The Scent of Murder (18 page)

I rode the escalator to the second floor and sat on a bench in front of our appointed meeting place and studied the Halloween masks and costumes displayed in the window. The space had once housed a bookstore, but it had gone out of business. Now whoever rented it sold Halloween costumes up until the end of October, after which the space was given over to Christmas decorations. At the moment the place wasn't doing much business, but I was certain things would pick up, once the kids got out of school and dragged their mothers in to buy fake blood and fangs—two favorites that never seemed to go out of favor.

I was feeling restless, so I got up and walked inside. The store housed the usual array of monster masks and makeup. I walked out again and looked around. Amy wasn't there. I went over to Barney's, got myself a cup of coffee, and came back. She still hadn't arrived. She was now officially five minutes late. I decided to give her an hour. I spent it pacing, eating a Wendy's hamburger, drinking a second cup of coffee, and making another tour of the Halloween store. I left precisely at four and sped back to the store.

“Let me guess. Amy didn't come,” Tim said when I walked in.

I was telling him he should get a job telling fortunes, when Manuel sauntered out from the back room. “I could have told you she wouldn't show,” he said.

“You did last night,” I reminded him. Pickles jumped on the counter and rubbed her head against my hand.

Manuel ran the palm of his hand across one of the cages. “Why did you go?”

“I guess because I wanted her to be there.”

“I don't get it,” he said.

“It's simple. At least I know I did the right thing. My conscience is clear.”

And it was until the phone call came. Then everything changed.

I
was making room on the shelves for the new shipment of bird toys we were getting in tomorrow, when the phone rang.

Tim answered and handed me the receiver. “Who is it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Some guy. He asked for you.” He went back to fixing one of the filters.

I wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder. “How can I help you?” I enquired, as I kept on working.

“Is this Robin Light?” the person on the other end of the line asked.

I told him it was.

“Good.” The voice was male, but it sounded muffled, as if he had wrapped a wool scarf around his mouth and was speaking through that. “Now listen carefully.”

“Who is this?” I demanded.

He cut me off. “Just listen,” he ordered. “We have Amy. I want you to do exactly what I say. If you don't, she's going to get hurt.”

I straightened up. “This is a joke, right?”

“Wrong.”

And I heard a scream.

The scream rose in a crescendo of pain. It seemed to go on forever, even though it probably lasted thirty seconds at the most. Then there was silence, and the only sound I heard was the burbling of the water in the fish tanks. I became aware that my left hand was aching. I glanced down. I'd clenched it into a tight fist. My knuckles were white. I felt my nails digging into my palm. When I opened my fingers, I had four perfect half-moons incised in my palm.

“Now do you understand?” the man said.

My mouth was dry. My tongue seemed to be having trouble forming the word “yes.” I said it anyway.

“Good.”

A few seconds later, I heard Amy say, “Robin, do what he says” and a moan.

Then the man came back on. “Follow my instructions, and your little friend will be fine. If you don't, I'll ship pieces of her back to you, understand?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Pay attention.” He told me to write down his instructions.

My hand was shaking as I hung up the receiver.

“What's going on?” a voice asked in my ear.

I must have leaped at least a foot. It was Manuel. He was looking at me curiously. So was Tim. “Don't sneak up on me like that,” I snapped.

“Bad news?” Tim asked.

I blurted it out. “Amy's been kidnapped.”

“You're kidding, right?” he said, echoing my words.

“I wish I were.”

Manuel sucked in his breath and tugged up his pants. “Why would anyone do something like that?”

A lot of answers came to mind, and I didn't like any of them.

Tim put his screwdriver down on the counter and shook his head. “Jesus,” he said. “Jesus.” He turned around in a circle and hit the counter with the flat of his hand. “God damn.”

I walked over to where Tim was standing, removed my pack of cigarettes from my bag, extracted one, and tried to light it, but the flame from my lighter didn't seem to want to connect with the tip of the Camel. I managed on the third try.

“What does the caller want?” Tim asked.

“A small envelope that's supposed to be beneath my desk.”

Tim stared at me. “Your desk?”

“That's what the man said.” I bit my cuticle. “Amy must have put it there when she ran out the door.”

