Death of a Six-Foot Teddy Bear (6 page)

The coffee shop buzzed with late-night activity. The seat beside her was the last unoccupied one in the house. Through the window, she could see Suzanne and Kindra resting on a bench, surrounded by shopping bags.

Arleta looked at the woman over the top of her glasses. She had had twenty-twenty vision all her life, and now at seventy-six, she had to break down and get these geezer glasses. She took comfort in the fact that the spectacles were just for reading and that they had jewels on them.

The woman slumped into the chair beside Arleta. Her leather jacket had a patch on it that made reference to a Christian motorcycle organization. “I like your glasses.”

Arleta touched the rhinestones on her cats-eye frame. “If you’re going to go blind, you might as well go blind in style.”

“I won’t bother you for long.” The woman angled her head to get a better view of the counter. “They’re a little backed up. I’m just waiting for my hot tea and Italian soda. I get tired if I stand too long.” The woman took her hat off. The clarity in her eyes overpowered her distorted features. The effect was subtle, but it looked as though her skin had been pulled and stretched over her skull.

The woman touched Arleta’s wrist. Her fingers were puffy and blue. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. I have a disease that causes my skin to thicken and my hair to get thinner.” Her lips seemed frozen.

“You didn’t—” She must have shrunk back from the woman without realizing it. “Okay, you did freak me out … a little.”

The woman laughed a sort of trilling laugh, like birds singing. “I’ve been looking at this face in the mirror for a while. I forget that it shocks other people.” She put the hat back on. “So are you from Calamity?”

“Just visiting. We came for the outlet shopping, and one of my friends has a husband who was supposed to do the Inventor’s Expo.”

“I live in northern Nevada. Came here to have a talk with my ex-husband about our son. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” The woman shifted slightly in her chair. “I don’t know anyone else in this town, and you have a kind face. I have to have one of those difficult talks with my ex. I’m meeting him at a bench out by the gondolas. This place is so busy all the time. He said it would be quieter out by the lake. I’m sorry, I am babbling because I’m nervous.”

Arleta patted her hand. “It’s all right.”

The woman traced the grain of the wood in the table. Her finger moved in slow hypnotic circles. “I suppose it all happens for a reason, even these difficult talks. It all works together for good. That’s what God says, anyway.”

Arleta straightened in her chair. “That God guy again.”

“What do you mean?”

“You ever feel like God has your phone number, and He just keeps hitting redial?”

“Oh yeah.”

A man behind the counter yelled, “Number sixty-four, Italian soda and mint tea.”

“That’s my order.” The woman rose to her feet. “It was nice talking with you—”

“Arleta, Arleta McQuire.”

“I’m Gloria. Gloria Clydell. Maybe I’ll see you around the Wind-Up. My ex-husband is the owner.” She held out her hand.

Arleta opted out of giving her opinion about Dustin Clydell. There was probably a good reason she was his ex-wife. Gloria’s handshake was like a vapor passing over Arleta’s palm. “Is it fatal, what you have?”

“It can be. It’s spread to my lungs, the thick skin, so I have to be careful.” She leaned a little closer to Arleta. “Don’t look so glum. I’ve had scleroderma for fourteen years. The pain was awful at first, but it has sort of evened out.”

Arleta felt like she’d just run a long way in a hailstorm. Her skin tingled with cold and pain, and she didn’t know why. “I’m sorry, I—I don’t know what made me ask that.”

Gloria’s gaze did not flicker. Such kind eyes.

Gloria negotiated her way through the crowd to the counter. She emerged a few seconds later holding one plastic cup and one foam cup and returned to Arleta’s table. She wrapped the Italian soda in napkins. “Cold irritates the swelling in my hands. The napkins help. You have fun blogging.” She turned toward the door and then pivoted back around. “You might want to pick up that phone the next time it rings. You know, the God phone.”

Arleta mimed a phone to her ear. “I’ll think about it.” She watched until the crowd outside the coffee shop enveloped Gloria and she disappeared from view. She clicked open a file and typed:

I am sitting in a coffee shop near the Wind-Up Hotel surrounded by shopping bags but suddenly, the nifty sweatshirt I got with the sequin embroidered cat matters very little to me. Our trip has spun off in unexpected directions that I am sure Ginger will share about later. I have had so much fun buying a whole new wardrobe and finding a flashier new me. But I am still the same old me on the inside. My soul needs some sequins and a little sparkle too. A conversation I had with a stranger reminded me that you can shop all you want, fill your life full of stuff, but in the end you die just like everyone else. I am pretty sure I got another twenty years before the warranty expires on this old ticker. But in the end, I am not the one who gets to decide that, am I now? We live in a world that says if you got a problem, throw money at it: from deodorant to Botox, to those TV ads for all those pills (half of which I have no idea what they are for). From stinking armpits to aging, anything that makes us slightly uncomfortable can be warded off by buying the right thing. But we still can’t buy our way out of death. It comes to us all, no matter how rich or important we are.”

