Death of a Six-Foot Teddy Bear (8 page)

“I invented it.” Earl beamed. “There are others on the market but none as good as mine.”

Ginger cringed. Earl was so proud of his invention. They had to find a way to get it to customers.

Mallory nodded and rolled the light back to him. “And what were you doing out on the pier at night?”

“I just pulled into town fifteen minutes earlier. The guy at the desk said I wasn’t registered, but he gave me a complimentary pass.” He touched the badge he had around his neck. “I couldn’t find my wife to find out what was going on, so I stepped out back for some air.”

Nerves in Ginger’s neck pinched. She did a double take at her husband. Mallory lifted her head from her notes. Why had Earl lied about the time he got into town? She had seen him hours earlier on the convention floor. He had a badge and everything.

“Mrs. Salinski, is something wrong?”

“No, no, I’m just fine … considering.”

Mallory laced her fingers together on the table. “Yes, considering. Can you tell me what you were doing out there, Mrs. Salinski?”

“I was out there looking for my—” Ginger shot straight up from her chair.

“Ginger, sit down,” Earl said.

Phoebe
. She needed to find Phoebe. Ginger rubbed the strap on her travel purse. With all the hoopla, she’d forgotten that her cat had run off again.

“Everything all right, Mrs. Salinski?”

“Yes, I just …” She plunked down into the chair. “Is this going to take much longer?”

“I have a few more questions. Did you see or hear anything unusual before your husband found the man in the bear costume?”

Ginger shook her head. Her thoughts tumbled over one another like a toddler’s building blocks. The bear costume had looked like Xabier’s.
What if
… “Is there anyone else who wore a bear costume besides Xabier Knight?”

“We don’t have an ID on the body yet.” Mallory studied Earl and then Ginger.

Ginger touched her collar and then broke eye contact. Her guilty conscious was getting the better of her. The detective looked at them like they were somehow involved.

Mallory leaned back in her chair, pushing her palms against the rim of the table. “You folks look tired. Why don’t you get some sleep?” Her gaze did not waver.

Ginger pushed her chair away from the table. The detective made her feel like she was specimen under a microscope. “I have things to do.”

Mallory traced over something she had written. “You are staying around for a while, aren’t you?”

There was that look again from the detective, a slight narrowing of her eyes. She must have been able to tell that Earl was lying. She couldn’t change that, and it didn’t feel right to say anything to Mallory until she talked to Earl. All she could do was tell the truth from here on out. “We booked the room through the end of the convention on Sunday.”

Earl rolled the Pepper Light back to Mallory. “You can keep that if you like.”

How could Earl be thinking about marketing his invention at a time like this? Was he so focused on his goal that what had happened here tonight didn’t matter to him? Maybe he had lied because he thought an investigation would interfere with finding a distributor for his invention. Had it really come to that? It just didn’t seem like Earl, but …

Mallory pushed her chair back and rose to her feet. Ginger and Earl stood at the same time. Mallory offered a backward glance before leaving and closing the door behind her.

“She thinks we had something to do with the murder.”

“You were acting kind of nervous, Ginger,” Earl said.

“Me?” She touched the palm to her chest. “Here’s the key to our room. I don’t know where the girls are. You might have to fight someone for a bed.”

“Why don’t you come up with me? It’s been a long day for all of us.” He touched her hand just above the elbow.

Involuntarily, she pulled away. Why had she done that? This was her husband, her Earl. Of course he wasn’t a murderer. She knew his character. Still, he had lied about when he had gotten into town.

Ginger took another step back. “I need to find Phoebe. I don’t like the thought of her being out there in the cold.”

Earl slipped the key in the hole and pushed the door of room 517 open. Both beds were occupied, one with Arleta and one with Suzanne. No sign of Kindra. He knew from his last camping trip with the grandkids that he was too old to sleep on the floor. Maybe the hotel had a spare room.

When he stepped into the hallway, a woman in a dress that looked like a paint store had exploded on it slipped out of room 519. She dabbed her eyes with a Kleenex.

“Ma’am, are you all right?”

“Haven’t you heard the news?” She tore the Kleenex in half and continued to dab.

“Oh, about the body?” What other news could she be referring to?

A new crop of tears sprouted in her eyes. “Yes, they think it might be Binky.” She shook her head and whispered, “I just feel so guilty.”

Binky? What kind of cruel parent would name their kid Binky?

“I can’t sleep.” The woman wiped the rims of her eyes. “I’m going to go downstairs to wait for any news.”

“I’m headed downstairs to see if they have another room available. I would be glad to walk with you.”

“That’s so nice of you to offer. What is your name?”

“Earl Salinski.”

She held out a hand. “I’m Martha Hillstrong. I am the founder and president of the Squirrel Lovers Club.”

