“Great. I’ll pass these out while I’m patrolling.” He helped himself to a handful of flyers and pushed through the glass doors, still shuffling his feet as though channeling Sugar Ray Leonard.
By the time my shift ended, Captain W still hadn’t shown up or called in. After a moment’s debate, I crossed the hall to the management offices and asked to speak to Curtis Quigley. The receptionist, a lovely dark-haired girl named Pooja, buzzed him and then said he’d see me. “Is it true that Captain Woskowicz has been kidnapped?” The smile that went with the question told me she thought the idea was utterly ridiculous, and she laughed when I rolled my eyes.
Quigley, seated behind his desk when I entered, immediately asked if the police had arrested someone for the murder and if Captain Woskowicz had shown up.
“No and no,” I said, seating myself.
He flapped his hands in a gesture somewhere between annoyance and worry. “This is not a good time!”
I resisted the urge to ask when was a good time for murdered bodies to turn up on mall property and senior managers to be no-shows.
“I’m giving my quarterly report to the FBI board this afternoon”—FBI was not the law enforcement agency; it stood for Figley and Boon Investments, the company that owned Fernglen Galleria and several other malls.—“and they are not going to be happy about this. A dead body on the doorstep doesn’t play well with the stockholders. It tarnishes our image as a family-friendly mall.” He fussed with one of his cuff links, then gave me a penetrating stare. “You’re in charge, EJ, until Captain Woskowicz turns up.”
I sat up straighter, startled. “But I’m not the most senior—”
He waved away my objection. “This isn’t the military. I can put whoever I want in charge and I want you. You seem to have a good working relationship with the Vernonville police and that’s important right now. In fact, why don’t you go over there this afternoon and poke them about the murder. While you’re there, you can tell them that Captain Woskowicz is missing.” He scooped up a handful of files and came around the desk.
“Woskowicz is an adult, Mr. Quigley,” I said, wondering how to break it to him that the police were going to be monumentally uninterested in hearing about a grown man who’d been missing for maybe twenty-four hours, if we counted from when he’d been supposed to meet Nina Wertmuller.
“Just fill them in,” Quigley insisted. “I’m late.” He hurried past me and out the door, leaving me alone in his office.
Central Vernonville consisted of two blocks of shops and restaurants in Colonial-era buildings fronted by brick sidewalks. Words like “quaint” and “historical” peppered the chamber of commerce brochures about the downtown shopping district. The police department fit right in, occupying the former Town Hall, a lovely two-story building surmounted by a white cupola. Although the exterior looked like something out of Colonial Williamsburg, the interior had been modernized and was so generic it could’ve been a police department in Tucson or Augusta: counter staffed by a uniformed officer, waiting area with virtually indestructible molded chairs, wear-resistant carpet in a color between dark green and gray.
As a young officer escorted me back to Detective Helland’s office, I took the opportunity to once again admire the photographs spaced along the hall walls. Last time I’d been here, I’d realized that the atmospheric landscapes were all signed “A. HELLAND” in tiny gold type. It interested me to think of Detective Helland turning his analytical brain to photo composition as he tried to capture a mood or a moment; he was just so darn un-artsy on the job.
“I got your email,” he greeted me when the officer knocked on his door. His gaze flicked to me for a split second and then returned to the document on his desk. I paused on the threshold. More landscape photos—black-and-white studies of trees—decorated the beige wall behind his desk. An empty fish bowl sat on a credenza near a computer printer; last time I’d been here, it had held a Siamese fighting fish. Perhaps he had moved on to the Big Fishbowl in the Sky. File folders, case binders, a computer, and other office paraphernalia took up most of the available space on the desk and bookshelves. He had no personal photos on his desk—no smiling wife, no tow-headed kids, not even a dog—which I tended to think meant he wasn’t married. Not that it mattered to me, I hastily reminded myself.
“Good work,” Helland said. “You didn’t have to come down here.”
His slightly condescending tone raised my hackles immediately. “My boss asked me to check in and see what progress you’re making.” I wanted to make sure he understood I hadn’t come of my own accord. “And,” I added reluctantly, knowing Helland would be dismissive, “he wanted me to tell you that Captain Woskowicz is missing.”
