4 Decoupage Can Be Deadly (27 page)

“No fight,” he said. His face contorted into a scowl. “Took a header off the roof. We’ve got a leak, and I can’t afford to hire someone to lay new shingles. Lost my footing. Luckily, we live in a rancher—at least until the bank forecloses and we wind up on the street—so it wasn’t that far a fall.”

“Good thing you didn’t break any bones,” I said, not believing a word of his story.

Mike’s injuries weren’t the kind he’d sustain from a fall off a roof. Black eye plus fat lip plus raw knuckles equaled fist fight. Or beating to death a woman who had fought back before she lost the battle. I chanced a quick glance across the table at Tino. His eyes told me he wasn’t buying Mike’s tale, either.

The waitress returned, and we placed our orders, a steak burger with a large order of cheese fries for Mike, a meatball Parm sub for Tino, and a turkey on rye for me.

After the waitress left, Mike downed half the beer in his mug, then said, “So about this reality show. I sure could use the job, what with one kid and another on the way.”

“We’re in the early stages of development,” I said. “Let’s start with you telling us about your former job. You worked for a magazine, right?”

“
Bear Essentials
.” He gulped down the remainder of the beer, then wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his well-worn denim jacket.

“Really?” I feigned surprise. “I used to subscribe to that magazine. I collect teddy bears.”

Mike snorted. “When they hired me, I thought I’d be working on a girlie magazine, not a rag about stuffed animals.”

“Yeah, I can see where you’d make that mistake,” said Tino. “What did you do there?”

“Circulation. When they folded, I figured I’d just get transferred to one of the other publications. The parent company owns dozens, and circulation is circulation. Doesn’t matter, you know? But they canned all of us. Bastards.” He grabbed the pitcher and poured himself a third beer. Tino motioned the waitress for another pitcher.

“Which company?” I asked.

“Trimedia.”

“Really? Wasn’t one of their employees murdered recently?” I asked.

“Some ex-rapper skank Gruenwald was banging.”

“Gruenwald?” asked Tino.

“The CEO.” Mike sneered. “I heard he gave her a magazine to run and settled her into our office space. Now he’s got no hot pussy and no goldmine. Karma. Gotta love it, right?”

“Goldmine?” asked Tino.

“
Bear Essentials
. That rag pulled in huge advertising revenues. Our circulation topped two hundred thousand last year.”

“And that’s good?” I asked.

“In this economy? It’s fabulous.”

“So the CEO folded a successful magazine just to have space for his girlfriend?” I asked.

“Can you believe it? Why not fold one of the loser publications?”

“If he planned to start another magazine,” I said, “why not keep the
Bear Essentials
staff?”

“The bitch probably wanted to bring in her own people,” said Mike.
 

The waitress arrived with our meals. After she left, Mike took a huge bite out of his burger and talked around the mouthful, “Seems to me, whoever killed the skank should’ve killed Gruenwald instead. Now that would’ve been justice.”

We let Mike rant for the remainder of the hour, but the more he drank, the less intelligible information he provided. Tino had set the alarm on his phone to go off at noon. When it did, he signaled the waitress for the check.

“We need to head out to another appointment,” I told Mike.

“What about the gig?” he asked. “Do I get it? I can convince my wife to give birth on live TV if it helps. Great for ratings, right?”

I stood to leave. Tino headed over to the bar to settle the tab. “As I said, we’re first doing preliminary interviews. We’ll be in touch.”

He grabbed my hand with both of his. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do. Hell, I’ll even fall off a roof. I’ve got experience.”

I raised my eyebrows as I extricated my hands and took a step away from the table.

“I’m no fool,” he continued. “I know these shows are scripted.” Then he pointed to my half-eaten turkey sandwich and barely touched beer. “You gonna finish that?”

“Help yourself.”

~*~

“Gut feeling?” Tino asked after we’d settled into the car and headed off to our next bar.

