“Cute, Helen, real cute. Now, let's have it. I've been quivering for hours. If I knit any faster, these needles'll melt. What happened after I left?”
Helen carried a tray to the table and set down two mugs of tomato soup and a plate stacked with grilled cheese sandwiches. A little comfort food for a midnight snack, and a fire going. How could you hate it?
“I don't know if eating cheese at midnight's a good idea, especially nippy old cheddar,” she said, handing me a mug and a sandwich. “They say it gives you nightmares, you know.”
“Who's they'?” I dipped my sandwich in the soup and swirled it about a bit. “I'm looking around and I don't see any ‘they’.”
I bit off a chunk and dipped the sandwich again.
“Anyway, my nightmare's already booked, and it's probably going to be the same as yours.” I stared at my bit of sandwich. “You know, I can hardly believe Cathy Haggerty is dead. It doesn't seem quite real.”
“I know,” said Helen. “Just her luck to pick that table. I wonder who was there first, though I don't suppose it matters much.”
A shopping centre food area is like the setting for musical chairs. Customers walk around with their tray of food, and the minute they spot a seat, they're in it. Doesn't matter who else is there. It's enough that you found a stool. After all, you're not there to socialize, though some do. The principle is “fast in, fast out.”
“She was such a nice person and so helpful.” I couldn't let it go. “I was just in her store yesterday to see if the rest of my wool was in yet, this new stuff she put me on to. How can I be talking to her one day, and she's dead the next? She was going to order me a particular shade of green they've just introduced. I really need that colour now I've changed my whole pattern around.”
What Helen didn't know was that my current project is a Fair Isle sweater for her as a surprise Christmas present.
Cathy had called me at the beginning of September, excited about finding this new supplier.
“Jenny, you have to come down and look at this wool I've just got in,” she'd said. “You won't believe it. Pure wool, beautiful colours, a great price and the best part is they leave eighty per cent of the lanolin in, so it's not itchy. I'm telling you, this one's outstanding.”
Well, of course, one look and I was sold. What knitter can resist a brand new product? There's something about all those balls of virgin wool that reaches out to you. It's like looking at the eyes of dogs or cats in the animal shelter—they all say “take me, take me.”
According to Cathy, this knitting yarn was actually produced by a sheep farmer just a two hour drive from here. Apparently, he'd formed some kind of co-op with other farmers who shipped him their wool and he, in turn, baled it, sent it to Allentown, Pennsylvania, to get washed and then on to several different mills to be spun and dyed.
It had all the earmarks of a local success story, and the wool was indeed a quality yarn so, naturally, I bought enough for a sweater and was off and running on a new project—a project that had just suffered a sudden setback.
Oh well, I'll deal with it at the beginning of the week, I thought. If push comes to shove, I can always find the farmer. Getting back to the subject at hand, I took another sandwich.
“And that guy from the florist's, Gerry what's-his-name? I heard he was the other body, the one with the pepperoni. I never liked him much, what with his smarmy winking and gestures every time I walked past the store, but that's no reason to want him dead. God, was he even thirty?”
“Twenty-eight,” Helen said. “Gerry Menard. And you weren't the only one who didn't like him much, Jenny. Nobody did, now I come to think of it. He was such a jerk, and I'm convinced he used the florist's job as a front for other things, although I could never come up with something concrete enough to do anything about it.”
“Like what?” I sat forward. “You've never said anything about this before.”
“Remember that child shoplifting thing we had going in the spring? The one during the teachers' strike? I'm still convinced he was a major player in that game.”
For two months the mall had been overrun with kids, mostly kids from ten to thirteen years old. Mothers would send them over with a couple of dollars to get them out of the house for a few hours. What the mothers didn't realize was that, in addition to their couple of bucks, a lot of the kids came with a list of things to steal. Things that ranged from clothes to electronics to jewellery.
It was quite a professional setup—small scale but well organized. Most stores don't prosecute kids that young, and the entrepreneurs behind the scheme knew it. They even gave the kids a list of excuses to give their parents if the stuff was found in their room at home. The kids made pocket money, the middle man made a bit more and the final recipient got bargain prices.
“I just wasn't able to prove anything,” Helen went on, “but I'm pretty certain he processed the stuff the kids were stealing. I mean, how many twelve and thirteen-year-olds do you usually see going in and out of a flower shop? We watched that store like hawks, but never saw them exchange anything except conversation, and not a lot of that.
“I've never said anything, because it's still an open investigation. The police are having problems, because the parents don't want to believe their children would do such a thing, and the kids sure aren't talking.”
She put down her soup mug, stood up and rewrapped the bath towel she was wearing. Her thick black hair, still wet from the shower, made strange little patterns in the talcum powder on her shoulders. No recessive genes there.
“I guess whether Menard was involved or not is moot now, though, isn't it?” she continued. “And another thing, he was awfully tight with that guy who ran the liquor store. The one who was convicted last year of running the teen prostitution ring. They spent a lot of lunch hours together. Every time I spotted them with their heads together, I wondered what they were cooking up.” Helen sighed. “Anyway, that's all beside the point now. The liquor store guy's in jail, and Menard's dead. I gave George my Security Log for the past year so he could go over it. Menard's mentioned in it quite a lot, and coincidentally, so is today's other victim, Jones, the one in hospital. In fact, I'm more concerned about the trouble that's going to come from him.”
“Why?” I asked. “At least he's still breathing in and out.”
“And that's about all he's doing. Just before we went into a mini-meeting in Graham's office, my precinct sources told me, off the record, that it might be best if he just slips away. He got shot in the back of the head and, apparently, the doctors aren't predicting much of a future for him if he does survive.”
“Did you tell them that at the meeting?”
“Are you crazy?” she asked. “You know whose son he is, don't you?”
I looked at her. She nodded, and I knew.
“Oh, God. That Jones.”
“That Jones,” she agreed. “Stephen Jones Jr., whose father, Councillor Stephen Jones Sr., is the biggest thorn in the side of this shopping centre, what with his watchdog Citizens' Advisory Committee and his constant carping about inadequate security, inadequate lighting, ineffective management, etc., etc.
“Bob Graham was upset enough for one night and, who knows, medical miracles have happened before. No doubt his condition'll come out at the meeting tomorrow, but it won't be from my mouth.
“You know, of course,” she took another sandwich, a sure sign she was upset, “my job's been on the line a number of times due to Jones. He's never got over the fact that I banned his son for three months last fall. Remember I caught the little shit hassling the models in the fashion show? His remarks when they were on the runway were bad enough,” she said, “but fixing the