Killer Pancake gbcm-5

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Anyway,” she went on, “Claire would just make this guy feel like a million dollars. ‘You’re not really goin’ to buy that too! Y’goin’ t’be broke!’” Dusty’s imitation of Claire’s Australian accent was dead-on. “So. Pretty soon the wife, who spends a lot of money here herself, comes in with her husband to see why her husband’s developed such an enthusiastic interest in cosmetics all of a sudden.”

  “When was all this going on?” I asked, trying to keep still as Dusty smeared lime-scented toner over my face. I slid my glance sideways to see if Harriet was having any luck with Mrs. Got-Rocks in the black and white dress.

  “Watch out!” Dusty cried sharply.

  Startled, I fell off the stool where I was perched. “Huh? I was just looking to see how Harriet was doing.”

  “I don’t want to get this stuff in your eye! You don’t know what could happen!”

  Dusty had become so suddenly flustered that I sat back slowly on the stool and opened my eyes wide. “I’m fine. Look. I love the feel of this stuff you put on me—”

  Dusty took a deep breath and began to write on my ticket, or whatever it was. When I asked her what she was doing, she informed me that this was my client card. She’d record everything she sold me so that next time she could just look it up when I came in and needed new blush or whatever.

  “I have to tell you honestly, Dusty, I don’t think there’s much chance that I’ll be spending a lot of time or money here….”

  “Okay, close your eyes and keep them closed. I’m going to do your moisturizer.” She didn’t seem to hear me.

  I obeyed. “So what happened with this man and his wife and Claire?”

  Dusty finished with the moisturizer and began to dab on something else. From the position of her fingers, I guessed it was concealer. I didn’t dare open my eyes though, for fear of another eruption.

  “I think Claire and the man had an affair. He was, like, smitten. I mean, the guy seemed crazed. Obsessed. I do know they broke up later, because she told me. But he still came around—you know, hanging back where he figured we wouldn’t see him. He would skulk through Shoes, watching her. I mean, who could miss him? He’s so tall, and that blondish-white hair makes him look kind of young and real cute. Okay, now I’m doing your foundation.” More scented stuff was liberally spread over my face. Pat, pat, pat. “Never tug or pull on your face,” Dusty warned sternly. “That’s what causes premature loosening of the skin around the eyes.”

  Noted. Keeping my eyes closed, I inquired, “So what happened to the skulking guy? Why was he here this morning?”

  “Well, I don’t know about this morning, because he was just asking a bunch of disgusting questions, like what had happened to Claire’s body and stuff like that. Okay, I’m doing your eyes. Hold still.”

  While Dusty worked on my eyelids, I was reminded of those X-ray technicians who tell you to hold still and not breathe. Then they go behind a foot-thick wall and zap you. What happens if you breathe? Do you go radioactive, or do you just screw up the X ray?

  “All right,” said Dusty. “Now blush.”

  It took me a second to realize that wasn’t a command. “Can I move? What happened to the guy?”

  “Don’t talk or I won’t get this on straight. Well. As far as the affair goes, a while back the guy’s wife started coming in just to ask if her husband had been here. I mean, you talk about screwed up. You can look in the mirror now.”

  I did as ordered. I looked different, that was for sure. No more smudges under my eyes from lack of sleep; lots of radiant cheek tone that made me look either acutely embarrassed or much more physically active than would be justified by a short daily regimen of yoga. Most prominent and startling were the black eyeliner and brown eyeshadow. I no longer looked like a caterer; I resembled an Egyptian queen. Make that a promiscuous Egyptian queen.

  “Wow, Dusty,” I gushed. “You’re amazing! This guy who was watching Claire … What was his name, do you remember?”

  Dusty batted her eyes at me and then held them open wide. I had the uncomfortable feeling that she was vamping me. But the eye movements were apparently some kind of universal signal of what she wanted me to do. She needed to apply my mascara. When I obeyed, she continued. “His name was Charles Braithwaite. Don’t you know the Braithwaites? Our bio class went over to his lab once on a field trip. Look up now, and hold still.”

  “Yes, I know them,” I said carefully. “Babs Braithwaite invaded my life a few weeks ago, and it hasn’t been pleasant.” In fact, I thought with a shiver, Babs was making me feel distinctly uneasy, the way she kept interjecting her presence into Julian’s and my life.