Arleta read over what she had written. How depressing. She pressed the Delete button and watched the cursor eat the text until the blank screen stared back at her.

With her heart pounding like a basketball under Michael Jordan’s control, Ginger peered through binoculars as Phoebe jumped on the railing and stalked toward the celebrity squirrel. “There must be a way to make that elevator work.”

Victoria rooted through cupboards until she pulled out a bag of almonds. “Only Dustin knows the code.” She tore open the package of nuts.

“Please, the lives of a very important squirrel and a cat that I dearly love depend on it.” If Phoebe killed Binky, the squirrel lovers would demand a death for a death. “Those doors to the convention floor are locked. The cleaning crew isn’t going to hear me knocking. You know Dustin. Can’t you guess at the code? People usually use their birthdays or something like that.”

Victoria rolled her eyes. “All right.” After tucking the bag of almonds under one arm, she swept past Dustin’s desk and grabbed a Day-Timer. “I have a couple of guesses.” She stepped into the elevator, placing the snack on a chrome shelf. “I am only doing this because I am mad at Dustin for missing our appointment.”

She didn’t care if Victoria’s motivation to help her was revenge. She’d take what she could get. “Thank you.” Ginger stepped in behind her.

“It’s a six-number code. I know that much.” Victoria grabbed a handful of nuts out of the package and munched. “Let’s try the address for the Wind-Up.” She pushed six numbers on a small panel the size of a calculator. Ginger held her breath. “Nope.” Victoria grabbed another almond and popped it in her mouth.

Ginger bit her thumb nail counting each nibble Victoria took. She was up to four. How could she be getting her snack fix at a time like this?

“What about Dustin’s birthday?” Even without binoculars, Ginger could see Phoebe slithering across the floor in hunter mode. Hunched down, the cat took six or eight steps and then stopped, ready to pounce. Her tail sliced the air like a switchblade.

Victoria flipped through the book. “Hmm. He’s got his ex-wife’s birthday on his list of dates to remember.”

“Tiffany Rose?”

“No, that’s his second ex-wife.”

“How many ex-wives does he have?”

“Two that I know of. He’s got Gloria’s birthday on here. That’s his first wife. I’ll try that date.” Victoria pressed the buttons on the panel. A whirring sound signaled the start of a motor. “What do you know.” Victoria stepped out of the booth. “Enjoy your magic-carpet ride.”

“Thank you.” The door closed, and Ginger pushed the number one on a larger panel on the elevator wall.

Her heart slammed against her rib cage. She pressed her hand hard against the glass. The floors slipped by.

Please, God, don’t let my cat kill that squirrel.

The doors of the glass
elevator slid open, and Ginger stepped out. None of the cleaning crew even lifted their heads in her direction. She raced toward the reptile catcher display, scanning the shelves and the railing above. No sign of cat or squirrel.

A flash of gray by a doorway caught her peripheral vision. A woman with her back to Ginger vacuumed about ten yards from where Phoebe had disappeared. Ginger scampered across the carpet and tapped the woman on the shoulder.

The woman jumped. Arms flew up. She whirled around and pulled her ear buds out. She clicked off her vacuum. “Goodness, you near give me a heart attack.”

“I’m sorry.” Ginger read the name on the woman’s light blue smock. “Cheryl, can you tell me where this hallway leads?”

“To the other convention hall.” Cheryl bent back, causing bones to crack somewhere in her body.

“Where the Squirrel Lovers’ convention is?”

“Yep.” The woman massaged her lower back and tilted her neck side to side. “Those squirrel lovers, they are something else, aren’t they? Nice folks.”

Any other time Ginger would have delighted in small talk about furry tree dwellers and the people who loved them, but right now the clock was ticking. “Is it open?”

“Oh sure, sure. I always unlock the doors first thing so the crew can move on through.” The cleaning lady studied Ginger. “Who are you?”

