Killer Pancake

operating a booth at our Playhouse Southwest benefit, and we can’t have her—”

“When’s your party?” the security fellow asked amiably as he made a no-nonsense gesture to me to walk forward in the direction of the department store offices.

“Why, why—” babbled Babs as she hustled along beside us, past the Japanese china decorated to look like English bone, “—tomorrow,” she finished breathlessly. She slapped her purse down imperiously on a table displaying Waterford crystal. An extremely large and undoubtedly expensive vase teetered, then, miraculously, straightened.

“It’s Friday,” Stan said wearily, without giving Babs so much as a glance. “I promise not to detain her more than twenty-four hours.”

“But … this department store! What is going on—” Babs wailed, while I thought, Twenty-four hours? I don’t think so.

Stan White nudged me through a door that said SECURITY and slammed it with a satisfactory thwack on Babs Braithwaite’s indignant face. A large, imposing man sat behind a large, imposing desk. I felt like the bad kid brought before the principal. Or, since the man who stared at me with such authoritative disdain seemed to be enthroned, make that a disobedient subject tossed in front of the king. From the scowl of the seated man, it was clear he was the one who decided whether the subject was thrown to the lions or was released to work again in the fields of the sovereign.

Stan White discreetly disappeared through a side door. I sat down and eyed the plaque on the desk: NICHOLAS R. GENTILESCHI, DIRECTOR OF SECURITY. Then I took in the man himself. Fiftyish, Nick Gentileschi had a face whose extraordinary pallor was set off by flat jet-black eyes. His dark, receding hair was slicked to one side, except for an errant strand that flopped rakishly over his high-domed forehead. If his suit cost more than fifty dollars, he’d been cheated.

“Sit,” he commanded, gesturing to a wooden chair. Without protest, I obeyed. When Gentileschi said nothing further, I glanced around his windowless office. Like the other still-to-be-refurbished Prince & Grogan offices, the paint on these walls was a disintegrating aquamarine. The department store seemed to care about its appearance everywhere but in its offices, as if prospective employees and would-be criminals weren’t worth the trouble of a lovely decor. On one wall someone had mounted a white-framed painting with a plaque underneath: PRINCE & GROGAN, ALBUQUERQUE. The style of the flagship store was Southwestern via Wonderland. The picture showed a multistoried pink stucco building complete with soaring columns, multistoried glass, and a bulging, gilded entrance. A Pueblo Indian wouldn’t have recognized it as indigenous architecture, that was for sure.

“I didn’t take anything, as you can see,” I said defensively. “I was just looking around.” I rubbed my arm. “Please call the police,” I told Nick Gentileschi firmly. I wasn’t really hurt. Nevertheless, I wanted to act miffed. I knew security people feared lawsuits like the plague. Maybe I should tell him Babs’s story too, about somebody lurking behind the mirror in the women’s dressing room. Then again, maybe not. I didn’t want to confuse him. With an optimism I was far from feeling, I said, “I’m hoping we can get this all straightened out.”

Nick Gentileschi raised his thin eyebrows and tapped a pencil on top of a camera on his desk. Vaguely I wondered if a hidden video camera had somehow monitored my not-so-surreptitious surveillance of the cosmetics counter. “The police?” Gentileschi’s voice grated like sandpaper. He dropped the pencil and began to jingle the keyring hanging from his belt. Then he turned his boxy, pale face sorrowfully toward the picture of the Albuquerque store. “She wants me to call the police.” He grinned, revealing oversize, horselike teeth. “Now, that’s one I haven’t heard. You haven’t stolen anything yet? You want to be cleared before things get worse? Or you have a friend at the sheriff’s department?”

“Please, Mr. Gentileschi.” Acting patient and sweet sometimes worked. I’d give it a whirl. “I know who you are, and Claire Satterfield was a friend of mine—”

The thin eyebrows lifted. “Is that right? A friend of yours? You ever go to her apartment for a party? Where did she live exactly …?”

