Murder at the Mall Read online

  The forces of evil?

  Right on cue, there was a tremendous clap of thunder, and rain started pouring down on the roof, pattering loudly on the glass skylights.

  “Somebody else is signing our name to those messages!” Steph insisted.

  “Why would they do that?” I asked.

  “To make us look bad, of course! And so that the city council and the mayor will approve the sale of the mall.”

  SUSPECT PROFILE

  Name: Stephanie “Steph” Flowers

  Hometown: Bayport

  Physical description: Age 30, 5′ 4″, 120 lbs. Looks and dresses like a hippie from the sixties. Tie-dye and paisley to the max.

  Occupation: Manager of In the Groove, one of the East Side Mall’s signature stores, catering to young people.

  Background: Grew up in Bayport and became a dedicated environmentalist in college, where she stayed for seven years. Has been in retail ever since she got divorced from her husband, who was her high school sweetheart. No children, but cares deeply about all children and other living things.

  Suspicious behavior: She’s the president of STEMM, the group implicated in the threatening e-mails to Applegate.

  Suspected of: Making threats against the mall and its owner, trying to prevent the mall’s sale. Potentially planning violent acts if their demands aren’t met.

  Possible motives: Saving the mall and its surrounding marsh (and all the cute little animals and plants that live there).

  “But aren’t they already in favor of the sale?” I asked.

  Uh-oh. Now I’d gone and made Steph mad. Her face got all red, and she wagged her finger in my face. “If this place gets sold to Shangri-La, you know what comes next?”

  “Uh, no. What?”

  “I’ll tell you what comes next—stores like this one will disappear from the new mall, and so will the kind of customers it draws. Teenagers and young adults will be just as endangered around here as the creatures who live in the marsh outside! Well, let me tell you something, Frank—that is never going to happen.”

  Steph sure seemed committed to her cause. I had to wonder if, in spite of what she said, she really could be trusted to stay nonviolent if things came to a crisis. From the fiery look in her eyes, and the hot tone of her voice, I got the impression that she had a pretty explosive temper.

  After Steph had gone, Adriana said, “She gets a little worked up sometimes, but she’s really pretty nice. You’ll see.”

  Yeah, I thought. Pretty nice, if you’re on her good side.

  Adriana showed me around the store for about fifteen minutes. By the time closing time rolled around, the rain had let up, and the sky was getting a little brighter.

  She got out her keys, and we stepped out onto the promenade so she could lock up. I was kind of hoping she’d let me walk her to her car. That way, I could get to know her better—and question her some more about the case, of course.

  As I waited, I heard a cracking noise coming from above my head—a noise that sounded like …

  I looked up, just in time to see a huge pane of glass separate from the ceiling and come hurtling down, headed right for us!

  5.

  Shattered Illusions

  I was almost all the way back to the food court for my appointment at Healthy Wraps, when I heard the crash of shattering glass.

  I looked down the promenade and saw that a huge rectangular piece of glass had fallen from the roof!

  People were screaming, running away from the spot where the glass had fallen. I fought the tide, running toward the scene of the accident, to see if anybody needed help. (Both Frank and I have CPR training.)

  The glass had fallen right in front of In the Groove, this really cool, funky store. At first the whole area looked clear of people—which was a good thing, believe me. But then I saw that someone was lying on his stomach in the doorway. He was covered in little pieces of glass. Lucky for him it was safety glass, the kind they use in car windshields. When it breaks, it shatters into little round pieces instead of deadly, jagged-edged shards.

  As I got closer, I realized, first, that the guy was lying on someone else, and second, that I knew this guy.

  “Frank!”

  He looked up at me. “Hi, Joe. Am I dead?”

  “No, dude—you’re still here. Let’s just make sure you’re okay.”

  He got up slowly, checking himself for blood, and I saw that the person underneath him was a really cute girl with huge dark eyes. She was clinging to Frank like a barnacle.

