All Sales Fatal (8 page)

“I’ll keep this simple,” he said, his voice a surprisingly pleasant baritone. “See this?” He held up the gizmo from which dangled two wires. “Someone deliberately disabled these cameras. No way did this happen by accident.”

Whoa. I exchanged a quick glance with Joel and then told Paula, “How about if I meet you at Captain Woskowicz’s place in an hour, okay?”

“Yeah, great,” she said, nodding. “I can get some papers graded.” With a waggle of her fingers, she left.

I turned back to the repairman, relieved that Captain Woskowicz’s ex-wife was no longer listening in, and said, “What do you mean? By the way, I’m EJ Ferris.”

“Brad Eaton,” he said as we shook hands. “And I meant what I said: someone sabotaged the cameras.”

All sorts of questions ran through my head, starting with “Who?” dashing past “How?” and ending with “Why?” but I only asked, “Can you fix it?”

Brad gave me a pitying look. “Piece of cake.” He returned to the monitor bank and went at it with his screwdrivers, canned air, and other miniaturized tools.

I drew Joel away, out of earshot, to stand by the credenza that held the coffeemaker. The scent of stale coffee hovered in the air. Joel’s eyes were big with excitement as he said in an explosive whisper, “It had to be Woskowicz! He was on duty when the cameras went belly-up.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” I cautioned, although the same idea had immediately leaped to my mind; that was
why I’d wanted to get rid of Paula Woskowicz. “And let’s keep this between us for now, although I guess I have to tell Curtis Quigley.”

“Should we call the cops?” Joel asked.

I shook my head. “As far as we know, no crime’s been committed. None of the merchants on that wing have reported any losses or break-ins.”

“Maybe the heist is set to go down tonight, or later this week,” Joel suggested, clearly eager to volunteer for stakeout duty.

“I suppose it’s possible,” I said, “but no one had any way of knowing the cameras would still be out, that it would take so long to get them repaired.” Or maybe someone did. I remembered that the camera-repair company had been surprised to hear from me, had had no record of a service request from Fernglen. I’d written it off to poor record keeping on their part, but what if Captain Woskowicz had never called them? That would explain why he was pissed at me when I told him I’d gotten in touch with them.

The whizzing of a cordless screwdriver and a clang told me Brad had finished securing the console cover. I thanked him and pointed him across the hall to the mall operations office for payment. Strolling over moments later to let Quigley know about the sabotage, I found he was out of the office, so I wrote a brief note and left it with Pooja, feeling cowardly and relieved at the same time. Retrieving my gym bag from under my desk, I checked in with all the officers on duty to make sure there were no crises brewing, rifled our files for Captain Woskowicz’s home address, and left to rendezvous with his second ex-wife.

Seven

I pulled up
in front of Captain Woskowicz’s house to find Paula waiting out front in an aging green sedan. The shadows had lengthened, and when I killed the ignition and the heater cut off, I noticed the air was definitely chillier than it had been earlier. The calendar might say one week shy of spring, but it still felt plenty wintery. Pausing to assess the building before I got out of my car, I noted a snug, two-story brick house with a steep roofline and small front yard. Frankly, it was homier than I’d expected from Captain W. From his lurid tales of his sexual conquests, I’d pictured him in whatever the modern-day version of a bachelor pad is—a high-rise condo with a swimming pool and hot tub?—not this cul-de-sac home with trimmed shrubs just beginning to bud out and a red-painted mailbox at the curb. I wondered which of his wives, if any, he’d been married to when he bought this place.

Paula exited her car and was halfway to my Miata when
I climbed out and locked it. She dangled a key on a P-shaped keychain. “Have you been inside?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she said, brushing a strand of coppery hair off her face. “I waited for you.”

“So, you’re a teacher?” I walked beside her up the concrete walk to the front door. She didn’t look much like a teacher to me, but she’d said something about grading papers.

“Eighth-grade social studies,” she said.

