The Bubble Gum Thief (20 page)

“December thirty-first,” Victor said. “On New Year’s Eve, you guys ordered another box of Chewey’s Cinnamon.”

“So we need to go one more back,” Waller remarked.

They sifted through the orders and found that another had been placed on September 20. “That’s it?” Dagny asked.

“Should be,” Waller said. “But it don’t say how many were in each pack. I guess that’s not on the form?”

“Can you tell by the price? Five dollars and eighty cents?”

“Nah, it fluctuates. Could be the ten, twelve, or fifteen.”

“Do you have a specific person you deal with at the wholesaler?”

“Just whoever answers the phone. They’ve got a big call center. Lots of people there.”

Dagny glanced at her watch. It was eight thirty. Maybe the call center would be open. She found the phone number on the order form and called from her cell. A bright and cheery female voice answered.

“This is Sandi at HLP Wholesale, can I help you?”

“This is Special Agent Dagny Gray of the FBI. I need to find out some information about an order placed by Waller’s Food Mart on September twentieth, last year. Is it possible for you to look it up on your computer system?”

“I’m going to have to transfer you to the legal department.”

“No, I just think...” It was too late. She heard a few seconds of overwrought instrumental music before an answering machine informed her that the legal department did not open until nine. She hung up her phone.

Victor laughed and grabbed her phone. “Did your rep have a name?” he asked.

“Sandi.”

Victor hit redial and then held up his hand for silence. “Hi, this is Crosby Waller,” he said in an inexplicable Southern drawl. “Hey, Barbara, I’m so glad you are there. My daddy owns Waller’s Food Mart here in Bethel, and I work here. I think I did something wrong, so I was wondering if you could help me out?...Yeah, you see, when I order stuff, I’m supposed to write down exactly
what was ordered, and my daddy’s going through the papers and checking, and I realized I didn’t write down some information on one of them, and I know it’s stupid, but if that information isn’t there, I’m going to get a whuppin’ like you wouldn’t believe...September twentieth of last year...Yeah, I know, it’s completely stupid. My dad’s insane—likes to rip that belt off mighty fast.” Mr. Waller frowned, but Victor shrugged. “I know I ordered Chewey’s Cinnamon, but I don’t know if it was a ten- or twelve- or fifteen-pack, or what...Order number two-one-two-three-three-eight...Yeah, thanks...Okay, I got it. You have no idea what you’ve saved me from.” Victor ended the call and handed the phone back to Dagny. “It was a ten-pack. But if you want,” he said, “you can send a subpoena to their legal department to confirm it.” Dagny was impressed; her potted plant had some skills, after all.

Ten sticks, ten crimes? Maybe.

Dagny turned to Waller and his son. “Thank you for your help today, gentlemen. I would like to ask one more favor—that you don’t talk to the press about this.”

“Of course we won’t,” Waller said. “That’s what we told the man last night.”

It was strange that Fabee had sent only one agent the night before. “You remember his name?”

“Brian, I think. Black guy.” Waller reached to his back pocket and pulled out an overstuffed wallet. A few loose papers fluttered to the ground when he opened it. He leaned down to pick them up and found the card he was looking for. “Not Brian. Brent.” He handed the card to Dagny. “Keep it. He gave Crosby one, too.”

She smiled. Brent Davis was working for Fabee.

They spent the rest of the day canvasing Bethel homes, inquiring about a man in a grey hooded sweatshirt who stole some gum on New Year’s Day. In the evening, they checked into the Econo
Lodge in nearby Monticello. Victor dropped his suitcase in his room, then joined Dagny in hers.

“Time to learn something,” she said, withdrawing a fingerprint kit from her bag. She put on a pair of nitrile gloves and removed the doorway tape measure they’d bagged at Waxton’s Savings and Loan. The magnetic strips at each end were about six inches long and an inch wide. She brushed the magnets with a white powder, coating the entire surface.

“What kind of powder is that?”

“Lanconide,” Dagny replied.

“Why not carbon black?”

