Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 37, No. 13, Mid-December 1992

Editor’s Notes by Cathleen Jordan

Readers who have been with us for a while will know that Double Issues are usually an occasion for some stories from AHMM’s archives, stories we think warrant a new readership. This time, however, we are departing from that tradition. All the stories in this Mid-December issue are new ones, with the exception of Josephine Bell’s “The Silver Snuffbox” — which will, however, be new to readers in this country.

For those who like seasonal stories to add an extra fillip to, say, Halloween, we have not been neglectful. “Many Are the Traps of the Crafty” by Robert Wm. Klein directly involves itself with this ominous time of year. Dan Crawford’s “The Thousand Toes of Bliss” gives a new tweak to the tale of the Ruler of the Underworld (hmm). Don Marshall’s “As Ye Sow So Shall Ye...” is appropriately horrific.

Nor have we forgotten Thanksgiving: our “Unsolved” is about bringing home a turkey.

And those are just a few of the puzzles that await you.

So as not to puzzle our faithful readers unduly, however, in future issues anyway, we wish to announce that this is the last of Carol Harper’s “Booked & Printed” columns for AHMM. Ms. Harper, who has been keeping us so well informed about the latest in mystery novels for almost four years, has moved to London and so can no longer continue. Starting in the January issue, her place will be taken (retaken, actually) by Mary Cannon, who wrote “Booked & Printed” from its inception in 1982 till early 1989 and has been a twice-yearly reviewer for us since.

We welcome Mary back, we thank Carol enormously and wish her all the best, and we hope the stories herein entertain you through these end-of-year long nights.

The Supermarket Bandit by Stephen Wasylyk

Alone with the soft humming of the freezer cases at the rear of the supermarket, Klauder lifted his head at what sounded like a small scream filtering from the front. Nothing followed but silence. Probably another shopper stung by a sharp price increase.

He tumbled a few more frozen dinners into his cart atop the half dozen already there and continued his meandering along the deserted aisles, roaming alone and free among the boxes, cans, and jars, which was why he always shopped on Wednesday night in the last hour before the store closed.

Fifteen minutes later he emerged at the checkout to see the lone, white-faced checker, both her mouth and her cash drawer wide open and her trembling hands pressed to her cheeks, leaning back in her little stall. Behind her, the young, sandy-haired, mustachioed manager and a teenaged boy seemed to offer support as they all faced Meg Boniface, the county sheriff.

Solid, erect, shoulders back, graying brown hair cut short, heavy winter jacket open, Meg held a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other; a stalwart and reassuring presence patiently waiting for the younger checker, a frizzy-haired blonde with a prominent nose in a narrow face, to calm down.

The familiar tableau gave Klauder the reason for the scream.

As his clattering cart drew her attention, Meg’s eyebrows lifted hopefully when she saw him behind it.

“Holdup,” she explained unnecessarily. “Like the others. See anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Damn. You might have helped if you had.”

“If he had the usual gun, I’d have done nothing.”

She flicked the notebook impatiently. “Wouldn’t expect you to play hero, but you’d have made a good witness—”

“He was short. Small. The gun was big,” said the checker loudly, her moment in the sun threatened. After all, she was the one who’d been held up.

There are no small guns when you’re looking down the muzzle, thought Klauder.

“Clothes?” asked Meg.

“Tan parka. Hood up and something across his face. Didn’t say anything. Just pointed the gun at the register. I knew what he wanted. I gave him the cash. He waved for me to get down on the floor and ran out.”

Klauder began unloading his cart.

“Hey,” said the manager, anger fluttering his droopy blond mustache, “we’ve just been held up. We can’t handle that now.”

Klauder stacked his frozen dinners alongside a half-dozen cans of heat-and-serve equivalents, an array that stamped him as a man living alone who hated to cook for himself. “Life must go on.”

“There’s no cash in the register.”

“I’ll give you a check for the exact amount.”