  Frank helped the girl up, and between sobs, she hugged him, saying, “Thank you!” over and over again, and “You saved my life!”—all of which Frank accepted without an argument.

  “You okay, dude?” I asked him.

  “I th-think so,” he said, still checking himself over.

  “You sure seem like you’re doing fine,” I commented, glancing at the girl.

  “Oh. Yeah—Joe, this is Adriana. Adriana, my brother Joe.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said, nodding at me.

  “Likewise.”

  “I’m, uh, going to be working with her, Joe—here in the store,” he explained.

  “Ah. Well, good for you.”

  “What about you—did you get a job?”

  “Yeah, but I think you’re gonna like yours better,” I said, with an eye on Adriana.

  Frank was already at work, though—and not the retail kind. He was crouching down at the edge of the pile of glass, looking for clues.

  Meanwhile, mall security had arrived, along with the janitor—a weird-looking old guy with OSKAR stitched on his uniform. He was wheeling a large garbage can and carried a big broom over his shoulder.

  I looked up at the roof where the huge pane had come loose. The ceiling was high, and the lighting wasn’t that good at this hour—but I thought I saw a neat edge of glass around the metal frame of the missing pane. Which made me think that maybe—just maybe—someone had cut through it on purpose.

  Of course, I couldn’t be certain—not from this far away. I needed to get up there on the roof and check it out.

  “Everybody back!” shouted the mall security officer in charge. There weren’t very many of us around—mostly store employees, since closing time had come and gone, and the customers with it. In the distance I heard police sirens.

  And then I saw Mr. Applegate, running down the promenade toward us from the direction of his office. I could tell right away that he was the most upset person there—even more than Frank and Adriana, who had every right to be scared out of their wits.

  Just then, a police whistle blew. “Stand back, everyone!” yelled a voice I recognized instantly as belonging to Chief Ezra Collig—our dad’s old friend, and the top man in the Bayport Police Department. The East Side Mall was on the outskirts of town—in his jurisdiction, but just barely.

  “Somebody want to tell me what happened?” he asked, looking around at the crowd, most of whom were wearing ID cards identifying them as store employees.

  Everyone started answering the chief at once, and he had to blow his whistle again to silence them. “One at a time!” he shouted.

  Then he saw me and Frank, and he frowned. “Aw, now, why is it that every time there’s trouble, you two are always nearby? No, don’t answer that!” he quickly added.

  “That skylight came down right on top of us,” Frank told the chief, his arm still around the shivering Adriana. “It nearly killed us.”

  “Hmm,” the chief said, scowling. Turning to Officer Con Reilly, another of our pals on the force, he said, “Haven’t I been telling you about this place? I get more complaints about conditions here—”

  “This was no accident!” Mr. Applegate piped up. “I’m always very careful about safety conditions here—those code violations were all fixed months ago! You can check your records and see.”

  The chief looked up at the hole in the glass ceiling, then down at the shattered fragments of the skylight, and said, “Looks pretty hazardo
us to me. But we’ll have a look—don’t you worry.” Turning to Reilly, he added, “Get a detail up on that roof, Con.”

  “Right, Chief,” said Reilly, who took off at a trot, motioning for two other officers to join him.

  “If this was an accident,” the chief said to Applegate, “I’m gonna have to cite you for unsafe conditions. Again.”

  “I’m telling you, sir—this was a message meant for me.” Then suddenly Applegate looked up and over my shoulder.

  I turned around to see what he was staring at, and saw a blond-haired woman, soaking wet and about thirty years old. She looked straight out of a sixties movie, with her headband, her vest full of patches and buttons, and her hair in braids. She stared right back at Applegate, with a look on her face somewhere between anger and pleading.

  I noticed that one of the buttons on her vest said STEMM. I remembered what Applegate had just said: This was a message meant for me.

  Then I looked beyond the retro-hippie lady—and there, lurking in the shadows of one of the potted palm trees that lined the promenade, I saw the lawyer for Shangri-La, Bob Meister. He was staring at Applegate too—with a look on his face that said, I told you so.

