Killer Pancake gbcm-5

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Why don’t your guys just ask her?”

  “We’ve already talked to Dusty Routt. At length. She swears she’s never heard of Shaman Krill. So either she’s lying or your friend Markasian got the info from somebody else, or got it wrong about who the boyfriend was. And speaking of your friend Markasian—”

  “You know that person in question is never going to tell me a thing. She’ll protect her sources to the grave.”

  “Frances Markasian? Not tell a thing to my Goldy? Never.” Tom chuckled again. “Feed her some doughnuts or something. You know, the way they loosen folks’ tongues by slipping ’em a few drinks? How about a little sodium Pentothal in your chocolate truffle cheesecake?”

  I told him I’d do my best and hung up. Truth Serum tiramisu was not in my repertoire, but never mind.

  “Well, Mrs. Schulz,” said Nick Gentileschi with that equine grin that made my skin crawl. “Whadya know? Seems you were just the person I was looking for.” Then, without a hint of apology for the fiasco of my in-store “bust” and “interrogation,” he shuffled through an untidy stack of papers next to the camera and retrieved a check. After scanning it, he handed it over: the balance due Goldilocks’ Catering on the Mignon banquet. I stuffed it in my skirt pocket. Gentileschi went on with, “Sorry we didn’t get it to you sooner. Personnel gave it to me when we heard your assistant went to the hospital. As you know, we’re in the middle of a major crime investigation here. An unexplained death doesn’t help the accounts get paid.”

  I fingered the check in my pocket. There was something slimy, something Uriah Heepish, about Nick Gentileschi that made me increasingly uneasy. He’d gone straight from badgering and prejudging me to acting as if we were pals. Still, it would be better to have the man on my side than not. And Tom said I should cooperate. “I wasn’t lying when I came up here,” I confessed. “I don’t know why I was listening to what was going on at the counter, except that my assistant, the fellow who went to the hospital, is practically a member of our family. He is—was—Claire’s boyfriend. He’s devastated by her death, and I’m trying to help.”

  Nick Gentileschi crossed his arms and wriggled in his chair. “We all cared about Claire, you can count on that. She was a good girl. We’ve stepped up security in the parking lot. Since it looks like foul play, we’re going to help the police in any way we can.”

  I said innocently, “Yes, my husband referred to that. I certainly hope you are doing everything to help the case.” I rubbed my arm again. “Everything relevant, that is.”

  He glanced at the picture of the home office again, clearly trying to decide what to tell me. He didn’t know how to balance secrecy with my irritation over being falsely arrested. There was an ego thing involved too. He was dying to show me what a big shot he was. I guess Albuquerque sent back good vibes, because he said, “Know what our biggest problem is, Mrs. Schulz?”

  I shook my head sympathetically.

  “Lawsuits.” Bingo. He exhaled and moved around in his chair, making it squeak. “If Claire Satterfield’s parents decide to sue because they think we have lax security in our parking lot, this store and this mall could go down the tubes all over again.” He raised his chin and added proudly, “I’ve been in this place a long time. Served as security chief when it was Ward’s. And believe me, being unemployed for four years was not something I want to repeat.”

  I hadn’t been a psych major for nothing. In good Carl Rogers fashion, I said, “Not something you want to repeat.”

  Abruptly, Nick Gentileschi stood up and braced himself against his desk. He looked at me for a moment and I squirmed. Then he announced, “We’re analyzing all the films of her sales, seeing if anyone suspicious turns up too often. But you figure”—he held out his large hands too close to my face and ticked off his points on his fingers—“someone had to know when she was going to be in the parking garage, that she was going to be there at all….”

  Uncomfortable with his stare and his sudden closeness, I stood up too, and inched backward. “Figuring out Claire’s whereabouts wouldn’t have been too hard. Especially given that the banquet attracted so many high-rolling customers. Not to mention a few demonstrators.”

  “Let me tell you what the problem is,” he said suddenly.

  Another problem. I took up refuge against one of the smudged aquamarine walls. “Go ahead.”