“Our policy on checks is—”

“The sheriff will vouch for me.”

“Like hell I will.” Meg turned to the manager. “His checks bounce higher than golf balls on concrete.”

The manager blinked, swallowed, saw the grin, and disgustedly said, “Jeez,” in a low voice, obviously disapproving of a law officer who could joke at a time like this, not realizing that her good humor expressed relief at not finding bleeding people sprawled on the floor and that only money was lost.

“Okay,” said Klauder. “But you’ll have to take the frozen food back before it thaws because I’m not doing it.”

The manager looked at the stacked pile, rolled his eyes to indicate that the retail business was surely the first step toward martyrdom, and motioned the checker out of the stall.

Meg took the girl aside as he noisily totaled Klauder’s week’s supply of food while the teenager dropped it haphazardly into two paper sacks.

Klauder gave him the check. “Look at it as a new start. Just be thankful no one was hurt.”

Meg fell into step as he headed for the door, a large and formidable bastion of law and order, but an attractive woman none the less.

“Same as the other three,” she said. “Like someone is running a computer program. Maybe someone saw him this time.”

Klauder glanced down the line of stores in the small shopping plaza. All were dark except one fifty yards away.

“Laundromat,” she explained. “Novachek’s down there. Either he found someone to talk to or he’s washing his socks.” She marched along as he headed for his Blazer, her voice now carrying a trace of concern. “We have to stop these holdups, Klauder. We’re approaching critical mass.”

He agreed. It was only a matter of time until someone became foolish, that gun went off, and more than cash was lost.

“How about putting aside getting rich from carving those ducks and giving us a hand?”

He set the bags down on the passenger side floor.

“Be happy to, but I’m driving to Baltimore tomorrow for a meeting with Halley and to pick up a check. I’ll be back Friday afternoon.”

“One of the boys saw Natalie Something heading west well over the speed limit this afternoon, and I see you’re back to frozen dinners for the microwave. Sounds like a permanent departure. Hurt her feelings?”

She did have a way of putting two and two together. Natalie Thurman, the tall blonde who had rented the cabin next to his, wouldn’t be back.

“I have an open invitation to visit her in Pittsburgh any time. Since you won’t be happy until you know why, she left because she saw herself in a mirror once too often with her hair in a ponytail, a sweatshirt, jeans and boots. That wasn’t her, she said. She’s the beauty salon every week, silk blouse, tailored suit with short skirt, pantyhose and spiked heels type. She called her former law firm and got her job back.”

“Too bad, but both of you can now look forward to becoming rich. And speaking of money, I hear you’re doing so well you can afford a housekeeper.”

He grinned. Since his ad in the weekly last Friday had carried a box number, the only way she could have known was because Harry and Jane, the couple who publish the paper, had told her.

He slid behind the wheel. “Only for three days a week.”

She closed the door. “Have a good trip and hold the speed down. Staties give you a ticket, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

She was, he thought as he drove home on the dark, deserted roads, a perfect example of how the people who wear badges can’t do it all alone. Very little went on in the county, good or bad, without someone’s saying, better tell Meg. It was remarkable how people did things for her. Himself included. She’d always had to call in the state police for investigations, but when she’d found he was a Philadelphia homicide detective on early retirement, she’d enlisted his experience, eventually talking the County Board of Supervisors into taking him on as a detective-consultant so that when she used him he’d be paid for what he was willing to do for nothing. Perhaps that was her secret. She played fair with everyone.

He pulled into his carport, extracted his bags, and stood for a moment in the cold, still night. To his left, the blackness of the water was discernible only because of the lighter value of the lakeshore snow. Some hundred yards up the road, the darkened cabin owned by Charlie and Grace Boynton couldn’t be seen at all. They wouldn’t return from Florida for another two months.

Natalie, who had rented it for the winter, wouldn’t return at all. The cold nipped at his face, the night feeling harsh and empty. That he’d miss her was putting it mildly. She’d been responsible for the thawing of the emotions that had been in a deep freeze since his wife had died, and he was grateful.