“Do they still make the kids memorize the Preamble to the Constitution in middle school?” I asked. Rote memorization had fallen out of favor in educational circles, I’d heard, but I still remembered the Preamble from when I was thirteen and had to recite it in class. “‘We the people, in order to form—’”

“Oh, yeah,” Paula said. “I get them to memorize it by encouraging them to text it to their friends.”

I looked at her with respect. “That’s thinking outside the box.”

She shrugged. “You have to meet the kids where they are, you know?”

We had reached the door, and she bent to insert the key. “Wait a minute.” Leaving her on the stoop, I crossed to the attached garage, wanting to see if Captain W’s car was inside. The garage door was rolled down and locked, however, and had no windows. I rejoined Paula, who was shivering in her rib-knit sweater, and motioned for her to unlock the door. The key clicked in the lock, and the door swung open soundlessly.

Paula stepped in without hesitation and I followed after a brief pause. It felt weird to invade Captain W’s space like this, without an invitation and with him gone. We stood in a small, vinyl-floored entryway that was essentially a toehold within a carpeted living room. The furniture was a
strange mix of what I’d expected—black leather sofa and big screen TV—and the unexpected: a chintz-covered wing chair and an upright piano.

“It was his mother’s,” Paula said of the piano, following my gaze.

I didn’t ask if he played; I didn’t think my image of him could stand it if she announced he was a concert-caliber pianist or played jazz piano with a combo on Tuesday nights.

“The garage door is in the kitchen,” Paula said. She strode across the living room and I followed, noting some peanut shells and an empty beer can on an end table. Its single drawer gapped slightly, and the TV remote lay on the floor.

The kitchen was more in line with my expectations: a bland space with black appliances, fridge magnets featuring insurance company and beer logos, a few dishes in the sink, and a couple browning bananas in a bowl with those miniscule fruit flies flitting around them. Most of the cabinet doors were slightly ajar, and none of the drawers were completely closed. I was about to comment on the sloppiness when a whirring sound suddenly broke the silence and I spun, looking toward the hall.

Paula laughed. “That’s just Kronos,” she said, “on his wheel.”

Feeling like a total moron, I crossed the room to what I assumed was the garage door. Pulling it open, I found myself staring into a pantry stocked with enough canned soups to sustain a family of four—much less a man and his hamster—for several weeks. Cheddar cheese and bean with bacon predominated. Ugh. I backed away and tried an identical door two feet to my left. Success, of a sort. Weak fluorescent lights stuttered to life on the ceiling, illuminating the garage. The neatly swept, tool-filled, carless garage. Wherever Woskowicz was, he’d driven there under his own steam. I turned
off the light, closed the door, and told Paula, who was looking a question at me, “No car.”

“Huh.” She nibbled on her cuticles again. “Well, what do we do now?”

Before I could answer, a muted thud sounded from the direction of the bedrooms. Adrenaline spurted through my veins. “That was definitely not Kronos,” I said, “unless he’s the size of a baboon.” I wished I had the gun I’d carried as a military police officer. Confronting a possibly armed intruder without a weapon of my own would be sheer stupidity.

“C’mon,” I said, beckoning Paula toward the back door. “Let’s get out of here and call the police.”

“No way,” she said. “This is—was—my house, and I’m not letting any lousy, opportunistic thief ransack it. Hey, you back there,” she called, raising her voice to a shout before I could stop her. “We know you’re here. We’ve called the police.”

I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 911 on the words. I couldn’t leave Paula alone to face the intruder, so I wanted backup on the way. The operator asked, “What is the nature of your emergency?” at the same time I heard footsteps in the hall.

“Paula? Is that you?” a woman’s voice called.

“Oh my God! Aggie?” Paula’s voice went from avenging Valkyrie to exasperated in two seconds flat.

“Never mind,” I told the operator, hanging up.

A short, plump woman emerged from the dark hallway, flame red hair spiraling to her shoulders in a thick, springy mass. Mrs. Woskowicz Number Three, I presumed.