I sighed. “I didn’t go to any parties, and I don’t know where she lived, somewhere in Denver—” The heck with this. I wondered if I could remember my lawyer’s phone number off the top of my head.

“Now, that’s an interesting friendship when you don’t know where someone lives. Claire was a party girl. Didja know that? Or didn’t you discuss that either in your … friendship?” He sneered the last word. My skin prickled.

“Who do you think you are, the FBI?” I said angrily. “Are you going to make a call or not?”

He opened a desk drawer, got out a form, and then carefully selected a pen. His gleaming black eyes regarded me greedily. “What’s your name and occupation?”

I told him, and he took notes. Then he shifted his weight, smoothed his Grecian-Formula-16 hair with the palm of his hand, and said, “Now, you listen to me, Goldy Schulz, the supposed good friend of Claire Satterfield. We have our ways of knowing what’s going on in this store. I know what you were trying to do. I just need to know the reasons. If your answers aren’t satisfactory, I’ll call the cops myself.”

“I can assure you my reasons won’t be satisfactory, since I don’t even know what they were.”

He blinked impassively and, pen poised over his form, waited for me to say more. When I did not, he sighed, put down the pen, picked up the telephone, and raised one eyebrow, as if he were calling my bluff. “Who should I call at the sheriff’s department? Another friend?”

“Homicide Investigator Tom Schulz.”

“I know Schulz. Do you know Schulz? I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re his sister or something.”

I chose not to answer. He wouldn’t believe me anyway.

But to my relief he dialed the sheriff’s department. After a few preliminary murmurings, he managed, thank heaven, to get through to Tom. I watched with no small amount of satisfaction as the security chief’s features quickly registered first smugness (“Caught her acting suspicious by the cosmetics counter”) , then discomfort (“No, she didn’t touch any of the goods”), and finally embarrassment (“No, she didn’t hurt anybody or take anything”). But the moment of discomfort passed just as quickly, and Gentileschi confirmed an appointment to meet with Tom later that afternoon. Then he thrust the phone across the desk at me. “He wants to talk to you,” he said glumly.

When I took the receiver, I could hear Tom humming a dirgelike tune.

I said, “The great intellect—”

He was not amused. “Look, I said not like hitting the demonstrator. That means not like being picked up for suspicious activity by department store security.”

“This is not my fault,” I said in a low voice. After all, I was just trying to learn something to help Julian. No matter what the security people said about my presence, I had not caused trouble in the store. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

“Goldy, please remember, we’re trying to work with this guy.”

“I wish you the very best of luck in that particular enterprise,” I said crisply. “Listen, Tom, did you check out that other person I asked you about?” When Gentileschi leaned over just slightly to catch what I was saying, I turned in the wooden chair.

“Double oh seven, what would I do without you? Okay, Miss G. We’re already looking into Hotchkiss. He has a record and he runs a cosmetics place. But I will definitely tell the guys to ream his behind; And don’t worry about Nick, he’s an old friend of ours. Watch out though, he’s got a reputation with women.”

I turned back to look at the polyester-clad, dyed-haired man across the desk from me. “Must say, Tom, I find that extremely hard to believe.”

He chuckled. “Okay, look. I don’t know when I’m going to have another chance to talk to you while you’re down there. And I’ve been hard to reach—”

“No kidding.”

“But there is something you can do. Somebody I need you to talk to, a friend of yours. You think Dusty Routt is the one who might have hinted to Frances Markasian this Krill character was one of Claire’s old boyfriends? He swore to us he didn’t know Claire. Maybe Markasian was baiting you with an idea of hers, see if you’d bite.”

“I’m seeing Dusty at lunchtime, once I get out of prison.” I tried to give Nick Gentileschi a prim look. He smirked.

“Well, the organization called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals hasn’t heard of Shaman Krill. And neither has the National Anti-Vivisection Society. Hell, even the SPCA swears they don’t have a member named Krill.