“You can’t use black on black. You use carbon black on white or clear surfaces.” Dagny lifted the top magnet by its edges and tapped the side gently against the table. “To create an even distribution,” she explained. She blew softly over the top of the strip, but the powder didn’t adhere.

“No prints?” Victor asked.

“None.” The top magnet was of no help. She tapped the bottom magnet against the table, revealing a couple of prints—a thumb and an index finger. Dagny photographed the prints with her digital camera, then lifted them with a long piece of transparent tape, which she stuck to a piece of black card stock.

“The photographs actually work better,” she explained, “but you always keep a copy.” Dagny placed the tape measure back in its bag and retrieved the pen with Waxton’s fingerprint. It was a Bic—white plastic with recessed black lettering. “Round surfaces are always tricky.”

She grabbed another brush and dusted the pen with carbon black. “Partial thumb, partial index. That should be enough.” She photographed the pen, then lifted the prints with tape and stuck them to a white piece of paper.

“Since the prints are rounded, they might not show well in the photographs, so the paper is actually the more important
record in this case.” She compared the features of the fingerprints on the black paper with those on the white. It wasn’t even close.

“Those prints aren’t Waxton’s.” She repeated the process with the pen Adams had used to sign an autograph for Victor, but the prints were too smudged to be of use.

“Drat,” Victor said.

“Drat?” Dagny removed Adams’s security proposal from her bag, tore off the front and back pages, and set them down on top of a newspaper. She coated the pages lightly with ninhydrin. “You use ninhydrin with porous objects—paper, cardboard, fabrics. You can’t use too much pressure, though, or you’ll destroy the print.”

“Aren’t they supposed to turn purple?” Victor asked, peering down at the pages.

“Sometimes it takes a little while to develop.”

“Cool.” He sat down on the bed and folded his hands in his lap, then began to whistle the theme song from
Growing Pains
until Dagny shook her head. “Can we get some dinner? I can’t keep skipping meals like this.”

She’d been living off pretzel nuggets and adrenaline. It was hard to understand why anyone would need more than this.

At Loretta’s the tables were lined with chrome, the booths were covered in vinyl, and a tiny jukebox sat at the end of each table. Dagny flipped through the selections—a lot of Neil Diamond and Billy Joel. Victor ordered the diner’s world-famous chicken potpie. Dagny ordered a salad and picked around the feta cheese.

“So we didn’t need the pen, I guess? The one with J. C.’s fingerprints. I forgot that his prints would be on the proposal,” Victor said.

“It’s always nice to have a backup. You still did well.”

“Can I ask you a question? And if you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll drop it completely.”

“Go ahead,” Dagny said.

“How are you doing this? How are you keeping it together?”

“I’m not keeping it together, Victor. I’m just tossing it all in the closet to deal with later. Believe me. It’s eating me up inside.”

“Why work the case, then? Why throw yourself into the vortex? The case doesn’t need you. It doesn’t need us. Fabee wants to catch this guy, too, even if it’s only to stake his career.”

He was right, of course. Fabee was perfectly competent and adequately motivated to work the case. “I wish I could give you a good reason, but I only have bad ones.”

“Revenge? Retribution?”

Those things and more. “I’ll drop you off this boat before it sinks. You’ll come out okay,” she promised.

“I don’t care about that.”

“Well, you should. You’ve already got a mark against you for signing up for the Professor’s class.” It must have bothered him to hear this, because he set his fork down and stopped eating. “Don’t worry. You’ve got potential. You could actually be something. Someday. If they give you a chance to learn.”

“I’m learning a lot right now.”

“This isn’t the way to learn, Victor. We’re not working the case like someone should. We’re just picking up scraps.”

“What are you talking about? We know there are ten sticks of gum, right? So maybe our guy’s planning ten crimes. And we know he’s a tall guy—around six four or so. And that he quoted a bank robber doing time in Coleman—so maybe he knows this robber, maybe he used to be in jail with him. And now we have some prints that might match something. Do you think Fabee’s fabulous team has that much?”

It was a good question. “Let’s find out what Fabee’s Fabulous has.” She pulled out Brent Davis’s card and dialed his number.