“Missing? I talked to him yesterday.” He looked up at me, raising brows a few shades darker than his white-blond hair.
“I know, but he didn’t show for an appointment with his ex-wife last evening and he didn’t turn up for work today.”
“So he had one too many last night and he’s sleeping it off,” he said, just as dismissively as I had known he would. Standing, he shrugged into a pin-striped jacket. “I’ve got a meeting.”
What was it with men walking out on me today? “I’ll walk with you,” I said. He didn’t object, so I preceded him out of the office and we fell into step. Our shoulders brushed, and I put another couple of inches between us, too aware of him. From the almost imperceptible hesitation in his step, I thought he’d felt the jolt, too. “About the Arriaga case. It would be helpful to locate either the guy or the girl he was with at Fernglen, right? Have you talked to them yet?”
“No,” Helland admitted. “We’ve managed to touch base with the mero mero—leader—of the Niños Malos, and he’s assured us that no gang member had any involvement in his homey’s death. Cross his heart and hope to die.” Heavy irony laced Helland’s words. “He’s told the Niños not to talk to us, so they’re not. He suggested we haul in some Latin Kings for questioning.”
“A rival gang, I presume?”
“Exactly.”
“Think there’s anything to that?”
“It doesn’t look like a gang hit to us,” he said, pausing outside a conference room door. “And our gang task force hasn’t heard about a Latin King or Blood taking credit for it. That doesn’t prove it wasn’t a gang thing, but—” He shrugged.
People trickled past us into the conference room, giving me curious stares. I knew I was about to lose him. “Look, I can describe the pair he was with at the mall. If you have an artist—”
“We don’t. Budget cuts. We’ll handle it.” He strode into the conference room. I was dismissed.
Six
Word had trickled through the security force by the next morning that Captain Woskowicz was AWOL and Quigley had put me in charge temporarily. A couple of the old-timers seemed inclined to resent my being appointed over them, but most of the officers were okay with it. For many of them, working mall security was just a job that paid the bills; they wanted to work their shift and go home with no worries about staffing or funding or other management functions. For others, it was a stepping-stone (they hoped) to a job with a police force. For me, it was a combination of the two: a pseudo law-enforcement job to augment my puny medical retirement from the military until I got back on with a real police force. I didn’t mind taking on the director of security responsibilities until Woskowicz showed up, but no way did this job represent the pinnacle of my ambitions.
Joel, however, was enthused by my temporary ascension. “You can fund the operation of all the cameras now,” he said when I’d chatted with each of the officers as they came on shift and sent them on patrol.
“I’m the acting director of security for a couple days,” I told him, sitting at my regular desk; it seemed presumptuous to move into Captain W’s office. “I’m supposed to keep the office functioning, not rearrange the funding priorities.”
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “Will you have time to swim today? I lost another half a po
und.” He patted his still round belly.
“Good for you,” I said encouragingly. “Have you asked Sunny for a date yet?”
“No,” he mumbled. “But she’s bringing her golden retriever to my agility class now, so I get to see her twice a week.”
“Ask her out.”
“I want to lose five more pounds first.”
“Joel, you sound like a girl,” I said. “Sunny either likes you or she doesn’t. Five pounds one way or the other isn’t going to make a difference.”
“You think? Well, maybe,” he said, clearly not convinced.
If his reaction was anything to go by, it looked like I didn’t have much of a future as a dating advice columnist. Before I could urge him further, the radio crackled.
“EJ?” It was Harold Wasserman’s voice. He was the oldest of our security guards, a sixty-something retired engineer who had returned to the workforce primarily to avoid having to take care of his twin four-year-old grandsons. “We’ve got a rabbit issue. Can you come down to the fountain?”