  Chief Collig had already started interviewing the witnesses, beginning with Frank and his new “instant girlfriend.”

  I decided my time would be better spent getting to the roof and seeing what Con Reilly was up to. So I headed for the emergency stairs, which were just to the right of the escalators.

  Two flights up, I found the door to the roof. It had been propped open with a cinder block. Its alarm system must have been turned off too, because it hadn’t sounded—at least I hadn’t heard it, and I have pretty good ears.

  Reilly’s two men were trying to make their way across the metal frame of the glass roof, keeping their weight off the remaining sheets of glass as they inched their way toward the missing pane.

  “Hey, Joe,” Reilly greeted me. “Did Chief say it was okay you being up here?”

  I had to laugh. “Sure, Con. You know how he loves me poking around his business.”

  “Ah, that’s okay,” he said, “seeing as it almost hit Frank, I guess you take a personal interest. Besides, you’ve saved our bacon more than once. Hey, maybe you’ll spot something we don’t.”

  “I doubt that,” I said modestly—but it was true. Frank and I have solved more than a few cases for the Bayport Police Department. Chief Collig might not like it, but at least we don’t try to take any credit. (ATAC wouldn’t let us do that, even if we wanted to. That’s how a secret agency stays secret.)

  Con’s two officers had made it over to the missing panel. “Looks like it was cut through on purpose,” one of them called back to us. “Nice clean job—still an edge of glass firmly in place all the way around.”

  “Geez,” Reilly muttered. “If that isn’t creepy …”

  “Hey,” I called, moving farther along the framework to a vertical brick wall that had been tarred black. “Check this out, Con.”

  He came over and stared at it. Then he let out a low whistle. “If that don’t beat all,” he said.

  On the black wall, someone had spray-painted a message, graffiti-style: NEXT TIME DURING BUSINESS HOURS.

  It was signed STEMM.

  6.

  Picking Up the Pieces

  The first thing I did after realizing I was still alive was to make sure Adriana was okay. Other than being terrified, she seemed fine, thank goodness. She held on to my arm for a long time, though. I guess it made her feel safer. But the way she was looking at me, it was like I was her hero or something.

  Chief Collig finally separated us when he took me aside to question me. I told him everything that had happened—except for the fact that Joe and I had been sent to the mall by ATAC.

  He seemed especially interested in Stephanie Flowers, Adriana’s boss. I figured he already knew she was involved with STEMM. I was also sure he would run into her hot temper the minute he tried to question her. Chief Collig doesn’t like hot tempers, other than his own. So I knew Steph was in trouble.

  I thought back to when she’d left us. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes from that moment till the glass came crashing down. That would have given her just enough time to get up to the roof and cut through the glass—if she had the right cutting tool. But I couldn’t see her having enough time to spray the graffiti, too.

  I supposed the glass could have just fallen by accident, but I didn’t think that was likely. When I looked up, it had been coming down in one huge piece, not in broken shards.

  While the chief peppered me with questions, I heard police sirens fading into the distance. I knew they were off to find Steph, whom I’d seen briefly in the crowd just after the police had arrived, but not since. Meanwhile, old Mr. Applegate looked like he was having a fit of some kind. He was sitting on the marble edge of the fountain, staring into space, with tears rolling down his wrinkled cheeks.

  That poor guy, I thought. This mall means everything to him.

  The chief was conferring with Detective Wright, who’d been interviewing Oskar, the janitor. “The janitor says there’s a bunch of kids that hang out over there by the emergency stairs,” Wright was saying. “He says they’re always sitting there, right up till closing time. But I looked around—no sign of ’em now, Chief.”

  “Any names?” the chief asked.

  “Not yet, but we’re working on it,” Wright said. “Should have something for you by tomorrow.”

