State of the Art Heist

by Maisie Dean

  “Would we be able to speak with him, to get some answers?” Harrison asked.

  “He should be here, let me go check.” Olivia walked over to the swinging double doors. “Edgar?” she called over the noise of a mixer. “Would you come out for a moment?”

  I heard a mumble of a reply and then the mixer stopped. Olivia joined us back at the table and we waited a few moments in silence. Finally, the man called Edgar backed his way through the doors, drying his hands on a cloth.

  “Yes, ma’am?” Edgar’s eyes took a moment to settle on Harrison and myself. He did indeed seem like a match to the figure in the footage, of average height for a man and extra lean. Edgar’s eyes widened as he took in the scene. Suddenly, quick as a flash, he turned on his heel and bolted back through the doors into the kitchen. He was gone before the cloth hit the floor.

  CHAPTER 11

  Harrison knocked his chair over backwards and sprinted through the swinging metal doors before I could even flinch. Olivia stared after the sprinting figure with her mouth hanging open. I flashed her an apologetic look as quickly as I could before I dropped my bag and took off after Harrison.

  I pushed through the swinging doors and saw that the kitchen area beyond the display room was massive. It was a warehouse full of high windows, storage shelves, surfaces, and stainless steel countertops. Extra-large kitchen appliances lined the walls, and a variety of tasty smells wafted through the air. The large space was bustling with at least fifteen cooks, bakers, and chefs busy at work. Or they had been busy a moment ago. They’d all stopped to witness the wild chase.

  Harrison was already over ten feet ahead of me, darting through—and doing his best to dodge—a large collection of metal bowls falling off a shelf. While he ran, Edgar was attempting to slow Harrison down by knocking over whatever he could grab along the way. Two sacks of flour thudded onto the floor, which Harrison nimbly avoided. Edgar rolled a couple mixing bowls behind him, which Harrison had to jump right over so as not to trip.

  “Edgar, come on. Let’s make this easier. We just need to talk to you,” Harrison puffed between strides.

  Edgar was clear across the kitchen from me, but his pale face was that of a calm and reasonable man. I wasn’t sure how this would end, but I have a feeling it wouldn’t be good for Edgar. Harrison was shockingly fast, sure-footedly moving among the obstacles.

  Half a dozen prep cooks stood around a large stainless steel countertop, plating canapés and icing stacks of hundreds of pink mini cupcakes. Their faces were a mix of confusion and amusement.

  One larger man near the commercial dishwasher was yelling something at Harrison or Edgar, I couldn’t tell. I doubt anyone could have over the racket those two were making. Hanging racks suspended from the tall ceiling were pulled on by Edgar as he climbed over a pile of crates, sending cast-iron pans clattering to the floor. Sacks of flour and sugar that had been pushed off the countertops in Edgar’s wake threatened to trip Harrison, but he jumped over each one with precision and fierce determination. Harrison was engaged in the epitome of a hot pursuit, if I’d ever seen one. I tried following after him but with all the kitchen equipment getting in the way, I realized that just blocking the door we’d come through might be the most helpful position. I caught a glimpse of Olivia through one of the small windows in the doors as I made my way over to them. Her face was taut from her forehead to her chin, and her lips were set in a thin line.

