The Big Cat Nap

rejoiced when women succeeded in male-dominated fields. One thing life had taught Franny was that most reasonably intelligent men knew where their economic self-interest lay and put their energies into those businesses that would turn a profit.
    In a tiny way, she felt that young women wanting to steer their own ships was her little victory, too. Now, if she could just encouragewomen to take more risks, for Franny well knew that greater risks meant greater profits.
    Then she came back to the present. Seemed she had run risk enough in her youth. The funny thing was Franny, like most people, thought life would get easier as she got older. It didn’t. She just got better at handling the crises.

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 hepaused. “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 fartoo 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