All Sales Fatal (31 page)

“That he killed Woskowicz.”

“Yes.” He clicked his beer bottle onto a coaster. “Our working theory is that Silver and Woskowicz were in business together, reselling the guns Silver siphoned off from his police contracts. Maybe Silver approached Woskowicz, knowing the man was open to shady deals, or maybe Woskowicz suggested that it would be easy for Silver to certify the guns destroyed and then resell them. We won’t know until Silver shows up. Regardless, they went into the illicit gun-sales business together.”

“That matches with what Starla and Aggie told me. Was Silver down here on Tuesday when Arriaga was shot?”

“There’s no record of it. I think Woskowicz killed Arriaga, possibly because he became a threat to him somehow—Woskowicz had the murder weapon in his possession, after all—and then Silver killed Woskowicz.”

“Why?”

“We haven’t figured that one out yet, but it doesn’t matter.
It’s possible Woskowicz demanded a bigger cut than he was getting and Silver balked. Hell, it’s even possible he shot Woskowicz for sleeping around on his sister and dumping her.”

I hadn’t thought about that. “Do you think Aggie Woskowicz was involved?”

“It’s early days yet,” Helland said noncommittally. “Right now, there’s no evidence that she knew anything about the guns. Although she called Silver after talking to you today, and we think that phone call is what spurred him to run. His secretary said that after his sister’s call he told her to cancel the rest of his appointments for the week, lugged a box of files and his laptop to the car, and took off.”

“Aggie warned him?” I felt guilty about having talked to her. “I’m sorry.”

Helland shrugged it off. “She might have called to warn him, or she might have called just to chat and happened to mention your conversation. Either way, it’s not your fault. If you hadn’t uncovered the link between Allied Forge Metals and Woskowicz, we’d still be wandering around in the dark. If you tell anyone I said that, I’ll deny it.” A half smile went with the words, and I found myself smiling back. He didn’t seem nearly so aloof when he smiled.

“So what happens now?”

“We catch Silver. We’ve got an APB out on him, and I don’t think he’ll get far.”

“So, it’s over?” I felt let down. It was curiously unsatisfying to accept that Captain Woskowicz killed Celio Arriaga for an unknown reason and Silver shot Woskowicz. I knew proving motive wasn’t necessary in the courtroom, that means and opportunity were more important for a conviction, but I really wanted to know
why
.

“Pretty much.” Helland stood and I followed suit. He looked down at me, a hint of understanding in his eyes.
“There’s always questions left at the end of an investigation.”

“I suppose so. When you interrogate Silver, will you let me know what he says?”

“Maybe.”

That was more like the Detective Helland I’d gotten to know and tolerate than the man who’d come over to tell me where the investigation stood.

“What does ‘maybe’ mean?”

“Just what it sounds like,” he said, draining his beer and setting the bottle down. “It ‘may be’ that you’ll do something helpful that prompts me to share details of an investigation with you. Or it ‘may be’ that you’ll annoy me so much with your constant assumption that you can do my job better than I can that I’ll make sure the only update you get is via the newspaper.” He sounded disgruntled, but I didn’t feel any real animosity behind his words. It was hard to read the expression in his hooded eyes.

“Great,” I said sunnily. “Can’t wait to hear all about it if—sorry,
when
—you round up Billy Silver.”

He rolled his eyes and preceded me to the door, stooping to pat Fubar as I opened it. “Has Fernglen found a replacement for your ex-boss yet?” he asked, straightening.

“As a matter of fact, I interviewed for the job today,” I said.

“I hope you get it.”

“Thanks.” I was surprised and pleased by his vote of confidence.

He passed me on the way out the door and paused a moment on the walkway. He had a glint in his eyes that in someone else I’d have taken for humor. “That way, you’ll be too busy to stick your nose into my investigations in future.”

I didn’t slam the door; I shut it firmly.

Twenty-five

I wasn’t exactly
biting my nails on Monday, but I was more anxious to hear who’d gotten the director of security job than I’d expected to be. Consequently, I spent large chunks of the morning patrolling, talking to the security officers and merchants, and generally fidgeting. I lunched with Grandpa before he donned his costume for a shift as the Easter Bunny, and filled him in about William Silver.

“You cracked the case,” I told him, munching an apple on a ledge that girdled a room-sized planter near the fountain. Grandpa sat beside me. Every few seconds, I had to brush away a fern that kept tickling my ear. Shoppers trickled past, with one or two of them stopping to toss a coin into the fountain.

“You did,” he said, “by discovering the link between Woskowicz and Silver. I’m surprised Detective Helland isn’t making you a job offer. Speaking of which—?” He looked at me inquiringly.

“No word,” I said, trying to sound like it didn’t matter. I
swung my foot idly. “It may be a week or two before they make a decision, for all I know. I don’t know how many people they were interviewing.”

He hopped spryly down from the ledge. “I’ve got to suit up. I’ll talk to you later, Emma-Joy.”

After Grandpa left, I Segwayed back to the office and decided to make a real effort to block the interview from my mind. Casting about for something else to focus on, my gaze fell on the camera screens, currently monitored by Vic Dallabetta. In the confusion of the investigation I’d forgotten that Captain Woskowicz had, in all likelihood, disabled the cameras in the Pete’s wing. If it was only him and Silver running the recycling business—as in recycling guns to new owners—why did he sabotage the cameras? Did Silver bring the guns in through that entrance? That made no sense. Woskowicz couldn’t have a parade of gun buyers marching through the security office to pick out hardware. Goose bumps prickled my arms. There was someone else involved. Someone who worked in the mall.

