Die Buying

by Laura Disilverio

  “Why do you want to know?” Murph asked. “Heel, Dolly!”

  Dolly gave up sniffing at Grandpa’s shoes and ambled toward Murph.

  “She’s diabetic,” Mary Beth explained, “and needs insulin shots every day. That’s why we’re dog-sitting while Murph’s parents are on a cruise. They didn’t trust the kennel to—”

  “Why?” Murph asked again.

  I explained about the murder and my theory about the murderer’s car.

  “So we could help catch a murderer by telling you about the car?” Murph asked.

  I nodded. “Maybe.”

  “That was the red Lexus, wasn’t it?” Mary Beth said, wrinkling her forehead. The last bit of Popsicle broke off the stick and made a cherry splat on the driveway. Dolly snarfed it up with a move a striking cobra would envy.

  “Nah, the Lexus was at the Short Pump Town Center. Fernglen was the black SUV.”

  “Second Corinthians,” Mary Beth nodded. “But it was dark blue.”

  “Black.”

  “Blue. Or maybe dark green.” She faced me. “It was hard to tell because we blessed that car so late and it was blacker than the devil’s heart in that parking lot.”

  “What time was it?”

  “About eleven,” Mary Beth said just as Murph declared, “Just before midnight.”

  They glared at each other and I interrupted. “Do you remember what model?”

  They looked at each other doubtfully. “CR-V?” Mary Beth offered, tapping the Popsicle stick against her lip.

  “I thought it was something more upmarket than that,” Murph said, brow wrinkled in concentration. “An MDX or Cayenne.”

  Mary Beth shook her head, making her frizzy hair tremble like dandelion fluff. “No, it was a CR-V, or maybe a Highlander. And it was definitely not black.”

  Murph faced me squarely. “Black.”

  “Not,” Mary Beth muttered from behind him.

  “Where did you write the verse?”

  “At the Fernglen Galleria,” Murph said, giving me a “duh” look.

  “I mean, on what part of the car?”

  “The hood,” they said together. “In orange and yellow with lime green accents,” Mary Beth added, swishing her hand through the air as if wielding a can of spray paint.

  “Okay,” I said, convinced that they’d told me all they could. Besides, I was getting darn cold and I noticed Theresa shivering. “Thanks for your help.”

  “So we’re good?” Murph asked. “No police?”

  “Not this time,” I said. “But if any more cars in my lot get ‘blessed,’ all bets are off.”

  “Deal.” He stuck out his hand and I shook it.

  With a final pat on Dolly’s head, I trailed Grandpa and Theresa back to the van. “Thanks for tracking them down,” I said.

  “I’m afraid you’re not much better off than you were before,” Theresa said.

  “Well, I wish they could’ve been more specific, but at least we know the murderer drives a dark-colored SUV. That rules out a lot of vehicles. You were fantastic back there, by the way.”

  “Community theater,” she said. “You should see my Norma Desmond.” She struck a dramatic pose with the back of one hand against her forehead.

  “Sunset Boulevard is one of my favorite movies,” Grandpa said. “But the musical—”

  I left them to it. I wanted to be long gone before Grandpa broke into his rendition of “C’est Moi.”

  I swung by the auditorium on my way home to try to catch the end of Kyra’s bout, but she was already gone. By the time I got to my house, it was after eight and I was beat. Fubar met me at the door and twined between my ankles. “Nice to see you, too,” I said, picking him up. Cradling him in my arms, appreciating the weight of his solid body and the feel of his fur tickling my chin, I headed for the kitchen. I found a single Sam Adams at the back of the fridge and made a mental note to go grocery shopping tomorrow. I put Fubar down to open the beer, and he scampered off as I pried the top from the bottle. He probably figured that thirty-seven seconds of cuddling had fulfilled his quota for the week.

