Death of a Six-Foot Teddy Bear (7 page)

Jacobson nodded. “The guy seemed genuinely upset about the loss. I just noted that all that ice seemed like an irregularity.”

“Probably nothing,” said Mallory.

“Probably.” Jacobson touched her stomach. “I don’t know about you, but that $3.99 buffet looked pretty tempting.”

“Jacobson.” Mallory protested.

“I’m sure they have a side of beef for you.”

Cheryl the cleaning lady jingled the keys in her hand. “I’m only doing this because I’m a cat person.”

“Thank you.” Ginger struggled to get a deep breath. Time was of the essence. With Phoebe outside, she might never find her. Or worse, her cat would wander out into the street and be hit.

“Of course, those two-for-one coupons at the Steak House were a nice bonus.” Cheryl winked.

Never underestimate the power of a discount to open doors and dispel suspicion
. “You’re so welcome.”

The cleaning lady sorted through her keys. “Hate to see anything bad happen to that squirrel either.” She pushed the door open. “There you go. I’ll be locking this behind you, so you won’t be able to come back in this way. These convention halls are supposed to be secure.”

Darkness and desert-night cold greeted Ginger. Water lapped against the shore. Anchored boats banged against one another. Her feet pounded along the boardwalk. She ran toward the backside of the Little Italy Hotel.

Light spilled from a downstairs room as did the aroma of Italian spices. The clinking of silverware and quiet chatter floated out from a covered terrace. Ginger exhaled. Up ahead on the boardwalk, Phoebe sat beneath a street lamp grooming herself.

“Phoebe.” She trotted across the wooden sidewalk. “Phoebe, come back here.”

Phoebe lifted her behind and swished her tail. Then she scampered into darkness out onto the pier. Gondola boats were tied and lined up along the dock in strings of three and four. The farther Ginger ran down the pier, the darker it got. Phoebe’s white paws showed up in the dim light. The cat was leaping from boat to boat.

“What I do for you.” Ginger kicked off her flip-flops and stepped into the first wobbling boat.

One gondola banged against another and she nearly sailed headfirst into the water. Her fingers got stuck between two boats rocking together, a Ginger sandwich. She pulled her fingers free and shook out the pain. Four boats away, Phoebe posed at the front edge of one of the boats, head tilted, tail tucked under.

“Here, kitty. Come to Mama.”

The cat didn’t so much as flinch.

“Tell me you haven’t killed that squirrel. Any squirrel but that one.

Ginger crawled into Phoebe’s craft. The cat leaped to the bottom of the boat. Ginger gathered Phoebe into her arms. Phoebe purred against her chest. “I thought I was going to lose you.”

Across the water several boats away, she saw a circle of light. Somebody was in one of the boats. Holding Phoebe, Ginger scrambled back onto the dock and ran until she was parallel to the string of boats. In a gondola, the farthest vessel from shore, a man bent over as if staring at something.

“Yo, who’s out there? What are you doing?”
Yo?
Where did that come from? She sounded like a sailor or one of those hip-hop fellas.

A familiar voice floated across the water. “Is that you?”

“Earl, Earl, I am so glad I found you. I have been looking for you all night.” Ginger walked to the edge of the dock and leaned over to see better. Earl’s light bobbed up and down. “What are you doing out here?”

Water lapped against the shore. Laughter, soft and distant, rose up from the restaurant. On the other side of the hotels, cars rolled over concrete.

A shiver trickled down Ginger’s back. “Earl?” At the same moment she spoke, Phoebe squirmed free, scratching Ginger’s hand in the process. Ginger recoiled from the sting of broken skin and the warm seep of blood. “Earl, what is it?” Phoebe scampered up the pier, but Ginger remained frozen by some unnamed fear.

Earl stood up. The flashlight cast a circle of light on the boat next to the one he stood in. Ginger focused on the sound of her own exhale and inhale until it seemed to match the rhythm of the water licking the shore.
Breathe in. Breathe out
.

Earl’s voice floated across the water. “You might want to go inside and get security.” He turned, directing the light toward the front of the boat. “There’s a man in a bear costume, and as far as I can tell he’s not breathing.”

The Scent of roses
greeted Kindra as she stepped out onto the rooftop garden of the Little Italy Hotel. She spotted the trellis with vines around it and the bench beneath, just as Xabier had described. Soft solar lights were dispersed between the rosebushes and other greenery. A few couples wandered around. She was the only person by herself.

