Die Buying Read online

  “Now that Jack is dead—” I prompted.

  “Poor Jack.” Tears filled her eyes.

  “Were you good friends?”

  “You could say that.” A wistful smile curved her lips.

  The bartender chose that moment to plunk down my club soda and I could’ve strangled him. By the time he sponged up a damp circle from Finola’s glass, she had recovered herself a bit.

  “Customer,” she said, nodding. “Jack was a good customer.”

  “But you sell ladies’ clothes.”

  “Um-hm.” A tiny frown appeared between her brows. “Jack liked ladies.”

  I wasn’t sure which way to take this conversation. I didn’t think I was going to get anything else out of her about her relationship with Jackson Porter, so I went with, “When was the last time he bought something from you?”

  “Saturday. Cocktail dress. A tangerine number by Tadashi Shoji.” She fluttered her hands in the air, seeming to indicate ruffles or a floaty material like chiffon.

  “For his wife?”

  She blew an un-ladylike raspberry. “Elena’s not a size two! I need another drink.” She signaled to the bartender, but I shook my head at him. “Hey!” She glared at me.

  “Let me take you home, Finola,” I said, slipping off the bar stool to help her stand.

  “Got my car,” she mumbled, her chin falling toward her chest.

  “I don’t think so.” I draped her arm over my shoulders and wrapped my arm around her waist. Thankfully, she was a skinny thing, probably a size two, unlike Elena. The helpful bartender, probably hoping I’d get her out of his bar before she upchucked, found Finola’s purse and hooked it over my forearm.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I was getting worried about her. Your drink’s on me.”

  Wow, a free club soda. I gave him a “just doing my job” shrug and nudged Finola toward the door. Luckily, my car was parked close by because she was leaning heavily on me by the time we got there. I propped her against the side of my bronze Miata and opened the passenger door. Thank goodness the temps were in the low fifties instead of the icy teens we’d experienced last week. A woman shepherding two toddlers gave me an odd look and crossed to the far side of the row. I maneuvered Finola into the front seat and handed her a shoe box from the backseat after dumping out the strappy silver sandals I’d bought last week in a moment of madness. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t wear heels like that anymore. The shoes were in the car so I could return them.

  “Here.” I put the box in Finola’s lap when she showed no inclination to hold it. “Use this if you feel sick.” I buckled her in, closed the door, and went around to the driver’s side. Once settled, I asked, “Where do you live?”

  A gentle snore was my only answer. I looked at her slumped against the window, the harsh sun illuminating the lines around her lips and the crepey skin on her bare arms that the dim light in Tombino’s had camouflaged. She was in her midfifties, I figured, not her forties, as I’d always thought. With a sigh, I dug through her purse, finding her wallet and her driver’s license.

  I drove to the modest townhome some fifteen minutes from Fernglen, found Finola’s keys, and opened the front door, then returned to the car to lug the groggy boutique owner into her house. I guided her back to her bedroom and located some aspirin in the medicine cabinet, noting fluffy taupe bath sheets and an array of expensive-looking lotions on the counter. She took the aspirin as docilely as a child and promptly passed out on the bed. Propping two pillows under her head and turning her head sideways so she wouldn’t choke if she threw up, I left her keys and purse on the granite counter by the coffeepot—sure to be her first stop when she awoke with a massive hangover—and left, turning the lock in the knob as I closed the door.

  Back in the car, I checked the time: four thirty. Damn. I could still work in a swim before Kyra’s bout, if I kept it short, but the pool would be crowded now with after-work exercisers. I liked to swim more or less alone, still uncomfortable with the gawping that my leg injuries received. In desperate need of exercise, I headed reluctantly to the YMCA just two miles from my patio home. In the locker room, redolent of wet metal and antiperspirant—someone must have sprayed herself lavishly—I stripped quickly, keeping my back to the room, and pulled on my orange swimsuit with the racer back. Wrapping my hibiscus-print beach towel around my waist so it draped to my ankles, I headed for the showers and the pool entrance, wondering for the thousandth time why they needed so many mirrors. From the waist up, I looked okay, maybe better than okay, with glossy chestnut hair and long-lashed eyes, a bustline that was a happy medium between Keira Knightley and Dolly Parton, and strong arms and shoulders from the swimming. Below the waist . . . I hustled past all the mirrors, rinsed off, and headed to the pool.