  I took my place by the swinging doors and re-assessed the scene. Harrison must have been in between Edgar and any other way out on the other side of the kitchen. The two men paused, their chests heaving, with only a long, stainless steel countertop between them now. Harrison’s eyes were wild and locked on Edgar. Edgar glanced side to side, from the the far side of the kitchen where there must be at least one service entrance, to where I stood. His chest rose and fell quickly, and even from where I stood I could see the whites of his eyes all the way around his irises. He stood completely still like a spooked animal in headlights while he picked which direction to run. His gaze met mine, and in that moment he made a decision that I was not happy with. He was going to try and take me out to get back through the door! I braced myself as I watched his muscles tense to spring toward me. I tried to recall any techniques from that one self-defense class I’d taken when I first moved to LA. I might have been able to poke his eyes or kick him in the balls if he was closer, but I couldn’t remember anything to help me stop a 200-pound man from barreling into me. I stood my ground, hoping for the best. Maybe I could trip him by getting low at the last second. It all happened so fast. As I planted my feet Edgar shifted his weight and began to run toward me, when suddenly Harrison ran straight for him and leapt over a three-foot-high countertop. There was a loud crash as several trays clattered to the floor, sending a spray of pink icing everywhere. Including my hair. The loud noise made someone yell in surprise, and it took me a second to realize it had been me. I quickly walked over to where the two men were sprawled out on the concrete floor covered in baby pink icing and breathing heavily. The chefs and other prep cooks joined me and watched as Harrison and Edgar started pulling themselves up off the ground. Everyone in the room stood still with their mouths open, surprised by Harrison’s sudden display of athleticism, especially me.

  “What?” he asked when he saw my face. “I was a star gymnast in high school.” He shrugged and pointed at the counter. “It’s not quite pommel-horse size, but it worked well enough, didn’t it?” Despite the sticky mess he was in, Harrison smiled triumphantly.

  I could only nod with my mouth open a little. I couldn’t help but suspect that Harrison might have been trying to prove, through his display of physical agility and stamina, that he was not five years older than Lucky. I couldn’t help but be impressed, and it must have shown. He smiled at me smugly, icing all over his face and a dollop falling down his ear.

  Harrison grabbed onto his target’s arm for safekeeping, which also served to steady them on the pink, slippery floor. He held on tight so as not to lose his captured suspect, but it didn’t look like Edgar was planning on running again. He was staring down at the ground with wide eyes, staying silent. He still looked white as a ghost and he was chewing on his fingernail. The idea of someone who worked in catering with a nail-biting habit made me wrinkle my nose slightly. But perhaps it was only a nervous tic, and not a constant habit.

  Now that he was stationary, I realized he was much younger than I had suspected. He must have only been a year or two older than me. With his white apron shirt and black pants it was very clear that his frame matched the build of the person in the security footage. Plus, he’d run from us with plenty of conviction. We really did have our culprit this time. Didn’t we?

  Suddenly Olivia’s voice spoke from behind us. She stood by the swinging doors. “Well, then. It looks like I will now be very busy for the rest of the day. Thanks for that.”

  Olivia’s face was still tight like freshly pulled canvas, but she kept an even, business-like tone. “I’ll need to make sure that this…disaster is properly taken care of. Go ahead and ask Edgar whatever you need, but you’ll be paying for those cupcakes.”

  She strode across the room and began speaking to the man at the dishwasher. The other kitchen staff moved in their direction, sending some admonishing glances back toward the icing-covered duo.

  “Alright, Edgar, let’s talk.” Harrison led our suspect out of the kitchen, with me following close behind. Now we had found the culprit, we just had to get a confession or manage to get a positive ID with the footage. Even though there was a crime involved, it was hard not to laugh at the whole situation. The two of them were pink from head to toe. Some of the icing was falling off Harrison in clumps. Never having been able to resist the deliciousness of icing, I covertly dragged my little finger across Harrison’s shoulder, coated with puffy-pink sweetness, and brought it to my lips. Mmm, vanilla butter cream!

  CHAPTER 12

  Harrison marched Edgar through the messy space t
o what appeared to be a staff room. The walled-off space with windows looking back out to the warehouse consisted of a few tables and regular-sized kitchen appliances for preparing personal lunches. Harrison pulled off a few handfuls of paper towel from a dispenser beside the sink and handed some to Edgar. We all took a seat on foldable white plastic chairs. Harrison swiped at the icing on his face and down his neck. Edgar, looking very resigned, did the same.

  “Do you have anything to share with us, Edgar? About last Saturday night?” Harrison said. He was trying to hide that he was still breathing a little heavier, and he already sounded frustrated with the boy. Edgar’s body was small and slouched in the plastic chair. He alternated between rubbing his face and twisting his hair. He crumpled the wad of paper towel in his hands.