Kindra checked her watch. Already eleven. After burying her face appreciatively in a rosebush, she wandered over to the bench and sat down. A fountain, hidden by plants, trickled and bubbled behind her.

She retied the sleeves of the jeweled cardigan she had over her shoulders, fluffed the skirt of her black dress, and sorted through the coupons in her purse before she dared herself a look at her watch. Okay, so he was five minutes late.
Not a good sign
. She was willing to forgive his ignoring her in the underground outlet mall, and she was open to hearing an explanation as to why he was running from men with guns. But being late for a date? A girl had to draw the line somewhere. That shifted him from the full-price-new-on-the-floor rack to the ten-percent-off section.

Kindra untied her sweater and slipped into it to stave off the night chill. She crossed her arms and stared at the sky.
I am not going to be upset. I am not going to feel rejected
.

She hadn’t made a huge emotional investment in this guy. It was no big deal. Her throat tightened. She counted stars. She was up to fifty before she allowed herself a glance at the entrance. A dark head emerged. Kindra stood up. Another head, a woman’s, appeared. A couple stood at the entrance holding hands, leaning into each other. Kindra slumped back down on the bench.

Down below, sirens sounded. Couples ran to the brick fence that served as a railing around the garden. Kindra rose from the bench and peered over the edge of the Little Italy rooftop. About twenty people, some of them policemen, scampered like ants who had found a crumb. The location of the morsel seemed to be out in one of the gondola boats where the cluster of people grew. All those police. What on earth could have happened?

Dragging her silk scarf on the ground, she wandered back toward the garden entrance half hoping that Xabier would emerge smiling.

Okay, so she was sad about him not showing up and upset about being ignored in the outlet mall. This guy was not worth her time. Kindra raced down the stairs to find the other members of the BHN for wisdom, consolation, and hugs.

Detective Mallory placed her hands on her hips and surveyed the crime scene. In a few short hours, they’d gone from jewelry theft, to squirrel abduction, to a dead body in a bear suit. The Wind-Up had officially become Calamity’s hot bed of illegal activity.

Crime-scene people had set up floodlights along the boardwalk and sectioned off the area with tape. They’d have to work through the night.

Her first observation was that four out of five members of the forensics team were overweight. She patted her own ever-expanding hips. No more muffins and doughnuts in the break room. Wait a minute. Was she becoming some kind of diet Nazi, pushing her beliefs about nutrition on everyone else, demanding that they eat just like her?

One of the forensics guys crawled out of the boat, hiking up his refrigerator repairman pants and nearly falling onto the pier. He wobbled to his feet, breathing heavily from his effort. Nope, she wasn’t a food tyrant. A veggie tray would be good for all of them.

She walked a few paces down the pier. Her second thought was that killing someone in a boat was a lot of work. Let alone in a bear suit. Forensics always trumped speculation, but she suspected the victim had been killed elsewhere and moved, but not too far from here. A guy in a bear suit was pretty heavy.

She assessed the area surrounding the crime scene. Beyond the Little Italy Hotel was a park with a golf course on the other side of it. On the Wind-Up side was a dock for larger boats and an unused atrium with dusty windows.

Maybe the perpetrator had intended to take the boat out in the lake and dump the bear. The part of the pier where the bear had been found was dark enough to allow the suspect to go undetected if he were quiet. All guesses at this point.

Detective Cindy Jacobson conversed with one of the crime-scene crew, a recent female hire named Somebody Smith. Her first name started with a
Y
. Jacobson leaned toward Y. Smith, heads close together, speaking in whispered tones. Jacobson broke the circle of privacy and glanced in Mallory’s direction. Y. Smith handed her an evidence bag. Jacobson strode over to Mallory.

“What do you have?”

The younger detective sighed. “They can’t ID the body until they get the bear head off. It’s latched on. We detained the guy who found the bear.” She checked her notebook. “An Earl Salinski and his wife are waiting inside if you want to question them.”

Mallory nodded. “It’s a place to start. Guess we can move forward when we get the ID. Anything else?”

“There’s a Gloria Clydell. She was out here for a meeting with her ex-husband. She says her son was hired to wear the bear costume, some sort of PR thing. She’s pretty shook up.”