“EJ, are you all right? Do you see something suspicious?”

Vic’s voice broke through my reverie. She was watching me, a wary expression on her face, and I realized I’d been staring fixedly at the monitors. “I’m fine,” I said. “Sorry. Just thinking.”

I hurried back to the director’s office and called the Vernonville Police Department. Asking for Detective Helland, I learned today was his day off. Asking the desk sergeant to have Helland call me tomorrow, I hung up, figuring my bright idea would keep until then. I sat in front of the computer and pulled up the camera data from the Tuesday Celio died. I needed a project to distract me and I’d found one: I was going to sift through the footage from that day again, all of it if I had to, and examine Celio’s every moment in
the mall. It was painfully tedious work, and after two hours I took a break to fetch a cup of hot coffee and squirt lubricating eye drops into my eyes, which were burning from the effort of focusing so closely on the grainy images.

I kept a legal pad at my elbow and noted when and where I spotted Celio, Enrique, or Eloísa. They’d come into the mall through the lower Macy’s entrance at two thirty-seven. They were in a mini-wedge formation, with Enrique slightly in the front and Celio and Eloísa a half step behind on either side. They turned right and walked toward the Sears, popping into a couple of stores on the way. Reaching Sears, they turned around without going in and headed back the way they’d come, on the other side of the corridor. Halfway down it, they rode the escalator up to the second level. It looked like the overlong and thready hem of Celio’s jeans got caught on the top elevator step because he jerked his leg hard to get free. The next time I found them, Enrique and Eloísa were munching big pretzels and Celio held a cup with a Chik-fil-A logo. Eloísa had her purse tucked under her arm so she could hold the pretzel with one hand and a small paper cup with mustard or cheese in the other.

I tracked them through a series of innocuous store visits and some goofing off near a cell phone sales kiosk until they turned into the Pete’s wing and I lost them. Twenty minutes later, Eloísa and Enrique emerged from the wing and headed toward the bunny enclosure, in keeping with what Eloísa had told me. They’d apparently finished the pretzels because Eloísa carried only her purse, and Enrique had nothing. It was four o’clock by now, and I decided to quit for the day. Other than answering a couple of phone calls, I’d been glued to the computer all afternoon. And learning pretty much nothing, I thought, discouraged. I could resume my scan of the images tomorrow… or give it up and accept that the deaths played out the way Helland said they did. If there
was another person involved with Silver and Woskowicz, he—or she—had lost his gun supplier and was out of business. Presumably.

Changing into a pair of yoga pants and a long-sleeved tee shirt so I could stop by the Y for a weight workout on my way home, I stuffed my uniform in my gym bag. Harold had replaced Vic in the office, and he told me about his grandsons’ dying the water in their fish aquarium red with a tablet from an Easter egg coloring kit. “My daughter thought some predator had gotten into the tank and slaughtered the fish,” he said, laughing. “‘What were you thinking, Marcy’ I asked her. ‘A great white? It’s only a ten-gallon tank, for heaven’s sake.’”

I chuckled obligingly.

“Aren’t you off shift by now?” he asked, glancing at his watch.

“Technically, yeah.” I smiled. “I’m on my way out. See you tomorrow.” Slinging my gym bag over my shoulder, I left, threading my way through the stop-by-the-mall-on-the-way-home-from-work shoppers. A man passed me carrying an Easter basket dripping virulent pink grass in a sporadic trail behind him. A mother pulled two children in a wagon like the one Jen kept on display outside her store. One of the kids waved at me and I waved back. “Want fish,” he crowed, pointing past me.

I turned to see what had caught his attention. A teenager with long black hair and jeans tight enough to cut off her circulation strolled past, a whale from the Make-a-Manatee store tucked under one arm. The sight triggered a memory and I stopped dead. Eloísa had had a stuffed animal—manatee? seal?—with her when I passed her and Enrique and Celio the day Celio died. I hadn’t seen it in any of the camera footage I’d looked at today, and I’d gotten up to the point where she and Enrique left the Pete’s wing, leaving
Celio behind to conduct business of some sort. Ergo, Celio had been in the Make-a-Manatee store. Excitement thrummed through me. That didn’t mean it was the
only
store he’d been in while separated from his cousin and Enrique, but he’d definitely been in there—and Mike Wachtel had denied it.

Spinning on my heel, I strode toward Make-a-Manatee.

Twenty-six

Make-a-Manatee was quiet
when I entered, with no birthday parties or flying cupcakes. A woman and a little boy wandered past the bins full of unstuffed animals, the boy wanting a starfish, a shark, and a sea lion. “Just one,” the mom reminded him.

I spotted Mike Wachtel in the party nook, setting up for a birthday party. Standing precariously on a chair, he tacked a computer-printed banner that read “Happy Birthday, Sierra” over the table. A folded pink paper tablecloth and a plastic bag of pink utensils peeked from a cardboard box on the table.

“Need some help?” Without waiting for Mike’s reply, I took the tablecloth, flapped it open, and let it drift down onto the table.

At the sound of my voice, Mike looked over his shoulder. If he was pleased to see me, he disguised it well. “EJ.” His tone was flat. The bruises on his face were even more lurid
today, and I could see the boy’s mother cast him an uncertain glance.

“Maybe you’d rather have a game from Jen’s Toy Store?” she asked her son, steering him toward the door.

Mike heaved a big sigh as they departed and teetered on the chair, his cast making him unsteady. I reached up a hand to help him down and he gripped it hard. As soon as he was safely down, he let go.