The Big Cat Nap (8 page)

H
e was a brilliant mechanic. Not that the other guys are bad, but they plug in the cars to the computers. They’re very dependent on technology. Walt was, too, but he had a feel. Computers don’t.”

“How long had you known him?” Cooper asked.

As she conducted the questioning, Rick sat in the squad car using his computer to get statistics on the splatter pattern of dashed brains. Information like that could be helpful in determining just where the assailant stood.

Victor Gatzembizi leaned back in his comfortable office chair. “A long time, actually. He worked for a big Chrysler–Dodge–Jeep dealership in Richmond. When disaster struck Chrysler, he figured sooner or later he’d be fired, the dealership would close, or both. I hired him. Hadn’t opened the shop here yet, but I wasn’t going to let anyone that good go. As it was, I had this place opened three months after I hired him.”

“No troubles?” Cooper also leaned back, then sat upright. She was tired and needed to stay sharp.

“No.”

“It would appear he wasn’t popular with the other men.”

Victor’s dark eyebrows rose. “No one complained to me.”

“Would it have done any good?”

This caught the handsome forty-one-year-old man off guard, so he
paused. “If the complaints piled up, had some commonality, I would have listened. Officer, you’ve probably not run a business.”

“No.” She didn’t take offense.

He smiled. “You get some people who like to work, take pride in their work. You get slackers and those you need to fire right off. But most men fall into the middle; they might like what they do well enough, but it’s all about that paycheck. They live for the weekends. Walt loved cars, loved engines, loved working on them. If anyone spoke badly of him to you, I’d be willing to bet there was a tinge of jealousy, resentment there—maybe because I favored him, made him the floor boss.”

Cooper silently noted that none of the mechanics had mentioned this. “I see. I’m hoping you can help me, and these questions might seem tangential, but emotional relationships nine times out of ten can point us in the right direction to solving a crime. This one was brutal. A great deal of emotion may have been involved.”

Victor grimaced. “I can’t imagine anyone out back”—he motioned with his head toward the rear of the building, as they sat in his well-appointed office—“hated him that much. And, I repeat, I heard nothing. You’d think I would have heard some grumbling. Kyle’s quick to pick up crap like that. If anything, he revels in it.”

“Troublemaker?”

Victor shook his head and laughed slightly. “No. Kyle’s young, and he’s one of those people who pounces on the negative.”

Victor was right about that, Cooper thought to herself, but mostly what Kyle had pounced on was Victor himself. The young man, without launching a frontal attack, snidely characterized his boss to Cooper during questioning as a pompous rich ass fond of flashy cars, jewelry, and (he hinted) women, despite Victor’s marriage.

“Have you ever suffered any kind of robbery here?” Coop asked.

“You’d know.”

“Not if it was only a slight imbalance in the till, not enough to call in our department. A muffler missing here and there. That kind of thing.”

“No, I have honest people here. Although I do know that toilet paper and paper towels occasionally have gone missing, as well as far
too many ReNu tablets and pens.” He shrugged. “That’s any business. Employees think they’re entitled to those items, especially since we do give out pens and tablets to customers. But it can add up quicker than they imagine. One year I had a stationery bill of three thousand some dollars. I let everyone know I was pissed.”

“Would scare me,” she teased him.

Coop, good at questioning, read people fast and accurately. Some needed to feel safe, others needed to be knocked down a peg, some feared that revealing information would cost them their jobs—and, depending on the information, it just might. Others feared physical reprisals, especially with certain types of murder, and Walt’s carried a hint of that. Anyone who would bash out someone’s brains with a tire iron either possessed a hair-trigger temper or didn’t much mind hurting someone. That could include anyone who got in the way while they covered up the first murder. Victor liked congeniality. Cooper provided that, and her good looks certainly assisted the process.

He smiled at her mock fright. “Oh, you’ve dealt with a lot worse than myself, Deputy.”

Her turn to laugh. “Mr. Gatzembizi—”

“Call me Victor.”

“Victor.” She waited a moment. “Have you received threats concerning your business?”

“No.” A cautious note crept into his voice. “But ReNu is a relatively new firm, founded here in 2007, as you know. I also have shops in Richmond, Virginia Beach, Alexandria, and Norfolk.” He brightened. “Norfolk—all those sailors. The young ones get loaded on the weekends and it’s one fender bender after another. Perfect for me.” He grinned broadly.

“No threats at all?”

“You mean from a disgruntled customer or from another business? No. Well, this sounds like so much hype, but I don’t have disgruntled customers. I fix their cars. If there remains a problem, I do any further work gratis so they don’t have to keep dealing with their insurance companies. That’s where the real problems are. By the time the client gets to me, he or she has been exhausted by all the people they’ve had
to talk to—the claims adjuster, et cetera. It’s a bit better if they deal locally. Tell you what, Officer, don’t get in an accident.”

“I know that. You get a lot of business.”

“There are a lot of accidents in Charlottesville. As you know, hey, anywhere there’s a college, there are plenty of accidents.”

She flipped through her notebook. “The various insurance companies cite you as providing reasonable rates for repairs.”

“Yes, I have a good relationship with all of them. And I can usually undercut other shops. I’m more efficient. It’s not rocket science.”

“I see. You don’t think one of those other shops—let me put it this way, someone would try to harm your business?”

“The way to harm my business would be to offer quality work cheaper than I do. It would be pretty stupid to kill my best mechanic. Better to steal him away, pay him more.”

