Murder at the Mall Read online

  “Mr. Applegate,” continued the lawyer, “let’s stay calm, shall we? Shangri-La is simply looking to buy an attractive property for development. And let me remind you that we’re offering a handsome payment—enough for you to buy a luxurious retirement estate for yourself, someplace where it’s warm even in winter.”

  “Who says I want to retire?” shouted Applegate.

  Meister shrugged. “Sometimes an offer comes along that you just can’t refuse. And you are in your seventies, are you not? I don’t mean to be rude, but lots of people retire younger than that.”

  Applegate sighed. “Look, Mr. Meister. I’m an old man, it’s true. But I have my reasons not to sell.”

  “And those would be?”

  “Those would be my business, not anyone else’s,” said Applegate, annoyed again.

  “I see,” said Meister, flashing a weary smile. “Well, then, Mr. Applegate, I wish you luck keeping this place open. I’m afraid you may need it.”

  “Threatening me again?” Applegate roared, pounding the desk.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” replied Meister, adjusting his glasses. “But I can see how things are here. Things are going downhill fast.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I see the sort of people this place attracts,” Meister said, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “Vagrants. Teenage gang members. Vandals.”

  “We don’t have any more trouble here than at any other mall,” Applegate insisted.

  “Not yet, perhaps,” said Meister. “But I can see which way the wind is blowing. You’re going to need some serious security around here—and you know how expensive that is.”

  “I don’t like the idea of keeping young people away,” stated Applegate, coming around the side of his desk.

  I ducked so neither he nor Meister would see me as they turned in my direction. “Kids need a safe place to hang around. Malls should be a community place, not some sterile thing where only rich people can afford to shop!”

  “When Shangri-La builds a mall,” Meister said, “the stores are spectacular, and the customers have real money to spend. Mr. Applegate, think for a moment before you back out of this deal. Think of the future of Bayport, the city you love. The East Side could be a true destination. People would come here for shopping, movies, restaurants. That awful marsh out there will be a massive, shiny-new parking deck, and those juvenile delinquents you love so much will be nowhere in sight. Good riddance, I say. Let them find another place to trash.”

  “They’re not juvenile delinquents!” Applegate declared. “I’ve known some of those kids’ parents since they were kids.”

  “Have it your way, Mr. Applegate,” said Meister.

  I could hear him backing up toward me, and I knew I should book—but I needed to hear what else he had to say!

  “I’ll bet some of those kids are in with those wacky enviro-nuts from STEMM,” said Meister.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Applegate replied, snorting. “And who says they’re wacky? They just want to save the marsh, that’s all.”

  “Mmm, yes—save the endangered mosquitoes, I suppose … but a little birdie told me they were wacky enough to threaten you—which is something neither I nor Shangri-La would ever do.”

  “You’re smooth, Meister,” said Mr. Applegate.

  Meister smiled and nodded his head. “Well, I’ve got to be going, Mr. A. Think it over for a while—but don’t take too long. Our offer is time-sensitive. Here’s my card in case you want to chat. That number is my direct line.”

  I heard the sound of paper ripping. Once … twice … three times.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. Applegate,” said Meister. “You’ll see, someday you’ll come begging us on your hands and knees to buy you out. But when you do, you’ll have to take our rock-bottom offer—and it will be rock bottom, I assure you.”

  He cleared his throat, and I heard something that sounded like fumbling with the locks on a briefcase.

  I had to risk taking another look. I leaned in and saw Meister take out a small leather case. From it he removed another business card.

  “Let’s try this again,” he said. With his left hand, he wrote something on the card and left it on Applegate’s desk. “That’s my direct line. Please don’t hesitate to call if you change your mind.” He offered his hand, but Applegate didn’t shake it.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Applegate growled. “I won’t be calling.”

  And just then, wouldn’t you know it, my stupid cell phone went off!

  AAAHH!

  Why hadn’t I shut it off the minute I came down this hallway? You know, sometimes I can be a total space cadet.