“I hope he isn’t going to get behind the wheel of a car any time soon. I’ve never seen anyone drink so many beers in such a short amount of time.”

“He won’t.” I turned to question him, but before I could say anything, he continued, “I slipped the bartender a twenty to grab Monahan’s keys and call his wife to pick him up.”

“That makes me feel better.”

“Even if he’s our killer?”

“I don’t think he is, even though I highly doubt he fell off his roof.”

“Aside from that,” said Tino, “his injuries are too fresh. They didn’t come from killing Philomena. Maybe we’ll have better luck with the next guy.”

~*~

Twenty minutes later we pulled into the parking lot of an Applebee’s on Route 10 in East Hanover. Our next interview subject immediately zeroed in on our matching UsTV ball caps and approach as soon as we entered the lobby. He was a stocky man in his forties of average height with a dark complexion, close-cropped midnight black hair and a matching well-trimmed beard. Unlike Mike Monahan’s sartorial homage to grunge, he’d dressed in a charcoal gray pinstripe suit with a double-breasted jacket. He reeked of tobacco.

“Borz Kazbek,” he said in a thick Eastern European accent, extending his hand toward Tino.

“Tino Martinelli.” He nodded in my direction. “And this is my associate Emma Carlyle.”

Borz Kazbek didn’t offer me his hand, let alone acknowledge my presence beyond stating, “You brought your girl with you?”

This guy needed to be put in his place, and I was just the girl to do it. “I’m not his
girl
, Mr. Kazbek; I’m the senior producer. Tino is
my
assistant.”
Take that, you smelly misogynistic cretin!

If I thought I’d receive an apology, I thought wrong. The guy quirked his mouth in disdain and said nothing. As the hostess led us to a table, Tino grabbed my arm to hold me back and whispered in my ear, “We might get more out of this guy if you let me do the talking.”

I nodded, knowing instinctively Kazbek would never open up to me. I was in for some major tongue biting.

As soon as we were seated and handed menus, a waiter appeared. “Can I start you off with drinks? We have a special on our house margarita today.”

“Sounds perfect,” I said. Anything to help take the edge off what promised to be a very long hour.

“Want to split a pitcher of beer?” Tino asked Kazbek.

“I do not drink alcoholic beverages.” Disdain dripped from his words.

So much for loosening the guy’s tongue with booze but I suppose we shouldn’t have been surprised. When I called to set up the appointment and suggested the bar Tino had picked out, Kazbek countered with the Applebee’s down the street.

“Water for me,” he told the waiter.

“I’ll have a Corona,” said Tino.

While we waited for our beverages, Tino began to engage Kazbek in conversation. “As you know, we’re interested in doing a reality show that follows a group of out-of-work men on their search to find new employment.”

“I will be on your show. Your country has a negative image of my people. They need to learn the truth about us.”

“We’re in the process of interviewing possible candidates,” said Tino. “We’ll make our final casting decisions once all the interviews are completed.”

Kazbek folded his arms across his chest. “You will need an ethnic balance to avoid boycotts of your sponsors.”

Was that a threat?
Good thing we fabricated the show. I glared at him, but he refused to make eye contact with me. To this guy I didn’t exist. Only he and Tino shared the table.

“Of course,” said Tino, doing his best to suck up. “Why not tell us a bit about yourself. What type of work did you do before you were laid off?”

“I presided over an international magazine with a staff of seventy-five.”

Luckily, our drinks hadn’t yet arrived, otherwise I might have snorted margarita out my nose. Not only did we already know Borz Kazbek was the production manager at
Bear Essentials
, we also knew the entire former staff consisted of eleven people. No Trimedia magazine had a staff of seventy-five. This guy was full of shit.

“What happened?” asked Tino.

“What do you mean?”

“Why are you out of work?”

“The CEO gave my job to his whore.”