“Hello?” he answered.

“Have a little time for an April fool?”

“Dagny Gray! How’s Bethel?”

“So you know about my banishment here?”

“Wasn’t my idea.”

“Where are you?”

“Sitting at the counter, staring at you.”

Dagny looked across the room. Brent waved, and she called him over. Victor slid over in the booth to make some room, and the handsome black man in a fitted suit sat down next to the pale boy in a floppy one. The contrast between the two of them made Dagny happy.

“Nice to see you both,” Brent said.

“You stalking us?” Dagny asked.

“I was actually here first. Get the cheesecake, by the way. It’s delicious.”

“Why are you still in Bethel?”

“Antiquing.”

“So you’re not going to give me anything.”

“We’re under strict orders not to.”

“Well, you just divulged your strict orders, so—”

“Open the floodgates?” Brent laughed.

“What flavor?” Victor asked.

“Marble. Get the marble.”

“What if we got something you missed?” Dagny asked.

“Sounds unlikely.”

“But maybe you’d trade? Give us a glimpse into the magic of Fabee’s Fabulous.”

Brent chuckled. “Is that what you’re calling us?”

“Victor came up with it. So a trade?”

He paused. “You didn’t get anything.”

“We did.”

Brent looked at Victor. “Did you get anything?”

“We did,” Victor said.

“Offer it up. If it’s good, I’ll give you something in return.”

“Only a fool would take that deal.”

“But you’re an April fool, remember.”

Dagny figured she had nothing to lose. “Twelve sticks. Twelve sticks means twelve crimes.”

“I already knew that, Dagny.”

“It’s not twelve, Brent.”

He offered a sheepish smile. “Okay, I don’t know. How many then?”

“What can you give me for it?”

The waitress approached, and Victor ordered the marble cheesecake. Brent drummed his fingertips on the tabletop. “I had a sketch artist meet with Crosby this afternoon. So we’ve got a good idea of what he looks like. I can get you a copy of the sketch.”

“When?”

“I’ll e-mail it when I get back to the motel. You can’t reveal where you got it.”

It was something. “Okay.”

“So how many sticks?”

Dagny paused. “Ten sticks.” She explained the methodology behind this deduction.

“Okay then.” He nodded. “I’ll send you the sketch.”

Back in her motel room, Dagny checked Adams’s proposal. Several prints had turned purple. She held them next to the prints from the magnetic strip. And though she was no expert, it looked as if Adams’s prints matched those on the faulty tape measure.

Adams had an alibi for Mike’s murder, so he was either an accomplice or he was being framed. The latter seemed more likely to Dagny; no one, not even a murderer, was likely to put up with Adams’s company for long. She photographed the fingerprints and sent the images to the Professor. While she did this, an e-mail arrived from Brent. She opened the attachment and looked at the sketch. The man in the drawing was hidden behind big sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt. He looked exactly like the Unabomber. She called Brent.

“Not helpful,” she said. And when he laughed, she followed with, “Not funny.”

“Okay, I may have oversold its utility. But it has some value. The guy does a Brutus thing in DC, and he does the Unabomber in Bethel. He likes a good homage. That’s something.”

“You still owe me.”

“I know. And I’ll deliver. I promise. But for now, I’m just a cog in the machine. I don’t know anything you don’t know. If I get something, I’ll get it to you.”

“I’m sure.”

“You have my word.” He paused and then added, “You’re not someone I want mad at me.”

After hanging up, Dagny took a shower and changed into a long Georgetown T-shirt—a gift from Mike. It had only been four days since his death. She felt tired and weak. It hurt to breathe. She thought about ants, and how they carried fifty times their body weight. She wondered if it hurt them as much as it was hurting her. The bed called, and she climbed beneath the covers.

At 4:00 a.m., she woke and dressed for her morning run. Outside the motel, a man was loading the newspaper boxes. The day’s
New York Post
featured a picture of Crosby Waller on the cover. The front headline blared, “The Boy and the Bubble Gum Thief.”