  Before I could sprint back down the hallway to the promenade, Meister threw open the door and pinned me against the opposite wall.

  “Hey!” he snarled. “What are you doing here? This is a private area!”

  “Oh—s-sorry!” I stammered. “I must’ve gotten confused … by the sign …”

  Lame, lame, lame!

  SUSPECT PROFILE

  Name: Bob Meister, Esq.

  Hometown: Bayport

  Physical description: Age 40, 5′ 9″, 150 lbs., pale complexion, spectacles, close-cropped dark hair, sickly smile.

  Occupation: Lawyer for Shangri-La Enterprises.

  Background: Decided to study law so he could punish bad people. Trouble was, he thinks all people are bad and deserve punishment. Sued his parents while still in law school. Never married. No children (and a good thing, too!).

  Suspicious behavior: Threatening the mall’s owner (or was it just a friendly warning?).

  Suspected of: Using hardball tactics to get Applegate to sell the East Side Mall—but are those tactics strictly legal?

  Possible motives: Money, money, money.

  Meister scowled, giving me the once-over as he let me go. I could tell he didn’t believe a word I said. “Don’t let it happen again, punk.”

  “N-no, sir!” I said, backing away, then turning and making for the promenade, going as fast as I could without running.

  I felt a chill go through me, and it stayed with me as I walked back toward the food court.

  That guy Meister was a chilly character, all right. And now I’d gone and made an enemy of him.

  The question was, how dangerous an enemy was he?

  4.

  Help Wanted?

  After half an hour of looking for work and getting nowhere, I was beginning to think maybe it was me. Why was nobody around here hiring?

  Iola had a job. Chet had a job. I wondered if Joe was having a hard time too. I’d already tried every clothing and shoe store, as well as the pet store, the video game store, the hat store, the sunglasses store—and got no results. Toy stores, zilch. Bookstores? Nada.

  “Good thing you’re an ATAC agent and don’t need to look for a real-life job,” I told myself, sitting on the marble edge of the fountain. I needed a short “get-it-together” break before I went back to the hunt.

  “Hey, you!” a heavily accented, gruff voice shouted. “No sitting there! Don’ you see sign?”

  “Me?” I asked, pointing to myself.

  The guy yelling at me was not a security guard. He was wearing dark green overalls with an EAST SIDE MALL patch sewed to the chest and the name OSKAR embroidered underneath.

  He was kind of old to be a janitor—tall, hulking, and bald except for a fringe of wild, curly gray hair. It grew out of his ears too. Flakes of white dandruff decorated his shoulders, and a faint smell of unwashed clothes wafted in my direction.

  “Yeah, you,” he said. “You want sit, find bench.”

  He was leaning on something that looked like a push broom, except that the bottom was not a broom, but metal mesh. “What’s that you’ve got there?” I asked, curious.

  “This? For fishing,” he said, indicating the fountain. “Get coins from pool, give to charity.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “Okay? You don’t sit here no more.�
�

  “No, I get it. Thanks, Oskar.”

  He frowned. “I know you from somewhere?”

  I pointed to the name on his chest. “My name’s Frank,” I said. “Frank Hardy.”

  “Yeah? So what?”

  “I’m … uh, I’m looking for work here at the mall. You know of anyone who’s hiring?”

  “You want my job?” he asked, offering me the coin-fisher. Then he laughed, showing broken, blackened teeth. “Listen, this mall finished. Kaput. Rich millionaire gonna buy, tear down, make new one. Then maybe young kid like you find good job in nice store. Not like now.”

  He looked over at the group of kids Iola’d pointed out before. They’d moved on from the wall by the food court and were now hanging out by the emergency stairs.

  “You see kids over there?” he grumbled. “They keep nice people away. Somebody gots to get rid of them.”

  “It must be tough for you,” I said, figuring maybe Oskar might know a thing or two about what went on here at the East Side Mall, and that it would be a good thing to get him talking about it. “Do those kids give you a hard time?”

