All Sales Fatal (10 page)

“Looking to see if I could find any hint about where Captain W might have gone,” I said. “Or why.”

“What’s in there?” Joel nodded at the shoe box.

I couldn’t think of a reason not to tell him. “A gun.”

He made a disgusted noise. “So, we’re not allowed to have weapons at the mall, but he is? Not fair.”

This didn’t seem to be the moment to enlighten Joel about life’s fairness in general or the relative fairness of policies related to bosses and minions. I didn’t share my suspicions with him; I simply returned the gun to the bottom file drawer and relocked it. I needed to think about what to do with it. Should I tell the police? Leave it be? Wait for Captain Woskowicz to return and ask him about it?

“Did you find anything else?” Joel asked as I joined him and we returned to the front office.

“Nothing interesting. No pocket calendar with a notation for a vacation to Daytona that he forgot to mention.” Suddenly feeling antsy, I told Joel he could handle dispatch while I patrolled for a while. I might only be the temporary boss, but I wanted to do it right by getting out to talk to the mall merchants and the security officers on duty. And I’d start with cookie king Jay Callahan… with whom Captain Woskowicz had chatted mere hours before disappearing.

When I rolled my Segway to a stop by Lola’s, Jay was serving a string of customers five deep. I watched him as he worked, appreciating his efficiency, the way he actually listened to his customers, and his bright smile. He caught me watching him and smiled wider, mouthing, “Just one sec.” I nodded and loitered until he dispatched the last customer with a two-foot-in-diameter cookie frosted to look like a volleyball with the words “Way to go, Norton Netters” scrolled in blue icing.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” I asked, nodding at the cookie.

“From a book.”

I thought he might be serious.

Without asking, he poured me a cup of coffee and proffered it with a flourish. Pouring himself a cup, he joined me at the counter. “This feels like a professional visit, not a social one.”

I thanked him and blew on the coffee, wondering how he knew. As if he’d read my mind, he said, “I keep an eye on you, you know.”

I didn’t know what to read into that, so I stayed silent, slightly flustered by the look that went with the words. “I noticed you chatting with Captain Woskowicz on Wednesday,” I said, stirring my coffee even though I hadn’t put anything in it.

“You ‘noticed’?” The look he gave me told me my casual act wasn’t fooling him.

“Okay.” I put down the coffee stirrer. “Don’t spread this around, but Captain Woskowicz hasn’t shown up for work the last couple of days. Some friends he meets regularly haven’t seen him. He’s not answering his phones. I reviewed the camera footage and
noticed
him stopping by here. So, I’d like to know what you talked about Wednesday afternoon.”

Jay whistled softly. “Missing, huh? His vehicle?”

“Gone.”

“Police?”

“Uninterested.”

Jay nodded. “Couldn’t expect them to get excited yet, not without evidence of foul play.”

He looked a question at me, and I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to tell him I thought someone might have tossed Woskowicz’s house. And I certainly wasn’t going to bring up the recently fired gun.

“I wish I had something helpful to tell you, but we were just shootin’ the shit, you know? March Madness. He’s picked Duke to go all the way. I like UCLA.”

“Are you from California?” I interrupted.

A smile crept across his face at this evidence of my interest. “I spent some time there as a kid growing up.”

“Me, too.” I’d done more than spend time there; I’d been raised in a ten-thousand-square-foot house on the beach in Malibu and lived there until I graduated from high school and joined the military. Now my time in California seemed like another life, almost like a book I’d read or a movie I’d watched long ago.

“I know.”

I kicked myself mentally; I’d forgotten he’d met my dad, Ethan Jarrett, the actor. “Of course you do. Anyway…”

“Anyway, that’s about it. He got coffee and put in about fifteen packets of sugar. He ordered two peanut butter cookies to go.”

“Two?” That piqued my interest. Could he have been planning to meet someone?

Jay gave me an indulgent look. “Don’t go reading too much into that, EJ. Half my customers order two or more cookies for themselves. Not everyone’s as into health and fitness as you are.”

