinkled as he smiled and held up his hands at shoulder height. “I guess you caught me. Damn! I must be losing my touch.”

  I sighed heavily. “Grandpa, how many times do I have to tell you not to spy on the mall customers?”

  Three

  “I’ve got to keep my hand in, Emma-Joy,” he said with a cajoling smile. “Where else am I supposed to practice? You know what happened when I tailed that man downtown.”

  The man, whom Grandpa Atherton was convinced was casing a jewelry store for a heist, had ambushed Grandpa and decked him with a right hook, kicking him and breaking a few ribs for good measure before running off. Grandpa had spent a night in the hospital, and I’d gotten long-distance grief from my mom for letting Grandpa put himself at risk. As if he listened to anything anyone said. It was rumored that he had defied Wild Bill Donovan, the founder of the Office of Strategic Services, which later became the Central Intelligence Agency, on more than one occasion.

  “You don’t need to keep in practice,” I told him, knowing it was a waste of breath. “The CIA was a long time ago. You’re retired. Why don’t you take up golf or bocce ball or stamp collecting like other people your—” I’d been about to say “your age,” but Grandpa was vain about his age, insisting he didn’t look a day over seventy, so I changed it to “—like other retirees?”

  He flapped a dismissive hand. “Boring. I still have my wits and my health. Just because the Cold War’s over doesn’t mean we’re secure. Spies are everywhere. More countries than ever are out to learn our secrets. I can still serve this country by—”

  “By terrorizing suburban housewives picking up a new vegetable scraper at Williams-Sonoma?” I asked dryly.

  “Emma-Joy!” He tried to sound hurt.

  “Don’t ‘Emma-Joy’ me,” I said. “I’m responsible for the well-being and safety of the mall’s customers and—”

  “I didn’t hurt her,” he said. “Having an attractive man follow her is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to her all year. She’ll tell all her friends about it at bunco tonight.” He tipped his beret to a rakish angle and winked.

  A smile slipped across my face before I could stop it. “Go home,” I said as sternly as I could. “Or, if you insist on hanging around, make yourself useful by finding a few snakes and lizards.” I explained about the reptile liberation. “Don’t you have an infrared gadget or something that can find their heat signatures in the planters?” Grandpa was gaga for gadgets, combing the Internet and hitting up spy buddies and God-knows-who for techno-gadgets that detected, photographed, surveilled, recorded, and, for all I knew, made Belgian waffles while videotaping a target. Maybe if he were occupied with the reptiles, he wouldn’t hear about the murder until after the cops left the mall. I didn’t want him trying to spy on the murder investigation, antagonizing Detective Helland and his crowd. They had guns.

  Grandpa brightened. “I have something I can try . . . but a reptile should be roughly the same temperature as its environment, right?” He crinkled his brow. “That’s a challenge. But maybe—” Without another word, he strode away from me, mentally sorting through his extensive collection of gadgets to find one to help with reptile roundup.

  Dealing with Grandpa had used up my break time, so I phoned Kyra to let her know I wouldn’t be by. She reminded me of her bout that evening, and we agreed to have dinner afterwards. I swung the Segway around and headed for the office, hoping Captain Woskowicz was still tied up with the reporter. He wouldn’t want me investigating the murder, would insist it was the cops’ job. Maybe it was, but that didn’t mean I had to close my eyes and ears, did it? And if I happened to do a little research on the victim, whom Finola had obligingly identified, and discovered something relevant, well, then, maybe the look-down-his-nose Detective Helland would be grateful when I turned the information over to him.

  Joel was the only one in the office when I got back, and he shook his head when I raised my eyebrows and nodded toward Woskowicz’s office. “Still out.”

  “Good.” I plopped myself down across from Joel and smeared cinnamon cream cheese on the bagel he pushed toward me. “Thanks.” I swallowed the first bite and then gave in to the pleading in Joel’s brown eyes. “Oh, all right.” I filled him in on the murder scene. “The cops are going to want the video. Why don’t you burn them a CD? We’ll look at it before we hand it over.”

  “Okay,” he said, making a note. “Then what?”

  “If this was our case to solve, we’d interview Finola; research the vic’s background and interview his family, friends, and coworkers; work the scene and get the autopsy results; talk to all the employees on the Dillard’s wing; do a timeline of the vic’s movements . . . and that’s just for starters. But it’s not our case. So we do nothing.” I swiveled the chair around to face the computer.

  “So why are you typing in ‘Jackson Porter’?” Joel asked.

  “Curiosity.”