  Several lap swimmers were crawling and breast-stroking in the lanes, and a rowdy group of eight-year-olds had assembled for a lesson at the far end. Sitting on the pool’s edge, I quickly unwrapped the towel and slid into the water in one smooth movement, turning to place the towel on the deck. A surreptitious look around discovered no stares or pointing; no one had noticed. Adjusting my goggles, I struck out for the far end of the Olympic-sized pool, letting the exertion and the water strip away the stress that had built up in my body. I didn’t know how nonexercisers made it through the day without killing someone.

  Hair still damp, I arrived at the city auditorium just as the roller derby bout was getting underway. On a Monday night there wasn’t much of a crowd, and I got a seat on the bleachers near the front without any trouble. The oval track was laid out at a slight angle to the long axis of the hardwood floor with rope under the tape to give the skaters a tactile indicator when they were going out of bounds. A computer-driven projector showed the score and the time remaining on a screen over the stage at the south end. Big speakers on the stage shrieked a guitar riff from a song I didn’t know, undoubtedly by a band I’d never heard of. The league had padded the hard edges of risky wall corners and stationed volunteers—grinning young men—at two side entryways as “girl catchers” to stop errant skaters from sliding out of sight and into possible harm.

  I spotted Kyra right away—not hard to do since she’s a six-foot-tall black woman and was wearing the purple uniform and helmet of the Vernonville Vengeance, the roller derby team she’d skated with for over two years. Her long hair frizzed from beneath the helmet to midback, much longer than when we’d first met, when I was eleven and she was twelve. My folks had brought us to Vernonville to visit with Gran and Grandpa Atherton in the big Colonial home they’d lived in before Gran died. Kyra had skated by the house one morning when I was sitting on the porch, sulking about how boring it was going to be with no one but my brother Clint to play with. We’d hit it off immediately, and I cried when it was time to go back to California. Kyra and I called each other weekly during the school year, and I had looked forward to returning to Gran and Grandpa’s each summer after that. Kyra had even visited us in California a couple of times before graduating high school a year ahead of me and going off to Duke. A college track and field athlete, she had won a silver medal in the hurdles at the Olympics. She started skating because running on a treadmill during the gloomy winter months was “too damned boring.”

  I’d been skeptical about roller derby, but it wasn’t what I’d expected. The women ranged in age from about twenty to almost forty and, like Kyra, were into it for the fun of skating and being part of a competitive team. Some of the women were muscle-bound, some were almost waiflike. Some sported tattoos, some didn’t. As the women whizzed around the track, with the jammers trying to lap the other team, I admired the way they worked together, the way a skater would scramble up if knocked down. There was definitely no crying in roller derby, not even when a nose got bloodied, a finger got jammed, or a hip got bruised in a fall.

  I yelled along with the crowd, urging the Vengeance to pulverize the visitors, the Morganville Morgue. The Vengeance won, 147 to 113. Kyra celebrated with her team, then skated over
to me and plunked down on the bleacher, gym bag in hand. She was breathing hard and had a smell of clean sweat about her.

  “I’m going to be sore tomorrow,” she said, unlacing her skates.

  “You say that every time.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s true every time. And it gets truer every year. We’re not getting any younger.” She threw a Blue Devils sweatshirt over her tank top, pulled on matching sweatpants, and slipped on flip-flops decorated with beads and yarn wrapped around the straps. She wiggled her strong toes with their purple-polished nails as if glad to be out of the confining skates.

  “It’s forty-two degrees out,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “Where to?”

