“What do you mean, I should still hire you? Where were you yesterday?”
I felt like tearing my hair out. I mean, my assignment from ATAC was to get a job—any stupid job—at the East Side Mall. Not too complicated. But so far, I seemed to be a complete bust. I couldn’t even give myself away!
I’d been here at the food court for ten minutes already, trying every excuse I could come up with to convince Clem Bartlett to give me another chance. Too bad for me, he turned out to be a stickler for being on time.
“But I was on my way here when I heard the glass shattering.”
“Oh, yeah? That was ten minutes past closing time. You were already ten minutes late! I’ve got a business to run here. I can’t put up with workers who don’t know what time it is.”
“But—”
“What time is it?”
“Huh?”
“What time is it?”
“It’s, um …”
“It’s time for me to get back to work. You should try it sometime.”
“I am trying!” I shouted.
Everyone turned around. I could see Chet and Iola leaning forward in their food stalls. Everyone and his brother wanted to get a peek at the argument and see whether it would turn into a full-blown fistfight.
“Hey, I’m offering a week of free labor, remember? And I know how to sell wraps! You give me a chance, and I’ll turn this lousy business around for you.”
I could tell he was ticked at me, but at least I’d gotten his attention. “Okay, smart guy. I’ll give you ten minutes, starting right now. Let’s see what you can do.”
“Deal!”
I leaped right over the counter and grabbed the uniform he handed me. In no time, I was decked out in green apron, orange shirt, and white paper hat, ready to go.
The only problem was, I’d been giving him a load of baloney. I had no earthly idea how to sell a Healthy Wrap.
“Hey, get your wraps here!” I called out to the passing shoppers. “Healthy Wraps!”
No one stopped. Once they realized there wasn’t going to be a fight, Healthy Wraps didn’t interest them. If I wanted to keep this job, I had exactly five minutes to come up with something really, really good.
And then it came to me. Suddenly I knew what to do. I grabbed one of the wraps that was sitting under the glass as a display item and took a huge bite out of it.
“Mmmm!” I said, nodding happily as I chewed and chewed. “Mmm-mm-mmm!”
A few of the passing shoppers stopped to watch. None of them had ever seen a food court employee stuffing his face with his own food before.
“Is it that good?” asked a lady lugging two big shopping bags.
I nodded enthusiastically, swallowing. Then I tore off another huge bite of what I can only describe as day-old plastic, flavored with wax.
No, it wasn’t because Clem’s wraps tasted bad. It was because the wraps he’d laid out for display had been laminated by soaking them in plastic!
Why didn’t he warn me? I thought, too late. Clem was practically rolling on the floor, laughing his head off and pointing at me.
As I swallowed my second mouthful of laminated food, I promised myself that once this case was over with, I’d come back and make Clem eat one of these too.
Sometimes, though, you just have to grin and bear it. I bit off yet another mouthful and asked the lady if she wanted one.
“Sure, why not?” she said. “I’m not much into health food myself. But if the guy behind the counter is eating it, it must be good!”
I handed her a wrap—a real one, courtesy of Clem—and watched as she bit right into it. “Yummy!” she squealed. “Hey, Irma, you’ve gotta try one of these!”
Her friend scurried over, followed by a couple of curious onlookers—and by the time my ten minutes was up, half the food court was lined up to try Clem Bartlett’s Healthy Wraps.
“Eating one myself! I’ve gotta admit, kid, I never thought of that!” He clapped me on the back, laughing some more.
“I assume this means I’m hired,” I said, thinking thoughts of murder.
“Oh, you’re hired, all right,” he said. “Keep up the great work. Ha ha ha!”
I would have hauled off and socked him right there, but—well, what can I say? I needed the job. Besides, I wasn’t feeling so good.
I worked the stand until closing time. As the mall emptied out, I sat at one of the food court tables with Iola and Chet, waiting for Frank to show up and my stomach to calm down.
“Plastic—that’s funny!” said Chet, doubling over.
“Go ahead, laugh,” I said with a groan. “I’d be laughing myself if I wasn’t so nauseous.”
Frank came walking down the promenade from the direction of the parking deck.
“Where were you?” I asked him.
“I wanted to walk Adriana to her car,” he explained. “She’s still freaked out by what happened yesterday.”
“You guys, I’ve gotta book,” Iola told us. “I have a chemistry test tomorrow.”
“Yeah, me too,” Chet said, getting up with her. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car. You guys coming?”
“Uh, not yet,” answered Frank. “I’ve got to show Joe something here first.”
“Okay, see you tomorrow, then,” Chet said.
“Bye,” called Iola, leaving with him.