  “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have. It was wrong, but I didn’t think it would really do any harm. I only stopped working for twenty minutes, less even! I’ll tell Mrs. Bundt about what happened and she can deduct the money from my next paycheck.” Edgar’s words tumbled out. His knitted brows and taut lips made him look like he was in pain.

  “We aren’t interested in the length of your break on the shift. Edgar, I want you to tell me what made you want to steal the painting that night?” Harrison said.

  Edgar’s face clouded. “The painting? What painting?”

  “Tell us what happened on Saturday night, Edgar.” Harrison sat back in his chair.

  “I didn’t steal anything. I would never do that. I was coming in from the truck with a round of canapés and—”

  “What kind were they,” I asked. Both Edgar and Harrison widened their eyes and stared at me, very confused at why such a detail would matter, but Edgar answered anyway.

  “The shrimp puffs, I think. They’re always served after the chorizo-stuffed olives and salami,” Edgar said. Harrison raised an eyebrow and shot me a look out of the corner of his eye. Then Harrison nodded toward Edgar, signaling him to continue with his account of the night.

  “I ran into this rich guy, a guest at the party. He said he’d give me a hundred bucks if I let him borrow my clothes for twenty minutes. I’ve already spent the money on fixing my car.” Edgar folded in on himself in his chair, even more after mentioning the money.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you for the money back. Can you tell us what this man looked like?” Harrison said. Edgar thought for a moment.

  “He was just older and rich. My memory for faces isn’t so good.”

  “Unfortunately for us both, that likely constitutes more than half of the guests that night.” Harrison’s tone was clipped. He was clearly not interested in putting up with Edgar playing dumb or beating around the bush. “You can’t remember anything else? Glasses? A mole? Facial hair?” Harrison said. Edgar squeezed his head between his hands firmly, as if trying to squeeze out a detail from the night. Despite the effort, evident in the reddening of his face, Edgar stopped trying to squeeze his head like an orange, and dropped his face back toward his lap in defeat. Harrison inhaled sharply and switched the crossing of his legs. His nose began to flare ever so slightly. Did Harrison believe Edgar was intentionally playing dumb? He was awfully worked up, but I wasn’t convinced Edgar was deliberately hiding anything from us. I got the distinct impression that this was no icing-covered, criminal mastermind we were dealing with.

  “I can’t remember anything about those things...no. I do know his name, though,” Edgar said. Harrison stared at him, wide eyed.

  “I’m not sure why you couldn’t have led with that,” Harrison muttered. “Okay, let’s have it, then.”

  Edgar reached into the deep pockets of his black pants and drew out a business card; it was a little tattered around the edges. Harrison took it from him and held it up to read.

  “Frederick Fitz?” Harrison said aloud, incredulously. He stood up and moved away from Edgar. I followed so we could speak a little more privately. We stood together in the door frame of the staff room. Harrison still smelled scrumptiously of vanilla butter cream. I had to resist taking another scoop. Instead, I inspected the card as well. Harrison paled and his shoulders turned extra rigid.

  “Isn’t that Fitzy? Leo’s brother?” I asked.

  “How do you know Fitzy?” Harrison said.

  “I met him yesterday with Lucky. He was at having lunch downstairs at the diner.”

  Harrison thought for a moment. His lips pressed tightly together as if he was trying to prevent his words from slipping out.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “What you might not know is that Fitzy happens to be Tippy’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. She was there at the party with him that night.”

  Edgar was still slumped over in his chair, his pink frosted head hanging down even closer to his lap. Harrison may not have felt bad for him, but I did. Edgar must have been mixed up in the case quite innocently. Or he was innocent, besides accepting Fitzy’s bribe, that is. Harrison scratched his head. “Tippy and Fitzy...this is all starting to smell quite rotten,” he said. Figuratively, he was correct of course, but literally it still smelled sweet as could be from where I stood.