“On my way,” I said, resisting the impulse to ask what kind of bunny issue could come up in a mall. Visions of a mass escape from the pet store filtered through my mind, and I hoped it wouldn’t create the chaos that a few loose lizards and snakes had generated not that long ago. Shoppers wouldn’t object to a cute kitten or beagle puppy playing in the halls, would they? Although, I thought as I mounted the Segway and headed for the elevator, the janitorial crew might have a bit more work.
By the time the elevator bumped to a stop on the lower level and I motored toward the fountain, a small crowd had gathered. Geez, how could a long-eared, fluffy-tailed mammal generate so much interest? When I pushed through the onlookers, I understood. I found myself confronting a six-and-a-half-foot-tall bunny wearing a polka-dotted bow tie and swinging a chair around by two legs. Harold Wasserman stood several feet back, trying to calm the hyped-up rabbit.
“Look, buddy—” Harold caught sight of me and broke off, hurrying to my side. “It’s the Easter Bunny. He’s drunk. He tipped that little girl out of his lap.” He pointed to a ringletted tyke watching big-eyed from within the Easter Bunny’s tulip-decked enclosure. “The mother”—he lowered his voice—“smelled beer on his breath and flagged me down. When I suggested that he go home and sleep it off, he got off his chair, picked it up, and took a swing at me.” He rubbed his forearm. The odor of cigarettes leaked from him.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” Harold grinned behind his luxurious gray mustache. “The twins do worse than that to me three times a week.”
“Okay. You get the crowd to move along, and I’ll see if I can’t persuade Mr. Bunny here to simmer down.”
I approached the man in the Easter Bunny costume cautiously, trying to figure out where the eye holes were so I could make eye contact. They clearly weren’t in the bunny’s head, which was adorned with plastic disks for eyes. Approximately the diameter of a baseball, the eyes were a strange lavender shade with black insets for pupils, and were fringed with two-inch-long lashes. I finally decided a mesh screen below the critter’s bow tie hid the performer’s face.
“Sir, can you put the chair down, please?” I asked, wondering how he maintained his hold on the wooden chair with his rounded rabbit paws. “What’s your name?”
In answer, he hefted the chair a foot higher and said, “You can sit on my lap, pretty lady.” A very un-bunnyish snicker issued from the costume’s big, round head.
“Mr. Bunny,” I said sternly, having no other name to use, “you’re scaring the children.”
“Good.”
We were not off to a promising start. I didn’t want to have to subdue him physically—how many kids would be traumatized by seeing the Easter Bunny taken down by a couple of mall security officers?—so I resorted to bribery. “Look, why don’t you take off that costume—I’m sure it’s uncomfortable and hot—and we can talk about this over a beer at Tombino’s. I’m buying.”
He thought for a moment, swaying. “Okay, then.” He dropped the chair with a clatter and wiggled his hands free of the mittlike paws. Attached to the arms of the fuzzy white costume with a length of cloth, they dangled like a toddler’s mittens secured to a parka. I was congratulating myself on my strategy when his hands went to a hidden zipper beneath the bunny’s chin and he yanked it to his waist with a metallic whizzing sound. A scrawny bare chest appeared, matted with graying hair.
“No, wait!” I said as a few of the watching mothers gasped or covered their children’s eyes. But it was too late. He continued unzipping and shrugged out of the costume, almost falling as he kicked off the clumsy bunny feet that must have been three feet long.
“There, that’s better,” the man said, wearing the round bunny head with its one upright and one drooping ear and nothing else but a pair of plaid boxer shorts. I’d never been so happy to see a pair of underwear in my life. I became aware that many of the onlookers had pulled out their cell phones to take photos, and groaned. “Naked Easter Bunny at Fernglen Galleria” was not the kind of headline that would make Quigley happy. I moved forward to help the actor remove the bunny head, which had gotten stuck, and Harold borrowed a coat from someone and laid it around the man’s shoulders. It covered him to his knobby knees.
“Good thinking,” I told Harold.
He grinned. “What’s up, doc?”
It took an hour to get Hiram Dabney, aka the Easter Bunny, dressed, sobered up, and out of the mall in the company of a police officer who seemed to know him from his overnights in the local drunk tank. I arrived back at the security office, hair disheveled and knee aching, to find Joel grinning like a fool, obviously having heard all about the bunny striptease.