“You about gave me a heart attack,” she complained to Paula. She entered the kitchen and went straight to the fridge, extracted a beer, popped the top with a bottle opener she pulled from a drawer, and took a healthy swig. She was
forty-fiveish, with skin dark enough to suggest some African-American or Hispanic heritage, small features, and designer jeans spray painted over rounded hips and full thighs. Red platform pumps peeped from beneath her jeans.

“Me? You took five years off my life, Aggie. What are you doing here anyway?”

“Feeding Kronos,” the shorter woman said with a sniff that wrinkled the skin on her pug nose. “Who are you?”

I introduced myself and said we were sorry for scaring her. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where your ex-husband might be?” I asked.

“He’s dead,” Aggie announced flatly. She tilted the beer bottle to her mouth and drained it.

Her announcement startled me, and I gazed at her with a mix of suspicion and doubt.

“And you know this how?” Paula asked skeptically. “You’re so doom and gloom, Aggie, always focusing on the negative.”

“He’d never willingly leave Kronos to fend for himself,” Aggie said. “Never. He loved that little guy.”

The slight catch in her voice and the tears starting to her eyes seemed overdone to me. Apparently, Paula thought so, too.

“You’re such a drama queen, Ag. No wonder Denny divorced you. No man could put up with that ‘woe is me, the sky is falling’ mopeyness from his cornflakes clear through to bedtime.”

Aggie drew herself up to her full height, maybe five-one, and glared at Paula. “Well, at least I held on to him for six years, Miss Sunlight Shines Outta Your Ass. You barely lasted three. So who around here needs an attitude adjustment, huh? Huh?” She thrust her chin forward pugnaciously.

Before the confrontation could degenerate into a catfight, I asked, “Aggie, do you have any proof Woskowicz is dead?”

After a moment’s thought she reluctantly said, “No. But he is.”

A
ding-dong
from the front door brought all our heads around. Paula and Aggie jostled each other trying to get to the door, and I followed more slowly. Without even looking to see who was on the stoop, Paula fussed with the dead bolt before realizing it wasn’t engaged, and then pulled the door wide while Aggie muttered, “What gives her the right? It’s more my house than hers because I just moved out last year. I don’t know where she gets off acting like she still lives here. I mean, I’m Wosko’s most recent wife. Just because she was married to him when he bought this place doesn’t give her any special rights.”

I made soothing noises and stopped midstep at the sight of the cop on the doorstep. Tall, rangy, and young, he sported a serious expression.

“Hello!” Paula greeted him with a welcoming smile.

“Oh no, what’s happened?” Aggie asked. “Is it Wosko?”

I stayed silent. The young officer looked at each of us in turn, somewhat confused, then said, “We got a report of an interrupted 911 call. Is everything okay here?”

“Absolutely,” Paula said, “but thank you for coming by.”

“No, it’s not,” Aggie said, shouldering her way forward. “My husband’s dead.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am,” the policeman said politely. “When—”

“Ex-husband,” Paula put in. “And he’s not dead. At least if he is, she has no way of knowing it. Unless…” She trained a suddenly suspicious gaze on Aggie. “Maybe you’d better come in,” she said to the policeman, her eyes never leaving Aggie.

“Are you implying—” Aggie began.

I took that as my cue to leave, sidling past Woskowicz’s former wives and the patrol officer as he stepped reluctantly into the mini foyer. I didn’t blame him for looking wary.
“Let me know if either of you hear anything from Woskowicz,” I said. “You know where to reach me.”

Midway through the
next morning I stood in front of the camera screens in the security office, watching as the views changed. The system was timed to show ten seconds of footage from each operational camera before automatically jumping to the next view. With each screen divided to show views from four cameras at a time, it made for a busy display. I watched as a gaggle of little girls—a birthday party, I’d bet—streamed out of the Make-a-Manatee store, each clutching a new stuffie. Behind them, a woman emerged from Nailed It, flapping her hands to make her manicure dry faster.