PANTY RAID
By Lorraine Bartlett
A Tori Cannon ~ Kathy Blake Mini Mystery
Copyright © 2014, Lorraine Bartlett. All rights reserved. No part of this short story may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Frank Solomon for taking my cover design and running with it. Also to my proofreader, Judy Beatty.
PANTY RAID
By Lorraine Bartlett
Classmates. That’s what they’d been at SUNY Brockport (otherwise known as State University of New York at Brockport).
Kathy and Tori. Best friends for four wonderful years. Then, upon graduation, they’d drifted out of each other’s lives. Email kept them connected, but jobs and distance—albeit not that much—had kept them from daily, face-to-face contact.
“Let’s do lunch” happened at longer and longer intervals until it became just a Christmastime thing, so Kathryn Blake was surprised when she glanced at the caller ID on her cell phone to see the call was from Tori Cannon on a Thursday evening in late May.
“Kathy?” the voice on the other end of the wireless connection asked tentatively.
“Oh, my God! Tori, is that you?”
“It’s me all right.”
“What a wonderful surprise,” Kathy said and sat back in her chair in the manager’s office at the Batavia, NY, Hampton Inn. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“We’re coming up on a holiday weekend. I know I’m asking you kind of late, but Billy’s out of town this weekend and I wondered if you’d like to come into town for a girl’s weekend.”
Kathy’s lips quirked upward. “You mean a sleepover—like when we were roommates back in college?”
“I can’t bake like you can, but I know a great bakery that does. And getting a bottle of wine isn’t as hard as it was back in those days.”
Kathy’s smile widened. “Fattening treats, wine, and staying up half the night talking—sounds like heaven to me.”
“Come for a day or two. We can talk, shop, talk, eat, talk, and maybe discuss the future.”
The future? Now that was a scary topic.
“Aw, Tor, I’d love to. But my circumstances don’t exactly allow me that kind of freedom. To get a day off around here—let alone two—means calling in favors. I’ve just started a new job and I’m low man on the totem pole.”
“Would you be willing to impose upon them? I really could use your expertise.”
“Me? Expertise?”
“In your line of work, you come across a lot of weird stuff. Maybe you could advise me on a problem I’ve been having.”
“Weird is the word all right. What’s your problem?” Kathy asked.
Tori gave a mirthless laugh. “Things have been disappearing around my apartment complex. The cops here have no interest in petit larceny when they can bag a speeder going forty in a thirty-five mile zone less than half a mile away. The town loves that kind of income, but it doesn’t help me.”
Kathy could believe that. “Okay, I’ll see if I can get coverage for tomorrow night. I’ll email or text you as soon as I know.”
“Great. It was wonderful talking to you.”
“You, too!”
They rang off and Kathy slid her phone back into her slacks pocket. Something was up. Tori was the most laid-back, competent person Kathy had ever met. That she needed help with something—anything—was unusual, and the fact that she’d invited Kathy for the weekend and that Billy, the guy she’d been living with for the past three years, was away, was suspicious, too. But maybe that was part of the reason she’d wanted to get together—to bear her soul knowing Kathy would listen without judgment. And what had she said about her apartment complex—that things had been disappearing? Hopefully between the two of them, they would soon find out the cause. But right now Kathy needed to find coverage—oh, and on a holiday weekend! She might have to sweeten the offer by offering to give up her next day off. Of course, the chance to connect with Tori for more than a couple of hours would be worth it. Lately she’d felt the pang of loneliness herself.
Tori had been and still was the best friend Kathy had ever had. Though they weren’t as close as they’d once been, no way did Kathy want to refuse her friend’s request for assistance. If nothing else, she could give Tori at least an entire evening of her undivided attention.
Kathy opened an email, addressing it to two of her subordinates, and began to type. She just hoped she was a better negotiator than her fellow employees.
Tori—short for Victoria—Cannon looked at herself in the antique oak mirror that hung on the wall between her bedroom and the apartment’s bathroom. She’d bought it at a yard sale the summer before. It had been covered with six layers of different colored paint and had taken her the better part of a week to strip and refinish it. Now the golden oak had been restored to its former glory, and though the reflective coating on the back of the glass wasn’t in tip-top shape, it pleased her. She needed another such project to work on, something to keep her mind off her current situation, which was being alone after she and Billy had had yet another fight and he’d decided to take a few days off of the relationship, heading down to Florida to visit a buddy with a big boat and lots of spare cash. It didn’t bode well for their future, but then Billy had pulled this stunt before and had always come back to her. Only, with each departure, and arrival the welcome home was less enthusiastic, and sometimes Tori wondered what the heck she’d ever seen in the guy.
