by Kelly, Diane
With that, Seth climbed out of my car, retrieved his dog from the backseat, and raised a hand in good-bye.
FIFTY
WILL HE OR WON’T HE?
Brigit
Despite the fact that Megan had ordered her some kind of unidentifiable, meatless slop, Brigit enjoyed lunch. Spending time with Blast had been a lot of fun. If Brigit had been capable of understanding how cell phones worked, she would have hoped he’d call soon. Given that she didn’t comprehend the concept of wireless communication, she merely hoped the two of them would cross paths again.
FIFTY-ONE
DINNER AT THE CLUB
The Rattler
He followed his mother and father into the dining room at Colonial Country Club. The very man who’d shooed him and the elderly lady away from the Dumpsters greeted his parents by name with a respectful tip of his head. The man offered the Rattler a nod, too, evidently not recognizing him. Of course the Rattler was dressed differently tonight. He’d worn the damn khakis and button-down shirt and sport coat his mother had forced upon him.
He hated dressing this way. It reminded him of his days in prep school, where he’d always been the odd man out, never fitting in with the other kids, who seemed content to live as virtual clones of one another, who accepted the status quo, who never dared to think an original thought or dream of a different world.
The hostess seated the three of them at a table by the back windows, the perfect vantage point from which to watch the golfers. Not that the Rattler gave a shit about golf. But watching the men play would give him some inspiration.
His father chuckled as he gazed out the window. “What a knucklehead,” he said of a man on the fairway. “He hit his ball right into the water hazard.”
The Rattler smiled. For now, a shallow pond might be the biggest hazard the golfers would face. But give him a little time and he’d show them a hazard like they’d never seen before.
FIFTY-TWO
NAILED IT
Megan
Brigit and I met Detective Jackson in front of the bridal shop promptly at ten on Tuesday morning. Before we went inside, Jackson gave me an update. The search of Serhan’s house had turned up the usual inventory of nails and screws found in any suburban garage but no gunpowder, no metal pipes, and no oddly shaped nails.
“So he’ll be released from jail, then?” I asked.
She nodded. “The immigration issue is minor. As soon as his attorney gets the paperwork cleared up he’ll be out.”
“What about the sushi place and the pet store?”
“Dead ends. Nobody knows nothing. Nobody seems suspicious.”
None of our leads seemed to be leading anywhere. But I supposed the fact that we could at least eliminate some people as potential suspects was some sort of progress.
We stepped inside the bridal store and were directed by the salesclerk to the rear. Vu Tran was already at work at a large table in the back room, letting out a wedding dress for a bride who, I surmised, was a nervous eater and had gained a few pounds en route to the altar.
He looked up as we stepped into the doorway.
“Good morning, Mr. Tran,” Detective Jackson said. “We’d like to speak with you.”
Tran said nothing, just waved us in, gestured to a couple of stools pushed back against the wall, and continued his work, using a pair of tiny scissors to snip the tight stitches along the seam.
After we’d taken a seat, the detective explained why we were there. “As part of our investigation of the bombing incident, we’ve run criminal background checks on all of the mall employees. We learned you were convicted of a fireworks violation and a drug offense.”
“Yeah, yeah. All true.” He continued to carefully cut the threads.
Jackson and I exchanged glances.
“Would you care to explain?” the detective asked.
“Vietnamese New Year.” He used his fingers to pluck the severed threads from the fabric. “Setting off fireworks is tradition. Neighbors call police. They come. Find my mother’s Xanax in my pocket. I had to take from her because she forgetful and maybe take too many.”
“You didn’t fight the charges?” I asked. The fireworks violation likely would have stood, but a sympathetic judge might have reduced the drug offense under the circumstances.
“Lawyer too expensive,” Tran said. “Prosecutor say no jail if I agree and pay fine.” He shrugged and set the scissors down.
“Do you know anything about the bomb?” Jackson asked. “Anyone who might have had a reason to plant it here in the mall?”
Another shrug. “I do my work. I go home.”
Obviously this interrogation had been a waste of time. We thanked him and stepped out of the room.
“You get married,” he called after me as we left, “come see me!”
The bridal shop having been a bust, Jackson and I made our way to the Williams-Sonoma store. Three employees were on duty, two women and one man. Jackson called each one out of the store separately, posing the same question to each of them.
“We have reason to believe there may be a link between your store and the explosion. Do you think one of your coworkers could have been capable of planting the bomb?”
I watched the staff closely, gauging their responses. None seemed to think any of their coworkers could have been involved in the incident. All three were surprised and disturbed, and all three grew fearful.
“Is it safe to work here?” one of the women asked.
Jackson let out a long exhale. “Life doesn’t come with any guarantees.”
If only it did.
The assistant manager was able to go back through the store’s data and determine how many fondue fork sets had been purchased in the last three months. They’d sold twenty-seven sets, fifteen of them on the day of the demonstration when the chef had offered the free—and freaking delicious!—samples. She was able to give us card numbers on the credit and debit card purchases.
She looked at her computer screen. “Three sets were purchased with cash.”