“Not one word,” I warned him.
Before he could reply, two people arrived simultaneously, and I turned to greet them, hoping they weren’t reporters. The first, a man wearing coveralls and carrying a toolkit said, “I’m here to fix the cameras?” The second, a statuesque redhead said, “I need to talk to Denny.”
“Thank heavens,” I said to the camera guy. I pointed to the bank of monitors. “Do your thing.” Joel cleared papers and office-supply clutter out of the way so the repairman had somewhere to spread out his tools.
“Sorry,” I said to the redhead. “Denny?”
She sighed heavily, rounded bosom rising and falling under a zip-up knit jacket. “Denny Woskowicz, the security guy.”
I stared at her. Talk about déjà vu all over again. She was taller and a few years younger than Nina, and her hair was a more coppery red, but she was enough like yesterday’s visitor to be her sister. It dawned on me a bit late that Captain Woskowicz’s first name was Dennis. “He’s not here,” I said. “He hasn’t been in since Wednesday.”
“Nina called me last night and told me he was missing, but I didn’t believe her,” the newcomer said. “This is just great.” She sounded put out.
“I’m sorry,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m EJ Ferris. You are—?”
“Paula Woskowicz.” She shook my hand, the multiple rings she wore digging into my fingers. “I kept Denny’s name when we divorced. You wouldn’t think any name would be worse than Woskowicz, but my maiden name was Poupére”—she gave it a French pronunciation—“and I just hated getting called Paula Pooper, so you can see why I held on to Denny’s name.”
“Uh—”
“Anyway, I bet he’s here, right?” She winked a turquoise-gilded eyelid. “He just didn’t want to be bothered by that Nina. Anyone can see why he left her for me. I mean, all you have to do is talk to her for thirty seconds. It’s all Nina, Nina, Nina. A man needs to feel like he’s important, that he’s the center of a woman’s world.”
There was a feminist message if ever I heard one.
“Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that we’re still on for tonight.”
Captain Woskowicz had hidden depths I’d never suspected. Apparently he was dating at least two of his ex-wives, in addition
to a reporter for a local TV station he’d been seeing recently. Now that I came to think of it, she had reddish hair, too. “He’s really not here,” I said. “Did he ever do anything like this when you were together? Not show up for work?”
“Never,” she said. “Denny was all about work. Well, work and… you know.” She winked again.
Yuck. I didn’t even want to think about “you know” with Woskowicz. “Is his car at his house?”
Paula’s eyes widened. “Why, I don’t know. I haven’t been over there, and Nina didn’t say. She stopped by yesterday, she said, just to make sure he wasn’t ducking us, you know, and to feed Kronos.”
“Kronos?” I pictured a slavering Doberman in a spiked collar.
“Denny’s hamster.” She giggled at my expression. “Yeah, I know. I mean, he doesn’t seem like a hamster kind of guy. Aggie gave it to him for their second anniversary. There were two of them, but Cerberus died last year. Kronos just keeps going on and on. Kind of fitting, if you think about it, since he’s named for a god. Immortal. Was Kronos a Roman god, or maybe Norse? I can’t remember.”
An immortal hamster sounded like a shoo-in for whichever Hollywood studio had put out a “squeakquel” about chipmunks. “Aggie?”
“The little home wrecker who filched Denny from me.” Her tone, sort of “easy come, easy go,” didn’t match the words.
Before I could ask more about Aggie, she said, “Look, would you come with me? To check on the car, I mean. It kind of gives me the creeps to think about going over there by myself, when something might have happened to him and all.”
“Didn’t you say Nina visited the house yesterday?”
“Yeah, but still…” She gnawed on the cuticle of her mulberry-painted thumbnail.
I glanced at my watch. My shift had ended long ago, and things were running smoothly.
“Ahem.”
I turned, raising my brows questioningly, to find the camera repair guy standing at my shoulder. Medium height, with glasses and thinning hair, he held a tiny screwdriver in one hand and some sort of gizmo in the other.
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