All Sales Fatal (21 page)

Keifer gave me a pitying look. “Leave it to the police, EJ.”

His mention of the police made me guiltily aware that I hadn’t told Detective Helland about my conversation with Eloísa.

Rock Star was next up, and when I entered the teen accessories emporium, a pair of women in their midthirties were trying on lace gloves—for a costume party or theater event, I hoped. The manager, Carrie, caught sight of me and came clicking, tinkling, and jangling forward. “Oh, Officer Ferris, I forgot to tell you. That girl you were interested in? She was in here yesterday with a friend. I meant to call you, but then it got busy in here. But I’m telling you now.” She smiled like a dog expecting praise or a tidbit for performing a task.

“Thanks,” I said drily.

“Any time!”

I didn’t know how to broach the topic of guns with this barely twenty-year-old girl whose appearance and demeanor suggested that the most lethal weapon she’d ever owned was her car, or maybe a nail file. “Um, do you ever get people in here asking for something unusual?”

“Like what?”

“Well, like—”

“Oh, I know what you mean. Like tiaras and stuff? We don’t carry them in stock, but we can special order them. We get a lot of requests for those around Mardi Gras and
Halloween. Or real gems? You wouldn’t believe how many men wander in here thinking they can buy their wife or girlfriend a tennis bracelet or something.” She rolled her eyes at the thought. “It’s not like we’re a
jewelry
store—we’re an
accessories
store.”

Short of tossing the
g
-word into the conversation, I didn’t see how I could nudge her around to the topic I was interested in, so I gave it up and left.

“See you in class tomorrow,” she called after me. “My little sister wants to come, too.”

Call me ageist if you want, but if she was selling illicit weapons, I’d eat my belt. Besides—I gave it more thought—who was likely to buy guns? Probably not teens of the female persuasion. Women, maybe, for protection, or to shoot their husbands, and men for all sorts of reasons. Maybe a woman could get away with sidling into Rock Star, browsing the bracelets, and then asking for a gun on the side. Men? No way. A steady trail of adult men, even a trickle, would stand out in Rock Star like Hannibal’s elephant-mounted army in the Alps. Using that logic, I’d also have to eliminate Jen’s Toy Store and the Make-a-Manatee shop from consideration, I thought, surveying the wing.

Just as I reached this conclusion, a man in a Windbreaker with trousers a fraction too short strolled into Jen’s, bumping the wagon that still stood outside the door. A daddy buying a gift? I sighed. Men could shop for their kids at Jen’s or Make-a-Manatee, I guessed, so those stores would have to stay on my list after all. The most man-friendly place on the wing, Pete’s Sporting Goods, was next up, and I crossed the threshold to find myself beneath an upside-down canoe that hadn’t been there last time I was in the store.

“You’ve been doing some redecorating,” I commented to Colin Garver, pointing to the canoe above my head. “Are
canoes the new must-have element for home décor, like granite countertops or stainless steel appliances?”

“I think it has limited appeal as a home accent piece,” Colin said, a smile creasing crinkles into his tanned skin. He stood behind a counter near the door, and I joined him, hitching one hip onto the counter. “Although it might work for folks who like the ‘lodge’ or ‘mountain retreat’ look. I assume you’re not really here to look at canoes. Can I help you with a pair of Rollerblades or a Ping-Pong table?”

I hadn’t thought about Ping-Pong in years. Clint and I used to play—the Malibu house had a table in the basement rec room next to the home theater that seated twenty, the wine cellar, and the home gym—and I’d been good. Good enough that Clint refused to play with me anymore by the time I was twelve or thirteen. It might be fun to get a Ping-Pong table. I mentally smacked myself. I was not here to buy sports gear; besides, who would I play with? Fubar had many talents, but I didn’t think Ping-Pong was his forte.

Colin was looking at me quizzically. “Sorry,” I said, shaking my head to refocus on the present. “The mention of Ping-Pong zoned me out for a sec—childhood memories.”