My name is not important, only my mission
. She cupped the woman’s shoulder. “Thank you.” Before the cleaning woman had a chance to become suspicious, Ginger bolted for the dark hallway. She felt along the rough-textured wall, moving toward the faint light that must be the other convention floor.

Ginger blinked and waited for her eyes to adjust to the brightness of the convention floor. Looked like the squirrel lovers had called it a night too. A stage with a podium occupied one corner of the floor. A sign reminded squirrel lovers that the keynote speaker, Martha Hill-strong, squirrel expert and founder of the club, would be speaking tomorrow. Clear plastic tubes circled much of the convention hall. It took her a moment to figure out that the scratching noises were squirrels running through the tubes.

Ginger slowed her pace through the convention hall. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” The other squirrels might have distracted Phoebe from her intended target. She walked past a table that displayed everything squirrel: squirrel bookmarks, stuffed squirrels, squirrel identification books.

Ginger turned, surveying every dark and shadowed space. Listening. Memories of the screams she heard in the night when Phoebe caught a rabbit caused her shoulders to bunch up to her ears. “Here, kitty.” Her voice faltered.

She studied the tubes. The squirrels were only faint impressions moving through the murky plastic. When it came to hunting, Phoebe was a lot like Ginger at a store sale, very focused. The cat probably hadn’t gotten distracted by the other squirrels.

From a far corner of the convention floor, she heard a yowl that chilled her. Phoebe was afraid of something. “Phoebe, Phoebe. I’m here.” Ginger ran in the direction of the cats yowl.

Phoebe stared down from a high window. “Come on down,” Ginger pleaded. No dead squirrel in Phoebe’s mouth. That was a good sign. “Come on, baby. Come on down.”

Phoebe lifted her furry chin and disappeared through the window. The window faced the backside of the Little Italy and Wind-Up Hotels, by the lake. Ginger ran to the door nearest to the window where Phoebe had escaped. Locked. That meant she would have to get a cleaning person willing to open it for her.

She raced back through the connecting hallway to track down Cheryl.

Detective Cynthia Mallory’s mouth watered as she stood in front of door number 515 of the Wind-Up Hotel. “Can you please not wave that thing under my nose?”

The other Cindy, Cindy Jacobson, drew the jelly doughnut toward her chest. “They were free down in the hotel lobby.” She took a bite. “I could have grabbed you one.”

Cynthia Mallory stared with longing at the sugar on the younger detective’s cheek. “That’s not the point. You know I’m doing Atkins. You’re like Jack Sprat’s mean sister.”

The boxy blazer Cindy Jacobson wore didn’t hide that she was the poster child for skinny minnies. “Who’s Jack Sprat?”

“Nursery-rhyme character.” Even before she had decided to do Atkins, food had been a source of tension between them. Jacobson ate constantly and never gained a pound. Depending on the hour, their shift usually involved one trip through a fast-food drive-thru and a stop at a bakery or coffee shop. Mallory carried a Ziploc baggie with deli ham. “Skinny Jack Sprat and his fat wife.”

Jacobson’s eyes were uncomprehending. “Sorry, never heard of the guy. My parents had me reading Shakespeare by the time I was seven.”

Mallory thought about the complete collection of
The Andy Griffith Show
on DVD she had at home. Just one more way that she and Jacobson were polar opposites. In college, she had thought it was an accomplishment to get through a Shakespeare class without jumping off a building.

Being partners with someone who never had a bad hair day and could eat anything caused her own insecurities to rise to the surface. But she could live with it. Jacobson was the best partner Mallory had ever had in her thirty years as a cop.

“Never mind.” Mallory’s fist hovered over the door. “I dream about cake and fudge at night. I get arrhythmia when I go past a candy shop. Could you please just not eat sugar in front of me?”

Jacobson wiped the red jelly off her mouth and held up the doughnut. “No problem, but may I finish this?”

Mallory nodded. Again, she lifted her hand to knock on the door. “This is a first for us, huh? A missing squirrel.”

“We did have the one lady who lost her champion poodle.” Jacobson took a luscious bite of the doughnut and chewed for a moment. “You remember that?” She licked the sugar off her lips.

Detective Mallory’s mouth watered. Oh the torment. She leaned a little closer to her partner. The aroma of doughnut was intoxicating. “Squirrel abduction. You ever feel like you’ve been sucked into some alternative universe that is being run by cartoons?”

Cindy Jacobson shrugged. “It’s a job.”

