McCone and Friends Page 16

  At the tip of the park two streets came together, and two cars were also about to come together in a great blast of horns and a shout from one of the drivers that laid a blue streak in the air. Lee had to stop, I put on some speed, and next thing I knew I had hold of her arm. Thank God she didn’t struggle—I had absolutely no wind left.

  Lee’s short black hair was damp with sweat, plastered close to her finely fashioned skull, and her almond-shaped eyes had gone flat and shiny with fear. She looked around desperately, then hung her head and whispered, “Please leave me alone.”

  I got my breathing under control—sort of. “Can’t. You know something, and we have to talk. Come on back to the house.”

  “I don’t want to face the rest of them. I don’t want any of them to know what I’ve done.”

  “Then we’ll talk out here.” There was a makeshift bench a few yards away—a resting place one of the retired neighborhood handymen had thrown together for the old ladies who had to tote parcels uphill from the stores on Mission. Hell, I thought as I led Lee over there, he’d probably watched me trying to jog around the park before I totally lost it in the fitness department, and built the thing figuring I’d need it one of these days. Eventually I’d keel over during one of my workouts and then they’d put a plaque on the seat: Rae Kelleher Memorial Bench—Let This Be a Warning to All Other Sloths.

  I gave Lee a moment to compose herself—and me a moment to catch my breath—and looked around at the commuters trudging up from the bus stop. The day had stayed gray and misty until about three, then cleared some, but new storm clouds threatened out by the coast. Lee fumbled through her pockets and came up with a crumbled Kleenex, blew her nose and sighed.

  I said, “It can’t be all that bad.”

  “You don’t know. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done. When my father finds out, he’ll kill me.”

  I tried not to smile, thinking of all the kids down through the ages who had been positively convinced that they would be killed on the spot if they were ever caught doing something wrong. I myself was in college before it occurred to me that parents—normal, sane parents, that is – don’t kill their offspring because kids are too damned expensive and troublesome to acquire and raise. Why waste all that money and effort, plus deprive yourself of the pleasure of becoming a burden to them in your old age?

  “Maybe,” I said to Lee, “he won’t have to find out.”

  She shook her head. “No way, not this.”

  “Tell me about it, then we’ll see.”

  Another tremulous sigh. “I guess I better tell somebody, now that Kirby’s been murdered and Adrian…but I’m afraid I’ll go to jail.”

  Big stuff, then. “In that case, it’s better to come forward, rather than be found out later.”

  Lee bit her lip. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “Okay. I didn’t know Kirby very well, just to say hi when I’d see him around, you now? But then one day last August he came to my house with these pictures while my parents were at work.”

  “What pictures?”

  “Of my taking stuff from where I work. You know that stationery and gift shop at Ocean Park Plaza—Paper Fantasy? Well, I worked there full time last summer and now I go in three days week after school. I kind of got into taking things—pen-and –pencil sets, jewelry, other gift items. I didn’t even want them very much. I mean, the stuff they sell is expensive but pretty tacky. But it made me not feel so bad about having this crummy job…Anyway, that’s what Kirby’s pictures showed, me taking jewelry from the case and stuffing it under my sweater.” Lee’s words were spilling out fast now; I was probably the only person she’d ever told about this.

  “There was no way you could mistake what I was doing,” she went on. “The pictures showed it clear as could be. Kirby said he was going to go to my boss unless I did what he wanted. At first I thought he meant, you know, sex, and I could have died, but it turned out what he wanted was for me to steal stuff and give it to him. I said I would. I would have done anything to keep from being found out. And that’s what I’ve been doing.”

  “So Kirby got the merchandise he was selling by blackmailing people into shoplifting for him. I wonder if that’s the hold he had over Adrian?”

  “It might have been. When they were first going together, they were, you know, like a normal couple. But then she changed, dropped all her friends and other activities, and started spending every minute with Kirby. I guess he used her shoplifting to get control of her.”

  “What about the other kids? Do you know anybody else who was stealing for Kirby?”