  After scrambling an egg with some chives and feta cheese, I wandered into the living room and sank onto the love seat, putting my plate on the ottoman. I ate distractedly, my mind turning over everything I’d learned this week. Finished with my dinner, such as it was, I pulled my lap desk onto my thighs and started writing down my thoughts, connecting some with circles and arrows. When I was done, I had a list of suspects for each killing and possible motives:

  I wished I had access to the alibi information Detective Helland had no doubt collected. Surely he’d managed to rule out some of the suspects? I also wished I could get hold of vehicle registration records and find out what kinds of cars the suspects owned. I knew Velma drove a black CR-V, and I’d seen a dark MDX parked at the Porter house, but I didn’t know who it belonged to. A hazy memory of a green SUV of some kind parked in front of the college museum made me wonder if it belonged to Dyson Harding. Tomorrow, I’d call Helland and tell him what I’d learned from Mary Beth and Murph. Maybe then he’d share some of his information with me.

  “This is an open police investigation, thanks to you,” Detective Helland said when I called from work Monday morning. “And—”

  “Thanks to me? How is it my fault you haven’t sewn this up yet?”

  Ignoring my interjection, he continued, “—and we don’t share police files with the general public.”

  “Even when a member of said public provides you with valuable information about the vehicle that the murderer used to dispose of the body?” I made no attempt to soften my bitter tone.

  “Might have used to dispose of the body. And narrowing it down to ‘dark blue, green, or black midsize SUVs’ doesn’t exactly point a finger at somebody.” Someone in the background yelled, “Helland! Livingston!”

  “Gotta go,” he said. “Thanks for doing your civic duty.” The smile in his voice made me bang the phone down harder than I’d intended, causing Joel to look up.

  “No luck?” His expression was sympathetic.

  “Arrogant, snide, unbearable—”

  “Put that to music and you’ll have a Top 40 hit,” Joel suggested.

  Growling, I stalked from the office and mounted my Segway. My knee had improved, but it still ached more than usual and I was grateful for the Segway’s smooth ride as I patrolled the Fernglen halls. I gave directions to several people, helped a woman find her car, and was just coming in from the parking lot when I spotted a familiar figure. I zoomed forward, wanting to catch up with Julia Cleaton before she arrived at the bright yellow Volkswagen she was headed toward. “Julia!”

  The girl looked over her shoulder, spied me, and broke into a run. She dropped two shopping bags to fumble for her key and had just gotten the door open when I pulled up behind the compact car, effectively blocking her in.

  “What was—” I started.

  Her gaze dropped to the bags at her feet and the penny dropped. “Ah. You thought someone reported you for shoplifting.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, the skimpy white tee shirt under a black sundress with quarter-sized pink polka dots not remotely adequate for the February chill. “You can look in the bags if you want to. I paid for everything.” She dug in a pink messenger purse and brought out a handful of crumpled receipts. “There!”

  “No one accused you of shoplifting,” I said.

  “Then why did you chase me?” Her young face showed confusion.

  I didn’t point out to her that it only became a chase when she started running. “I was wondering if you and your mom talked about what was worrying you.”

  “The blood?”

  I nodded. A sunny smile lit her face. “Yeah, and everything’s copacetic. She didn’t kill him.”

  “Then the blood was . . . ?”

  “She told me a coyote killed the neighbor’s cat in our yard. She didn’t want me to see it and get all upset, so she helped Rosa—our neighbor—bu
ry it that morning and hosed away the blood when she got home from church, not knowing I’d already seen it.

  “That’s great,” I said.

  “She was really pissed off that I said what I did, though, and that the detective asked her about it.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t so much pissed off as hurt,” I suggested, mentally crossing Marcia Cleaton off my suspect list.

  Julia looked thoughtful. “Maybe I can make dinner tonight,” she said after a minute. “I know how to do tuna casserole. And I can clean my room before she gets home from work, and not complain about practicing my French horn.”

  “Sounds good.” I suppressed a smile. There was hope for Julia yet.

  Nineteen

  I took my lunch break at noon and sought out Kyra, anxious to talk to her about tracking down the graffiti duo. Not wanting to be bothered by people who take my uniform as an invitation to interrupt my meal with questions about where they get refunds for defective Rollerblades or how to apply for a job at the mall, I picked up loaded baked potatoes in the food court and toted them to Merlin’s Cave. We ate in Kyra’s small office with her sitting by the door so she could see if a customer came in.