“I forgot to check the roster. Was Elmer Fudd on patrol tonight?”

Jacobson laughed. “Could be worse. Could be dealing with all the messy crime down in Vegas. We just get the weird stuff here.”

“Into every life a little weirdness must fall,” Mallory said.

“Lets see if we can get to the bottom of this before my shift is over. The Wind-Up has had a busy day. Spurgen took a jewelry theft report earlier. How hard can it be to find a squirrel? My money is on the little critter having escaped and this all being nothing.”

“I say it was Colonel Ketchup in the library with a toaster oven.”

“Miss Chartreuse in the sauna with a towel.” Mallory drew her hand back from the door. She closed her eyes.

“What are you thinking?”

Again, she appreciated that Jacobson could almost read her thoughts. “I know this is funny to us. But the man cared about the squirrel enough to phone it in. For his sake, we need to take this seriously.”

Jacobson nodded.

Mallory rapped hard on the door of 515. A man with fuzzy hair and whitish skin opened the door. The rims of his eyes were red. Mallory put him in his midfifties. Not terribly muscular. Little guy. “Mr. Simpson? You phoned in a report about a missing squirrel?”

“A kidnapped squirrel.” Simpson nodded, causing the excess skin on his face to shake.

Mallory held out a hand. “I’m Detective Mallory. This is my partner, Detective Jacobson.” She noted that Simpson had no calluses on his hand. Probably worked in an office. Unless, of course, a performing squirrel provided enough income to live on.

The door swung open wider to reveal a woman hunched over the table by the window. The bright floral-print muumuu cascaded down her large body in an explosion of color. Long, lackluster hair framed a round face. Plastic-frame glasses nearly consumed a small nose.

“This is Martha Hillstrong. She’s the organizer and keynote speaker for the convention.” Simpson sniffled.

Martha rose to her feet and held out a hand to Cynthia Mallory. “I’m here to offer support to Alex … Mr. Simpson. Binky meant a lot to all the squirrel lovers.”

Mallory took note of the I heart Squirrels button pinned to Martha’s chest. She cleared her throat. “Mr. Simpson, why don’t you tell us exactly what happened, and we’ll see if we can find that squirrel for you?”

Jacobson took out a notebook and pen. That her partner was willing to be the silent detail-taker while Mallory focused on reading the body language of the person she interviewed was one of the reasons they worked so well together. Mallory nodded and listened to Mr. Simpson’s woeful tale. He’d been taking a shower. Binky was exercising in his ball.

“Do you have that exercise ball?”

Simpson shook his head. “It was taken too. It has his name on it.”

Martha Hillstrong scooted to the bed where Mr. Simpson slumped. She patted his back while he recalled the details of the kidnapping.

Mallory continued to nod and listen, moving about the room taking mental snapshots. The oddest thing in the room was the excessive amount of ice buckets, all in various stages of melting. She counted five in all. She scanned the bureau for liquor bottles. No signs of Mr. Simpson being a heavy drinker. She’d like to get a peek in his minifridge. Maybe he had a more sedate party of root beer and Sprite planned.

Jacobson coughed and patted her chest. “May I have some water? That doughnut seems to have caught in my throat.”

It was nice to have a partner who read your mind. Simpson retrieved a paper cup, walked to the bathroom, and turned on the faucet.

“Do you have some ice to go with it?” Jacobson took two steps toward the bathroom, a move that put her in full view of the refrigerator.

Simpson returned. “I know, it’s hot in here.”

Sure enough, Simpson ignored the buckets of ice, opened the fridge, and pulled ice out of the little freezer.

Jacobson thanked him for the water and sipped.

Mallory asked the question of the hour. “So what do you think the motive for taking Binky would be?”

Simpson rested his face in his hands. “Do you know how long it takes to train a squirrel? Binky was valuable. He had lots of bookings.”

Martha Hillstrong straightened her back. “Maybe someone who didn’t like squirrels took him. There are people like that … squirrel haters.”

Simpson gripped Martha Hillstrong’s flabby arm. “Yes … that could be it.”

“Thanks for all your information. We’ll be in the hotel awhile longer. It would be nice if we could find that ball Binky was rolling around in.”

They left just as Martha wrapped an arm around Mr. Simpson.

Mallory and Jacobson walked silently down the hallway and entered the elevator. Once the doors closed, Jacobson spoke. “There was more ice in the fridge, only it was red. No soft drinks.”

“Like made out of Kool-Aid or something?”