“I haven’t been here long enough to judge. I’m just a dumb kid working my way through college. As long as I get my check at the end of the week, I’d be happy if no one came in at all. Gives me more study time.”
“You do have blue uniforms, though,” said Polanski. “Maybe something that could pass as an air force uniform.”
“Well...” The clerk rubbed his jaw. “They’re sort of like bus driver’s or security guard’s but you could decorate one up.” He slid open a drawer behind the counter. “Have almost anything you want in here. Want to be a general?” He held up a pair of silver stars clipped to a card. “You couldn’t get into the Pentagon, but it’s just a costume, right?”
“Okay,” said Maguire. “See if you rented one of those.”
“I don’t have to look. I know I didn’t.”
“Humor me. Go check them out.”
The clerk disappeared through a door at the rear of the shop. He returned wearing a frown.
“Something missing?” asked Maguire.
“Not missing. Out of place. Like to keep everything in order, so when I started here I arranged all the costumes according to size. The forty-four was moved into the thirties.”
“If you didn’t move it, who did?”
“Could have been Mr. Kendrick. He owns the shop but he only comes in three or four times a week to see how things are going. Tell you the truth, I don’t think this place makes a dime. I think he runs it as a tax write-off.”
“What size does he wear?”
The clerk scrubbed his jaw again. “I’d say a forty-four.”
Polanski pushed a pad at him. “His address.”
When knuckles tapped at the door, Dorothy motioned to Helga to stay where she was. Holding her pistol straight down at her side, she made sure the security chain was fastened and unlatched the door with her other hand.
It burst open with a crash, tearing the chain anchor from the jamb and knocking her off her feet, the pistol skittering across the rug toward Helga.
The capped, gray-haired man leaped through the doorway, pistol thrust before him with both hands. Surprise at seeing Helga across the room, rather than sprawled behind the door, froze him for a moment. His eyes flicked to Dorothy, now perched warily on hands and toes like a sprinter poised for the starter’s signal.
To Helga, he seemed to read the situation and settle down, swinging the silenced pistol toward Dorothy as the more dangerous of the two.
She dove from the sofa, scooped up Dorothy’s pistol and fired.
The man jerked backward into the hall, his gun coughing and chipping plaster from the ceiling.
Someone shouted. Footsteps pounded up the carpeted stairs.
Roth appeared, gun in hand, jammed a shoe down on the man’s wrist, and tore the pistol from him.
Someone, she didn’t know who, or much care, wrapped Helga up in big arms just as she started screaming she’d shot Allan.
It hadn’t been Allan at all, of course. Just something triggered by the stress, the psychologist explained. She had nothing to worry about because whatever feelings she’d harbored about him, she’d shot the man only to save herself and Dorothy. Understand? No, but she didn’t tell him that. When she pulled that trigger, she was certain she was shooting Allan. Knew better now, of course. Funny thing, the mind.
Maguire had explained the rest. The man dead in the airport parking garage; the air force major. No one had hired him. He was simply getting rid of another witness like the retiree who had spotted him. She hadn’t known she was a witness, of course. She’d never seen anyone wearing an air force uniform, just as she’d told Roth.
Neither had anyone else, said Maguire. Roth realized it didn’t have to be a real air force uniform at all. Just similar in cut and color and decorated with a major’s oak leaves and chest ribbons. No one would have spotted the deception if the retiree hadn’t noticed the ribbon, and at that, only three people had seen it and two of those were dead.
Turned out what she had seen was a man carrying it in a transparent garment bag on a hanger slung over his shoulder. She’d no idea the bag held anything but an ordinary suit. Didn’t matter, though. He couldn’t risk her calling the police after reading the story in the paper and saying, I saw a man carrying an air force uniform. Interested?
It all sounded very complicated. Roth might have explained it better, but she hadn’t seen him since The Day My Niece Became a Heroine, as Uncle Dennis proudly called it. Oh, well—
She turned to check the apartment before she left for work.
No more teller’s window. The psychologist had indicated she’d suffered lasting trauma. Good for him. Personally, she had no qualms about going back to one, but if they wanted to give her a new job in check processing along with a raise, she’d be a fool to argue. And her back would undoubtedly appreciate a more comfortable chair.
She locked the door. Mrs. Longwood had tsk tsk’d a great deal about the cost of repair, but the new chain was far stronger. As if a killer breaking down her door again was something to be expected.
She looked up at the third-floor stairs and felt a chill. Imagine having a man living above you who killed for money. He’d smiled at her when he passed by in the hall, carrying that uniform. Smiled, while thinking, Now I have to kill you.
She’d been so angry about that, she wished he’d died, but that had passed. He’d limp for the rest of his life. Revenge enough.
She shuddered and walked quickly down the stairs.
Harry Roth was waiting on the sidewalk.
Her eyes widened with surprise. “What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since— I thought—”
She’d thought he’d disappeared into outer space like every man she’d ever been interested in except Allan, and life would have done her a favor if it had rocketed him into permanent earth orbit.
“Busy cleaning the thing up. FBI, the U.S. Attorney, the D.A., all those people. The man committed a lot of very nasty crimes out of his little shop of horrors.”
Maguire stood to one side of the steps, Dorothy to the other, along with a heavy set man she’d never seen before.
“Is this a reception committee?”
“In a way. We checked on Allan, you know. Just routine, covering all possibilities.”
“But he lives in Pittsburgh — he couldn’t—”
“No, he couldn’t.” Roth cleared his throat. “Someone shot him three weeks ago. This is Detective—” Roth looked at the heavyset man.
“Redford,” said the man.
“—from the Pittsburgh police department. He’d like to talk to you—”
“He was shot at extreme range with a nine-millimeter pistol,” said Redford. “A witness said it appeared to be a woman. We thought he had to be mistaken because women — well, you don’t generally come across women who handle a pistol real well. Lieutenant Roth tells us you’re an exception.”
He held open the door of a car at the curb. “It won’t take long, Mrs. Vivaldi.”
Dorothy went with them.
“What do you think?” asked Maguire.
Roth sighed. “I don’t know. I hope not. Probably can’t prove it anyway. Damn. Sometimes I wish my brain would take a holiday. The doctor said she was screaming she shot Allan because she’d always wanted to shoot him, but he admitted that if she really had, it could be sitting in the front of her mind and when she pulled the trigger, she relived the moment. But what do I know? All I know is when you shoot someone, you don’t scream you shot someone else. It’s—”
“An anomaly?” asked Maguire.
A particularly bitter one, but Maguire couldn’t know that.