“Joe,” Frank said in a low voice when they were gone, “I’ve got some big news.”
“Fire away,” I said.
He told me about the poncho belonging to Stephanie Flowers, and about the kids with the tattoos and piercings spraying the graffiti.
“And you know this how?”
“They spray-painted the STEMM logo all wrong. Adriana noticed it too.”
“Dude,” I said, “you’d better leave her out of this. It’s getting too dangerous for spectators.”
“She’s already in it, Joe. She nearly got killed yesterday, remember?”
“I guess you’re right,” I replied. “But how’d you get them to confess?”
“I saw the silver paint on the kid’s trigger finger.”
“Brilliant,” I said. “What else did you find out?”
“Well, they said Steph paid them to do it, but they double-crossed her by signing it STEMM. They said they did the spraying before closing time, and they denied knowing who cut the glass.”
“Seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Wouldn’t she have noticed that the graffiti wasn’t what she’d paid for?”
“It was raining hard when the glass was cut,” I pointed out. “And she was probably wearing that poncho, with the hood up. She might have missed spotting the word STEMM.”
“Or maybe it was somebody else,” Frank suggested. “Somebody who wanted Steph to take the fall.”
“That would mean those kids are lying about who paid them,” I said.
“Stranger things have been known to happen,” he argued. “You know, at first, when I grabbed the kid’s finger, he said he wouldn’t tell me who paid them. He said some things were worse than going to jail. But then, after that, he changed his mind and decided to tell me after all.”
“So?”
“Joe, maybe he didn’t add the word STEMM on his own—maybe he was paid by somebody else to put it there.”
“It’s possible,” I had to admit. “Hmm. Maybe if the police grill those kids …”
“They’ll just deny it,” he said. “I mean, the part about being paid. They’re juveniles, so they won’t go to jail just for spraying graffiti.”
“There must be another way we can get them to cooperate,” I said. “Meanwhile, I’ve got an idea who else might have paid them.”
I told him about my visit to Shangri-La, and my run-in with Bob Meister.
“Joe, this thing is not over by a long shot,” Frank stated. “Whoever cut that glass is getting ready for round two. And we’ve got to prevent it.”
“It?”
“Whatever they’re about to pull. Steph is out on bail, and no one knows where she is. So if she’s the criminal, she’s on the loose. And if she’s not, and someone’s trying to make her look guilty, they’ll try to strike while she has no alibi.”
“You mean, like right now?”
“Tonight would be about ideal, wouldn’t you say?”
I had to agree with him. “So what do we do?”
“We camp out here at the mall,” he said. “In hiding, of course. We see what happens, and if anything goes down, we get in the way of it.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“I just wish I’d gotten something to eat before closing time,” said Frank.
“Not me.” I shook my head. “I couldn’t eat a thing if you paid me.”
We took up positions, straggling along with the last of the shoppers as they left for the parking garage. Frank positioned himself by the stairs to the roof, in case that gang of kids made an appearance or someone tried to get up there again.
It was a good position. There were trees and concrete pillars to hide behind, and he had a good view in three directions out of four.
As for me, I headed to the area near Mr. Applegate’s office. I’d had luck in that area before, and I figured, why not try it again? It was one of the few parts of the mall Frank couldn’t keep an eye on.
I found a spot to settle in—a little vestibule fronting a maintenance closet—and waited. It wasn’t five minutes before I heard a door closing nearby. Keys jangled, and then I heard footsteps.
“Never mind that, where are you? And what have you done?”
It was Applegate, talking to someone on his cell phone!
“Of course I’m angry! I know we haven’t been on good terms lately. But as long as I’m alive, this is still my property, not yours! I can do whatever I want with it. Do you think you can get your way by threats and violence? Well, if you’re trying to scare me out of it, you must have lost your senses!”
He listened for a minute, then said, “How am I supposed to believe that? You know, I wanted to keep this private, but your outrageous behavior is making it impossible!”
He listened again, and I could see his shoulders slump and soften. “Oh, very well,” he grumbled. “I’ll hold off for another twenty-four hours. But unless you can prove it, I’ll have no other choice. I have my own future to think of—and yours, too.”
He flipped his phone shut, took out a hankie, and blew his nose. I got the impression he was actually crying. Then he opened his phone again and punched in another number.
“It’s me,” he muttered. “Yes, me. I called to say I need more time … twenty-four hours … to clear up some family business.”
He closed up his phone, stuffed it into his pocket, and hurried off down the promenade.
Interesting. He’d been talking to two different people, obviously. But who?
I was curious to know more, so I followed Mr. Applegate at a safe distance. He crossed the empty food court area, then turned right at the fountain and headed for the parking deck.