  “Nobody who’ll talk about it. But there’s a rumor about a couple of guys, that they take orders and just go out and rip off stuff. And a lot of the things he has for sale come from stores where I know other kids from school work.”

  Kirby had had quite a scam going—a full-blown racket, actually. And Lee was right: there was no way this could be kept from her father. She might even go to juvenile hall.

  “The pictures,” I said, “did Kirby say how he took them?”

  “No, but he had to’ve been inside the store. They were kind of fuzzy, like he might’ve used a telephoto.”

  “From where?”

  “Well, they were face on, a little bit above and to the left of the jewelry counter.”

  “Did you ever see Kirby in the store with a camera?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t’ve noticed him if we were busy.”

  “Would you have taken something while the store was busy?”

  “Sure. That’s the best time,” Lee seemed to hear her own words, because she hung her head, cheeks coloring. “God, those pictures! I looked like a criminal!”

  Which of course, she was. I thought about Kirby and his corps of teenage thieves. What if he’d tried to hit on the wrong person? Homicides committed by teenagers, like all other categories, were on the upswing…

  “Lee,” I said, “you’re going to have to tell the cops investigating Kirby’s murder about this.”

  She nodded numbly, hands clenching.

  The phrase, “shit hitting the fan” isn’t a favorite of mine, but that was exactly what was about to happen, and a lot of perfectly nice parents were going to be splattered, to say nothing of their foolish, but otherwise nice children. Parents like Donna Conway. Children like Adrian.

  I pictured the pretty redhead in the photo Donna had given me—her quirky smile and the gleam in her eyes that told of a zest for living and an offbeat sense of humor. I pictured her quiet, concerned, sad mother—a lonely woman clinging to her stacks of self-help books for cold comfort. Maybe I could still find Adrian, reunite the two so they could lean on each other in the tough times ahead; if Adrian was still alive, there had to be a way.

  And if she was dead? I didn’t want to think about that.

  VII

  Lee and I went back to All Souls, where the rest of the kids were standing around the foyer wondering what to do next, and while she escaped to my office to call her father, I thanked them and showed them out. Tom Chu hung back, looking worried and throwing glances at my office door. Since he was the one who had put this together for me, I filled him in on some of what Lee had told me, after first swearing him to secrecy.

  Tom didn’t look too surprised. “I kind of suspected Lee was in trouble,” he said. “And you now what? I think Del might’ve been mixed up with Kirby, too. He got real quiet when Lee ran out on us, and he left in a hurry right afterwards.”

  “Those’re pretty shaky grounds to accuse him on.”

  “Maybe, but Del…I told you he’s basically just hanging out this fall? Well, where he’s hanging out is Ocean Park Plaza.”

  Ocean Park Plaza—the focus of the whole case. I thanked Tom and gently chased him out the door so Lee wouldn’t have to deal with him when she finished calling her dad.

  Her father arrived some fifteen minutes later, all upset but full of comforting words, and agreed to take Lee down to the Hall of Justice to talk to Adah Joslyn. I called
Joslyn to let her know a witness was on her way. “Adah,” I added, “did Sharon ask you what was in Adrian Conway’s backpack?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got the property list right here.” There was a rustling noise. “Some raunchy-smelling yogurt, makeup, a golden Gate Transit schedule, a couple of paperbacks—romance variety—and an envelope with the phone number of the Ocean Park Plaza’s security office scribbled on it.”

  “Security office? You check with them?”

  “Talked to a man named Waterson. He said she’d lost her i.d. badge the week before she disappeared and called in about getting it replaced. What is this—you trying to work my homicide, Kelleher?”

  “Just trying to find a missing girl. I’ll turn over anything relevant.”

  When I got off the phone, Lee and her father were sitting on the lumpy old couch in the front room, his arm protectively around her narrow shoulders. He didn’t look like much of a teenager-killer to me; in fact, his main concern was that she hadn’t come to him and admitted about the shoplifting as soon as “that little bastard”—meaning Kirby –had started hassling her. “I’d’ve put his ass in a sling,” he kept saying. I offered to go down to the Hall with them, but he said he thought it would be better if they went alone. As soon as they left, I decided to head over to Ocean Park Plaza, check out a couple of things, then talk with Ben Waterson again.