And as he was, I had noted before. Strong biceps showed beneath the short sleeves of his orange tee shirt, and the way he moved, the way the shirt strained across his chest and back, told me he’d put in some serious hours at the gym and/or competing in some sport. I halted those thoughts and said, “How did he seem? Happy? Nervous? Upset?”

Jay shrugged. “I don’t know him that well. A little agitated, maybe. He spilled a sugar packet on the counter and went after it before I could wipe it up, letting loose with the kind of language you’d hear in a biker bar.”

“You spend much time in biker bars?”

“Hardly any now.” He grinned. “I put it down to the caffeine and sugar.”

“It looked like he was carrying a bag—did you see what was in it or notice what store it was from?”

“Sorry, EJ.”

I shrugged it off. “It was a long shot.”

“So.” Jay looked a little ill at ease. “Do you have a boyfriend? Significant other?”

I tucked my hair behind my ear like I do when I’m nervous. “You mean besides my husband?”

“Husband!” He yelped the word, then looked around sheepishly. “I’m sorry. You don’t wear a ri—”

My grin clued him in, and he gave me a mock glare. “You don’t have a husband.”

I shook my head, pleased to have gotten under his skin. “Nope. You?”

“No husband,” he said. He relented when I gave him a look. “Or wife, girlfriend, significant other, or any friends with benefits.”

“That’s comprehensive,” I said, slightly startled.

“Thought you might as well know.” A customer with four kids under ten was approaching, and Jay cast them a look as he asked hurriedly. “You?”

“None of the above.”

With a satisfied smile, he turned to serve the harried-looking woman, and I got on my Segway, resisting the urge to look back as I glided away.

My next task
was to locate Harold Wasserman and see if, by chance, he’d had any meaningful conversation with Captain Woskowicz on the day the latter disappeared. Checking in by radio with Joel, I learned that Harold was down by the movie theaters. The theaters were on the ground floor, between Sears and Macy’s, so I rode the elevator, stopping to hold the door for a woman in a wheelchair. We both faced outward on our wheeled vehicles as the elevator descended, watching the activity below us through the elevator’s glass walls. I glimpsed Grandpa Atherton, suited up as the Easter Bunny, with a little boy on his lap, and a gaggle of teens wearing the red, green, and white of the Niños Malos just passing the fountain. The dark-haired girl in the middle looked familiar…

Mentally urging the elevator to go quicker, I pivoted the Segway and faced the door, ready to charge out the moment it opened. The elevator landed with a gentle thump, and I whizzed through the doors, speeding past startled shoppers as I sought to catch the girl. I was fairly certain she was the
one I’d seen with Celio Arriaga. I was conscious of Grandpa Easter Bunny turning his head as I went past, of the lush greenery around the fountain riffling in my wake, and saw that I was closing in on the five teens. One of them stepped into a store and the remaining four—

A toddler wandered into my path, headed for the fountain. I jolted the Segway to a stop, skewing it to the left so it squealed in protest. The child’s mother snatched her son out of danger by grabbing him by the back of his overalls and hauling him to her chest. Her eyes were big.

“I’m sorry—” I started. I climbed off the Segway and approached the pair, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. The teens I’d been hoping to catch up with turned into a side hall.

“You almost ran over Micah!” The mother’s voice hovered between anger and panic, and Micah began to bawl, more because he’d been prevented from reaching his destination than out of fear, I thought.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, knowing I shouldn’t have been going so fast. The Segway’s top speed is about twelve miles an hour, and I’d been doing close to that, far too fast for a mall crowded with people on a Saturday.

“Ride!” Micah suddenly demanded, stretching out his arms to me.

I was shaking my head even before the mother turned hopeful eyes to me. “I can’t,” I said. “Mall policy. Insurance. And I’m on duty.” I pulled a coin from my pocket. “Micah, would you like to throw the nickel in the fountain and make a wish?” His grasping little hand closed over the nickel and his tears stopped. He studied me cautiously, blinking wet lashes.