  “We’re not careful enough in this store,” he said matter-of-factly. “Yeah, we have security. But we’re not warning employees about people who come in with an ulterior motive. Take that guy you were talking to Schulz about.”

  I raised my eyebrows innocently, and he grinned. He said, “The one with the record and his own cosmetics place? His name’s Reggie Hotchkiss. He’s around us all the time. I mean, why? What’s the big deal with our cosmetics counter? Guy went to jail in seventy for burning his draft card, destroying federal property. Convicted of trying to break into the CIA. He’s into makeup now because his mommy founded a cosmetics company. Now that he’s in his forties, Mr. Hotchkiss is suddenly interested in making money. Uh-huh. The guy’s spying on us, I say. That’s what I told Schulz. Could be more there, that’s what we’re going to discuss later,” he concluded grimly, “after I escort you out of the store.” He strode to the door and opened it.

  “But … I don’t want to leave the store just now. What do you mean by ‘more there’?”

  He wagged a finger at me. “Remember Martha Mitchell? Maybe you’re too young. She wanted to get too involved in her husband’s business too. A guy can’t be Attorney General and tend to a wife who’s always meddling.”

  “A guy can’t be Attorney General if he’s intent on breaking the law,” I said sweetly.

  Gentileschi’s features hardened. “Mrs. Schulz, let’s go.”

  As we walked back through the china department, I took a new tack. “I hope you told my husband the details of Hotchkiss’s record, if he didn’t know already.”

  “You bet.”

  “So tell me,” I continued, “how are you going to analyze these films you were talking about? I mean, where are your cameras?”

  He gave me a look that told me I’d lost any tactical advantage I’d had. He wagged a finger at me and said, “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, come on.” We started our descent on the escalator. “I’m just wondering how you saw me. I mean, technology must have changed the way you do things over the years.”

  Nick Gentileschi puffed out his chest. “Things haven’t changed that much, I can tell you that.” He raised one of those eyebrows. “And we’re talking some years.” He gestured to a protruding area that framed the entrance to the store just inside the doors. The three-sided frame, which looked like a walled-in deck that had been painted the same color as the store walls, was about six feet wide and deep all the way around—up one side of the entrance, spanning the top of the door, and coming down the other side of the entrance. It faced the Mignon counter. About five feet up the horizontal section of the frame, a large vent extended the length of the front. “I can’t tell you how the cameras work, but I can tell you how we used to do most of our security. See that boxed-in area across from the Mignon counter? They decided not to get rid of it when they renovated the store.” I nodded and studied the large, protruding structure as we descended the escalator. I had never even noticed it before. “It’s called a blind,” Gentileschi went on. “We used to sit up there.”

  “A blind?” I repeated.

  “Yeah, we’d sit in the blind. Like a duck blind, you know? The place where the hunters sit to watch for the ducks. You can see out, but whoever is hunted can’t see in. Anyway, we’d look out through those vents to see what was going on in the store. We’d watch people. Say a woman picks something up, maybe a bottle of perfume. She wants to steal it but she isn’t sure. She hawks all around….” He slitted his eyes and looked from side to side in imitation. “That’s hawking. She could spend ten minutes trying to make up her mind whether she’s gonna swipe it.” He chuc
kled. “So say she finally doesn’t lift it. That would really piss us off. So we’d squirt her with Windex. Right through that vent on the blind!”

  “Why, Nick,” I said demurely, “I never imagined a security guy could get away with that kind of behavior.”

  We had reached the first floor. His warm, moist hand shook mine briefly. “You’d be surprised,” he said. He winked roguishly.

  And on that happy note, he headed off for men’s suits.

  “Gosh, what happened to you?” exclaimed Dusty when I returned to the Mignon counter. She was picking up the last of the plastic boxes and arranging them on a cart. “What were you doing?”

  Harriet Wells, who was waiting on a black woman, tilted her head and smiled to acknowledge my return. Dusty and Harriet must have known I wasn’t stealing anything. Why didn’t they speak up in my defense when they saw Stan White leading me away? Maybe they were taught not to trust anyone. Given what had been happening around this mall lately, perhaps they were spooked by anyone acting odd in their domain.