  The mall wasn’t very crowded that night, but it was only Thursday, and the merchants were still gearing up for a big, weekend sales push designed to lure in all those consumers who weren’t suffering too much from the recession—getting started early on the Christmas season by urging everybody to spend, spend, spend, in order to stimulate the economy. The sale banners were red, white, and blue and, really, they were making it sound like it was our patriotic duty to blow every last dime on frivolous things that—by God!—had better be American-made if Americans made them at all. Even I, much as I love to max out my credit cards, am getting totally sick of the misguided economists’ notion that excess is not only good for the individual but for the nation. Anyway, the appeals from the politicians and the business community probably wouldn’t meet with any more success with patrons of the Ocean Park Plaza this coming weekend than they had with downtown shoppers the previous one, and tonight they were having no affect at all.

  When I got to Paper Fantasy I found I was the only browser—a decided disadvantage for checking out the possible angles from which Kirby might have taken the photographs of Lee. I checked anyway, under the suspicious eyes of the lone clerk. Over there was the counter where Lee had been standing when she’d five-fingered the jewelry, and from the way she’d described the pictures, Kirby would have had to be standing not only in front of it, but some three feet in the air. Impossible, unless…

  Ahah! There it was—a surveillance camera mounted on the wall above and to the left of the counter. One look at that and I recalled the banks of screens in the security office upstairs, closed-circuit TV that allowed you to video tape and photograph.

  I hurried out of Paper Fantasy—possibly provoking a call to security by the clerk—and headed for Left Coast Casuals.

  Only two salesclerks manned the store, and there were no customers. I wandered up and down the aisles, scanning for the cameras. There were four, with a range that covered the entire sales floor. While stealing jewelry, Adrian would have had to stand around here, in plain sight of that one. For lingerie, camera number two would have done the observing. Stupid. How could the kids be so stupid?

  Of course I knew the answer to that—anybody who’s ever shoplifted does. The cameras are there, sure, but you just assume they’re not recording your particular store at the time, or being monitored. And you’re certain that you’re being oh-so-subtle when actually you’re about as discreet as a moose picking its way through a bed of pansies. And then there’s the urge that just washes over you –ooh, that irresistible impulse, that heady pulse-quickening temptation to commit the act that will bring on that delicious soaring high.

  Yeah, the kids were stupid. Like I’d been stupid. Like a drug addict, an alcoholic, a binge-eater is stupid.

  “Ms. Kelleher?” the voice was Sue Hanford’s. “Can I help you?”

  I swung around. She’d come out of the stock room and stood a few feet away from me, near the fake angora sweaters. “I was just looking the store over once more, before going up to see Ben Waterson.”

  Her face became pinched, two white spots appearing at the corners of her mouth. “You won’t find him in the office. I know, because I just called up there. I’ll tell you, I’ve about had it with him not being available when I need him.”

  ”This happens a lot?”

  “Well, yesterday morning around eleven-thirty. He said he’d come and talk about the problem I’ve been having with a gang of girls who are creating disturbances outside and intimidating my customers, but then he never showed up. I called and called, but he’d taken off without saying why. He didn’t come back until six.”

  But yesterday morning around eleven-thirty I’d seen him just outside the store, arguing with Kirby Dalson. Waterson had claimed Sue Hanford was the one who was away, leaving him in charge. “Were you in the store all day yesterday?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I worked a fourteen-hour shift.”

  “And today?” I asked. “Waterson wasn’t available again?”

  “Yes. He took off about half an hour ago, when he’s supposed to be on shift till nine-thirty.”

  “I see.”

  “Ms. Kelleher? If you do go up there and find Ben has come back will you ask him to come down here?”

  “Sure,” I said distractedly. Then I left the store.

  A taco, I thought. There was a taco stand down in the food concession area. Maybe a taco and a Coke would help me think this one through.

