All Sales Fatal (25 page)

“And the company that destroys them?”

“Allied Forge Metals.” Chucking his empty cup into the trash can, he muttered under his breath, “I must be an idiot.”

“Second thoughts?”

“And third and fourth,” he said, his eyes drilling into mine. “I can’t do this. I can’t involve a civilian.” He suddenly put his hands on my shoulders and gripped them, hard. I met his gaze without flinching. “Forget about it, EJ,” he said. “Woskowicz’s case is still open. I’ll find a way to the truth about Arriaga’s murder through that investigation.”

I blinked at him, unsure what to say, and he gave me a tiny shake. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I was still fumbling for a reply when he was half a block away.

Twenty

I trotted up
to the assembled self-defense students a couple of minutes late, apologizing. Grandpa gave me a cocked eyebrow that asked where I’d been, and I mouthed “Later” at him. All the students from Monday had returned, several complaining of sore muscles, and two new women had joined us. One was clearly the Rock Star manager’s sister, and the other was a woman who looked to be at least seventy. I thought she worked part-time at the fabric and yarn store on the first level. Despite a slight hump that suggested osteoporosis and a metal walker left at the edge of the mats, she gamely warmed up by marching in place and stretching with the rest of us. For the newcomers’ benefit, and to help the moves sink in for the others, I ran through the highlights of Monday’s lesson. “Your response needs to be automatic in a threatening situation,” I said as they practiced side kicks and elbow punches. “Your brain will freeze up; muscle memory needs to take over. Practice these moves
at home, on spouses, friends, your teenagers… anyone who’s willing. The key word here is ‘willing.’”

A couple students laughed, and we moved on to palm-heel strikes. “Twist your wrist back so the flat of your palm faces your attacker,” I said, demonstrating, “and pull your fingers out of the way by folding them up. You’re going to hit, or strike, with the hard, bottom part of your palm.” I smacked the base of my right palm against my left hand. Several students jumped at the loud popping sound.

“If you’re standing, aim for the nose or neck.” I beckoned Grandpa forward, and he rushed toward me like an attacker would. Thrusting my arm out sharply, palm first, I halted the strike just shy of his nose. “Don’t really hit each other with this one,” I cautioned. “You can do serious damage. If your attacker has managed to throw you to the ground, aim your palm heels at his groin or diaphragm, thrusting upward.” Grandpa and I demonstrated another couple of times before turning the students loose to practice on each other.

Starla, hair held back with a cloth headband, had paired up with Nina, who was making a game out of dodging Starla’s wimpy strikes. “My four-year-old granddaughter hits harder than that,” Nina said as I approached. “Like this.” Nina snapped off an impressive palm-heel strike that grazed Starla’s neck and sent her staggering back.

“Don’t make contact,” I said sharply.

“Accident,” Nina said, looking pleased with herself. Rotating her shoulders to loosen them, she backed off half a step. “Too bad I never took a class like his before. It would’ve been useful with my husband.”

Starla gasped, and my gaze fixed on Nina’s face. I could think of only one interpretation for her words. “Are you saying Captain Woskowicz beat you?”

“Not Beaner.” She shook her head. “My first. I met
Beaner at my gym while I was still married to Ron. We got to talking, and after a couple of months I told him about Ron hitting me. He helped me buy the gun that persuaded Ron not to mess with me anymore.” Her gaze strayed to a canvas tote sitting next to stiletto heels just off the mats. “I still carry it.”

Not sure how to reply, I turned to Starla, who was eyeing Nina with a combination of respect and trepidation. “Starla, set your feet like this.” I showed her how to center her weight and balance better. “Then use the power in your legs and core to launch your arm forward.”

“This is harder than it looks,” she said, wheezing a little as I tapped the backs of her knees to get her to flex them and put my hands on her shoulders to show her how to swivel at the waist. “Maybe I should get a gun instead.” She glanced at Nina’s purse.

“I’ve got nothing against guns if the owners get properly trained,” I said, “but you can’t have one with you all the time, and if you carry it in your purse, you may not have time to get it out if you’re attacked. And there’s always the threat of the attacker taking it away and using it against you.”