  “I wasn’t doing anything,” I told Dusty, “except trying to see if you were free. But you were talking to some guy.” I gave her a naive, questioning look. “A tall blond guy? I mean, you looked as if you were very involved with him.”

  She laughed and waved this away. “Harriet did put me down to work through lunch. So if you come over and let me do your face, you can buy something for your sick friend and we can talk, all at the same time. Then if another customer comes along, if you don’t mind, I can wait on him or her, and then get right back to you.”

  I was hungry but said that was fine, helped her stack the last of the plastic boxes on the cart, then asked if I could use the phone by the counter. She told me to go ahead, she’d be right back. Then she wheeled the cart away. I called Southwest Hospital and asked if Marla Korman had had her atherectomy yet. Someone at the nurses’ station reported that Marla had not gone yet, and they did not know when she would be going. Typical.

  I meandered over to the counter and listened to Harriet tell her customer that, believe it or not, she, Harriet Wells, had just had her sixty-fifth birthday, and just look at what Rejuvenation cream had done for her skin. The black woman put a ninety-dollar bottle of the stuff on her credit card.

  “Here we are,” said Dusty brightly. She nipped behind the counter, flipped through a file box, and retrieved a card.

  As she was writing my name at the top, I slid onto one of the high stools on my side of the counter and said, “Tell me where the cameras are.”

  Startled, she looked up at me and giggled. Her cheeks colored. She gestured toward a silver half-globe protruding from the ceiling above the shoe department. “That’s like, a one-way mirror. The camera sees out but you can’t see in. It has pan, it has zoom, and it’s watching us all the time. See, check this out.” She ducked behind the counter and came up with a Prince & Grogan hag in one hand and three miniature jars of pink stuff in the other. “These are free samples of Rejuvenation, the new cream Mignon is pushing. I’m allowed to give three samples to each person, which includes me. And of course, it includes you. Anything more than that is considered employee stealing and I’ll be out on my behind. Now, you can bet they’re zooming in on me.” She nodded at the silver half-globe and held up the three jars before putting them in the bag. “Okay,” she said with a laugh, “now you’ve got your free stuff that ordinarily costs ninety bucks a bottle. Let’s take a look at your face. Would you describe your skin as oily?”

  Actually, I told her I wouldn’t describe my skin as anything besides normal, because I just didn’t pay that much attention to it. She frowned, and I remembered that when I was a doctor’s wife, I’d worried about my complexion endlessly, and bought all kinds of stuff. I guess it was some kind of sublimation for worry about what was going on in the rest of my life. Your skin is under relentless attack, the ads screamed, and you have to fight back. No kidding. Needless to say, the gumption I’d eventually developed hadn’t come from a bottle. In the money-scrimping years that followed my divorce, the only thing I used on my face was sunscreen. As far as makeup went, I hadn’t missed a thing. And certainly the last thing I wanted to go back to was my endless trips to the counters of La Prairie, Lancôme, and Estée Lauder, seeking the best concealer to cover my black eyes and bruised cheeks, looking for someone who hadn’t waited on me before, hadn’t seen the damage the Jerk liked to inflict.

  “Goldy? Hello? You in there? What kind of cleanser are you using now?”

  Pulled back to reality, I replied that I used soap.

  “Soap?” echoed Dusty incredulously. “Real soap? Soap-soap?” When I nodded, she persisted, “What brand of soap-soap?”

  “Whatever’s on sale at the grocery store.”

  Dusty couldn’t help it, she put her hand on her chest and began to giggle. “That must be how you got to be friends with Frances Markasian! You know, that reporter you introduced me to?”

  “The woman in red who was here earlier, right? The one I introduced you to yesterday?”

  “Yeah, spending lots of money, I couldn’t believe it. She sure has changed her tune. Maybe she has a new boyfriend. Did you see that article she wrote on cosmetics for the Mountain Journal! I went home and looked it up, to see if it was the same person. I swear, she must be the queen of the skinflints. She wrote that people should just use Cetaphil, witch hazel, and drugstore moisturizer. Can you imagine?”