So I'd been right and George had been wrong, I thought, as I walked towards the back room. Manuel and Tim followed. Someone had been searching for something when they went through Dennis Richmond's apartment and my house and store. I wondered if that someone was Toon Town. And then I wondered why I'd let myself be talked out of my idea. It was a female thing, I decided. A facet of my personality I thought I had under control, but obviously didn't.

The macaw screeched as we went inside the room. Tim looked around.

“From what you said, I didn't think Amy had time to hide anything.”

“The back door is right next to this room. She must have run in, tossed whatever she was carrying under the desk, and run out the door. That wouldn't have taken her more than a couple of seconds. I just hope it isn't drugs.” I knelt down in front of the desk. Tim was so close to me, I could feel his breath on my neck. I worked the fingers of my right hand into the space between the desk and the floor. I didn't feel anything.

“So?” Tim said.

I stood up. My fingertips were covered with dust. I wiped them off on my jeans. “It looks as if we're going to have to move it,” I said.

Manuel stood off a little, while Tim and I lifted the desk up. We carried it about half a foot and put it down. It was a lot heavier than I remembered it being.

“Look,” Manuel cried, and he pointed to a three-by-five inch tan paper envelope lying on the floor amid the dust bunnies.

It was close to where the back of the desk would have been before we moved it.

“I see it.” I bent down and picked the envelope up. It was sealed with Scotch tape. I felt it. Whatever was inside was hard and lumpy. My first thought was rock cocaine, but then I realized it couldn't be. The envelope was too small to be holding an amount worth any real money. Tim and Manuel crowded around me as I peeled the tape off and opened the flap. They gasped as I poured the contents into my palm.

The diamonds sparkled in my hand, passports to another world.

“How much do you think they're worth?” Manuel asked, in a hushed whisper, temporarily overcome by the sight.

“If they're perfect one carats, maybe two or three hundred thousand, maybe more.”

Tim picked up one of the gems between his thumb and forefinger and held it up to the light. “Amazing. Really amazing.”

I had relatives that were supposed to have bought their way out of Nazi Germany with stones like these. I wondered where Dennis had planned to go, as Tim handed the diamond to me. I put all of them back in the envelope and resealed it.

Tim shook his head. “Where did Amy ever get something like this?”

I thought of my last conversation with her. “From her father's apartment.”

Tim snorted. “Boy, my father sure didn't keep things like this around our place.”

“Maybe he wasn't planning on pulling a disappearing act.”

“Even if he was, he could never have mustered together more than twenty extra bucks in cash. Twenty bucks doesn't take you very far. Maybe that's why he never left.”

“Neither does two or three hundred grand. Not today—not if you're planning on disappearing for good.” I weighed the packet in my hand. “I wonder what else Dennis had socked away?”

Tim sighed. “We're definitely in the wrong business.”

“True.” One thing about stealing stolen money: the person you steal it from can't very well complain. Who knew? Obviously Amy. Maybe Dennis's brother. Maybe his wife.

“So what do you have to do with that?” Manuel asked, pointing to the packet and interrupting my thoughts.

I glanced at my watch. “I'm supposed to leave it on the water tower over by the Lincoln Square apartments in three hours.”

“How about Amy?” Tim asked.

“After I drop the packet off, I'm to go to the phone booth on Plum Street and wait for a call that will tell me where to go to pick her up.”

“Wow.” Manuel tugged on his goatee. “This is intense. Really intense.” He started drumming on the wall.

I told him to stop it.

“Sorry.” He sat down. Two seconds later he was tapping his foot on the floor.

I found myself gritting my teeth. “Manuel, cut it out.”

“Right.” He gave me a sickly grin. “This whole thing is getting to me. I think I'm gonna take a walk. You mind?”

I told him I didn't. Actually, I was glad to see him go. At the moment, he was just an annoying distraction.

“I'll be back in a little while.”

“Whatever.”

Manuel fingered the buttons on his shirt. “If you promise someone you're going to do something, do you think you should?”

“That depends on what it is.”

For a second, I thought Manuel was going to say something else, but he didn't, he just turned and headed for the door. I walked toward the phone.

“What are you doing?” Tim asked.

“Calling the police. They're better set up to cope with this kind of thing than I am.”

Tim swallowed. “I hope that's the right thing to do.” The doubt in his voice was palpable. His body was vibrating with tension.

“Believe me, so do I.” I was reaching for the phone, when it rang again. The sound pierced the silence. My heart started thudding. “It's probably just a customer,” I said.