Mallory rubbed her temples. What she really wanted right now was five chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk and to watch
The Andy Griffith Show
. “Lucky for us we were here, huh?” Oh well. If she had wanted regular hours, she should have become a bank teller.

Jacobson placed a hand on a slender hip. “The Wind-Up is having a busy night.”

“Let me know as soon as you get a name on the victim. What’s the name of Gloria Clydell’s son?”

Jacobson glanced at her notes. “Xabier Knight.”

“Why the different last name from his mom?”

Jacobson shrugged. “Remarriage, most likely.”

“I guess I’ll start with the couple that found the body. What did you say their names were?”

“Ginger and Earl Salinski from Three Horses, Montana. If you want to handle the interview yourself, I can work on getting an ID and start the list of people to question.”

Mallory turned to go, but felt the press of Jacobson’s stare on her back. “Is there something else?”

Jacobson held up the evidence bag the Smith woman had handed her. “This was found beside the body.”

Mallory leaned closer to see what was in it. A ball of fur. “A rat?”

“A squirrel. Forensics is wondering if we should tag it as evidence or as a second victim.”

In her nearly thirty years of police work, Mallory didn’t recall reading or hearing about a circumstance like this. The issue had never come up in any of the workshops she had attended. They were off the map on this one. “Lets get an ID on both the bodies and then I’ll figure it out from there.”

“Is it possible to tell one squirrel from another?”

Way off the map on this one. “We got a hotel full of squirrel lovers. Ask one of them that question.” She threw her arms up. “If it is The Squirrel, one of the more sensitive members of the squad will have to inform Mr. Simpson. I don’t want this turned into a joke.”

Earl hadn’t said a word to Ginger since they had been escorted to the conference room by a police officer. She wasn’t feeling terribly chatty anyway. A tingling numbness had settled into her bones. That illogical notion that what she was going through was not real kept invading her thoughts.

This conference room was the most generic room she had ever been in. Large conference table, beige office chairs, beige carpet, and beige walls. Not even a picture on the wall.

Earl squeezed her hand and then pulled away, crossing his arms over his chest. “Things sure haven’t gone like I thought they would.”

Ginger nodded. She didn’t want to think about what had just happened. The bear costume looked like the one Xabier had worn. The thought of someone that young dying made it hard for her to breathe.

How much longer did they have to wait? After staring at the floor and then at the ceiling, which was also beige, she opened her purse, looking for something to do, anything to keep her mind from returning to the same horrible thoughts.

She pulled her coupons out of their book and spread them out like they were cards. She organized them by the amount of discount they offered. Then she arranged them by category: food, clothing, entertainment. Reading the coupons, thinking about how much money she would save, calmed her down. If she didn’t have her coupons, she’d be counting ceiling tiles. She just needed to do something.

She slapped down a coupon for fifty cents off butter substitute. Maybe next she could arrange her coupons by most dominant color. “I hope the police come soon.”

Earl answered with a grunt. She brushed her fingers over his razor-stubbled cheek. He hadn’t said anything about losing the booth. He must have found out when he was on the floor. Their setbacks seemed small in the face of this terrible thing.

The door burst open. Earl jerked his head up and rubbed his eyes. A woman dressed in a gray suit nodded at them.

“Earl and Ginger Salinski? I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.” The woman massaged her forehead. “I’m Detective Mallory.”

She sat down at the conference table opposite them, unbuttoning her blazer, which was tight through the arms and shoulders. She was fiftyish with auburn hair. Ginger recognized the shade as Spicy Red #114. Her own hair had been that color once. “I know it’s late and you’re probably tired. I would like to ask you a few questions if I could.”

Both Earl and Ginger nodded.

“Mr. Salinski, can you describe for me how you found the body?”

Earl straightened in his chair and folded his hands on the table. “I heard noise out on the pier. It was dark.” He pulled one of the Pepper Lights out of his jacket. “So I used my flashlight to go down there.”

“That’s awful brave of you, Mr. Salinski.”

Ginger gathered her coupons into a pile. She didn’t like the way Detective Mallory’s tone implied that Earl was guilty of something.

“The other end of the light is self-defense spray. I figured if it was anything bad, I could deal with it.” He rolled the Pepper Light across the table to Mallory. “The ends have different textures, so you won’t go to turn on the light and accidentally spray someone.”

Mallory rubbed her finger over the hard-plastic pepper-spray nozzle. “I haven’t seen one of these before.”