  “We have what we need from Edgar now, don’t we? We should probably leave him and Olive Buns in peace,” I suggested. Harrison nodded. We both thanked Edgar for his cooperation, although Harrison did so rather gruffly. As Harrison and I walked back through the prep kitchen and out the double doors, I took in the the pans and utensils scattered about, and the pink icing explosion at the far side of the room. The Olive Buns' staff were hard at work cleaning up the place. Harrison did try and join the clean-up party but he was shrugged off by the staff. We headed back out to the car.

  While Harrison’s skin was mostly free of icing, his jacket, pants, and patches of his hair still bore the evidence of his undertaking to catch Edgar.

  “So for my own learning purposes, this is to be considered working a case by the book and with dignity?” I said with an innocent smile. Harrison turned to face me, walking backwards a few steps while he rolled his eyes at me. For the first time, he smiled wide enough for me to notice a dimple appear, nestled in his left cheek, before he turned around again and I followed his icing-covered back to the car.

  CHAPTER 13

  After Harrison and I had returned to the office, it felt like the excitement of the morning was behind us. Harrison’s clothes were still smeared with pink frosting, but he’d told me on the way back that he always kept a spare change of clothes in the storage room for occasions such as these.

  “Do you get covered in frosting frequently?” I asked, trying to keep my face straight.

  “No,” he said. “But you can learn from this, Kacey. When you’re out on a case you never know what you could run into.”

  “Like a pastry truck?” I asked, but he was rummaging through the storage room closet and didn’t hear me. That was probably for the best.

  “Damn it, Lucky!” I heard him say. I was confused at what he had meant by that until he emerged into the office wearing a shirt and pants that were a long way off from typical Harrison fashion.

  “Lucky must have taken my suit,” Harrison said. His limbs were stiff and kept adjusting his collar as he walked back to his desk.

  The shirt he had put on was a bright orange-pink color with little yellow and white piña coladas all over it, and the light khaki pants were tapered for a skinnier fit by the ankle.

  “This is awful,” Harrison muttered.

  “No, you look good,” I told him. Harrison shot me a look that said Go busy yourself with something else and leave me to look like an idiot in peace, or that’s how I interpreted it.

  He did, in fact, look very handsome. The bright color brought out his natural tan and somehow made his eyes look clearer. Not only was it an improvement over sticky, stained clothes, it was an improvement on his normal look too. I didn’t dare tell him that, of course.

  The only trace of the morning’s chase and the pink icing was the peculiar, puffy way his hair was stick
ing up after a rinse in the break-room sink. All the color and the untamed hair made me see Harrison look more like a boy than a man sitting behind his large desk. His brows wrinkled as he sat there and tried to figure out what to do next.

  The sweet smell of frosting had made me crave something sugary. When I was confident that Harrison wasn’t looking at me I opened my side drawer to pick a snack. There was a two-pack of powdered donuts, a bag of Nongshim shrimp crackers, a box of Oreos, and a packet of sour gummies. I opted for the donuts.

  Seated at my desk sorting through loose papers, I was just finishing off the last of the white powder on my fingertips when the front door bell tinkled and in breezed Tippy.

  “Hello, everyone,” she trilled. Today she wore a lilac blazer with a ruffled white shirt underneath and narrow black dress pants that cut off just above the ankle. She dropped her purse, a little clutch entirely made of alligator skin, on a nearby chair and headed toward the break room.

  “I’m going to go put on the coffee, need a cup?”

  “Is that machine we got you for Christmas not working, Tippy?” Harrison asked skeptically. He watched her head down the hall from across the room. “Or are you bored?” he called out.

  Harrison caught my eye and gave me a knowing look.

  Tippy walked back into the room to answer her grandson. She waved away the suggestion she could be possibly be bored in her recent retirement.

  “Nonsense. There’s something wrong with it, I keep jamming those little fancy pods. Now I’ve dented them all,” Tippy said. She walked down the hallway into the break room. When she emerged a few minutes later she held two steaming cups. One was navy with a small chip out of it and a Booker Brothers logo. The other was multicolored, a little brown in some spots where colors had run together, and Gramma was written on the side in a child’s unpracticed scrawl.