They both handled her departure very lightly. Very adult approach. But both knew that trading casual clothes for designer fashions hadn’t been why she’d left. A relationship needed a more solid base than gratitude.

Friday afternoon he returned early enough to deposit a fat check into his account before the bank closed. The talent for carving wild ducks in flight had emerged from nowhere and the price had skyrocketed since Halley had begun featuring them in his outdoorsmen’s catalogues, some of the earlier ones already collector’s items.

He picked up his mail at the post office and walked over to the newspaper to find two replies to his ad.

One demanded transportation, twenty dollars an hour, lunch, and no chore that would require the woman to get her hands wet. The other, shakily penned, he handed to Harry Persky, the owner, editor, and publisher.

Harry grinned. “Mabel. She answers almost every ad we run. Either it’s her way of denying she’s eighty-nine years old, or she’s hoping for the basis of an age discrimination lawsuit. Very feisty lady, Mabel. Want to run the ad again?”

He waved him off. “Wouldn’t do any better, would we?”

Meg was behind her desk, eyes closed, chin propped up in her left hand, an inactive ballpoint in the right. He cleared his throat.

“Supermarket Bandit still running loose?”

She opened her eyes, stretched, yawned, and shook her head. “A wisp of smoke, Klauder. Just wondering why he’s never said a word. Easy enough to disguise a voice, if that’s what he’s afraid of.”

“All stores get hit on an off night just before closing, like the other night?”

She nodded. “Tuesday or Wednesday. Even though he gets a lot less that way. The managers aren’t stupid. They run only one register with just enough cash to make change. The night you were there, he got three hundred or so. The others were around that figure. One armed robbery a month with that kind of return is hardly worth the risk.”

“Not exactly an overwhelming crime wave. A schedule like that gives you plenty of time to set up stakeouts.”

“Sure, but you tell me where because I don’t have enough men to cover all the markets.”

“Make any traffic stops on suspicion after the reports came in?”

She sighed. “No vehicle description, Klauder, and the judges don’t consider roadblocks playing fair.”

“What did Novachek end up with? A witness or clean socks?”

“Young woman with a baby. She didn’t see or hear anything.”

“Anyone else in the laundromat?”

“Only the kid who makes change and sympathizes when a washer or dryer swallows your quarters without operating. He was raising his cultural values by drooling through Penthouse with his Walkman plugged into his empty head. Wouldn’t have seen or heard a massacre in the parking lot.”

He rose. “I’ll come back Wednesday evening, go over the file, and take a look at the four markets that were hit. Might stumble across something that will tell us which one may be next.”

He was halfway out the door when she said, “I’m sorry about Natalie.”

He paused. “I’ll survive.”

“On frozen dinners,” she said dryly. “But have faith, Klauder. There’s always another good cook around the corner.”

He should never have mentioned Natalie’s culinary skills.

On Wednesday, he looked at the dinners in the freezer, glanced at the microwave, said to hell with it, slammed the freezer door, and drove into town to Trevane’s bar and grill.

When he’d first moved here, getting a table on an off night had been no trouble, but since the opening of the ski resort, Trevane’s was always jammed with lean, healthy, bright looking, trendy young couples wearing turtlenecks, sweaters with flowers, and pants tucked into boots, to whom being caught on one of the more publicized ski slopes elsewhere was a social disaster from which they’d never recover. The rest of the year, it was filled out by their clones, who had bought the undistinguished but expensive conglomeration of angles, skylights, patios, balconies, brick and wood condos at the far end of the lake.

Nursing a beer at the bar, Klauder thought they all looked as though they’d come off a production line in a secret factory tucked away in the mountains, run by elves with a sense of humor, which had spewed them forth complete with gold cards.

Trevane himself rescued him, leading him to a table in the corner.