“It’s making a comeback,” he said, but didn’t press for the sale.

“When I was here before, you mentioned that Celio Arriaga had been in here, asking about guns.”

Colin nodded but his gaze was on a customer examining sports bras. “Those are among my most shoplifted items,” he said, discreetly gesturing toward the bra-browsing woman.

“Do you get a lot of shoppers in here wanting to pick up a gun without bothering with the waiting period or the background check?”

“Define ‘a lot,’” he said. “We get a few each month.”

“What do you do?”

That snapped his attention back to me. “What are you implying?” With narrowed eyes and the cords on his neck suddenly more prominent, he looked intimidating.

“I’m just wondering what you tell them,” I said in a nonconfrontational voice.

He wasn’t totally pacified, but he responded, “Mostly, I explain the laws to them and they leave.”

“And those who persist? What if a woman came in needing a gun to protect herself from an abusive husband or boyfriend?”

“I don’t like where you’re going with this, EJ.” He rotated his shoulders back three times and then forward three times. “Have there been complaints?”

“No. Just humor me.”

Comprehension glinted in his pale eyes. “I see. Do you have a ‘friend’ some man’s using as a punching bag? Someone who needs a gun?”

I didn’t respond, letting him draw his own conclusions. The shopper disappeared into a dressing room with a handful of bras, and Colin didn’t even notice. “I get it. In such a situation, I might—I say I
might
—suggest she visit a gun show, preferably in another state, or check Craig’s List.”

Interesting. “Aren’t sellers at gun shows bound by the same rules you are?”

“In theory. In practice… that environment is a whole lot looser and less regulated. No bar codes. No sales orders on record with manufacturers like Beretta or Glock. A lot of the gun show business is cash-and-carry, so no credit card receipts or checks to track. The feds have been trying to keep better tabs on what goes on, but they don’t have the manpower. They won’t get it until some jerk shoots up a
playground or shopping center with a weapon bought at a gun show,” he finished cynically.

Asking Colin point-blank if he sold guns under the table would only earn me his hostility, so I thanked him and left, leaving him with the impression that I had a friend who wanted to solve her marital problems with a bullet. His response let me know that, at the very least, he was willing to, if not bend the rules, then point a would-be gun owner toward someone who would.

Sunshine streamed into the wing from the double glass doors leading to the parking lots, and I felt it drape across my shoulders as I crossed the hall toward the sunglasses place. It half blinded me, so I didn’t notice Detective Helland approaching until he was almost in front of me.

“Officer Ferris,” he said, his voice flinty. “Just the person I wanted to see.”

I got the sort of feeling in the pit of my stomach that used to attack me when told the principal wanted to see me in her office. Usually, I hadn’t done anything to merit a chewing out by the principal, so the feeling of dread was wasted. Today, however, I was conscious that (a) I hadn’t told Helland about Eloísa’s revelations, minor as they were, and (b) I was interviewing merchants on a topic he might feel he had a proprietary interest in, so to speak. Consequently, I managed only a strangled, “Hi.”

With his tall figure now blocking the sunlight, I could face him without squinting. His mouth was set in an uncompromising line. “A Mrs. Rosita Arriaga reported her daughter Eloísa missing this morning.”

I gasped.

He nodded grimly at my reaction. “Exactly. You call me one day to tell me about a fifteen-year-old who may know something about a murder, and the next day she’s gone
missing. I don’t like coincidences. In fact, I don’t basically believe in them.”

I didn’t either, at least not in this case.

“The cop who took Mrs. Arriaga’s report recognized the name and clued me in. What do you know about it?”

Tucking a hank of hair behind my ear, I said, “After I talked to you yesterday, I got a call saying that if I wanted to talk to Eloísa I should go to Phat Cat last night. I did and I hooked up with her briefly.” I filled him in on what Eloísa had said. “She was terrified of this Enrique, and when a truck came around the corner, she took off for the woods like Usain Bolt headed for the finish line. It was only a club security guy.”

