Die Buying (31 page)

A tall woman in a dull red Armani gown strode toward me, eyebrows raised enquiringly. “Emma-Joy Ferris? I’m Aileen Lang-Quincy.” She offered a hand with short nails sporting a French manicure. Her hair was dark, cut in a short, asymmetric style, and her face was discreetly made up except for bright red lips. A triple strand of pearls draped the gentle swell of bosom revealed by the strapless satin dress. I’d read up on her and knew she was now the president of Lang Enterprises—not bad for a woman in her early forties.

“Call me EJ,” I said, shaking her hand. Her firm grip let me know she was a no-nonsense executive, used to operating in a man’s world.

“And I’m Aileen.” Seating herself gracefully on the settee, she arranged the folds of her gown around her ankles and leaned forward slightly. “You intrigued me with your phone call,” she said. “My father died more than three years ago—how could you have new information about his death?”

“Potential information,” I said, sitting across from her. “Before I say anything more, do you mind telling me why you thought your father was murdered, why you agitated for a more in-depth investigation?”

Aileen knit her dark brows, considering my request. “I guess there’s no harm in it,” she said finally. “I didn’t have any proof of foul play, but I found it difficult—no, impossible—to believe that my father died the way they said he did. He’d been an insulin-dependent diabetic—type one—for almost ten years by then. It was a kind of diabetes that they call late onset, some sort of autoimmune disorder, I believe. Anyway, he was a highly intelligent man and a disciplined one. He was managing his disease well; the idea that he’d inject himself with insulin and then not eat didn’t sound plausible to me.” She massaged the palm of her left hand with her right thumb as she talked, and I knew the topic was still painful for her.

“You didn’t buy the idea that he lost his food somehow? Maybe a bear swiped it, or he wandered away from his campsite and got disoriented?”

She shrugged one bony shoulder. “I can’t sit here and declare those things categorically impossible. However, they seemed improbable enough to me that I badgered the authorities to look deeper. They searched for his backpack but never found it. My father was a very wealthy and powerful man, EJ.” She gave me a significant look. “Many people benefited financially from his death, including me.”

“Since you mention it,” I said, glad that she’d broached the subject, “who were the beneficiaries in his will?”

She stiffened. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” A luggage cart trundled by, pushed by a bellhop, and a small dog yapped at us from within a carrier stacked precariously atop a heap of designer suitcases.

“Probated wills are a matter of public record,” I reminded her.

Taking a deep breath through her nose, she exhaled loudly. “I inherited controlling interest in Lang Enterprises, the Manhattan apartment, and the presidency of the company. I was in line for that job the next year anyway when my dad planned to retire. I’ve worked for the company since graduating from Stanford. Both my brothers inherited substantial property and other assets, and my stepmother got the house in Vernonville and a trust fund that ensures she never has to work again.”

But she had worked again, I thought. She worked for Jackson Porter. “Were—are—you and your stepmother close?”

“What a funny question,” Aileen said, giving me a quizzical look. “I was an adult when my dad married Catherine, and we’ve always been friendly but not intimate. Now, tell me why you called,” she commanded, glancing at a gold Omega watch on her wrist. “I’ve got to go into the dinner. I’m giving opening remarks.”

“And I’ve got to get to work, so I’ll keep it brief.” I explained about Porter’s death and how Catherine Lang had supplied Elena Porter with an alibi for the time of Jackson’s murder.

“I don’t see how that relates to my dad’s death,” Aileen said, disappointed. She stood in one fluid motion, the gown swishing.

I stood, too. “I think your stepmother was returning the favor.”

Aileen was quick. It took her only a split second to realize what I was saying. “You think Catherine arranged my father’s death somehow and that Elena backed up a fake alibi? And now she’s doing the same for Elena?”

I nodded. “I think it’s possible. The newspaper account said Catherine was at a spa with a friend the weekend your father died. If that friend was Elena—”

Aileen made a disgusted sound. “You should leave security work for novel writing.
I
was with Catherine at the spa that weekend, not Elena. I’m the ‘friend’ the article referred to. This has been an utter waste of my time.”