  “Not so much—but make dirty, make loud noises, scare customers,” he replied. “Listen, I night watchman here too. After close, I gotta chase those kids away. They no want go home.”

  “Hmm. Maybe their homes aren’t such fun places to go back to.”

  He shrugged. “So what? No come here, make frighten older people.”

  I could see that I wasn’t going to convince him to cut those kids a break. So I stopped trying and changed the subject. “Oskar, how many coins do people throw in here, anyway?” I asked, nodding toward the fountain and the pool that surrounded it.

  “A lot coins! Very many!” he said, suddenly angry. “And you see what happen? Look!” He gestured toward the pool, which had very few coins in it.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Didn’t you just collect them?”

  “No! I come collect, but somebody steal coins before me! They take this first, from broom closet,” he said, shaking his mesh broom at me. “I find, you know where? Bottom of water!”

  He was still staring at the kids by the stairs, and I could tell he suspected them of the evil deed. But I had to wonder—if they had done it, would they still be hanging around with all those coins in their pockets, waiting to get caught?

  “I call security guy, but he think I steal!” Oskar ranted, spit and foam flying out of his mouth. “Nobody like immigrant, but I not steal! Not like most people.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t, Oskar,” I said. “Um, when exactly did you notice the coins had been taken?”

  “Just now. Hey, what your name again?”

  “Frank. Frank Hardy.”

  “Frank, why you ask so much question, Frank? You some kinda cop or something?”

  Oops. It was time for me to back off, before I blew my cover to smithereens.

  “Nah, I was just curious, that’s all.”

  “Lots people around this place up to no good,” said Oskar. “Not just young people—lots people. I see everything.” He tapped his forehead, nodding slowly.

  “Oh, yeah? Like who?”

  His eyes narrowed, and he looked me up and down suspiciously. “Never mind who,” he said. Then he put his fingers to his lips and pretended to lock them with a key.

  So I was right about Oskar—he probably knew more about what was going on around here than anyone else.

  But now was not the time to pump him for information. That would have to wait for when he wasn’t in such a bad mood.

  “You’re right,” I said, patting him on the arm. “It’s none of my business. Well, nice meeting you, Oskar. See you around.”

  He watched me go, muttering something to himself.

  Yes, I thought, there was lots more to old Oskar than met the eye. I made a mental note to check up on him again, real soon.

  Well, at least the evening hadn’t been a total waste. I decided to give Joe a call and see how he was making out, so I took out my cell and backed into the doorway of a store, to get out of the flow of human traffic on the promenade.

  Joe didn’t pick up, and I didn’t feel like leaving a message. I had just hung up when somebody tapped me lightly on the shoulder. I turned to see a girl looking at me, smiling.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Um, why do you ask? Do I look lost?”

  “No, but you’re standing here in the store, so …”

  I suddenly realized that while dialing, I must have stepped back into the actual store—In the Groove, it was called. It offered lava lamps, incense burners, disco balls, black lights, weird T-shirts, posters, and lots of other novelty items.

  “Oh, I get it,” I said. “You work here.”

  “Yup. Were you looking for something special?”

  “Oh—no! I was just … um, making a phone call.”

  “Oh … I see. So, where’s your phone?”

  “In my pocket.”

  SUSPECT PROFILE

  Name: Oskar Zemeckis

  Hometown: Zagreb, Croatia

  Physical description: Age 65, 6′ 2″, 220 lbs. Has a problem with cleanliness and grooming. Narrow, beady, suspicious eyes. Thinks the worst of everybody—maybe because he knows himself too well?

  Occupation: Janitor/night watchman for East Side Mall

  Background: Came over from Eastern Europe while it was still behind the Iron Curtain. Arrived uneducated and penniless. Has had a hard life here in America. Who knows what kind of stuff (legal and illegal) he’s had to do to get by in a foreign land?