“Yes, it would.” She again agreed with him.

“Officer, I’m a successful businessman in a difficult time. Really. Every time I turn around it’s a new law, a new ruling, a new tax. I hire good people, which is half of success. I’m always looking for better ways to provide service, and that isn’t always easy, especially given the materials cars are made out of now. Entire bumpers fall off. In the old days those bumpers were made of steel. Used to be pretty simple to repair carburetors. Fuel injection is a wonderful thing, but it’s more expensive when something goes wrong. If I undercut my competitors, it’s their own fault. But, still, to kill one of my people—I can’t believe it.”

Coop had let him ramble a bit. Often people revealed far more than they intended to if you let them go on. It wasn’t necessarily facts but a sense of the situation and a strong sense of who that speaker was.

Victor Gatzembizi was intelligent and slick. She understood his self-interest—not necessarily a bad thing. She sensed he was a ruthless competitor, although the form that took appeared to be honest. He cared about his appearance. He really had built a successful business. Her own work on this told her that. Big shops across the state, forty-six employees, a few part-time. That was a pretty lean number, so he saved money there. By all accounts he paid very well, rewarding good work. His employee turnover stayed low.

Coop returned to her squad car, where Rick bent over his laptop. He’d walked through the repair shop and the body shop. He had wanted to see those splatter patterns on the computer and he had a special meeting that night with the county commissioners, not public. Not only would this murder come up, so would the budget. He wanted to be prepared, and if he sat in headquarters it would be one interruption after another. As for all sheriffs or police chiefs, battles over funding were a major obstacle—a bleeding ulcer, really—yet everyone expected law-enforcement services.

He shut off the computer. “Well?”

“Rick, everyone’s been helpful. Victor Gatzembizi freely answered any questions. He said Walt was his best mechanic. Still, neither Victor nor anyone else seems remotely distressed over Walt’s murder. Oh, they’re all horrified at the way it happened. No one says they wished him dead, but no one wishes him back, either.”

“Strange.”

“I’ll say.” She cut on the motor and drove off the ReNu lot.

G
otcha!” Miranda tossed a weed over her shoulder into the half-full wheelbarrow. “Death to weeds.”

The Very Reverend Jones sneaked up on her as he trod softly on her beautiful herringbone brick walkway. He clucked. “Miranda, plants are living. God made all living things.”

She stood up with some help from Herb. “You’ve come to test me, I see.”

His deep voice, always soothing, replied, “I came to see one of my favorite people. And, as always, your garden puts others to shame.”

She shook her index finger at him. “Now you’re testing me for the sin of pride?”

“Well, it’s true. Your garden dazzles and, of course, Big Mim tries hard to cover her envy about your emerald thumbs.”

They both laughed, for the Queen of Crozet, Big Mim Sanburne, lavished huge sums of money on her gardens, tended by three gardeners, and while beautiful, those gardens couldn’t hold a candle to the small but exquisite gardens of Miranda.

“How about some iced tea? I need a break. Un-tea, as I recall.”

“I’d love some.” He patted his stomach. “I do miss sweetened tea, but I am trying to cut back on the sugar.”

“You’ve lost weight.”

“Thank you.” He smiled. “Thirty more pounds. Tell you what,
Miranda, the pounds just creep up. Too much sitting.” He smiled again. “You slimmed down.”

They walked to her back porch, screened in as most back porches were in this part of the world.

“Did. Tending to Didee put me off food.” She poured tea from a cooler she kept on the table when she worked outside. “Herb, it’s easy to have faith when everything’s going your way. Watching my sister die, well, I asked painful questions and I have no answers.”

“None of us do. You were wonderful to your sister and she was grateful. You have a deep capacity for love and hard work, Miranda. You endured George’s passing with similar fortitude.” Herb mentioned her late husband.

“That was so long ago,” she said almost wistfully. “And mercifully quick.”

“I pray for a heart attack.” He held up his hand. “It’s up to the Good Lord, but why linger?” He paused. “Is there anything I can do, sweetie?”

“Your friendship is healing. You, Harry, Susan, and the girls.” She referred to BoomBoom and Alicia as the girls. “I have such wonderful friends.”

“Because you’re a wonderful friend.”

They drank their tea, both in rocking chairs, pushing away.

“Recovered?” she asked him.

“From what?”

“Finding that body at ReNu.”

“Poor fellow didn’t have a chance. It was gruesome. But somehow I can’t stop thinking”—he shifted his weight—“that if only I had walked in a few minutes earlier, I might have been able to stop it. Rush forward, yell, anything. Know what I mean?”

She nodded her agreement. “I understand.”

They rocked some more. A soft breeze lifted the wisteria climbing over the back porch and onto the roof, yet another chore Miranda would attend to in time: taming her wisteria.

“Herb, to change the subject. You picked up your truck from ReNu.”

“Finally, yes. The sheriff’s department wanted to examine every vehicle on the lot.”

“Are you satisfied with the work?”

He put his glass down. “Sure, but I just got the truck back. Hopefully I won’t have further problems.”

“Safe and Sound gave me a list of acceptable repair garages. ReNu is the only one in our area. Now, that doesn’t seem right. I’m not paying to have my Outback towed to Richmond. But Latigo Bly says ReNu does good work at good prices.”

“Any idea how long it will take for your car to be repaired?” Herb asked.