“She didn’t come home last night,” Helland said, making it clear he blamed me for that. As galling and as worrying as it was, he was probably right.

“I didn’t see her after she ran off. That would’ve been a bit after ten,” I said. Where could the girl be? I pictured her alone, chilled and hungry, hiding in the strip of woods near Phat Cat.

“You wouldn’t hide her?” Helland’s tone was marginally less stern.

“I might if I thought there was reason to, but I’m not and I’d’ve told you if I were.”

“You didn’t tell me about your conversation with her.”

That was unanswerable, so I kept quiet. I didn’t think saying “I was going to” would cut much mustard with him. “She’s got a friend, a girl named Gilda whose sister works at Phat Cat,” I said. “I don’t know her last name.”

He stopped short of rolling his eyes, but the expression on his lean, handsome face said it all: I’d messed up big-time.

“I’m sorry.”

“You should be. You’re interfering with a police
investigation, and you’ve endangered a girl who may be a key witness. If this is an example of the type of ‘policing’ the military does, no wonder things are so screwed up in Afghanistan.”

“That’s not fair” hovered on the tip of my tongue, but I bit it. Underneath Helland’s hostility, I sensed worry for Eloísa and that kept me quiet. “Where are you looking for her?” I asked quietly.

“I’m not Missing Persons; it’s not my case,” he bit out. “I just volunteered to come over here and grill you because I was certain you had something to do with her going missing.”

“I can help—”

“You’ve helped enough. Call Detective Angela Barnes in Missing Persons if you see or hear from Eloísa.” He scribbled a number on a piece of paper from his notepad, ripped it out, and thrust it at me.

I took it numbly and stuck it in my pocket. Without another word, Helland wheeled and strode toward the door. As he moved away, the sun struck my face again, blinding me, and I turned away to stop the involuntary tears. Caused by the sun, I told myself.

Seventeen

Joel took one
look at my face when I returned to the office and asked, “Whoa. Who died?”

“No one.” Yet. I prayed it was true and that Eloísa was safe. I gave him the
Reader’s Digest
version of Helland’s tongue-lashing.

“That’s ridiculous,” Joel said promptly, reaching into a plastic snack bag for a celery stick, which he then crunched down on. “You know what you’re doing. It’s not your fault—”

I stopped him with a shake of my head. I appreciated his faith in me, but no one could absolve me of blame in this case. “No. I screwed up. I should have called Helland before I ever went to the club. If something happens to Eloísa, it’s at least partly my fault.”

Silence fell, broken only by Joel’s chomping, and I watched the monitors absently, not really seeing what was playing out on the screens. The sound of Joel’s teeth grinding against the celery made me feel like I was in a barn with
a team of cud-chewing oxen. All that was missing was the smell of dung.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen this?” Joel asked, pushing the
Vernonville Times
toward me. He pointed toward a paragraph on an inside page.

“New Development in Gang Killing,” read the headline. I skimmed the lines beneath it.

A spokeswoman for the Vernonville Police Department today revealed that the police have recovered the weapon used to kill Celio Arriaga, the man found outside the Fernglen Galleria on Wednesday. “We caught a break,” Lieutenant Erin McEvoy, VPD public affairs officer, told reporters yesterday. She went on to say that the .32-caliber gun was originally registered in California but had been turned in as part of a gun amnesty program run by the Mantua, New Jersey, police department. That department is investigating to determine how a gun thought to have been destroyed ended up back on the streets, according to McEvoy.

“Interesting,” I murmured, my gaze still on the newspaper. The article didn’t say where the police had acquired the murder weapon, but it almost had to be the gun from Captain Woskowicz’s office, didn’t it? I noticed the police PA lieutenant hadn’t said anything about an imminent arrest. Was that because they were convinced Captain W was guilty and you couldn’t arrest a dead man?

“I thought you’d think so,” Joel said, pleased. “So, do you think a crooked cop killed that gangbanger?”