Looking thoughtful, Starla applied herself to the palm-heel strikes with enough determination to make Nina jump back, stumble, and fall on her well-padded fanny. I patted Starla’s shoulder, gave Nina a hand up, and tried not to giggle as Grandpa winked at me.

A series of
minor crises—a shoplifter, a lost six-year-old, and a defective fire alarm going off in Sears—kept me busy the rest of the morning after class ended. I didn’t have time to think about Helland or his rescinded request. When lunch time rolled around, I was ready for a break. “What’ll it be for lunch today?” I asked Joel. “I’ll buy if you fly.”

He smiled at me. “Thanks, EJ. That’d be a nice change. I’ve been bringing lunch from home lately because I’m saving to take Sunny some place nice for dinner after the movie. I was thinking maybe Red Lobster.”

I suppressed a smile and said, “I’m sure she’d enjoy that, Joel. Chik-fil-A work for you?”

Twenty minutes later, our sandwiches almost gone, I mentioned Cruz Guerra’s confession and arrest.

“No!” Joel’s mouth fell open. “A fourteen-year-old? No way.”

“That’s what I’d say, normally, but he’s one of the Niños Malos, so maybe.” An image of my brother Clint at fourteen crossed my mind: basketball obsessed, braces, just beginning to think about what kind of car he wanted when he turned sixteen. I didn’t think he’d ever held a gun. He was obnoxious and made fun of my acne, but he was no more capable of shooting a man in cold blood than our Bouvier, Rawhide, was. His life experience was a world away from Cruz Guerra’s, I thought.

“I found out Celio Arriaga was born in Richmond,” Joel said, “so my theory about New Jersey won’t work.” He slurped his diet soda noisily through a straw, looking downcast.

“Then we need a new theory,” I said briskly. “The first ones rarely pan out.” I didn’t feel I could share Helland’s information with him, so I suggested he do some research on Woskowicz’s wives. “Kyra’s convinced Woskowicz was at the battlefield park to meet a woman, a lover,” I told him. “Maybe it was one of his exes. Maybe they were tired of the same-old-same-old and wanted to put a little zing back into their love life.”

“Or that reporter he’s been seeing,” Joel put in, getting that excited look. He jostled his cup and grabbed it before it could spill.

“Good reflexes.”

I left him happily clicking away on the computer keyboard, trying to find out more about Nina Wertmuller, Paula Poupére Woskowicz, and Aggie Woskowicz. As I cruised the halls on my Segway, I tried to think of some way I could give Joel more responsibility, develop what I thought were some decent leadership tendencies in him. I should probably wait until I found out if I had this job for real, I decided, veering into the Pete’s wing.

This time, Starla was in. She had three belts draped over her plump forearm as she offered them one at a time to a customer standing indecisively in front of the three-way mirror. The customer, a woman of about Starla’s age and girth, wore a flowing skirt and top patterned in swirling blues and greens. I had to admit the belts made the effect less tentlike. Starla saw me out of the corner of her eye and gave me a nervous “just a minute” signal.

“What do you think?” The customer pirouetted on wedge heels.

I thought the woven fabric belt made her look like a sack of potatoes cinched around the middle.

“The colors go well together,” Starla said tactfully.

“I like the wide leather one,” I said. “It would give you—the outfit—more structure.” Not for nothing had I been raised in fashion-obsessed Hollywood; I recognized that belt as by far the most expensive one.

“Really?” She let Starla help fasten the leather belt around her waist, took a final look in the mirror, and said, “I’ll take the outfit and this belt.”

I waited while Starla rang up the purchase, wrapped the clothes in tissue paper, and told the customer about an upcoming sale. As soon as she was out the door, Starla turned to me and said, “Thank you.”

She walked toward me reluctantly, passing near a lamp
with a soft glow that burnished her hair to a golden auburn. My eyes widened. “You and Captain Woskowicz were having an affair,” I blurted.

She gasped and put a hand to her chest. “How did you—”

“He had a weakness for redheads.”