Two of those purchases had taken place the day of the demo; the other had taken place in late June. Short of watching the security tapes, there was no way of identifying those particular purchasers. Even if we watched the tapes, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to figure out which shopper had purchased the forks, given that the merchandise would have been placed in a bag. We’d have to go with what we had. See if it led to anything.
Armed with this new information, and after a stern warning to the workers at the cookware store not to discuss the data we’d requested, we headed to the wine shop.
I reached for the door, but when I pulled on the handle it didn’t budge. “It’s locked.” I stepped closer and peered through the glass, trying to determine if the store was still closed due to the bomb or whether they’d simply forgotten to unlock the door. Both Stacy and Karla were inside, packing bottles of wine into cardboard boxes. I rapped on the glass.
Stacy stepped over and unlocked the door, opening it only a foot or two, just enough to poke her head out. “Sorry,” she said. “We’re closed.”
Jackson stepped up to the door, subtly sneaking her steel-toed loafer over the threshold to prevent Stacy from closing the door should she try. “Closed? What do you mean ‘closed’?”
“That bomb was the last straw,” Stacy said. “We weren’t making it before and God only knows when things will be back in full swing around here. We found a wholesaler who agreed to buy our entire inventory. We’re going out of business.”
“What about your lease?” I asked.
Like Tran, she offered a shrug. “Mr. Castleberry won’t work with us. We talked to him yesterday, tried one last time to work something out, but he still won’t budge. If he sues, he sues. Nothing we can do about it. If we stay open we’ll go even further in the hole.”
“We need to come inside,” Jackson said. “We need some information from you.”
Stacy appeared a little put out, but she stepped
back and opened the door to let us in, closing and locking it behind us. “What kind of information?”
“Tell us about your corkscrews,” Jackson said. She’d left the question open-ended, maybe hoping that doing so would lead the women to offer some piece of information she hadn’t thought to ask about.
While Karla continued to pack wine into boxes, Stacy gestured at the display. “These are the corkscrews we have in stock. The wholesaler’s buying those, too.”
I ran my eyes over the display. While the rack contained corkscrews with flower, bird, and cow motifs and even a wooden man-shaped one with the corkscrew extending from the groin area, it contained none of the unicorn corkscrews. Had the women sold out? Or had they used the last one in the bomb?
I had trouble believing it could be the latter. Both of these women seemed fairly pragmatic. Taking such a dramatic step as planting a bomb simply to get out of a lease seemed a drastic move. But I’d learned early on in my career in law enforcement never to make assumptions. My first week on the job Derek and I had pulled over a mother who’d been speeding to get one of her kids to band practice on time. I’d assumed she’d want to set a good example for her children. Instead, when I’d walked off after issuing her ticket she’d hurled a sippy cup, a box of tissue, and a dirty diaper at me. Luckily for me, she had lousy aim.
Jackson waved a hand at the rack. “Are these the only corkscrews you’ve ever sold, or did you carry some other styles?”
“I ordered the wine; Karla handled the accessories. She’d remember better than me.” Stacy glanced over at her partner and called, “What other corkscrews did we have besides these?”
Karla taped a box shut and walked over, running her gaze up and down the display. “We had a cute one with a bumblebee on top. It must’ve sold. We also had a couple with horned frogs. Those were popular with the TCU crowd. And there was the unicorn. That was our best seller.”
When Jackson asked what kind of sales and inventory system they had on their registers, Stacy reached over to the sales counter and held up a scanner. “The system tracks everything automatically.”
“Great,” Jackson said. “We need information on all sales of the unicorn corkscrew.”
Stacy’s shoulders slumped. “Does it have to be now? The wholesaler is coming by this afternoon to pick up the inventory.”
I took a step forward. “I’ll help Karla pack up the wine while you get the information for Detective Jackson.”
The shoulders unslumped. “I’d appreciate it.”
While Stacy coaxed the system into spitting out the information Jackson and I sought, I pulled bottles of moscato and pinot noir from the shelves and slid them into cardboard boxes. Brigit took advantage of the downtime to take a quick catnap in the corner.
When the information had been retrieved and turned over to the detective, we thanked the women and stepped back outside the store. Stacy turned the door’s dead bolt, which slid home behind us with a resounding click.
Jackson held the paperwork out to me. “Have at it, Officer Luz.”
I took the documentation from her. “You want me to look into this? On my own?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Thanks, Detective Jackson,” I said. “I appreciate this opportunity.”
“Thanks, nothing,” she retorted. “Chances are the fondue forks used in the bomb were bought online or at another Williams-Sonoma location. It’s likely a long shot and my time would be better spent talking to the rest of the food court staff and custodians who were on duty Saturday. Still, it needs to be done.”
I supposed I should have been insulted that she’d tasked me with a project she thought would be futile, but I nonetheless felt proud she trusted me to get the job done. Then again, the assignment might have only been an indication of how overworked the detectives were. She’d be a fool not to delegate the less critical snooping to an eager volunteer like me.