  Suspicious behavior: Talking to himself, blaming others for the disappearance of coins he was responsible for collecting and turning over for charity.

  Suspected of: Taking the coins and blaming it on those lazy American kids. If he did that, what else is he capable of?

  Possible motives: Hey, life is hard. For a guy as nasty as Oskar, it’s easy to justify taking a little extra money here and there, especially if people are literally throwing it away.

  “Aren’t you going to need it? To make a call, I mean?”

  “No—um, I tried to call my brother, but he didn’t pick up.”

  “Ah. Well, let me know if I can help you with anything.”

  “Wait!” I said.

  “Yes?”

  First of all, let me say straight up, I am so not good at talking to girls. Especially if they’re staring right at me with huge, gorgeous brown eyes, like this one was.

  “You don’t go to Bayport High, do you?” I asked.

  “No, I live out in East Bay.”

  “My name’s Frank.”

  “Adriana,” she said, shaking my hand with her fingertips. “Nice to meet you, Frank.”

  “You, um, know if they’re looking for help here?”

  “Why, you want a job?”

  “Uh, yeah. Part-time. You know.”

  “Yeah—most jobs here are part-time.”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  For some reason, I always turn into a complete geek whenever I’m face-to-face with a girl I really like.

  “You’d have to ask Steph. She’s my boss.”

  “Steph?”

  “Stephanie Flowers. She’s around here somewhere—probably back in the stockroom. Let me check.”

  A minute later Adriana came back, trailed by what I can only describe as someone straight out of the sixties. “Steph,” as Adriana called her, was pretty much a retro-hippie—from her long, braided hair to her fringed suede vest. The vest, by the way, was covered with more than a dozen buttons, most of which were about saving the environment.

  In fact, one of them said STEMM—with the two Ms linked. I remembered that was the environmental group Q had told us about—the one that supposedly sent the threatening e-mails to Applegate.

  Steph stared me up and down. “Have you got references?”

  “Uh …”

  “No references, huh?” She frowned and folded her arms. “Well, I guess I c
ould give you a shot. Adriana seems to like you, and she’s got good instincts. And to be honest with you, I could use the help.”

  I looked inside the store. There were only two customers, standing at the cash register as Adriana rang up their purchases. “Really?” I said. “It doesn’t look that busy….”

  “True, but weekday afternoons, a lot of kids come in here. Besides, I’ve got other things going on right now, and I can’t be stuck here all afternoon and evening. So if you want a job, like I said, I’ll give you a try.”

  “Great!” I shook her hand, which had about ten rings on it. “Thanks. When can I start?”

  Steph looked at her watch. “Well, it’s almost closing time, so how about you come back tomorrow?”

  “Is four o’clock okay? I’ve got school….”

  “Great. See you at four … Frank, is it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Frank Hardy.”

  “Don’t call me ma’am—call me Steph. Everyone else does.”

  We shook hands again. Steph stepped out onto the promenade and looked up at the roof of the mall. It tilted upward on one side, which was almost entirely made up of glass skylights held together by a thin metal frame. Usually the glass let a lot of light through. At the moment, though, the sky was pretty dark.

  “It’s going to pour any minute,” said Steph. “I’m outta here. Adriana, will you lock up?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Uh, Steph?” I said. “I couldn’t help noticing your buttons.”

  “Oh, these? Yeah, I’m pretty ‘out there,’ I know.”

  “What does that one mean?” I asked, pointing to the STEMM button.

  “Ah—it means Save the East Side Marsh and Mall. I’m the president,” she told me. “We aim to keep this place just as it is—safe for animals and people.”

  “You know,” I said, taking a chance, “I heard something about e-mails to the owner of this mall, warning him not to sell. Weren’t they supposed to have come from STEMM?”

  Steph stared at me, her expression as dark as the sky overhead. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I don’t remember,” I lied. “But is it true?”

  “Definitely not! That rumor is just a bunch of baloney, spread by the forces of evil.”