  We made a swing through the deli at the Giant, collecting an eclectic mix of sushi, tortilla soup, curried chicken salad, and mini éclairs, and headed back to my house. One story of brick front with forest green trim in a community that boasted a pool, lush landscaping, and quiet neighbors—my house might not be my parents’ California spread, but it was all mine. I’d bought the small ranch house, part of a planned “village” of similar homes, when I moved here just over a year ago. When the military medically retired me, I didn’t know where I wanted to live, although I knew I didn’t want to return to L.A. and be near my folks. The thought of Mom and Dad trying to coddle me, and my former friends politely not asking about my leg, convinced me I wanted to live as far away as possible. When Grandpa Atherton mentioned that a friend of his was selling the rancher that he’d used as a rental property, I drove out from Walter Reed—the military hospital in D.C. where I was doing my rehab—to view it. My mom had begged me to buy the house and move to Vernonville to “keep an eye on” Grandpa. I suspected she was likewise urging him to keep an eye on me, worried about my knee and my mind-set; being forced out of the military and discovering I couldn’t work as a cop had depressed me for a while.

  Being offered the job at Fernglen Galleria sealed the deal. Having Kyra nearby was a huge bonus. I bought the house, even though it was a bit of a fixer-upper. The last renter had done some damage—I suspected he was either a rock star wannabe practicing Keith Richards’s hotel-room-trashing techniques, or had eight children or a pack of wolves. I’m not patient enough to be the do-it-yourself type; the “measure eight times, cut once” philosophy of construction, plus the need to make fourteen trips to the home improvement store in the middle of every project, drive me batty. So, I was hiring the work done as my mall paycheck allowed. The project currently underway was tiling the kitchen floor, since the renter had managed, in some never explained way, to scorch and burn several spots in the linoleum.

  “I see progress,” Kyra said, surveying the tiled but ungrouted area in the breakfast nook that had expanded by several feet since she’d last visited. My current handyman, a flaky college kid trying to earn money for spring break, had left a wet saw pushed up against the butcher-block table, and the untiled portion of the floor was nothing but raw plywood. I hadn’t laid eyes on him in almost a week and he wasn’t returning my calls.

  “Yeah, I expect House Beautiful to show up any day now,” I said. The clutter of trowels, buckets, and pallets of tile annoyed me, so I pulled some of Gran’s Noritake china from the cupboards and some Molson from the fridge, and led the way into my family room so we could watch Dancing with the Stars, our Monday-night ritual.

  “So, what’s with the murder?” Kyra asked during the first commercial break. She popped a piece of sushi into her mouth, having started with the éclairs.

  I told her what I knew about Jackson Porter’s death, which wasn’t much. “Had you heard any talk about his development, Olympus?” I asked. “Among the mall merchants, I mean?”

  “Some. I wasn’t worried about it.”

  “You run a magic store,” I pointed out. “I doubt Olympus was going to cut into your business.”

  “Exactly.” She relaxed back against the terra cotta–colored leather sofa and took a swallow of beer.

  “So who was worried?”

  She slanted me a glance from her long, narrow eyes. “Mostly the clothing boutique owners and the sporting goods people. Finola Craig, Terrence Chou of the Upper Limit, Colin at Pete’s Sporting Goods. She was trying to get an injunction or a stay of execution or whatever you call it to stop the construction. She was working with Dyson Harding at the university, the archeologist who was against the resort because it was being built on Native American burial grounds, or something like that.”

  “I vaguely remember reading about that,” I said. I had to admit I paid more attention to the international news, especially updates on the military’s progress in the Middle East, than the local news.

  A growling noise came from behind us, and Kyra and I looked over our shoulders to where a giant rust-colored cat sat behind the sofa, twitching his truncated tail. Fubar. I’d adopted him as a young stray a year ago when I’d been released from the hospital. He had a mangled ear and a shortened tail, and I didn’t know if he’d tangled with a coyote, a car, or an abusive owner. After our first month together, when I’d imprisoned him indoors in order to keep him safe, we’d come to an agreement: we could each come and go as we pleased. To that end, I installed a cat door and he stopped flaying the furniture. Now, he blinked his golden eyes at me, demanding applause. A dead mouse dangled from his mouth.

  “I hope you found that outside, Fubar,” Kyra said, eyeing the rodent with distaste.