  Dusty said, “The Braithwaites are, like, mega-rich. I mean, they live in this huge place in the country club. But I guess Charles Braithwaite fell in love with Claire. Like the bumper sticker, you know? Scientists do it unexpectedly. Okay, look out, I’m going to do your lipstick.” She giggled. “Nectarine Climax. How do you like having that on your lips?”

  “Sounds … intriguing. You went on a field trip to Braithwaite’s lab? What did he do in the lab?” My head was spinning.

  Dusty dotted my lips with a Q-Tip loaded with what resembled cooked pumpkin. She spread it all around, then ordered me to blot. Only when she’d put the cap back on Nectarine Climax did she answer, “Oh, you know, he has that big greenhouse. Haven’t you seen it? I never wrote up my report on the trip because I … left the school. But anyway. Last I heard, Charles was working on roses or something.”

  I looked in the mirror. Nefertiti blinked back. My eyes, dark-lined and shadowed the color of burnt toast, had a hard time concealing astonishment. Roses or something. Experimenting. The way you experiment to produce a blue rose, like the one I’d found on the garage floor near where Claire was hit? I furrowed my newly powdered brow, squinted at the smorgasbord of brightly packaged products lined up on the shiny counter, and asked Dusty to sell me some hand cream for my friend in the hospital. While I dug through my wallet looking for the emergency hundred-dollar bill, she picked out a jar for eighty bucks. Twenty dollars wasn’t going to get me too far in an emergency.

  “Please, Dusty,” I begged, “don’t you have something less expensive?”

  She shrugged, as if I were about to make the biggest mistake of my life. “The smallest jar is sixty.”

  “I’ll take it.” While she rummaged below the counter for the sixty-dollar size, I asked nonchalantly, “What about a guy named Shaman Krill? Did Claire go out with anybody by that name, before or after her fling with Charles B.?”

  Dusty plunked a shiny box down on the counter. “Shaman Krill? Never heard of him. What does he look like?”

  I handed her the hundred-dollar bill. “He’s an animal rights’ activist with a dark ponytail, gold earring, short stature, and big attitude. Sound familiar?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Are you kidding? He sounds disgusting. I never saw anybody like that. And Claire would never have gone out with some weirdo.” She pressed buttons on the cash-register terminal to ring up my purchase, lifted the jar and the receipt—for the cameras, I guessed—and gave me the bag.

  “Thanks, Dusty.”

  She tilted her head and gave me a sweet smile. “Come back soon. It’s fun to have somebody to talk to.”

  Time to leave the store, time to find Julian, time to go see Marla. Time to see if I could get my friend-who’d-just-had-a-heart-attack to smile at my freshly minted face. And yet something was holding me back. I couldn’t go just yet, and besides, Julian was still doing the chamber brunch. The paper bag crackled in my hand as I surveyed the store, the store that twinkled with bright lights and glittering décor and mirrors I hated to look in. Mirrors. I looked up to the second story. Not an hour ago I had seen Babs Braithwaite leaning half-dressed over the escalator and claiming somebody was back there, Nick had talked about surveillance from the blinds-that-were-like-duck-blinds. Claire had been helping Nick; Claire thought she was being watched. Now Babs thought she was being watched. I
dashed up the moving steps. Back where? Behind the dressing room mirrors? Was there somebody back there?

  On the second floor, I knew better than to look up to locate the camera or glance back and forth to check on the presence of security people, called “hawking” by Nick Gentileschi. That would alert them to my attentions, and I certainly didn’t want to have them watching me again. Even a paranoid has real enemies, Henry Kissinger was reputed to have said. I lifted a hanger with a hot-pink and yellow bikini and headed confidently in the direction of the dressing room.

  In the recessed entry, a short hallway to the right led to the mirrored rooms. I walked along the row of dressing rooms. One was occupied by a woman trying on a suit while attempting to calm her recalcitrant toddler. The rest were empty. Was this just more evidence of Babs acting hysterical? She’d seemed so convinced that someone was watching her. And not just a camera either. But where could you watch someone from?

  At the end of the hallway of dressing rooms was one of those expensive imitation rubber plants and a rack of bathing suits apparently waiting to be returned to the sales floor. Behind the rack and almost invisible because it was painted the same color as the walls was a door. Without hesitation I dropped the suit, pulled the rack out of the way, and tried the door handle: locked. Now, where would Nick Gentileschi, that cliché of a dime-store cop, put the spare key, if there was such a thing?

  I thought back to my visit to his office. He had been wearing a keyring. But there had to be more than one key. Where would the department store keep a key to an area behind the ladies’ dressing room?