I was congratulating myself on successfully distracting the kid and doing my part for customer relations when the little hellion flung the coin at me.

…

By the time
I parted from Micah and his mom, the teens had disappeared. I prowled a couple of corridors, but they were goner than a genie sucked into his lamp. With a sigh, I turned and motored back toward the theaters, hoping Harold was still there. The Fernglen Galleria Cinema occupied a wing plastered with film posters advertising the current films and coming attractions. Glass-fronted ticket booths faced the corridor, with a concession stand visible behind them. The scent of popcorn hit me as I rounded the corner and passed an advertisement for a movie that seemed to feature vampire zombies.

The reason for the heavy popcorn smell was immediately obvious: a white lake of popcorn buried the floor to a depth of an inch or two. The Segway’s wheels crunched over some kernels, and I got off, kicking the popcorn out of the way as I walked. It was like scuffing through autumn leaves. I wondered briefly if the theater was engaged in some weird advertising ploy, but then noted Harold talking to a couple of sullen-looking adolescent boys and an angry man in a red vest who clearly worked for the theater. He thrust a broom into one boy’s hands and gave the other a large dustpan.

“And if you’re done before the next show starts, I won’t call the police,” the manager said.

He was still giving the boys a talking-to as Harold left and came over to me. “I think we’ve got it sorted,” he said. A smile quivered behind his gray mustache. “In my day, it was cherry bombs down the school toilets. Now—” He gestured toward the popcorn explosion.

“How did they do it?” I asked, envisioning the boys hijacking the movie theater’s popcorn machine. Had they parked it in the hall, filled it with Orville Redenbacher, and left the lid open?

“Brought in garbage bags full of the stuff,” Harold said. “One of their brothers works here, and they thought it would be funny.”

“Used to work here, I’ll bet.”

We paused by the Segway and Harold asked, “Any word from Captain Woskowicz?”

I shook my head. “No. But I’ve got a question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“Were you in the office when the captain left on Wednesday?”

Harold thought for a moment, scratching his nose. “Yeah, I was,” he said. Beating me to my next question, he added, “But he didn’t say anything like, ‘Hold the fort, Wasserman, while I catch some steelhead out in Montana,’ or ‘See you in a week when I get back from having my appendix out.’”

I laughed but asked, “Did you notice if he was carrying anything? A shopping bag or a shoe box, maybe?”

Harold scrunched his eyes almost closed. “Now that you mention it, I think he did have a bag with him. He left, and I thought he was gone for the day, and then he came back, oh, ten minutes later. He popped into his office and was back within a couple minutes. I figured he’d forgotten something. It seems to me he might have had a bag with him when he came in, but I don’t remember seeing it when he left again. But I don’t remember
not
seeing it either, if you get me.”

I understood. “Let me know if you remember anything else,” I said.

“You think the boss is in trouble? Real trouble?” Harold’s forehead wrinkled.

“I hope not.”

Nine

I walked back
into the security office late that afternoon to see Joel on the phone. “Here she is now, sir,” Joel said. He thrust the phone at me, whispering, “Helland.”

“Officer Ferris,” I said formally.

Without preamble Detective Helland asked, “You said something about a Mrs. Woskowicz when you dropped by here on Thursday. Do you have her name and contact number?” His voice was clipped, all business.

“There are three ex-Mrs. Woskowiczes,” I said. “As far as I know, there isn’t a current Mrs. W. Why?”

“We need someone to make a formal ID.”

The news hit me like a horse kick to the gut. “He’s dead?” I felt rather than saw Joel jerk his head toward me. “How?”

“Shot.” Helland seemed disinclined to say more.

“Where?”

“Just give me the name and number, EJ,” Helland said impatiently.

Subdued, I gave him Paula Woskowicz’s name. “I don’t
have her phone number,” I said, realizing I hadn’t gotten a number from any of Captain W’s wives and didn’t even know Aggie’s last name.