Before I could recover from my astonishment enough to answer her, she had spun away in a swirl of garnet satin and was halfway across the lobby. I didn’t try to call her back. Her announcement left me flummoxed, flabbergasted . . . I tried to think of other words that would encapsulate my surprise. None came to me, and I retraced my steps across the lobby and out the revolving door to my car, finding a ticket on my windshield even though the meter could only have expired a minute or two earlier. I jerked the ticket from under the wiper and glared at the back of the traffic enforcement officer giving the same treatment to an H3 half a block away. This whole expedition had been a disaster.

On the long drive back to Vernonville, I beat myself up for having leaped to conclusions without getting all the facts. I had made a complete and total idiot of myself. Even in the car, my cheeks warmed with the memory of Aileen Lang-Quincy’s scornful look. I could only be grateful that I was unlikely to run into her again. Even worse than the humiliation was the realization that I was back to square one. Now that I had to consider Elena’s alibi a legitimate one, I was left with a handful of suspects who appeared equally likely—or unlikely—to have murdered Jackson Porter.

I hadn’t eaten before driving into the city and I needed food before I could think about the murder anymore. Kyra’s cell went straight to voice mail, so I called Grandpa Atherton. He sounded happy to hear from me and invited me over for dinner. “You can try out my new night-vision goggles while you’re here,” he said.

Knowing that dinner at Grandpa’s meant either cafeteria fare if we wandered over to the community dining facility, or canned soup and toast if we ate in his home, I stopped by a supermarket and picked up a deli-roasted chicken and a quart of pasta salad. Minutes later, the familiar scent of chicken noodle soup boiling on the stove greeted me as Grandpa opened the door. “You can save the soup for tomorrow’s lunch,” I said, hefting my grocery bag.

“Thank you, Emma-Joy,” he said, stooping to kiss my cheek. “I’ll just put this on plates and we can eat.”

I followed him into the kitchen and pulled a couple of Heinekens from the refrigerator while he divvied up the chicken and pasta salad onto paper plates. The tiny dining area off Grandpa’s kitchen was stacked halfway to the ceiling with boxes of gadgets he’d bought online, and two computers, ham radio equipment, and other electronics took up the entire table, so we carried our plates into the living room and ate off metal TV tables. Grandpa didn’t have a TV—he agreed with whoever said it was bubblegum for the mind—and his living room vibrated with books and mementoes of his CIA career: a hammered silver wall hanging from Nicaragua, a Hmong quilt, a cricket bat, a display of Soviet military insignia, a piece of a jacket that supposedly belonged to a young Fidel Castro, and more.

“So, what’s on your mind?” Grandpa asked, wiping chicken grease off his fingers as we finished the meal. “Are you still fretting over that murder?”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘fretting,’” I said, leaning back against the green plaid sofa. “But it’s eating at me.”

“Fretting,” he said with a decisive nod. “Your mom was always a fretter, too. I don’t know where she got it because I’ve never worried a day in my life and my Dolores was the most serene person I ever knew. She had to be, what with all my activities in the sixties and seventies.”

My grandmother had died almost two decades ago, and I knew Grandpa still missed her. He gestured for me to continue, and I told him about the theory that Aileen Lang-Quincy had blown out of the water and about the other suspects.

“It was a woman,” he said decisively when I finished.

“Why do you say that?” I asked, swallowing a sip of warm beer.

“Because no man would strip a man and display him in a window,” Grandpa asserted. “A man might cut off another fellow’s privates to leave a message—don’t mess with my wife, for instance—and I saw a chap once who’d been tortured and the naked body left in the street as a warning for potential informers, but this . . . this is a woman. If Porter was a womanizer like you say, it’s some woman who thinks he did her wrong.”

What he said made sense to me, but the physical difficulties involved made me less sure than Grandpa seemed to be. I flipped through my mental photos of Finola, Monica, Velma, Elena, and Catherine. “None of the women involved are exactly bodybuilders,” I said. “I don’t think they could have gotten him into the store by themselves.”

“You’d be surprised what people can accomplish with a little adrenaline flowing through them,” he said, then immediately contradicted himself. “Or maybe you wouldn’t be.”

He was remembering my time in Afghanistan, the firefight that had won me a medal and cost me my knee when Taliban forces set off an IED. “People can do extraordinary things when the situation demands it,” I agreed, setting my empty bottle on the tray with a snap.

