Neon beer logos, discount offers, and “CAlottery” signs filled the windows of the liquor store on the southwest corner of Moorpark Street and Whitsett Avenue. We parked behind the store and crossed the small lot to the rear entrance.
Liquor bottles in every label, shape, and size lined the wall behind a long counter stacked with boxes of gum, jars of candy and jerky above, and cigars and cigarettes below. A lone customer paid for his twelve pack of beer at the register near the front door. Nick and I wandered along the refrigerated cases on the wall then through the wine aisles until the customer left.
“I’m Nick Garfield. Are you Weisel?” Nick said to the clerk at the register.
The long-necked, hook-nosed clerk furtively scanned both entrances and the security mirrors up in the corners. Apparently satisfied, he nodded at Nick. “Yeah.” Then he ran his eyes over me. “Who’s she?”
Be polite. We want information. I smiled. “I’m Liz. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your first name.”
“Everyone calls me Weisel. Did you bring the money?” he said with a hushed tone.
“Let’s talk about the pamphlet first,” Nick said.
“Which pamphlet?”
“Can we cut the intrigue? I’m interested in where you got the pamphlet you sold Vic.” Nick put a ten-dollar bill on the counter. “A nice, simple exchange.”
Weisel reached for the bill and I spotted a tattoo on the back of his hand, an inverted pentagram with a goat’s head in the center. He pocketed the cash and said, “I got the pamphlet from a customer.”
“You can do better than that,” Nick said.
“A woman.”
“Her name? A description?”
“Never got her name. She comes in to buy scotch.” Weisel curled his lips in a wry grin. “If a customer looks old enough to buy liquor and pays with cash, I don’t ask for ID—unless it’s a girl I want to take out on a date. This lady is too old for me.”
“How old?” I said.
“Like your age, maybe? Short brown hair. Flat-chested.”
The combination narrowed our odds from one in a few million to one in a few hundred thousand. Locally.
Nick pulled out another ten-dollar bill. “How did you end up with her pamphlet?” The clerk reached for the money. Nick pulled back.
Weisel turned his palm down, showing his tattoo. “She saw my tat and asked if I worshiped Lucifer. I’m not into the left-handed scene anymore, but some people see my ink and want to save my soul. They come in Saturday night for booze and want me to meet them at church Sunday morning. This lady said her old man preached a different kind of religion and wrote something I should read. Then she gives me the pamphlet. Just gave it to me, like a gift. I took it, figuring Vic might be interested.”
“Has she been back?” I said.
“I see her now and then, nothin’ regular.”
Nick gave him the second ten with his business card. “I’ll pay you twenty more if you get me her name.”
“Fifty,” Weisel said.
“Twenty-five.”
“Forty-five.”
“Twenty-five. I’ll make it fifty if she agrees to meet with me,” Nick said.
“Deal,” he said. “How come you want to meet her so bad? Are you cops?”
“The pamphlet is a classic. We’ve been trying forever to track down a tie to the author,” I said. The past three days felt like forever. “You can’t imagine how excited we are about talking to her.”
A customer entered the liquor store, ending our conversation. Nick and I left through the back.
I buckled my seat belt. “Some detectives we are. We didn’t even get the woman’s name. I wonder if the weasel told us the truth.”
“The weasel?” Nick laughed. “I thought Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein, but you’re right—Weisel’s name suits him. If Weisel had something to hide, he wouldn’t have called me. Jarret and Forrest still top my list of suspects. Jarret had means and opportunity.”
“No motive,” I said.
“No apparent motive. Forrest had a definite motive if he caught Laycee cheating on him,” Nick said. “Forrest knew the combination to Jarret’s garage, so he had means. The only piece missing is opportunity. How did he track Laycee to the house?”
My phone rang. I held up a finger. “It’s Oliver.”
Chapter Twenty-one
I clicked my phone on and said hello to Oliver as Nick turned out of the liquor store parking lot toward my house.
“Sorry, kid,” Oliver said. “I was in court when you called. I just hung up from Pratt. She’s been after me all day to bring you in for an interview—left me four damn messages. The woman can hound worse than my ma, and that ain’t pretty. I told her you’d be at the station tomorrow at eleven.”