  “Of course he did,” I said with more certainty than I felt. Fetching a roll of paper towels from the kitchen, I persuaded Fubar to give up his trophy by bribing him with some hamburger. I was pretty sure Fubar only bothered to hunt in order to coerce me into upgrading his menu. I quickly shrouded the little victim in Brawny and put him in the outside trash. When I returned, Fubar had settled on Kyra’s lap and was purring loudly as she provided commentary on the samba talents of an Olympic javelin thrower.

  “You could shake your booty better than that,” she told the cat. “I don’t know why they’ve never had a roller skater on the show.”

  “The show is called Dancing with the Stars,” I said, emphasizing the last word.

  “Oh, please. Like you ever heard of that guy who was in a boy band two decades ago. Or that reality ‘star’ whose only source of protein is insects.”

  “Call up the producer. Maybe they’ll book you.”

  “Nah. I couldn’t be away from the store that long. How about your dad?”

  I choked on a bit of curried chicken. “Please, don’t give him any ideas.” The idea of being confronted with my father’s latest face-lift on TV every Monday was enough to ruin my appetite. I glared at Kyra.

  Laughing, she changed the subject. “So, have you met the new cookie man? He is hotter than a snickerdoodle straight out of the oven.” She flashed a lascivious grin.

  “Cookie man?”

  “The guy who bought the cookie franchise in the food court,” Kyra said impatiently. “Jay Callahan. I introduced myself today. We’re going out Thursday night.”

  “Fast work.” I dragged the conversation back to the murder. “If you hear anyone talking about Porter or the resort, can you let me know?”

  “You want me to spy for you?”

  “Not exactly. Just fill me in on the gossip. People say things in front of you that they don’t mention to me. It’s the uniform.”

  “Are you supposed to be investigating this murder?” Kyra asked, keeping her gaze on the television where a soap opera star who should have had more dignity, despite her character’s thirteen marriages, four illegitimate children, amnesia, and stint as a circus aerialist, writhed on the floor as her professional partner hopped over her. “I’d think Captain Was-a-bitch would rather have you ticketing litterbugs.”

  “Maybe. But the detective in charge of the case has made me his ‘mall liaison,’ so I’m going to do as much liaisoning as I can get away with, Woskowicz be damned.”

  Five

  When Tuesday morning rolled around,
I found myself more eager to get to the mall than I had been in months. I knew it was the challenge of the murder drawing me in. That, and the opportunity to round up more reptiles, of course. Feeling generous, I bought Joel a huge cinnamon bun at the coffee place where I got my first cup of caffeine. I put it on his desk with a flourish and he beamed.

  “Thanks, EJ!”

  “It’s about time,” Weasel growled, dark stubble shadowing his jawline. “Let’s do the turnover briefing so I can get out of here.”

  “I’m twenty minutes early,” I pointed out, shoving my gym bag under my desk.

  “Yeah, well, ya want a medal?” He rolled his chair over beside me, and I leaned away from his funk, a mix of sweat, cigarette smoke, and old beer. Either the man never washed his uniforms—completely possible—or he’d been boozing it up on duty—also possible. “Nothing much happened last night,” Weasel said, not referring to any notes. “Those stupid-ass kids tagged another car about oh-one-hundred hours.”

  “What’d they write this time?” Joel asked around a mouthful of sticky bun.

  “ ‘Love the Lord Ur God With All Ur Heart,’” Weasel sneered, making a heart shape in the air for the last word.

  “ ‘And with all your soul and all your mind.’ Matthew 22:37,” Joel supplied. “What?” he asked when Weasel and I stared at him. “I paid attention in Sunday school.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think the owner of that Jaguar XKE is liking the Bible very much right now,” Weasel said with a laugh that turned into a phlegmy cough.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Nah,” Weasel said. “Quiet as a tomb.” He shoved to his feet, checking his cell phone. “I’m outta here. When the boss comes in, tell him I’ll see him at Rauncho’s at the usual time.”

  “Sure thing, Weasel,” Joel said, making a note.

  When Weasel had plodded out, carrying a rank-smelling cooler, I turned to Joel. “Doesn’t the concept of a Christian graffiti gang seem like an oxymoron? I mean, isn’t there something in the Bible about thou shalt not deface your neighbor’s property?”