She sighed, a soft, sad sigh. “Denny always said he loved my hair. We were getting married, you know.”

I wasn’t surprised. “You knew his divorce wasn’t finalized yet.”

She nodded, looking faintly guilty. “Yes. Not until Friday. We were talking about eloping to Las Vegas next week.”

I’d have thought Woskowicz would have been leery of taking the marital plunge for a fourth time, but apparently not. Maybe he was one of those men who liked being married, only not for too long to the same woman. “Did Aggie know about you?” I was thinking about the soon-to-be-officially-ex-Mrs. Woskowicz’s contention that she dumped her husband.

“Oh, yes,” Starla said, looking simultaneously guilty and defiant. It was an expression more suited to a five-year-old than someone past fifty. “Dennis had to tell her. She kept pestering him, wanting to reconcile.”

Aggie had lied to me. To save face, or for a more sinister reason? “When did he tell her?”

“Three weeks ago,” Starla said. Tugging at a string near her ruffled cuff, she added, “She came to see me.”

“Here?”

Starla nodded. “She was so… so ugly! Called me a home wrecker and a bitch and”—she lowered her voice—“the
s
-word. She even said my clothes were hideous and she wouldn’t shop here if her other choice was to go naked the rest of her life.”

It sounded like the clothes insult had incensed Starla
more than the
s
-word. I didn’t mention that I kind of agreed with Aggie about the clothes. “Did she make any threats?”

“She said—oh. Oh!” Starla’s mouth gathered into a perfect little O. “Did she—do you think—?” Her hands with their pale pink nails fluttered in front of her mouth, as if she were considering clamping them down on the words that spilled forth. “No! Surely she couldn’t have—”

Killed Woskowicz? I wouldn’t rule it out. Aloud, I said, “I don’t suppose you were with Woskowicz the night he got killed? At the battlefield park?”

Starla shook her head. “No. I was doing inventory.”

“Alone?”

“No, Martha-Anne was here, too. One of my sales ladies.”

“Did you mention your… engagement to the police?”

“No.” She plumped out her lower lip when I raised my brows. “I didn’t see that my private life was any of their business. No one else knew except my son—he and Dennis really hit it off, and he was going to give me away if we got married here instead of in Vegas—and Aggie. I’ll tell them now, though,” she said grimly, “if it’ll put them on to that… that Aggie. She can’t be allowed to get away with it.”

I gave her Detective Helland’s number, and she wrote it down. “We don’t know Aggie shot him, though,” I reminded her.

Her nonresponse told me what she thought of that. “Did… Dennis”—it felt weird using his first name—“seem different at all the past couple of weeks? Did he talk about anything that might’ve been on his mind?”

“We mostly talked about the wedding. We’d both been married before, so we didn’t want a big fuss, but I wanted a nice dress—I found a lovely pearl-colored one with a matching jacket at Diamanté—and flowers. Orchids maybe,
or just carnations because I love their frilly petals. And we wanted to make sure they played our song.”

She was drifting far afield, but I couldn’t resist: “What’s your song?”

‘Walk Like an Egyptian.’ She giggled and her gaze strayed to a dressing room door.

Not your typical wedding fare. I got a sudden image of her and Woskowicz playing pharaoh and slave girl in the dressing room on his lunch hours. Now I understood why he’d come here so frequently. I shook my head to clear it. “Was he worried about something?” I prompted.

“I wouldn’t say worried, exactly. He was a bit uptight about his new business.”

I stood straighter. This was new information. “What kind of business?”

“He didn’t tell me. But he’d made enough money from it already that we were going on a ten-day cruise for our honeymoon. I’ve got the brochures right here.” She headed to the counter and rummaged through a drawer under the cash register, triumphantly holding aloft a slick pamphlet with a photo of a continent-sized ship on the cover.

“Did you ever meet anyone connected with his new business?”

“No. But he went to lots of meetings, mostly in the evening. I answered his cell phone once, though, when he was in the shower, and it was some man I didn’t know who asked me to let Dennis know he couldn’t make it to one of the meetings.”