“Sorry, Klauder. I hate having old customers wait, but—”

“No apology necessary,” said Klauder. “Just take the money and run. They’ll be gone as soon as they discover somewhere else.”

The influx had brought more than money. They’d forced Meg to expand her small force, increased her controlled substance problem exponentially, and forced her to spend more time behind her desk administrating.

“Those people are like dandelion seeds,” she said. “Look pretty drifting in the wind, but when they land and take root you get ugly weeds.”

She wasn’t there when he walked into the office, but she’d left the file for him. As she said, the holdups could have come off a computer program. He made a note of the dates. The first had been at the end of October, the others following at four and five week intervals. All had taken place between eight and nine. He noted the locations and found them on the map. No discernible pattern there.

Wanting to arrive at the sites at the time the holdups took place, he spent an hour commiserating with a morose Novachek, the two-month rookie on inside duty for neglecting to get the name of the woman he’d interviewed in the laundromat. “Teach you to keep your hormones in your hip pocket when on duty,” Meg had told him.

The sign loomed suddenly out of the darkness and the uncertain flakes of an approaching storm. Village of Andorra. He wondered how a group of homes went about qualifying as a village. Just beyond them was a stop-signed intersection, a self-service gas station on one corner, evidently the magnet for a small row of stores fronted by asphalt paving that ran up to the concrete of the station itself. Hardly a supermarket, the one at the end — yet too big for a minimarket or a convenience store. The others ranged from a dry cleaners to a real estate office. All dark, except for the market. He parked and mentally reviewed the report in the file. There had been only two people in the store. A wave of the gun had sent them to the floor before the man left, and neither had been foolhardy or brave enough to get up until several minutes had passed. The only other possible witness had been the man in the booth at the service station, who had seen nothing. Walled in, thick bulletproof glass in front of him, his view was confined to the pumps. He might have had a customer about the time of the holdup — a young woman driving an old car. A cash customer. Locating her for questioning fitted into the category of miracle.

The storm was getting down to serious business by the time he reached the second. Slightly larger shopping plaza and store, as though the man was working his way up in the world. Again, only one checkout person who had been waved to the floor before the man left. Three other shops had been open, but two were at the far end and the third in the center. Even if those in the two at the end had a reason to look out, they were too far from the market to see much of anything except a moving figure. In the card and gift shop in the center, the woman had been talking to a young mother who had her baby with her. Like most women, she’d been more interested in the baby than anything else.

Beautiful, thought Klauder. If this guy decides to go bigtime, Meg is in real trouble.

By the time he reached the third market, he was cruising through three inches of snow. He didn’t stop. The pattern of two still-open shops and the market jigsawed neatly with that of the other three shopping plazas. Meg would find it easy to fill in the missing pieces with similar ones to complete the picture.

And as she did, the M.O. could have come off a computer. Tan parka — every second person in the county wore one, including him — face concealed, man silent, gun, people waved to the floor, the usual special sale banners and stacked impulse merchandise blocking their view through the plate glass windows even if they’d had enough nerve to stand up to see him take off, only a couple of other stores open, the man disappearing as fast as a politician queried about voting himself a pay raise at midnight.

That vanishing act was the real puzzle. If nothing else, the laws of chance said someone would have noticed something, seen someone, noted a car leaving fast. Surely, the man didn’t hang around—

Uh-huh. Klauder grinned. He couldn’t remember seeing it in the interviews in the third investigation, but if it weren’t there, he’d bet he could come back tomorrow and confirm it.

It was in the file. He looked out the window at the snow deepening the six inches already on the Blazer. If he didn’t leave soon, he’d be here all night with Meg, Novachek, and a pot of coffee for company. He turned to Meg.

“That’s it,” he said. “A young woman in the gas station, a young mother in the card shop, a young woman in the hardware store, a young woman with a baby in the laundromat. No one knew her and she wasn’t important enough to rate a detailed description. In fact, Novachek didn’t even bother to get her name—”

“Dummy,” she said. “By the time I realized — hell, she was gone.”