Hmm. Maybe Binky wasn’t human
.

“Thanks for the offer, but Mr. Simpson in 515 said he would go down with me.” Her voice cracked. “Binky was his squirrel.”

Martha dug in her pocket and produced a key. “I know they don’t have any more rooms. With two conventions, the hotel is full.” She placed a key in his hand. “You’ve been kind to me. Why don’t you take my room? I won’t need it for a while.”

“Thank you. I just need a couple hours’ shut eye and I’ll be back on my game,” he murmured.

A man with fuzzy hair opened the door to 515 and nodded in Martha’s direction.

Detective Mallory stared at the piece of salami and celery sticks in her Ziploc baggies. Living with a growling stomach appealed to her more than downing this snack. It was nearly two in the morning. She collapsed onto a couch in the lobby. A college-age blonde in a black dress slept on the couch opposite her. The young woman used her pink cardigan as a blanket.

Jacobson was supposed to meet her here with an update. Something must have delayed her. Mallory closed her eyes. Her muscles relaxed. Her thoughts drifted. Cartons of chocolate chip mint ice cream floated around her. Bowls of it with chocolate sauce were set in front of her.

She sensed that someone was staring at her.

Jacobson had slipped noiselessly into the chair kitty-corner from her. Like part of a Vegas magic act, she had just suddenly appeared.

“What have you got for me?”

“Sorry for taking so long to get here. We had some setbacks”—Jacobson cleared her throat—“but we have an ID on the body.”

“The suit belonged to a Xabier Knight, right?”

The blonde on the opposite couch stirred, rolling over on her side but not waking.

“Correct. It was his costume, but it wasn’t Xabier who was in the suit. The victim is a Dustin Clydell; he owns the Wind-Up. Dustin’s first wife, Gloria, identified the body. We have been unable to locate Xabier Knight.”

“Let me do the math. Xabier, who is missing, has a different last name than his parents, one of whom is dead.”

Jacobson nodded.

The blonde stirred again, pulling her sweater toward her chin.

“Does the ex-Mrs. Clydell know where he is?”

Jacobson shook her head. “She’s pretty shook up. Plus, she’s weak from a chronic illness. I didn’t want to push her.”

For lack of something better to do, Mallory pulled a celery stick out of her baggie. “You said something about setbacks?”

“Two things. I sent a uniformed officer up to tape off Dustin’s apartment, and it had been ransacked. Two, we took the bear suit off the victim. Forensics bagged it. Somewhere in transport, someone lifted it.”

Mallory bit into her celery stick. “Have a uniformed officer watch the apartment. I’ll get the crime-scene people up there when they’re done outside.” She rubbed her temples. What sort of comment do you make about a stolen bear suit? “Is there anything else?”

“I’ve started to put together a list of people we need to question. Gloria Clydell and Xabier when we find him. Dustin had another ex-wife, Elise Rosemond, a.k.a. Tiffany Rose, chorus-line dancer.”

Mallory rose to her feet. “Good, we got an ID and a place to start. Lets all go home and get a couple hours’ sleep.”

Jacobson checked her notebook. “You might want to question Earl and Ginger Salinski again. We have a witness who says Ginger threatened Dustin, something about a dispute over a spot on the conference floor.”

Cynthia Mallory cupped Jacobson’s shoulder. “Good work. Let’s get a little sleep.” She stumbled toward the entrance but turned. “I totally forgot to ask. What does the prelim exam suggest the cause of death is?”

Color rose up in Jacobson’s cheeks. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t quite know how to put it. Of course, we’ll know for sure after full autopsy.”

“Cause of death?”

“They found … fur in his mouth.”

Mallory connected the forensics dots. “Death by squirrel. You, ah … don’t see that every day.” She
had been
sucked into an alternate universe.
Just keep it as official as possible
. “Suffocation?” Did she want to hear this?

Jacobson nodded. “We do have bruising on the neck and some petechial hemorrhaging, so the exact sequence of events has to be worked out.” Jacobson threw her arms up. “Into every life, a little weirdness must fall.”

Mallory stared across the expanse of checkerboard floor. How angry did you have to be to use a squirrel as a weapon?

Ginger slumped down
on a bench beside the lake. She managed one more lackluster cry for Phoebe. Stars twinkled in the night sky, and a soothing breeze came off the water. Heaviness seeped into her muscles. She bent forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Time to give up.

Part of the dock area was still sectioned off with police tape. Traffic noises from the other side of the street increased in volume, and people bustled by on the boardwalk surrounding the lake. She could see the lights of the park and golf course that bordered the lake on the far side of the Little Italy Hotel.