  “Okay, we’ll concentrate on the STEMM angle for now,” the chief decided. “Let’s wind this up, eh?”

  Chief Collig soon got busy questioning Adriana. I wrote down my cell phone number and passed it to her. “In case you need to reach me,” I said, waving good-bye.

  I kind of figured she’d call, just to talk it all out. Something like a sheet of glass coming down on you really shakes a person up. It sure had shaken me.

  Backing away, I headed for the emergency stairs. I wanted to know more about that group of kids, for one thing. And for another, Joe had gone off this way. I guessed he was up on the roof with Con Reilly, and I was curious what they’d found.

  There was a low marble shelf next to the emergency stairs and the escalators. It formed the border for a row of indoor trees. These were bamboo, or some kind of potted palms. They grew pretty high—high enough that a family of sparrows were living up in their crowns. I had no idea how those birds got inside the mall in the first place, but I guessed they ate well—there were plenty of crumbs for them on the floor of the food court.

  One of the birds swooped down past me. It landed at the base of a potted tree and started pecking around.

  Watching it, I noticed something sticking out of the mulch inside the pot. “Sorry, birdie,” I said as it flew away in panic on my approach.

  I brushed away the mulch and pulled out a black poncho—the kind that folds up into a pouch you can keep in your pocket. It was wet, and I wondered what it was doing there buried in dry mulch, at the foot of the emergency stairs that led to the roof.

  I walked the poncho back over to In the Groove and gave it to Detective Wright, telling him where I’d found it. He thanked me, and I headed back to the stairs.

  I stood in front of the marble shelf for a minute, surveying the mall. From here, I could see everything there was to see—the escalators, the second-floor promenade, three ground-floor corridors, the merry-go-round/ball room/kiddie area, and the big fountain that hid the food court.

  If I were a kid my age with nothing to do, I’d want to hang out here for sure. Of course, that would never happen. I always had something to do.

  Like right now.

  I started up the stairs, but just then, I heard Joe’s distinctive clomping footsteps coming down.

  “Frank?”

  “Yo,” I greeted him. “What’d you find up there?”

  “Sabotage—looks pretty professional, too. They must have had a diamond cutting tool. And there’s graffiti—a
warning from STEMM.”

  “A warning?”

  “‘Next time during business hours.’”

  I shook my head. “Man, that’s some serious stuff. I mean, I’ve heard of environmentalist groups tying themselves to trees, or lying down under bulldozer treads—but killing innocent people?”

  “I agree,” said Joe. “Whoever’s behind this, there’s something extra going on inside their heads—something personal … and maybe deadly.”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s why we’re here. To stop it from happening.”

  “You got that right. So what’d I miss?”

  “They’re after a woman named Stephanie Flowers. She owns In the Groove, and she’s the president of STEMM. I met her just before it all went down.”

  “She wouldn’t be a blonde, would she? Hippie-looking?” asked Joe.

  “That’s her. Actually, she’s going to be my boss.”

  “Right, you’re going to be working at In the Groove … with that girl you introduced me to. Nice going.”

  “That’s Adriana. She kind of helped me get the job.”

  “Adriana. Nice name.” Then Joe froze, remembering something. “Oh, no! I forgot, my job!”

  “Oh, yeah, you mentioned that. Where’s it at?”

  “No, no, I messed up—I was supposed to go back there at closing time!”

  “Aw, man, too late now.”

  He glared at me. “I know that,” he said. “I don’t need you to tell me I messed up.”

  “Sorry.”

  Joe kicked the door open, and we exited the stairwell.

  “Hey, I’m sure your boss will understand if you show up tomorrow and explain,” I said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “He’s bound to be ticked off.”

  “Who’s ‘he,’ anyway?”

  “The guy from Healthy Wraps.”

  “You’re kidding! You, working at a health-food place?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “You hate health food.”

  “I do not. Who says?”

  “You do. You never want to eat your vegetables.”

  “I eat them, though—don’t I?” Joe insisted.