  Wait. I had seen something the day before, when I was trying to find the right person with my check. There had been a key box on the aquamarine office wall belonging to Lisa, the lady perplexed by the notion of accounts payable. I veered off toward the offices. What would Tom say if he knew I intended to filch a key? Well, I would see if I could get the key and find out what Babs was talking about with somebody back there. Then I would worry about Tom.

  The store offices were virtually deserted, probably because of the food fair. To the one young woman in accounts receivable, I asked knowledgeably, “Is Lisa here? I talked to her yesterday about accounts payable.” I touched my Food Fair badge, as if that made me official. “She told me to come back today.”

  The young woman shrugged. “You can check her office.”

  Well, now, I would just do that. I knocked and walked into Lisa’s office. She was gone. Hallelujah. I stuck my head out and announced to the young woman, “She’s not here. I’m just going to leave her a note.”

  The woman shrugged. Instead of writing a note, of course, I stepped over the pile of computer print-outs, crossed to the key box, and pulled on it. It wasn’t locked, but one corner was painted closed. I needed something like a blade to cut through the aquamarine muck. Lisa’s desk yielded a nail file and I levered it in. My next tug brought the cabinet open and I stared at what must have been forty keys, of which only about half were labeled with ancient, corroded masking tape. I scanned them. In barely visible ball-point pen, one scrap of tape said, SECOND FLOOR—LADIES’ DRESSING ROOM. My fingers closed around the key and I slipped it into my shirt pocket. Thanks, Lisa.

  Not wanting to attract the attention of the cameras, I walked calmly back to the dressing room. I moved the plant out of the way, fumbled with the lock, and then pushed into the blackness of the space beyond the door. The odors of dust, concrete, and cardboard containers were almost overwhelming. I slipped the key back into my pocket and groped along the wall for a light. There was no way I was going into this area, whatever it was, and risk breaking my neck tripping over a box of lingerie. Eureka. My hand closed on a switch. When dim fluorescent light flooded the room, I saw that I stood in a huge, tall rectangle. Stripped of all the cameras, concealed piping, lighting, and other electrical wiring of the main store, this ceiling went up what looked like two full stories, past enormous steel shelves and a metal ladder going up to the roof. There was a door on the left. It couldn’t lead to the dressing rooms. I turned. The dressing rooms should be located on the right beyond the back wall where I stood.

  Boxes, plastic bags full of merchandise, and carts impeded my progress as I advanced parallel to the wall. My feet scraped across the concrete. My uniform was getting filthy from all the dust I was kicking up. But I was rewarded. Two boxes had been moved haphazardly—and hastily, it appeared—to make a narrow pathway to a door in the wall. I wiggled through and tried the door: it was open. On the other side was a very dimly lit passageway that appeared to be horseshoe-shaped. I tiptoed along and gasped. I was behind one-way mirrors. In front of me, a thin woman was trying on a pink bikini. I felt myself blush. I held my breath, averted my eyes from the mirrors, and walked quickly around the U-shape. Along both rows of mirrors, there were chairs, a half-empty paper coffee cup, and several crumpled fast-food wrappers. If there had been someone here earlier, he or she was gone now.

  A plump woman appeared behind the revealing mirrors, her arms loaded with swim suits. In the dressing room beside her, the thin woman, now clad in the pink bikini, swiveled her hips and frowningly scrutinized her cleavage. I beat a hasty retreat. Pushing past the clutter of the storage space, I closed the door behind me. Then I hightailed it out of the store grasping my bag with its jar of cream for Marla. Tom would, no doubt, be extremely interested to know that the security/peeping-tom area was accessible. He’d also be intrigued by what Dusty had told me of Claire, the infatuated Charles Braithwaite, and Braithwaite’s horticultural experimentation. But frustration ruled as I rushed along the mall looking for an available pay phone. The kiosks were full. Waiting lines for every pay phone snaked in front of the boutiques. I cursed under my breath; my stomach growled in response. Half past one with no lunch and two small muffins for breakfast—typical meal schedule for a caterer. I decided to zip up to the food fair for my share of the free samples, then find Julian and hurry over to the Coronary Care Unit to see Marla. I’d call Tom from the hospital.