The Calamity strip stirred to life when most people were long past ready for bed. She closed her eyes.
I will not think about Phoebe dodging speeding cars
. What was God doing? Now even that stupid cat had been taken from her. If they didn’t find a distributor and see a return on their investment, they might not be able to make payments on the second mortgage. They could lose the house.

Footsteps sounded on the wooden pier. “Do you mind if I sit by you?” The voice was female, with a warm quality.

Ginger scooted over to make room. She cleared her head of the thoughts of being homeless and turned her attention to the person beside her. The dim light provided a silhouette of a woman with a hat and gloves on. She wore a leather jacket. The hat brim shadowed her face.

The desert night could be chilly, but the winter getup seemed like overkill or a sign that the woman was a couple slices short of a loaf. “Lots of room on this bench.” Ginger inched toward the edge.

The woman tilted her head toward the night sky. “Did you come out here to pray too?”

Pray?
Why was that always the last thing she thought to do? Ginger rested her forehead in her palm. “My cat ran away. I can’t find her.”

The woman’s voice was filled with compassion. “I am so sorry.” She scooted a little closer and patted Ginger’s back. “We get attached to our pets.”

This lady seemed pretty normal. Ginger regretted her initial judgment. “What a night.” She slumped a little on the bench. “I’m sure you’ve heard the news.”

“I heard.” The woman paused. Her breathing was raspy and shallow. “I was afraid it was my son Xabier. It was his costume. I just found out it was my ex-husband. I didn’t think it was possible to feel relief and unbearable pain at the same time.”

Ginger’s troubles suddenly paled beside this poor woman’s. “I am sorry. I didn’t realize you knew the victim. We met Dustin’s ex-wife. You’re not Tiffany. You must be Gloria, the other wife.”

“Dustin has … had made his personal life very confusing. How did you know my name?”

“It’s a long story. You know Dustin’s glass elevator? Your birthday is his code.”

A small laugh that was more of a sigh escaped Gloria’s lips. She shook her head for a moment. “He never forgot my birthday. Always sent a card, even after we were divorced. It’s a blessing to know I was on his mind enough that those were the first numbers he thought of.” Gloria sat up a little straighter and turned slightly toward Ginger. “That was sweet of you to share that with me.”

A family from the veranda of the Little Italy’s restaurant stepped out onto the pier and walked by the two women. The father put his arm around a boy of about eleven while mother and daughter trailed behind. Gloria folded her hands in her lap, then unfolded them and tucked them under her skirt. She bent her head.

The intensity of Gloria’s pain was almost tangible in the cool night air. Ginger leaned into Gloria’s shoulder. What could she say? A year ago, she had lost her best friend at the hands of a killer. She knew from experience that the last thing she needed to do was offer clichés. “It is peaceful here at night, isn’t it? I see why you like it.”

Gloria nodded and then tugged at the puckers in her skirt. “My son Xabier has disappeared. No one has seen him since the body was discovered. He hasn’t spent much time with Dustin in the last ten years. He wanted to reconnect with his father. I’m afraid that the reality of being with his dad didn’t match the fantasy. I tried to warn him.” She shuddered. “The last time I talked to Xabier, he was angry.”

Ginger focused on the water lapping against the shore, choosing her words carefully. “So many unknowns in your life right now. Sometimes it’s easier to deal with bad news than an unknown.”

“Yes, true. Waiting to hear if I had a chronic illness was way worse than knowing what I had.”

Maybe the winter clothes had something to do with her illness.

“I don’t think my son is capable of murder.” Gloria hugged herself and leaned forward. “Then again, Dustin has this … had this ability to drive people to do things they never thought they would do.”

“I noticed that about Tiffany. He makes her angry and yet she’s working for him.”

“My ex-husband is … was poison of the sweetest kind. My guess is that he filled Tiffany’s head full of promises and strung her along, worked his charm on her. I warned Xabier that that would happen, but he wanted a father so badly.”

“I think I saw some of that sweet poison.”

“I don’t know if this makes any sense, but Dustin was like a drug. You hate yourself for staying; you leave in a rage. But then you start to crave his sweet talk, so you go back. It took me years and lots of prayer to get him out of my system, to not fall under his spell. It made me nuts that he was one person out in public, Mr. Make Nice, and an entirely different person in private. He could be … pretty ugly to Xabier and me when we didn’t live up to his fantasy of what a good Christian family should be. The hardest part is that he wasn’t so self-absorbed when we were first married. I kept waiting for the old Dustin to come back.”

“I think I understand.” Ginger shifted on the bench and hugged her travel purse to her chest. “Poor Tiffany is probably in the midst of withdrawal.”

“Thank you for listening to me rant.” Gloria touched Ginger’s arm. “What’s your cat’s name?”

Considering what Gloria was going through, she was touched that she showed interest in something as silly as a cat. “Phoebe.”