  “Well, finding the killer’s a piece of cake now,” Kyra said when I told her about tracking the taggers to their home and learning about the SUV. She leaned back in her chair, balancing the potato on her knee. Today’s outfit of royal blue, star-printed tunic over matching leggings with boots made me think of a mod Merlin.

  “It is?” I mashed butter evenly through my spud.

  “Sure. You just find an opportunity to scratch some paint off the hoods of the suspects’ cars and see if there’s an orange Bible verse underneath.”

  “With lime-colored accents,” I reminded her. I cocked a brow. “And the fact that vandalizing cars is illegal shouldn’t bother me? Or that someone might catch me at it and run me down or shoot me?”

  “You’d be careful, of course,” Kyra said. “Be stealthy. Didn’t they teach you that sort of thing in the military?”

  “We didn’t go in much for vandalism,” I said. “Come on. I need a real plan. I suppose I could call all the body shops and ask about someone getting their SUV repainted.” Just thinking about all those calls made my dialing finger hurt.

  “That would take for-damn-ever,” Kyra said. “And besides, this dude’s too smart to get the work done around here someplace. He hasn’t gotten away with killing three people by being stupid or careless.”

  “If you want to scrape paint off cars’ hoods, you can start with your buddy Dyson’s SUV.”

  Kyra wrinkled her nose. “Uhm—”

  “Doesn’t sound like such a good idea now, does it?” I didn’t know what Dyson Harding would do if he caught someone defacing his ride, but I suspected it would involve maiming and a possible jail sentence.

  Leaning toward a small mirror propped on her filing cabinet, Kyra picked a bit of broccoli out of her teeth and didn’t reply.

  “So, I guess I’ll start dialing my way through the Yellow Pages when I get home tonight,” I said, crumpling up the cardboard boat my potato came in.

  The chimes near the shop’s entry tinkled, and Kyra peered toward the front of the store. “Speak of the devil,” she murmured, rising to greet her customer. “Stay here.”

  Curious, I peeked around the corner and saw Dyson Harding, soul patch neatly combed and glasses in place, hovering near the door. “Kyra!” he said, coming forward to greet my friend with a hug.

  She pulled back after only a second and said, “What brings you to the mall today?”

  “How are you coming with the petition?”

  “I got a few signatures,” she said, walking to the counter and pulling the clipboard out from beneath it.

  Harding studied it. “I was hoping for more,” he said, dropping it onto the counter with a disgruntled bang.

  “Sor-ree!” Kyra said. She had her back to me so I couldn’t read her face, but her tone of voice was plain enough. “I’ve got a store to run, Dy; I can’t be trotting up and down the halls asking folks for their John Hancocks.”

  He put up a placating hand. “I know, Kyra. I’m sorry. It’s just that this is so important, not just to me, but for the country.”

  I hummed a bar of “America the Beautiful” under my breath.

  “How important is it, Dy?”

  Something in Kyra’s voice stung him because he reared back and said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I know you. You can be pretty determined.”

  His eyes glittered behind narrowed lids. “You’ve been talking to that friend of yours, the one who pretended she was interested in archaeology but who wouldn’t know a pot shard from a Harris matrix. She’s not on our side.”

  “And whoever isn’t for us is against us?” Kyra asked.

  “Precisely.”

  “Like Jackson Porter.”

  She was pushing him too hard. I decided it was time to make my presence known. Stepping out of the office, I said, “I’ve got to run, Kyra, or I’ll be late picking up my Harris matrix at the dry cleaner.”

  Harding literally jumped at the sound of my voice but recovered quickly. His gaze slid from Kyra to me. “You think this is funny?”

  I ignored his question, picking up the clipboard and scanning the text. Before he could say anything else, I added my name to it.

  “What are you doing?”

  I responded to his hostility with a smile. “Signing your petition against the Olympus development. There.” I tucked the pen under the metal clip.