“Probably,” Tim agreed, but he'd gone pale.

It rang again. The smallness of the room seemed to amplify the sound.

“Jesus,” Tim murmured. “Aren't you going to get that?”

I picked up the next time it rang. “Yes?” I said. I could hear the catch in my voice.

“I'm not a customer,” the voice on the phone informed me. I listened closely, but the voice was so muffled I couldn't identify it. “Modern electronics is a marvelous thing, isn't it?” the man continued. “All these cheap listening devices that you can buy through the catalogs. I can hear and see everything you and your employee say, so you follow my instructions to the letter, or your little friend gets hurt.”

I knew who it was. The electronics stuff cinched it. It couldn't be anyone else. “Toon Town,” I said.

“Just do what I said.”

“This is you, isn't it?”

I heard a click. He'd hung up. “Fuckin' son of a bitch,” I yelled into the receiver. “As long as you can hear me, I just want to let you know, I think you're a piece of pond scum.” I kicked the desk.

“What's going on?” Tim demanded as I rubbed my foot.

“I'll spell it out for you.” I reached for a pen and paper.

“But he was just here for a couple of minutes,” he exclaimed, after he'd finished reading what I'd written.

“It was long enough.” These days a listening device could be installed in seconds.

We searched the room, even though I knew it was a futile exercise. The devices Toon Town had planted could be anywhere. They could be hidden in anything: a pen, a wall plug, the bottom of a box. For all I knew, he could be standing outside and listening to what we were saying with an electronic ear. I dashed outside on the off chance that he was and I could spot him. I circled the block in the cab and looked in all the parked cars. But of course he wasn't there. That would have been too easy.

As I pulled up in front of the store, I debated about going to the police. I could drive down there right now. Toon Town wouldn't know. Unless he'd planted a bug in the cab too. The odds were against it. On the other hand, it never occurred to me that he would plant anything in the store. And my car had just been sitting out there. It was better not to take chances. I didn't want to upset him, even though I had a strong hunch that no matter what happened, he wasn't going to hurt Amy.

But I wasn't prepared to bet Amy's life on my intuition either.

I recalled the scream I'd heard.

It sure had sounded real.

But maybe it wasn't.

Maybe Amy had been faking.

Or maybe the scream had been prerecorded. You could get sound effect collections on CDs. I'd seen them on sale at Record Heaven. Which would mean she and Toon Town were in this together.

Maybe this was her way of getting me to give her the stones.

Of course she could have just asked.

Or come and gotten them herself.

So why hadn't she?

The most obvious reason was because she was afraid.

Of who?

Manuel had said she was scared she was being watched. I thought for a minute. And someone had gone through my house and ransacked my store. Maybe it wasn't a bunch of kids and Toon Town doing this stuff, after all. Maybe that's why Amy had staged this drama. If that were true, it would certainly make her behavior more understandable. On the other hand, she could be totally nuts.

Of course, Toon Town could actually
have
kidnapped her and be forcing her to tell where the stones were.

Maybe she hadn't met me at the mall because he'd grabbed her before she could.

Maybe she'd really been going to tell me everything.

And maybe I should go to circus school and learn to be a tightrope walker.

I rested my head on the back of the seat and closed my eyes. Suddenly I was seized by an overpowering desire to sleep. As I listened to the tree branches creaking in the wind, for some reason, I started thinking about the summer camp I'd gone to when I was seven and how much I'd hated it and how my mother had kept sending me back there anyway, even though I'd cried for two weeks before she put me on the train. And then I wondered if Amy had ever gone to camp and then I wondered why I was wondering. I yawned and opened my eyes. Even though I didn't want to, it was time to go back inside Noah's Ark. I got out of the car and crossed the sidewalk to the store. In the window, the cardboard witch, leaning against the stack of cat carriers, winked at me as I opened the door.

It was now eight o'clock. The next two hours took what seemed like ten to pass. Around eight thirty, Manuel came back to the store, spent ten minutes tapping his foot and jingling the change in his pocket, and left again, for which I was profoundly grateful. I was so keyed up that every sound he made grated on my nerves. Tim and I spent the rest of the time waiting on customers, rearranging the shelves, and mopping the floors. We didn't talk much. Given the circumstances, it was hard to think of anything to say.