“That’s a pretty name for a cat.”

“Thank you. I met your son when we had that alarm problem. He’s a real nice boy. I think he likes my young friend Kindra.” It seemed a bit odd that Xabier hadn’t acknowledged that Dustin was his father. And why was Xabier’s last name different from his parents? She wanted to know, but this was not the time to ask.

“I think he said something about a Kindra.” A tremble permeated her words. “I did the best I could with Xabier.”

Ginger put her hand over Gloria’s gloved fingers. “Parenting is never easy. I have four kids myself. And you did it alone.”

In the distance, a boat motor sputtered. A group of people carrying champagne bottles burst out of the back doors of the Wind-Up laughing and chattering. Their revelry faded as they made their way to the street.

“Okay, boys and girls, lets play a game called Calamity PD Profiler.” After four hours of sleep and a cheese and onion omelet, Cynthia Mallory’s confidence had returned. Alex Simpson had identified the dead squirrel as his Binky a few hours ago. Forensics was going over the last place Dustin was seen alive, the backstage areas of the inventors convention floor. Unfortunately, they had to close down the convention. The investigation was moving along.

She paced Dustin’s ransacked apartment and addressed her audience of two, Jacobson and a uniformed officer. “Crime-scene people combed through this place early this morning. There is no reason to believe the murder, and we are calling it murder at this point, took place here.” Mallory pulled a piece of gum from her back pocket. Gum was almost like food; at least you got to chew. “Dustin Clydell’s apartment is still useful to us for two reasons. Jacobson, what are those two reasons?”

Jacobson stepped forward, embracing the role of eager student. She addressed the officer. “One, the apartment tells us what kind of a person the victim was. Two, the apartment was gone through around the time of the murder, so the murder and the B and E may be connected.”

Mallory turned toward the officer, who leaned against the door. Her experience was that the more the uniformed officers felt like they were part of the crime-solving process, the more likely they were to bother pursuing leads they ran into on patrol. “So why would someone do this to the victims place after he is dead?”

The officer planted his feet shoulder-width apart, straightening his posture, a pose suggesting a military background. “Leftover rage or looking for something.”

“Excellent.” Mallory took note of the officers nod and smile. “Lets face it. Stuffing a squirrel down someone’s throat is a crime of rage.”

Mallory continued to pace, hands linked behind her back, chewing her gum in rhythm to her steps. Desk drawers had been opened and dumped and books pulled off shelves. Towels, silverware, crackers, and boxes of chocolate had been dumped on the counter. Her guess was that it wasn’t about rage; the destruction appeared to be a search for something specific and small. Enough books were scattered across the floor to suggest that the ransacker was looking for something flat, a document, maybe.

“No doughnut this morning, Jacobson?” The comment was filler while she paced and tried to think of the next line of questioning.

“I ate it before you came, and I had the $2.99 breakfast buffet. They have really good—”

Mallory held up her hand and chewed her gum with furious intensity. “Don’t go there.”

“What if I only mention protein products?” Jacobson raised her eyebrows.

A moment of shared humor passed between the two detectives. Mallory rolled her eyes. She was taking this diet thing too seriously. It was making her hostile in weird ways. What kind of person forbids other people to mention certain kinds of food? Mallory circled the room. “Let’s go back to our first reason. These are less-than-perfect circumstances, but pretend like everything is in its place. What does this apartment tell us?” Mallory swept her arm across the room. “What kind of a guy designs a hotel around a classic-toys theme?” The officer looked like he was barely out of his twenties. “There are no wrong answers here. Brainstorm with me.”

He shifted his weight, ran his hands through his hair. “A guy who is still a kid inside.” His words were measured out with careful pauses.

“Good one,” Mallory said.

The compliment must have given the officer some confidence because he blurted his next comment. “Maybe he didn’t have much of a childhood.”

“Yes, exactly.” Mallory wandered over to a window that looked out on the convention floor. She checked her watch. It had been almost eight hours since the body was discovered. “Jacobson, what can you tell me about the guy based on the type of books he read?”

Jacobson scanned the bookshelf and then the volumes scattered across the floor. “Big on self-improvement. Turns everything into math.”

Mallory cocked her head. “What?”

“Seven secrets of this, five ways to get rich quick. Improve your life in three minutes a day. Six unhealthy habits of mediocre people.”

The officer grinned. Jacobson was in good form this morning.

“Got a lot of books about Ted Turner, Donald Trump, Sam Walton, and Bugsy Siegel, the guy who had a vision for Vegas. Empire builders.” Jacobson rose to her feet and continued to inventory the shelves. “No fiction. No poetry. No books about art and architecture. The guy wanted to improve every part of his life but one.”