“—but the gas station attendant seemed to think the one he saw was driving an old car, and there was a heatup one in front of the laundromat. Send Novachek to the state police artist, have a sketch made of the woman he saw, and show it to the other three. If I’m right, they’ll say it’s the same woman. She drives the holdup man there. If it looks clear, she diverts the attention of anyone in the only open shop close enough to matter, while he holds up the market. By the time the people there work up enough nerve to get off the floor, he’s hidden in the back seat—”

“Dammit,” she said softly, “you mean he could have been fifty yards from us that night?”

“You were there before she had time to pull out, so she was interviewed as a possible witness. You were looking for a man, not a woman. When she drove away, she took him with her. That’s how he disappears so fast. It’s so simple we ought to give him the Thief of the Year award.”

Eyes closed, she sat as if picturing it in her mind. “There’s an inconsistency in your theory, Klauder. If it’s the same woman, why did she have a baby with her twice?”

“Assuming that no mother deliberately takes a baby along on a holdup, especially on a cold winter’s night, maybe she had to.”

“Had to?”

“No babysitter available. The first step is to have the sketch made. If the people identify her as the woman, all you have to do is stake out any shopping plaza that fits the configuration of the first four — only the market and a few other stores open — and wait for a young woman in an old car to show up, with or without baby. How many come to mind?”

“Only two. Unless he goes back to one of the first four.”

“Too smart to risk that.” He glanced out the window. “What’s with this storm?”

“Twelve inches by morning. The county’s on emergency status.”

He reached for his parka. “I’m gone. The drifts along the lake road are probably that high already.”

She walked with him to the door.

“Let’s hope you got it right, Klauder. Didn’t come up with why they pull only one a month, did you?”

Klauder shrugged. “Maybe they need rent money.”

He stood at the window with his morning coffee, looking out at least twelve inches in the flat areas and drifts double that. At the ski resort, the manager would be ecstatic.

The state would plow the main roads while the county would open up the secondaries, particularly those where the school buses ran. The sheriff’s department would have its hands full until things settled down. “It’s a natural law, Klauder,” Meg had said. “When it snows, the crime rate goes down but the aggravation rate goes up.” Some of the aggravation in this case being Novachek delayed in getting to the state police artist and showing copies of his sketch to the three people who had seen the young woman. Annoying, but not vital. Even though this was a short month, the next holdup had to be at least two weeks away.

He worked all day wondering if he was becoming money-hungry in the number of carvings he’d committed himself to do for Halley, breaking for lunch and several sessions of wrestling with the heavy snow blower George Boynton had insisted on giving him. “Hell, I’m too old to use it any more, Klauder. You might as well have it.” By the time he’d cleared his way to the road, he had a good idea of how George had developed his bad heart.

The roar of the plow coming through that night brought on a few mental calculations. With all the roads now open, Novachek was free to see the artist in the morning. He’d be back in time to show copies of the sketch to the three people who had seen the young woman, giving Klauder two good excuses to go to town on Saturday morning. One, for a good breakfast that required no dishwashing on his part, and two, for a visit to Meg’s office to see what the young woman looked like.

The soft lines of the sketch gave more of an impression than detail. She appeared somewhat older than he’d imagined, with a great deal of character in the square-jawed, pretty face. Generous mouth, long hair falling to her shoulders from beneath the wool cap. Looking at the line of the jaw, he thought that the no-babysitter guess was probably right. She’d brought the baby along because she’d had no choice.

“Yeah, they all agree it could be the same woman,” said Meg, “but wipe that smug look off your face. None knows her, and neither does anyone else in those four shopping plazas.”

“How tall?”

“Five two or three, hair dark, eyes blue, according to Novachek. I’m showing the sketch around in the two plazas I think might be next, to see if anyone there knows her. If not, I’ll leave a copy so they can give us a call if they see her. I figure she has to be along when he cases the store he’s going to hit next. What do you think?”

