Killer Pancake

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 décor. 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.