At three, another team of officers had shown up and started taking pictures of the Food Court. Helen managed to break away and join us for a quick bite. She said the second wave was the Identification Unit, whose job it was to photograph everything in sight, starting with the big picture as it were and going on to specific items. And boy, did they get specific. It took well over two hours for them to finish, then a flat cart was wheeled in and the six large, plastic trash bins that serve the food area were carted off.
“Why re they doing that, Jenny?” Joe asked.
“Gonna search them for the gun, I guess. I can't think of anything else they'd want them for.” I pointed over to the door behind the Pizza Place. “I saw three guys going in there while you were getting our lunch, so they're obviously searching along the back halls, too.”
While this was going on, everyone in the Food Court was questioned systematically to determine where they were when the shooting occurred. A few people, most likely the ones that were actually eating lunch when the murders happened, were led off, presumably to the witness room, for further questioning.
The atmosphere had become pretty tense by then. Any interest in watching the police and emergency crews do their job began to pall after a while, and restlessness set in.
The only smiling faces belonged to the Food Court tenants. Except for the Pizza place, they'd had a captive audience for lunch, and probably the best dinner hour ever, and I was certain the mall's four sit-down restaurants couldn't be too unhappy either.
Around three-thirty, after showing my business card to an officer and having Helen vouch for me, I was allowed to go back up to the office, escorted of course, to get my knitting. No point in wasting knit one, purl one time, but every few rows I'd stop and look over to where I'd seen Cathy's body. Death was unbelievable, incomprehensible. She and I had become quite friendly over the years during my visits to her wool store for supplies. How could she have been shot? Surely it was a mistake. Finally, I put the knitting back in the bag and just sat, thinking about the even larger implications of the day's events.
Any shooting in any public place is a tragedy that always grabs attention, probably because it underlines our own vulnerability. A seemingly random shooting in a major regional shopping centre was a disaster of immense proportions. The media would have a field day with this. Talk about negative publicity. Three people, not only gunned down, but gunned down in the busiest spot in the mall on the busiest day of the week, at the busiest time of the day. And all they were doing was eating lunch. Stir in the fact that the mall was full of kids at the time, and you've got a story tailormade for six-inch headlines. This would give us more coverage than my total budget for the year could buy.
My mind shrivelled thinking about all the fancy dancing it was going take to offset the ramifications of the events.
The mall's slogan is “Rosewood City Centre—Our Prices Are On Target.”
I got a quick mental picture of a cartoon showing one of our print ads. The caption read “But then, so are you.”
I got the knitting back out of the bag and started again, going faster this time.
At seven o'clock, the yellow tape came down, and the exodus began.
“Boy, look at them go,” said Roger. “Guess they're all sick of this place by now, huh?”
“I've had enough, too,” said Joe. “Okay if we leave, Jenny, or do you want to do the clean-up now?”
“Not bloody likely. Let's do it tomorrow,” I said. “There's been a management meeting called for nine in the morning, so if you guys can be here by two or so, we'll clean up then. Thanks, guys.”
“Bye.” They all stood up and were, in a word, gone.
I couldn't find Helen, Bob Graham or Keith, but then I didn't try too hard. The Information Booth staff had closed up and left and besides, I'd had enough. My knees were aching from their drop to the floor, and I'd started to think about Santa again. It was time to go home.
Now Helen and I were in the kitchen of my downstairs flat in the old house we shared. It had been the original farmhouse of the area before developers had moved in and built a subdivision around it. Tom, our landlord, had inherited the house from his father who had, in turn, inherited it from his father. Helen and I had subsequently inherited it from Tom— at least as temporary caretakers.
I'd dated Tom in a friendly, casual sort of way, a couple of years back, around the time he'd been finishing his doctorate on ancient languages with a special interest in Egyptology. An offer had come for him to take a five-year appointment in Luxor as a visiting professor, and he'd jumped at the chance, taking Helen and me out to dinner to celebrate.
“The only drawback is the house,” he said. “I'm uncomfortable about closing it up for that long, and even if I did close it, I can't afford to fly back and forth checking on it.”
“We'll look after it,” Helen and I said almost in unison. “We'll rent it. You won't have a care in the world.”
“Sweet Lord, you two are scary.” Tom dropped his fork. “I thought I'd got used to this talking in stereo, but I guess I haven't.”
“But you know,” he continued, “that's not a bad idea. My father always felt the house was haunted, though I've sure never seen any sign of it. But, if he was right, then you two are naturals.”
And so, after a bit of negotiation, here we are. We haven't seen or heard any uninvited guests or unusual activities, but there does seem to be a particular cold spot in the cupboard under the stairs—a cold spot that comes from nowhere, goes nowhere and does nothing. Occasionally, we take our cups of tea and sit on the floor staring at the cupboard, but we usually only get cold and, since we don't know what we're watching for, we just give up and go on about our business. Sometimes, when Helen's not home, I talk to my mother there.
Thanks to the clever planning of Tom's grandfather, there's a sun porch upstairs for Helen, a verandah downstairs for me, and Tom had converted the mud room off the kitchen into an extra bathroom, so there's no fighting over showers. An old carriage shed out back, for which I thank heaven daily, houses my '56 Chevy, but the house's ultimate decadence is the log-burning fireplace in the kitchen.
We've lived here just over a year now, and one of us is gonna have to marry Tom, because we don't intend to move out. Or maybe we can just slice him off a room.
Helen opted for the three rooms on the upper floor, saying the stairs would be good exercise for her which suits me just fine. I've got the downstairs rooms, and we share the large kitchen, which also suits me just fine. Quite often, when Helen has a day off, she'll take a cooking fit, and I come home to find the table set, a gourmet dinner ready and a bottle of Mountain Chablis on ice.
I'm a good enough cook, but my repertoire runs to dishes like meatloaf and chips, bangers and mash, and I only make a roast beef dinner as an excuse to have Yorkshire pudding.
So here I was, sitting in a rocker with my feet propped up on a kitchen chair and my knitting needles clicking along like a freight train. When I was a kid in Scotland, we travelled a lot by train. My sister and I drove our mother crazy chanting “Katy did, Katy didn't. Katy did, Katy didn't” in time to the rhythm of the wheels. Sometimes I find myself doing it now, when I knit.
My left knee had a bag of frozen corn niblets across it, and the label on the designer pouch covering the right one said “Peaches and Cream, Flash Frozen”.
Helen looked at my knees. Grinning, she patted the bags.
“Is this some kind of tribal medicine lore handed down through your family, Jenny?”
“For your information, smartass, it's First Aid 101—Ice packs for swelling and bruising. And just so's you know, the Scots