  The key words “Jackson Porter” and “Vernonville” brought up a surprising number of documents and articles. I skimmed them, learning that Jackson Porter was fiftythree, that he had a wife named Elena (an attractive blonde with suspiciously unlined skin and plump lips), a son named Robbie, twenty-two, and a house about ten miles outside of Vernonville proper. If the photos of Porter shmoozing at charity events, glad-handing council members, and wielding a shovel at ground breakings were anything to go by, he was a mover and a shaker in the community. A developer, it looked like. I tried to concentrate with Joel breathing onionbagel breath over my shoulder.

  “I know who killed him,” Joel announced a moment later. His voice buzzed with excitement.

  Skeptical, I swung around to face him. “You do?”

  He nodded, excited. “For sure. He’s the guy behind Olympus, the golf course and hotel they’re going to build behind Fernglen.” He gestured toward the north. “ ‘A vacation fit for a god.’ ”

  I’d heard the slogan before and knew about the golf course going in behind us, but I hadn’t connected it with Porter. “So who killed him?”

  “One of the independent merchants here in the mall,” Joel said. “They were all ready to murder him. They figured that the shopping center he was putting in at the resort would undercut their business. Some of them would go under. Especially specialty clothing stores. Stores like Diamanté.” He gave me a meaningful look.

  “You think Finola did it?” I had trouble envisioning the petite, immaculate Finola endangering her manicure by hauling a dead body around her shop, but stranger things had happened.

  “Absolutely.” He nodded like a bobble-head.

  “Finola Craig weighs maybe a hundred and five pounds,” I pointed out. “Porter looked like a solid two-twenty.” I let him do the math.

  That only stopped him for a second. “She shot him, right? You don’t need to be a linebacker to shoot someone.” He jumped into a Weaver stance, arms extended as if holding a gun. “Pow.”

  “No blood at the scene.” At
Joel’s blank look, I explained. “He wasn’t shot in the window. The murderer shot him somewhere else and moved him.”

  “Oh.” Joel’s disappointment showed in his eyes. He returned to his chair and slumped into it, his broad thighs stretching the fabric of the black uniform pants. “Well, she could still have done it.”

  “Sure she could,” I agreed cheerfully. “And so could a dozen or two dozen other people. In police investigations, we like to rely on a little thing called ‘evidence.’ ”

  “Excuse me.”

  Detective Anders Helland filled the doorway, all broad shoulders, sharp suit, and patrician features. Joel jumped to his feet; Helland had that kind of presence. With an effort, I remained seated. “Yes?”

  “That idiot Woskowicz isn’t here, is he?” Helland said it like he didn’t give a damn if Woskowicz was listening from the next room.

  Against my will, my opinion of the detective went up a few notches; anyone who could zero in on Woskowicz’s idiocy within minutes of meeting him deserved some respect. Although, Woskowicz’s intellectual failings weren’t exactly hard to suss out. “No.”

  “The cretin actually walked right into my crime scene. No gloves, no booties, no common sense. God knows what evidence he destroyed or corrupted.” Ignoring Joel, Helland focused on me, his pale gray eyes assessing. “I need a liaison here at the mall. You’re it.”

  “I don’t wa—”

  “For starters, I’ll need blueprints of the mall, names of all employees with contact data, video from any cameras that would have line of sight on either the interior or exterior entrance to Diamanté, and a corned beef sandwich with extra mustard. Think you can handle that?”

  “Yes, sir!” Joel piped up before I could tell the man what to do with his corned beef sandwich. “EJ already got me started—”

  “I’ll have the documents and video to you within the hour,” I said, keeping my tone professional.

  But Helland was already out the door and I doubted if he heard me.

  A little browbeating got me the blueprints from the mall manager’s office in record time. But the personnel list was another matter. They didn’t have one. Each of the stores maintained their own list of employees; no central list existed. Quigley’s office maintained personnel records only on the mall’s direct hires: janitorial staff, security staff, and mall administration. I accepted the list of those employees, knowing it wouldn’t satisfy Helland, and crossed back to the security office where Joel had finished transferring the camera data to a CD. We sat side by side in front of his computer monitor, fast-forwarding through a whole lot of nothing, looking for a murderer hauling a body into Diamanté. Detective Helland was going to be disappointed by the video evidence, I suspected. Although the mall had approximately one hundred cameras, only about a third of them were actually hooked up. The rest were for show, to scare crooks away from shoplifting or vandalism, the video equivalent of “This house protected by So-and-So Security” stickers on the windows of a house with no alarm system. A flicker of movement on the screen caught my eye and I paused the CD.