Outside her window, clanking front end loaders filled trucks with snow to be dumped into the lake. Before the condos and the ski resort, solar power had removed the snow. At no cost, a few irate taxpayers had bitterly pointed out. The environmental benefit had been cast aside when civic and business groups had insisted that you had to spend money to make money, tactfully not mentioning that those who did the spending and those who did the making weren’t necessarily the same.

He handed her the sketch. “It’s all a guessing game. Can’t hurt to canvass those plazas once. You might luck out, but I wouldn’t leave sketches. Most people are lousy actors. Someone who sees her walk in might get nervous. If either of them is sensitive enough to pick it up, they’ll not only call off the holdup, but probably take off. Which leaves you nowhere. You can’t prove a thing on the other holdups, so you have to collar these two while this one is going down. I’d rather canvass once. No results, I’d gamble on the pattern and stake out the markets on the two slowest nights, Tuesday and Wednesday, during the last week of this month and the first of the next. I can’t see them changing a successful M.O.”

“Sounds good, but with this snow, we’ll have schussing yuppies coming out of our ears every weekend, which means extra duty for everyone. That leaves me a little thin during the week. I may not be able to tie up two men just sitting around for hours.”

He grinned.

“What men?” he said. “We’ll do it. Since all you’ve been doing lately is sitting around doing nothing, it’ll do you good to get out.”

She leaned back, folded her arms, and regarded him balefully. “Sitting around? Doing nothing? Very diplomatic way to present the suggestion, Klauder.”

“Don’t be so damned sensitive. Do we do it or not?”

“Oh, we do it, Klauder.” She smiled at him. “As you say, it’ll do me good to get out.”

When it came to smiling false smiles, she could win an Academy Award. He’d touched a nerve, and it was going to cost him.

He wondered when and how much.

Ten nights later he was parked in the smaller of the two plazas, a row of twelve shops anchored at one end by a branch bank and at the other by the market. All the shops were closed except for the video rental near the darkened back, a beer-selling deli two doors from that, and a pizza place in the middle. A temperature of eight had kept everyone but the brave or insane at home. The video rental hadn’t done enough business to pay for the electricity, the pizza place not far behind, but the sixpacks had been flowing out of the deli all evening. Beer must be warming. The deli was doing better than the supermarket. If the holdup man had any brains, he’d zero in on that.

This was the second night of the stakeout. The first had yielded nothing but derogatory remarks about his intelligence from Meg while she massaged what she claimed were frostbitten toes in thermal socked feet propped on an open drawer. If nothing turned up tonight, they’d have to try again next week. And hope it was warmer.

He stamped his feet and clapped his hands, insulated boots and gloves notwithstanding. Without the heater going, the interior of the Blazer was the approximate temperature of his freezer at home, but exhaust curling from a parked vehicle would alert any sensible holdup man.

Even the thermos of coffee he’d brought along hadn’t helped. If he had to give chase, he’d be too stiff to move fast:

Since the night before, he’d had the feeling he was wasting his time. It took a car parked an inordinately long time in front of the pizza place to tell him that distracting the attention of anyone inside wasn’t the only reason the woman selected the shop closest to the market. Her car had to be convenient to it so that a running man was exposed for as short a time as possible. Each had been the type of place she could leave when she pleased. Even the laundromat. She’d been delayed there only because Novachek and Meg had appeared too quickly.

But like the unknown parker, at the pizza place she’d have to wait until her order was ready. Leave without it and several very angry pizza makers would remember her for wasting not only their time, but the extra pepperoni. And if several people were ahead of her—

He hadn’t thought it through. The store in this plaza couldn’t be the target. At Meg’s, though — but she hadn’t yet called for backup, so he’d probably missed there, too.

Realizing he’d been wrong suddenly made the cold colder, his feet icier, his hands number. Damn.