As I followed him, I saw that the food court wasn’t quite empty after all—Oskar was standing with his broom, eating a Phrank and chatting with Phil. He seemed to be in a great mood for once.
“I going be rich, lots money!” he said. “Make lucky break, hah?”
Phil chuckled, slapping Oskar on the back. “You’re a pretty smart fella, Oskar—I’ve gotta hand it to you. Just be careful, okay?”
Hmm. I wondered what that was about. I wanted to stick around to find out more, but I figured I’d better keep after Mr. Applegate. I had to run to catch up to him, but I finally caught sight of him, heading for the door to the parking deck.
I waited till the door closed behind him, and a good ten seconds more, before heading over there. I was determined to follow him all the way to his car—just in case he made another call.
But before I got to the door, I heard a loud commotion coming from behind me. I ducked into the alcove in front of a store entrance before anyone saw me.
There were several voices, all of them shouting. Most sounded like kids my age—but the loudest of all belonged to Oskar, no doubt about it. He was roaring in what sounded like part English, part foreign language.
“Get out from this place, you hoodlums! Don’t come here no more! You are the bad news! Go away now, you hear?”
Taking a peek, I saw the group of kids who’d confessed to doing the spray-painting. They were backing away from Oskar, their hands spread out in front of them, palms open, saying, “What? What did we do? We’ve got a right to be here.”
Well, it was after closing time, so technically, they didn’t—but I knew where they were coming from. I know how it feels to have adults chase you away from every good hangout spot. Sometimes kids get too loud, okay. But most times, it’s just out of meanness that they hassle you.
And Oskar was mean, no doubt about it. Mean and shifty.
The group of teens was backing right up to where I was hiding. I flattened myself against the wall and turned my back, hiding my head in my jacket to make myself less visible.
Luckily, the kids’ attention was on Oskar, and his attention was on them. No one noticed me cowering there. A good thing, too—it would have been really embarrassing to get caught like that.
I heard the door to the parking deck open, then slam shut. Oskar shouted, “And you stay out! No come back tomorrow—no come back never!”
He shuffled back past the entryway where I was huddled, but again, he didn’t see me. His eyes were focused on something inside his head, and he was muttering to himself. “Stupid kids … get throw in jail, or worser! Why they no get job, make money, be like normal people? Crazy …”
I wanted to follow him and see where he went—but first, I needed to make sure those kids were really gone. I tiptoed over to the parking deck door and tried to open it without making any sound.
It wasn’t hard, because the door lock was taped over with duct tape. Obviously, someone wanted to make sure they weren’t locked out of the mall tonight.
I lingered there for a minute, deciding whether to pull off the tape. It wasn’t an easy call. On the one hand, if I let a criminal back in and they got away with something bad, it would be my fault. On the other hand, if Frank and I expected to catch someone in the act, we had to let them back in!
Oskar had almost disappeared from my line of sight. I decided to follow him without removing the tape from the door. Just then, I caught a quick glimpse of someone else, dashing across the promenade and into a side corridor. Someone female, blond, with braids, a headband, and dangling earrings.
It had to be Frank’s new boss. She was out on bail, but I knew the police would have warned her to stay away from the scene of her alleged crime. Meaning here—which would put her in danger of being hauled off to jail if she were caught.
Was she stalking Applegate? If she was the one he was talking to on the phone, it was possible. But I thought it was more likely Oskar she was interested in. He’d just told Phil he was going to be rich—and it seemed to me that he wasn’t talking about a lottery ticket.
If he had picked something out of the glass that night—and Frank swore he had—it might have been something that fell from the roof along with the glass. Something that could identify the person who made it fall …
Perfect blackmail material.
I wondered if Steph had seen me. I didn’t think so, because she’d been looking in Oskar’s direction while she crossed the promenade.
Oskar himself was out of sight now, hidden by the fountain and the pool that surrounded it. I checked the side corridor, but Steph had disappeared. There were two doors, and I tried them both. Locked—surprise, surprise.
I wondered if she would have had a key—and if so, how she’d gotten it. Or maybe I’d just gone down the wrong corridor….
Suddenly I heard a man cry out in pain—and then a loud splash!
Forgetting about Steph, I ran back down the promenade. I was about ten feet short of the fountain when I stopped in my tracks. My heart was thumping so hard in my chest that I thought it would leap right out through my rib cage.
Something was floating facedown in the wishing pool.
No, not something—someone!
As I watched in horror, the body, moved by the current of the bubbling fountain, slowly turned over.
It was Oskar—and he was very, very dead.