“I’ll see what I can learn about the suspects for you,” Grandpa said, his face lighting up. “Which one should I follow first? Maybe that Monica woman. Mothers can be ferocious when they think their cubs are in danger . . . even if the danger is emotional rather than physical.”

“None of them,” I said. “And no breaking and entering to check out their computers, either.” I shuddered at the memory of how close he’d come to being caught at Gatchel’s house. “I think it’s time I bowed out of this and let the police do their thing. I really thought that my familiarity with the mall would help me identify the murderer, but so far I’m batting zero.” My fantasy of confounding Detective Helland by apprehending the murderer and marching him or her through the front door of the police station was looking about as likely as my knee suddenly regenerating.

Grandpa unfolded himself from the wing chair he sat in and pulled me up for a hug. The waffle weave of his tan vest felt comforting under my cheek. “You’re not a quitter, Emma-Joy. I’ll tell you what will make you feel better. We’ll go for a walk and I’ll let you use my new night-vision binoculars. The higher signal-to-noise ratio in these fourthgeneration devices is amazing. They’ve managed to negate some of the halo effect as well, so the binocs work better in an urban area with more ambient light.”

Grandpa’s enthusiasm made me laugh. “Let’s do it.”

I left Grandpa’s place an hour and a half later, feeling more relaxed than I had in days. Something about the simple pleasure he took in spying on unsuspecting strangers transmitted itself to me. I stopped home to change into my uniform and feed Fubar and then headed to the mall. The turnover briefing from Edgar Ambrose and Dallabetta consisted of a quick “Quiet as a grave,” and quicker good nights as they headed for their cars and, presumably, their comfortable beds.

I settled in at the desk and studied the camera screens, which remained boringly devoid of activity. After half an hour and several complete cycles through the mall’s fiftyplus operational cameras, my eyes burned and I was having trouble staying awake. Not a good sign with seven and a half hours more to go before my shift was up. I scrunched my eyes closed to moisturize them and when I opened them, thought I glimpsed a dark, hooded figure skulking along the outside of the mall about where Kyra and Joel and I had staged our reenactment the other night. The screen switched to another view before I could verify what I’d seen, and I hastily clicked through the cameras to bring up images from the one in question. Nothing. Whoever had been there—if anyone—was gone. I drummed my fingers on the desk for a moment, then decided a quick patrol was in order. If nothing else, it might help me stay awake.

I mounted the Segway and purred through the empty halls toward the Dillard’s wing and Diamanté. Whoever I’d seen might still be outside, but my instincts told me he or she was trying to get in. I slowed as I approached the turn, grateful for the Segway’s almost silent operation. The corridor’s inadequate after-hours lighting cast more shadows than illumination, and I hesitated before steering toward Diamanté. I saw no movement, no sign of breaking and entering at any of the stores I passed. When I drew level with the narrow hall that led to the restrooms, though, a change in temperature goose-pimpled my skin. Was it my imagination, or had I felt a draft? I stopped. Without the slight rush of air caused by the Segway’s movement, I definitely felt a draft. The outside door was open.

Now would be a good time to call the Vernonville Police Department. However, after this evening’s “cry wolf” fiasco with Aileen Lang-Quincy, I was reluctant to make the call and look like an idiot again if no one was there. I’d check it out first. I hugged the wall with the Segway, passing the men’s room and then the ladies’ room without incident. The large trash can was right where it always was. I peered into it. Empty. No trash or bodies. The exterior door when I reached it was ajar, open a scant half inch. Using my elbow, I nudged it wider and peered into the darkness. The cold bit at me, making me blink, but I saw nothing unusual or suspicious—no vehicles or hooded skulkers. I pulled it closed behind me, but it didn’t latch properly and sighed open the same half inch. Hm. Had someone damaged the mechanism forcing the door just now, or had it happened earlier, perhaps in the course of a delivery? I cursed the mall’s penny-pinching ways and the lack of a proper alarm system.

A faint sound behind me, not a footstep or anything identifiable, but out of place in the deserted hallway, made me spin around. Two figures loomed in front of me. Hillary Clinton stood ten feet away on my left, and Sarah Palin hovered close beside her on my right. Hillary had a gun pointed at my midsection. Damn politicians.