  “I must have missed that issue. When was it?”

  Before she could reply, Harriet, who had been writing in the large ledger, closed it with a firm slap and came over.

  “I remember one time,” she said in her honeylike voice, certainly not a voice I would associate with someone in her late sixties, “when we had a widow come in. She was fairly young, and all she’d ever used was drugstore makeup.” She shook her head at me beneficently, as if to say, You see, being a soap-user isn’t the stupidest thing we’ve ever seen here. “That poor woman … it just brings tears to my eyes to remember.” I looked at Harriet’s eyes. They were wet, all right. “Of course, her skin was a mess—too dry in one place, too oily in another. Her foundation didn’t match her skin tone, she wore bright green eyeshadow, and her cheeks were so caked with blush, she looked like she had scarlet fever. I sold her our complete line. She had the insurance money, you see, and she could do whatever she wanted. A thousand dollars’ worth of cosmetics I sold to that woman, and she was so happy! In less than an hour.” She reached for a tissue and dabbed at her eyes.

  “I’ll bet you just loved that, Harriet,” Dusty commented.

  Harriet ignored this. “Oh, it was wonderful,” she said to me. “Really touching, what I did for that woman. She looked beautiful when she walked out of here. She looked perfect.”

  Down the counter, a woman began to try out the perfume testers. She was wearing what looked to be some kind of designer sundress with big black squiggles on a white background. Below her elaborately streaked and curled hair, gold necklaces dripped around her neck and a gold bracelet with bells tinkled when she shook her wrist with each new perfume sample. Dusty put down her pen and moved toward her. Catapulted out of a post-green-eyeshadow reverie, Harriet took two quick steps in Dusty’s direction, put a hand on her shoulder, and snapped a loud “Excuse me!” before pushing past her to be the first one to stand in front of the Woman with Bucks.

  “Whoa,” I said when Dusty returned, crestfallen. “What was that all about?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Dusty bitterly. “I have Harriet’s pump prints all up my back. And I’m the one who has to worry about the sales figures.” She gestured to the big blue volume in which Harriet had been writing. “Every time I look at the ledger book, I break out in a sweat.”

  “Does she walk over everybody that way?”

  “If you’re in her way,” murmured Dusty as she held up a bottle of foundation to my cheek to see if it matched my skin tone. Shaking her head, she clinked the bottle back into its drawer and picked out an
other. “You know this Rejuvenation we’re selling?” I nodded. She continued, “Our sales goal on it is twenty-three hundred dollars a month per sales associate.” She pointed to the ledger. “Today’s the third of July and Harriet has already sold two thousand dollars of the stuff this month. That’s what, eighteen total hours of sales time? Incredible. Of course, she says the most awful things to customers.” Dusty’s smile was wicked. “Claire and I figured Harriet must be at least eighty by the end of the day, since she gets older each minute when she’s trying to sell anti-aging cream.”

  I unscrewed the lid on a jar of thick cream, then used the little plastic applicator to spread a dollop of the viscous, sweet-smelling stuff on the back of my hand. I said mildly, “Was Harriet jealous of Claire?”

  The wicked smile on Dusty’s lips traveled to her eyes. “Claire had one client, a man who’s a weird-genius kind of guy, who spent a lot of money. You mentioned him, he was here before—a thin, tall blond man? Anyway, never mind that it was his wife’s money, this guy spent it like crazy, buying stuff for his wife, I guess, but always only from Claire. He wouldn’t even buy a tube of lipstick from one of the rest of us. He’d hang around here like a loyal dog, waiting until her shift. And you know how Claire was. She’d flirt and bat her eyes and just have the best old time. Or maybe you never saw her do that…. Hold still, I’m going to use this cleanser on you.”

  I sat motionless while Dusty used two cotton balls to spread luscious-smelling cream over my cheeks. It felt divine. If my stomach hadn’t been growling, I would have been certain I was in heaven.