  Okay, I thought, reaching for Gordito’s Beef Supreme taco—piled high with extra salsa, guacamole, and sour cream—somebody in the security office here has been getting the goods on the kids who are shoplifting and turning the evidence over to Kirby so he could blackmail them into working for him. If I wasn’t trained not to jump to conclusions I’d say Ben Waterson, because his behavior has been anything but on the up-and-up lately. Okay, I’ll say it anyway—Ben Waterson. Kirby was a good contact man for Waterson—he knew the kids, knew their weak spots, and after they ripped off the stuff he would wholesale some of it at school, keeping Waterson out of the transaction. Kind of a penny-ante scheme, though, if you think about it. Would hardly have brought in enough to keep Kirby, much less Waterson, in ready cash. And there had to be something in it for Waterson. But then there were the other kids—like Del—who didn’t work here but ripped things off for Kirby, maybe big-ticket items, here and at other malls as well. And there was the rented house on Naples Street.

  Those storage sheds in the backyard—sheds full of Ron Owens’ mother’s things that Owens claims were worth quite a bit—I’ll bet all of that got fenced, and then they filled up the sheds with new merchandise while they tried to find a buyer for it. Not hard to find one, too, not in this town. Neighbors said a lot of people came and went at Naples Street, so it could have been a pretty substantial fencing operation.

  I know a fair amount about fencing, courtesy of Willie Whelan, who in recent years, thank God, has “gone legit,” as he puts it. So far the scenario made sense to me.

  The taco was all gone. Funny –I’d barely tasted it. I looked longingly at Gordito’s, than balled up the wrappings and turned my attention back to the case.

  Where does Adrian fit into all this? Last spring she starts to change, according to her school friends. She’s been taking her five-finger employee discount for a while, oblivious to what Kirby and Waterson are up to. Then Kirby comes to her with pictures, and suddenly he’s got the upper hand in the relationship. Adrian’s still pretty demoralized—the father leaving, the mother who’s always spouting phrases like “potential to be”—so she lets Kirby control her. Did she steal for him? Help
him with the fencing? Had to have, given that she was familiar enough with the Naples Street house to walk in and plunk her backpack down in the living room. I’m pretty sure she slept with him—even the other kids know that.

  Okay, suppose Adrian does all of that. Maybe she even glamorizes the situation as young women will do in order to face themselves in the morning. But fetching the condiments for the hamburgers of a young man who can damned well get them himself grows old real fast, and after a while she starts to chafe at what her therapy wall calls “white slavery.” So, as she tells her friend Anna, she’d decided to “blow the whistle and game will be over.”

  How? By going to the cops? Or by going to the head of mall security, Ben Waterson?

  I got up, tossed my cup and taco wrappings in a trash bin, and headed for the security office.

  Waterson wasn’t there. Had left around six after a phone call, destination unknown, the woman on the desk old me. I persuaded her to check their log to see if Adrian Conway had reported losing her i.d. badge about a week before she disappeared, as Waterson had told Adah Joslyn. No record of it, and there would have been had it really happened.

  Caught you in another lie, Ben!

  Back down to the concession area. This time I settled for coffee and a Mrs. Fields cookie.

  So Adrian probably went to Waterson, since she had the phone number of the security office scribbled on an envelope in her backpack. And he…what? Lured her away from the mall and killed her? Hid her body? Then why was her backpack at Naples Street? Waterson would have left it with the body or gotten rid of it. And would Waterson have gone to such lengths, anyway?

  Well, Kirby was murdered, wasn’t he?

  But would Kirby have kept quiet if he thought Waterson had murdered his girlfriend? The kid was a cold one, but…Maybe I just didn’t want to believe that anybody that young could be that cold. And that was poor reasoning—if you don’t believe me, just check out the morning paper most days.

  Another thing—who was this person Adrian had talked about, who would take her side and not take any shit off of anybody? Maybe Waterson had played it subtle with her, pretending to be her protector, then spirited her off somewhere and—