Might as well stop by and give her the bad news on the way in.

The Blazer skidded as he hit the highway.

The radio squeaked his name. “Come on in, genius. It’s all over.”

He grinned with relief and reached for the mike. “You have them both?”

“What we have is going to surprise you so much you’ll be happy to get back to your carving. I’m thinking of replacing you with a Ouija board.”

The first sentence told him he had missed something important. The second that collaring the supermarket bandit wasn’t enough to make her stop throwing verbal darts at him for saying she sat around doing nothing.

A doll of a woman was seated before Meg’s desk, head down, hands clasped in her lap, wearing jeans, boots, and a bulky white turtleneck sweater; short and small indeed, but a competence in the face and the long, thin hands. The sketch hadn’t done her justice, but only a color photo or portrait would — the subtle nuances and shadows necessary for the full impact. She’d have looked in character handing Trevane a gold card.

“Meet Mrs. Andrea Sharon, the supermarket bandit,” said Meg. “She did them all, alone.” A smile tugged at her lips. “You always underestimate the capabilities of women, Klauder.”

He shrugged out of his parka. Still throwing darts, but the lack of her usual wrath focused on the cowering perpetrator puzzled him. Women had never escaped it before — if anything, she was harder on them than on men.

“Since she’s sitting here, it seems that was the only mistake I made.”

Meg smiled at the woman. “You can get mad at him if you like. He figured out what you were doing and how, except he was sure you were only helping a man.”

This thing was rolling before his eyes like a TV with the vertical hold out of whack. No indignation at all. Sympathy, if anything. She sympathized with lawbreakers as often as NASA sent men to the moon.

The woman’s eyes flashed up to Klauder and back to the hands in her lap, the expression in them reminding him of the frightened look of a doe he’d surprised next to the cabin one morning.

Meg rose, patted her shoulder, said, “Don’t worry about the baby. I sent someone to get her,” and motioned Klauder out of the office.

She slid a hip onto a deserted desk as he poured himself a cup of hot coffee and held it with half-frozen hands.

“First female yuppie holdup person I’ve ever come across. Shows you where society is headed.” She punched him lightly on the arm. “I really can’t fault you for thinking someone else was involved. We might’ve had a clue if the woman in the gift shop and that dummy in the laundromat had had enough sense to tell us she left the baby and ran out to her car to get something. Car, hell. She used them as babysitters while she held up the markets. They never put two and two together. Why should they? Who would think that a mother would ask them to keep an eye on her baby while she ran out and committed a holdup?”

He sipped the coffee, wondering how long it would take for the hot liquid to filter down to his feet. “I would.”

“Naturally,” she said smugly. “If your mother came around the corner after a crime went down, she’d make your list of suspects. I’m talking normal people here, Klauder. But no baby tonight. She had a sitter. She parked, went into the card shop, checked to see if it was clear, and walked up to the market, pulling that turtleneck collar up over her face and the hood over her head so fast it took me by surprise. My frozen old bones wouldn’t let me move fast enough to stop her—”

“You were supposed to call me for backup.”

“—I don’t need backup to handle a lone woman, Klauder. Zip, she was out again. Fifteen feet from the door, she was just another longhaired female shopper heading back to her car. Never occurred to us, either, that the reason the holdup never said a word was because a female voice is a female voice, no matter how it’s disguised.”

In the office, the woman was still staring down at her hands.

“Why?” he asked.

“We’ve had a long talk—”

“Long talk? How long has she been here?”

“Oh, the babysitter’s schedule forced her to move early tonight. I guess I picked her up about seven thirty.”

“Thank you very much. Nice of you to let me freeze out there for more than an hour. Okay, we’re even,”

Her voice was syrupy. “Even? I have no idea of what you’re talking about. I just wanted to be sure I had the right party. Anyway, her sleaze, of a husband cleaned out all their assets and disappeared. Even took along the credit cards, since they were his, he said, leaving her in one of those condos with a nine-month-old baby—”

Aha. The rolling picture was slowing down. The sleaze had better have settled in the Gobi Desert, and he might not be safe from her even there.

