He took his pocket organizer out of his briefcase and flipped it open to the calculator.
“Don’t bother,” said Officer Plum. “It comes to a little over seven thousand apiece. But I have a detailed inventory here.” She tapped her fingernail against her clipboard. “I’m sure Terrence will provide you with an inventory on his claim, but if you’d rather, I can get you a photocopy of the report. You’ll probably want one anyway, to verify the insurance claim.”
Lindsey hesitated.
“Well, I have to go.” She turned around, walked to the front of the shop, spoke briefly with Terry Patterson, then left.
Patterson came back to where Lindsey was standing. “Y-You brought me the insurance forms, Mr. Lindsey? I really need to take care of this. Those weren’t my comics. I mean, some of them were and some of them weren’t. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I—”
Lindsey put up his hand. He couldn’t stand babbling, and it looked like Patterson was going to babble away indefinitely, “I have the forms here, don’t worry. But you know, we can’t just make out a check for this kind of money until there’s been an investigation. We have to make sure that the claim is legitimate. And if there’s any chance of recovering the loot, we have to work on that angle.”
Patterson put his hand to his forehead. He made a low, moaning sound.
“Besides,” Lindsey said, “there are a lot of unanswered questions. For instance, your two, ah, helpers.” Linc and Jan were in the front room. They had opened the street door as if no crime had been committed. They might have seen Officer Plum leaving, heard the end of Lindsey’s conversation with their boss. They must be boiling with curiosity.
Linc was arranging stock on the wire racks and tables. Jan was standing behind the cash register.
Already several customers had gathered inside the store. A handful of what looked like elementary-school children clustered at the wire racks, and an older man with greasy-looking gray hair and a bald spot stood near the wall. The elderly man gazed up at a thirty-year-old copy of Reform School Girls that hung in a transparent bag. Instead of the customary colorful drawing, the cover featured a photograph of a busty female model. A cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth, smoke drifting lazily upward. She had her skirt hiked up and was adjusting the top of one sheer stocking. The top of her dress was pulled low over her shoulders and her bosom was exposed lewdly.
“Look at those two,” Lindsey said. “How do you know they didn’t steal the comics? What time did the burglary take place, anyway?”
Terry Patterson shrugged, looking more like an updated Ichabod Crane than ever.
“You don’t know?”
He shook his head.
Lindsey waited for an answer. It was a good device. Just wait. People are conditioned to keep a conversation going. If the silence gets too long, they talk. Sometimes it takes a little encouragement—like an expectant look or an inquisitorial grunt.
As usual, it worked.
“I, uh, Linc closed last night. He phoned me at home. That’s our regular procedure. This is just a small business, you see. I have to keep close watch on it.”
Lindsey raised his eyebrows.
“I mean, ah, it isn’t that I don’t trust Linc.”
Lindsey nodded encouragingly.
“Or—or Jan.”
“Mm.”
“It’s just that, uh, it’s a small business, and I’ve put everything I have into it, and everything I could borrow. It’s expensive to run a store, you know.”
Patterson waited for a reply, but Lindsey outwaited him.
“So, uh, I have to keep close tabs,” Patterson said. He was blushing slightly. “And so Linc phoned me with the day’s totals, and to tell me that he’d secured the store, deposited the receipts at the bank, and he was at home.”
“Where?”
“Uh—just a couple of blocks from here. Uh—”
“Never mind. I’ll want a complete list of employees and their home addresses later on.”
“Anyway, when I arrived to open this morning, you see, I came in early, around seven o’clock, to check the stock because I was going to make the run to Hayward, to the distributors today. So I came in early, and I saw the broken lock on the back door, but I didn’t see anything missing, anything obviously missing that is, so I checked the special collectibles and that’s when I saw what was missing.”
“And you found it right away, and you know exactly how much the missing items are worth.”
“No, uh, only approximately.”
“Listen here, Mr. Patterson. I think I can get you off clean. I think the police will drop the matter if International Surety asks them to. Just bring the stock back. You haven’t formally filed your insurance claim yet. Just drop the matter and you’ll walk. Otherwise....” Lindsey let his voice trail off.
“W-What do you mean? W-What do you mean?” he stammered.
“I’ll be very direct with you, Patterson. I don’t think there was any burglary here. I think it was an inside job.”
“In-Inside job?” He leaned against a glass display case. “You mean Linc? Linc or—or J-Jan?”
“Cut the corn, sonny,” Lindsey told him with a sneer. “I mean you.”
Terry Patterson carefully removed his glasses, laid them on the display case, and slid to the floor in a dead faint.
CHAPTER THREE
That was all Lindsey was going to learn from poor Patterson, at least right then.
The kid was only out for a couple of seconds, if he was really out at all. While Linc Morris and Lindsey got Patterson propped up, his legs straight out in front of him and his back against the glass display case, Janice Chiu stayed in front to watch the store. Poor Patterson was pale and sweating. His breathing was shallow and his hands trembled visibly.
Classic shock—any tenderfoot scout would recognize the symptoms. Was it the stress of the burglary made worse by Lindsey’s accusation? Or was it the knowledge that his scheme had failed and he was in deep trouble?
It could be either.
Patterson stirred and looked around. He fumbled around, looking upset. “Where—where are my glasses?”
Lindsey picked them up and handed them to him. Patterson fumbled them onto his nose. Linc Morris said, “Maybe I ought to call an ambulance, Terry.”
But Patterson shook his head. “I’m okay. I j-just felt a little dizzy. I didn’t eat breakfast. Maybe a bite of food—I mean—uh, a couple of bites of breakfast.”
“All right,” Lindsey told him, “there has to be an eating joint nearby. International Surety’ll buy you a Danish and coffee.”
Morris wanted to come along and make sure his boss was okay.
Why? Lindsey wondered. The loyalty of a worker to his employer? Are you kidding? Plain friendship? Or something a lot closer and a lot less healthy than that? They went for that more in San Francisco than here in the East Bay, but still....
Or...if it was an inside job, maybe Patterson and Morris were both in on it, and junior here wanted to make sure that his boss didn’t throw him to the wolves. The wolves being International Surety for starters, followed quickly by the cops.
Maybe Patterson figured that out too. He was starting to get his color back, and he told Morris to make the Hayward run for him, pick up the new shipment of comics from the distributor and bring it back to the store.