  Out on the roof, a refreshing breeze stirred the air. A nearby bank thermometer announced a digital neon temperature that blinked from eighty-one to eighty-two and back again. I scanned the rows of booths, trying to decide where to indulge my hunger. Despite the maze of roads, fast-food spots, and housing developments spreading as far as the foot of the mountains, here on the roof the food tents, flowers, streamers, and music had transformed the expanse of concrete into a completely credible fair. Marvelous scents mingled and wafted through the air. So did laughter, happy voices, and a band playing jazz. As I stood underneath the flapping Playhouse Southwest banner, I smiled and took a deep breath of the delectable aromas: pizza, barbecue, coffee … and something else.

  Cigarette smoke? No. I looked around. Yes.

  Perched on a small raised platform on a roof adjoining the parking structure, and utterly heedless of the dirty looks she was attracting, Frances Markasian, eyes closed, face set in bliss, was relaxing and indulging in her nicotine habit. Her chin tilted skyward while her mouth opened and closed like a guppy’s. Unlike a fish, however, Frances was blowing perfect smoke rings. Her dark mass of curly hair lay wild and undone over her shoulders. Her red heels and bags of cosmetic purchases lay scattered in disarray on the concrete. To cool off, or maybe just to catch a few rays, she had pulled the flouncy red skirt up to reveal knobby knees and calf-high stockings. I wondered where she’d stashed the smokes this time.

  I skirted the garage wall, hopped onto the adjoining roof, and walked up to Frances. I was quite sure being where we were was illegal, but that had never stopped Frances before. I cleared my throat She opened one eye, then both. “Don’t tell me. Bathsheba as a chef.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I replied evenly. “Bob Woodward as Elizabeth Taylor. In a Marlboro ad. No, wait. Doing the roof scene from Mary Poppins. Except you don’t look like Julie Andrews, either.”

  She blew a smoke ring and gestured for me to have a seat. The two-foot-square platform contained litter
that could only be hers: an M&M bag, a Snickers wrapper, an empty can of Jolt cola. Of course, Frances was too much of a skinflint to spring for a ticket to the food fair. Which made her enthusiastic cream/rouge/lipstick/concealer/foundation/mascara shopping spree this morning all the more intriguing. I brushed her wrapper-debris into a small pile on the asphalt roof and sat.

  She took another greedy drag on her cigarette, then blew a thin stream of smoke upward, “So where’s your escort? He was kind of cute for a rent-a-thug. What’d he catch you doing anyway?”

  When I opened my mouth to reply, my stomach howled in protest. I ignored it and said, “Nothing. Security’s just suspicious, that’s all.”

  She lifted one eyebrow. “Suspicious of a caterer?”

  “Maybe they were suspicious of the wrong person,” I countered. “Look, Frances, I’ve seen your duct-taped sneakers and secondhand clothes. I know you’re a tightwad and proud of it. I even heard you wrote an article on what a ripoff all makeup is. For someone with your thrifty bent, you sure bought a lot of cosmetics today.” I watched for her reaction, but behind the unaccustomed makeup, she was stone-faced. “Isn’t it about time you told me what you’re doing with Mignon?” I pressed. I was getting lightheaded from hunger, but I was weary of Frances’s evasions. “Why the sudden interest in cosmetics at a Denver department store, when your beat is Aspen Meadow, forty miles away?”

  She smiled, leaned over, and picked up one of the red shoes to crush out her butt. “You keep asking me that,” she said, then smiled slyly.

  If I didn’t eat soon, I was going to pass out. I tried to think. Frances didn’t care about Claire as a person, and she certainly couldn’t be convinced to have any sympathy for a grieving Julian. I needed another angle.

  “Okay, Frances, here’s the deal,” I announced grittily. Caterers could be just as tough as small-town reporters. “To you, this whole thing is a story. What kind, I don’t know. But my assistant, Julian Teller, wants to know what happened to his girlfriend. He needs to know what happened to his girlfriend. And I need to know, because Julian Teller is like family, not to mention that he’s running my catering business right now. The guy is having a very hard time. He’s simply not going to be able to function until we get this cleared up.” If then, I added mentally. Over at the food fair, a group of teenagers in T-shirts, ragged shorts, and scruffy high-top shoes shuffled along devouring pizza. They stopped by the open tent where the jazz band was finishing up its set I took a deep breath, which was unwise: The aroma of the pizza sauce, garlic, and melted cheese made me dizzy with hunger. “So. If you don’t tell me what you’re up to, I’m going to march right into the Prince & Grogan offices and tell them who you are and where you’re from. Then, in case there’s no action, I’m going to get on the phone with every Mignon executive in Albuquerque—”