Not quite the truth but Borz Kazbek definitely had serious issues with women. I certainly could see him beating Philomena to a pulp to revenge the slight to his honor and manhood. Dumping her body back at Trimedia would also make a statement, but my gut told me, as with Mike Monahan, Borz Kazbek wouldn’t have stopped with Philomena. He would also have gone after Gruenwald.

I never thought of myself as biased; I try hard to like everyone with the possible exception of Mafia loan sharks, my dead louse of a spouse, and his curmudgeon mother. However, I was having a hard time controlling my urge to stereotype Borz Kazbek and an even harder time stifling the urge to swing my leg under the table and make hard contact with his shin. And that was before he started spouting his philosophy on women.

“In my country women do not take a man’s job,” he said. “Women know their place.”

“Barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen?” I asked.

He made eye contact with me for the first time. “Precisely.”

“That’s too bad,” I said, “because in my country—this country—women can do anything they want, and this woman is making the casting decisions for our new show.” I stood and tossed my napkin on the table. “Let’s go, Tino. I’ve heard enough.”

Once out in the parking lot, Tino said, “We might have gotten something out of him if you hadn’t lost your temper.”

“All we were going to get out of that jerk were outrageous lies. He may be our killer, though. He definitely hates women in general and Philomena specifically.”

Tino beeped the car locks open and ever the gentleman, held the door for me. “Which is why we should have stayed.”

“Waste of time.” I settled into my seat, grabbed the seatbelt, and stretched it across my body.

“Which we now have too much of before our next appointment,” he said. With that, he slammed the car door.

When he’d rounded the Focus and wedged himself behind the wheel, I asked, “Was that guy really in the U.S. army? He’s not American.”

“Reserves. And you don’t have to be a citizen to enlist, although he might be one. His family moved here from Chechnya in his late teens.”

“I suppose that explains his attitude toward women.” By the time he’d arrived on American soil, Borz Kazbek’s old-world misogynistic philosophy was set in concrete. “I pity his wife. He probably beats her if she burns his morning toast.”

“Could be.”

“He might be our killer,” I repeated.

“Want to go back to ask him?”

“I’ll wait in the car. You can have the honors.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Wuss.”

Tino and I stared each other down for a moment before he broke the silence with a deep chuckle and shook his head. “You definitely need that margarita before we meet our last suspect, Mrs. P.” He started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot.

Tino drove east on Rt. 10 to pick up Rt. 280, which took us to the Garden State Parkway. We then headed south into Union Township, a once middleclass town that had turned working class over the past few decades.

Our appointment with Christina MacIntyre’s husband Paul was scheduled for two o’clock. We arrived at the Five Points Tavern on Chestnut Street half an hour early, surprised to find Paul MacIntyre already waiting for us. Given his inebriated state, he’d bellied his massive beer belly up to the bar some time ago. His bloodshot eyes squinted to focus on us the moment we walked through the door.

Apparently sober enough to recognize the logos on our jackets and caps, he waved us over. “Paul MacIntyre,” he said. He didn’t offer his hand in greeting. Instead, it remained firmly gripped around a glass half-filled with brown liquid. He raised the glass to his lips, drained the contents, and slammed the glass down on the bar. Then he stumbled off the bar stool and lumbered his way to the one vacant table in the room. Tino and I followed.

“You see this guy rappelling down Trimedia’s roof?” I whispered to Tino. Paul MacIntyre weighed so much, while seated at the bar, his butt cheeks had spilled over the sides of the bar stool.

“Looks like he packed on a few pounds since his Marine days,” he whispered back.

Borz Kazbek looked better and better as prime suspect material. The guy had both the motive and the physique, plus the arrogance to believe he’d get away with murder. I wondered if Batswin had questioned him yet. I’d love to be a spider under the table during that interview.

Once seated, Tino waved over a waitress and ordered a margarita for me and a pitcher of beer for himself and our final suspect, not that MacIntyre, reeking of whiskey, needed any more alcohol. He also told the waitress to bring a platter of nachos for the table even though we’d both already eaten lunch.