“—Nice place to live, sure, but you can’t eat it. Even if she could sell it, which she can’t without his signature, it would take months, and public assistance — those people don’t set any speed records, especially when someone who looks like her is across the desk.”

“I thought they had things like emergency grants.”

“Try getting one with an expensive condo as your address.”

“No relatives?”

She sighed. “Klauder, get with it. Any Option you can think of, she’s been there long before you. She’s begged for help at every agency the social engineers have dreamed up, called every number in the book, and filled out every form ever created to baffle the poor and needy. And don’t say she could have gotten a job. She tried until she had to sell her car for grocery money along with most of her clothes and furniture. The one she used was borrowed. And what could she do with the baby if she found one? Not many jobs where you can keep a nine-month-old around, and daycare centers around here are expensive and jammed up.”

The picture steadied and cleared.

“When the sleaze cleared out, he left her with nothing. The kindness of strangers is highly overrated, Klauder. She needed money. She tried every legitimate way to get it until she ran out of options, so she got a sitter for a few hours while she held up a market. Once a month. Until some assistance came through. From somewhere. She and the kid had to eat.” She paused. “Know the occupation that forces some women into, Klauder?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “With her looks, she’d have made far more than three hundred a month, that’s for sure.”

She backhanded his arm sharply. “I should have left you out there until the store closed. Talk about people falling through the cracks — we’re up to the wahzoo in social programs, yet here’s a woman and infant going hungry because she doesn’t qualify for this one, her papers got lost in that one, the condo kills her for another, and in general, no one gives a damn.”

He looked at the bowed head of the woman. If she had to hold up supermarkets, she picked the right reason and the right county to do it in.

“Why do I think that if her story checks out you have something in mind that doesn’t involve a prison sentence?”

“Oh, her story will check out. I don’t get conned very often, and never by a woman. And yeah, I do have something in mind—”

“Beneath the badge on your broad bosom beats the heart of a dedicated do-gooder.”

“Forget my broad bosom. The most important thing right now is to keep her and her baby together. I can do that by swearing to the D.A. and the judge that her criminal career is over because she has a job. And if I handle the rest right, she’ll get probation—”

“Not in this state. Mandatory sentence for using a deadly weapon—”

Her eyes widened. “A plastic pistol a deadly weapon, Klauder? No way.”

Might be true. Andrea Sharon would have had no money for a real one, but if it hadn’t been a toy, Meg had magically turned it into one.

“Where’s the job coming from?”

“A car is no problem. Dealers have loaners—”

That they did. For customers. And when they were wise enough to stay on the good side of a polite sheriff in pursuit of a good cause.

“—and I know a man who not only needs a housekeeper but wouldn’t be disturbed by a baby while he’s carving away, making all kinds of money—”

“Hold everything.” He started to retreat, but she clamped one hand on his shoulder so hard he winced.

“After all, Klauder, it’s your fault she was caught. Something might have come through for her next month and the Supermarket Bandit would have been history. I think that ten dollars an hour and all she and the kid can eat would be fair.”

He opened his mouth, but before the words came, she said, “Hey, it’s only temporary while I start fires under a few appropriate bureaucratic posteriors. And now that Natalie Something’s gone, you have nothing else to spend your money on.” She patted his shoulder gently. “I always seem to be doing something nice for you, Klauder.”

“Nice for me?”

“She can cook. Now, consider how much you hate those frozen dinners.”

Surrender sometimes carried benefits with it, as a couple of world powers had discovered. He removed her hand and smiled.

“How in the hell do you come up with these ideas?”

She threw her final dart, speaking slowly and with obvious relish, like a poker player fanning out four aces and saying “read ’em and weep” while raking in the pot.

“Oh, when a person sits around all day doing nothing, they just sort of pop up.”