Jackson gave me a contact number for a lawyer at the district attorney’s office who could quickly obtain a court order requiring the banks to turn over the names and contact information for the cardholders. She then gave me a quick primer on how to use the numbers to identify which banks had issued the debit and credit cards and how best to contact them for information.
I set up shop in the mall’s security office. While I waited for the lawyer to get the court order, I used the data and the laptop from my cruiser to determine which banks I needed to contact. Fortunately, several of the cardholders were with the same large financial institutions, which should make obtaining the information more efficient.
Within the hour, the lawyer had faxed me the judge’s order. I forwarded it on to the legal departments at the various banks, all of which promised me the requested information within the twenty-four hours required by the emergency ruling.
One of the smaller banks sent me the data via e-mail right away. They’d issued only one of the debit cards. The card was held by a Rachel Felder who lived in an apartment near the TCU campus. My quick search of the driver’s license records told me she was twenty-three years old, five feet, two inches tall, and weighed 118 pounds, with black hair and blue eyes.
Using my foot, I nudged Brigit to rouse her from her napping spot under the desk. “Time to get moving, girl.”
We headed out to the cruiser and drove to Felder’s apartment, which was in a complex popular with the university’s graduate students. Fortunately, Felder was home when we knocked.
When I asked about the fondue set, she stood in her doorway, blinking her blue eyes. “You want to see my fondue forks?”
“That’s correct.”
“Um … okay.” She looked puzzled, but she didn’t question my motives.
She stepped back to let me and Brigit into her place, then led us to her kitchen, which looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink and on the countertops. The trash can overflowed with prepackaged food boxes and take-out cartons.
She cringed, evidently embarrassed. “I’ve been so busy working on my master’s thesis I haven’t had time to clean up in days.”
She opened a series of drawers, looking for the fondue forks. “I know they’re here somewhere.” When she struck out, she glanced up in thought, then snapped her fingers. “I had some friends over a couple of weeks ago and we made fondue. I bet they’re still in the dishwasher.”
She pulled the machine open and rolled the bottom rack out. The four dirty fondue forks sat in the silverware compartment, mingling with spoons, knives, and table forks.
Looked like Rachel wasn’t our bomber. I’d pretty much guessed that the instant she’d opened the door wearing a faded T-shirt with the Hogwarts crest imprinted on it.
“Thanks.” I pulled Brigit out of the dishwasher, where she’d been licking what appeared to be petrified scrambled-egg remnants off a plate. “That’s all I need.”
Rachel walked us back to the door. “Um … can I ask what this is all about?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not able to sh-share that information.”
“Oh. Well, okay then.”
I bade her good-bye and headed back to the cruiser, where I checked my e-mail. While no new information had come in from the banks, the Fort Worth PD had forwarded information about immediate overtime opportunities. Thanks to Saturday’s bombing, those putting on events in the area were hiring off-duty cops in droves. Given that I had nothing better to do at the moment and student loans to pay off, I decided to sign on for an evening shift at a paint horse show at the Will Rogers Equestrian Center.
After a quick stop for dinner, I drove to the center. As Brigit and I walked through the parking lot, pickup trucks and SUVs pulling horse trailers drove in, one after another. They unloaded their equine cargo in the parking lot, leading the horses inside to rented stalls. As we made our way to the main doors, Brigit stopped to sniff a pile of fresh horse poop one of the beasts had just dropped on the asphalt.
Blurgh. I tugged her leash. “Don’t
be disgusting.”
I kept my partner close to my side as we went into the building. The place smelled like hay and leather saddles and horses. The brown-and-white horses stood in their stalls, some munching on oats, others tossing their manes or pawing the floor, the more curious crooking their heads over the gates to check out the goings-on around them.
I made my way down a line of stalls, stopping here and there to discreetly admire a nicely built cowboy or to pat a velvety nose. Like many young girls, I’d gone through a horse phase, reading all of the Saddle Club books the library had. Knowing my parents couldn’t afford riding lessons, I’d never bothered to posit the idea. But on a rare occasion in second grade when I’d been invited to a classmate’s birthday party, I’d foregone the cake and musical chairs to take a few extra turns around the girl’s backyard on the rented Shetland pony.
On seeing Brigit, one of the horses reared up and whinnied in fright.
“It’s okay,” I reassured the horse. “It’s j-just a dog, not a bear.”
Lest the beast try to bolt from its enclosure, I moved on, pulling Bright along behind me.
Three stalls down, a farrier crouched next to a horse’s hindquarters, facing the back end. The horse’s leg was crooked back, the shoeless hoof secured between the man’s bent thighs.
Curious, I stopped. I’d never seen anyone shoe a horse before. “Mind if I watch?”
He pulled a small metal instrument from his toolbox. “Suit yourself.”
The man gently pushed the horse’s tail aside when it swished into his face. He proceeded to file the horse’s hoof into a clean, smooth edge, like an equine manicurist sans the obligatory small talk. Positioning a metal horseshoe on the mare’s foot, he pulled a long, sharp nail from the leather work belt around his waist, placed it through a hole on the curved shoe, and hammered it into the horse’s hoof. Growing impatient, the horse chuffed and swished her tail again.