  “But—” He stared at the petition as if I’d put a hex on it. “But you—”

  “I’m no more in favor of the development than you are, Harding,” I said. “And a petition’s an easy, legal way to register my opinion. Not like, say, murder.”

  “You are really something,” he said, disgusted. “I thought you, at least”—he looked at Kyra—“understood how important this is. I guess I was wrong.” He swept up the clipboard and stalked out of the store, brushing against the chimes so hard it sounded like a hurricane was gusting through. Hurricane Dyson.

  “Was it something I said?” I looked at Kyra with mock confusion.

  She didn’t smile. “You might remember he’s a friend of mine. You don’t have to make fun of him.”

  Her reaction took me aback. “You’re the one who warned me about him. And you were the one goading him a minute ago.”

  She turned away, pretending to straighten a rack of horoscope booklets on the counter. “Yeah, well, his methods might be questionable, sometimes, but he wouldn’t kill anyone. He might be a little . . . volatile, but he’s trying to do the right thing here.”

  “That depends on how he goes about it,” I said. “Three people are dead. Your pal Harding might well be involved: he’s a zealot and zealots think the usual rules don’t apply to them. He’s also smart enough to have pulled off the murders. And he drives an SUV.”

  “So we might as well toss his butt in jail and throw away the key,” Kyra said. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Fine by me,” I said, her attitude finally making me angry.

  “So much for due process and evidence and innocent until proven guilty,” Kyra said. “Now I know why you can’t get a job as a real cop—it’s your attitude, not your knee, holding you back.”

  I sucked in a breath as her words jabbed at me. Part of me recognized that Kyra was defending Harding because she used to date him—what did it say about her judgment if he turned out to be a murderer?—but most of me was too hurt to accept an excuse for her wounding words. Without another word I turned on my heel and left, careful not to set the chimes clanging. I was halfway back to the security office on my Segway before I let myself think about what had happened in Merlin’s Cave. What had happened? One moment, Kyra and I were tossing around ideas about how to track down the murderer’s car and the next we were spitting hurtful things at each other. Dyson Harding happened, I decided. And where did
Kyra get off accusing me of ignoring due process when she’s the one who wanted to go around keying people’s cars to see if they’d painted over some Christian graffiti? Righteous indignation carried me back to the office, but I decided not to go in. Instead, I parked the Segway, thumbed my radio to let Joel know where I was, and entered the management offices, needing a little back patting and approbation.

  When I told Curtis Quigley that I’d tracked down the taggers (with the help of outside “contractors”—Grandpa and Theresa Eshelman), he came around his desk, beaming, to shake my hand. “Excellent work, Officer Ferris. Will the police need me to testify? I’m perfectly willing to do so, you know, to ensure the miscreants get what’s coming to them. When I think what they did to my Karmann Ghia—” The tips of his ears flushed pink.

  “Well, I don’t think they’ll be facing prosecution—”

  “What?”

  Reluctantly, I told him about the deal I’d struck with Murph and Mary Beth.

  “You just let them go?” His face was an almost comical mask of dismay.

  “I don’t have arrest authority,” I pointed out. “And they wouldn’t have told me about the murderer’s car if I hadn’t promised not to point the police at them.”

  Tugging his cuffs down, he retreated behind the desk. “You had no right,” he said. “They are criminals. They need to pay for what they did. I asked you to stop the vehicle vandalism, not investigate a murder. That’s the police’s job.”

  I straightened my back. I had expected kudos from Quigley, not abuse. “I did stop it,” I pointed out. “They won’t be tagging cars at Fernglen.”

  He harrumphed and sat, still obviously dissatisfied with the solution I’d negotiated. “Tell Captain Woskowicz I need—”

  The door to his office pushed open and his new assistant, a young woman named Pooja, scurried in, her brown eyes wide with excitement. “Mr. Quigley?”

  “What is it?” he asked testily.

  “Outside.” She looked over her shoulder. “It’s . . . it’s Ethan Jarrett.”

  “The movie star?” Quigley couldn’t have looked more confused if she’d announced that Jabba the Hutt was slithering through the halls.