But in the meantime she had other things with which to concern herself. Her students’ end-of-term tests were just two weeks away. Those tests were the bane of this high school English teacher’s existence. She’d been instructing sophomores and juniors for seven years, but the satisfaction she’d once felt at being part of the profession had begun to wane. She loved the kids who had a thirst to learn, but with each passing year she saw fewer of them. The brats who passed through her classes came armed with cell phones, sneers, and seemed to be on a quest to disrupt each carefully planned lesson.
Kathy had changed jobs way too often these past few years. She might not be making as much money, but the last few times Tori had spoken to her she’d seemed happier. She was stressed, but happy with her decision not to climb up the various motel chains’ corporate ladders. She preferred a hands-on approach rather than become a paper pusher. Tori admired her for that, feeling like a coward that she didn’t possess the same kind of courage to give up her safe but unhappy life for the chance of something better—or maybe just something different. Her contract came due in August of the following year. She’d probably sign it because…what else besides teaching was she good at?
Tori glanced at her watch and realized the dryer in the laundry room downstairs had stopped some five minutes before. Damn! Grabbing her keys, she snatched up the empty laundry basket she’d left by the door to the hall. She pulled the door closed behind her and locked it before heading down the stairs.
The communal laundry room was warm and humid. The washer was grumbling and the dryer was tumbling, but no longer were her clothes inside it. Her lingerie and nightgowns now sat in a crumpled heap on top of the dryer. She had counted each and every item before putting them in the washer and did the same
when returning them to the basket. Four, five, six. Damn! Another pair of her panties had gone missing.
Fists clenched, she had a mind to stay in the laundry room and confront the person whose clothes now tumbled in the dryer and shout, “J’accuse!”
And so she sat there for what seemed like forever, fuming. The dryer stopped at the 45-minute mark, but no one appeared. It was at minute 51 when the grumpy older woman from Apartment 3 showed up with an empty plastic laundry basket in hand.
“Hi, Marie,” Tori said, trying to sound cheerful. Somehow she doubted Marie was the panties thief. They had to be way too many sizes too small for her.
The woman grunted a hello and headed for the dryer.
“By any chance did you take my clothes out of the machine before you put your own clothes in?”
“No.”
“Because I seem to be losing some of my clothes on a regular basis.”
“I didn’t take them, if that’s what you want to know,” the woman said flatly.
“Oh, I wasn’t accusing you.”
Marie glared at her, then turned back to the dryer.
“Did you see anyone in the laundry room when you came down before?”
“No.”
“Has anyone messed with your laundry lately?”
“No!” Marie said with annoyance.
Tori picked up her laundry basket and forced a smile. “It’s always nice talking to you, Marie.”
Marie didn’t react to her sarcasm, and began folding her towels.
Tori left the laundry room and trooped back up the stairs for her apartment. At the rate she was losing underwear, she was either going to have to go commando or start buying them by the gross.
The sun had begun its swing to the west when Kathy Blake pulled into the apartment complex’s parking lot and cut the engine. She stared at the cookie-cutter buildings. She’d lived in an apartment like this just a year earlier and she’d hated it. Her last move landed her in half a house out on Route 5. What she wanted was to buy an old house—a big old house that she could turn into a bed and breakfast. She couldn’t even hope to buy a stately home—in any state of disrepair—and turn it into a lovely inn until her inheritance came through in another eighteen months. Until then it was a pipe dream, she reminded herself. But what was life if you couldn’t dream? One day she was sure she would be an innkeeper. She just had to find the right property at the right price, fix it up, and fill it with lovely antiques. For that, her anticipated inheritance was going to be far too small.
Time marched on, and way too quickly.
Kathy grabbed her purse, duffle, and a plastic grocery bag from the passenger seat and got out of the car. As she walked up to the building’s entrance she noticed quite an abundance of catnip growing around the well-trimmed boxwood. Had Tori planted it for her kitty, Daisy? She nipped off a piece to offer the cat upon her arrival and stepped up to the door.
She’d only been to Tori’s apartment one other time, and was still surprised there wasn’t more security. The door opened to a shared lobby and anybody could enter the building, which housed four apartments. She pressed the buzzer under the metal mail slot for Apartment 4 and seconds later the door to the upper apartment on the left opened. “Hey, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Tori said, grinning broadly.
“So are you,” Kathy said and laughed before heading up the stairs. Tori stepped inside and Kathy followed. They paused to give each other a hug before Kathy pulled back and brandished the plastic bag hanging from her wrist. “I baked.”
“You always bake. What is it this time?”
“Your favorite—chocolate chip-oatmeal cookies.”
“Aw, you shouldn’t have—but I’m glad you did.”
“It’s how I relax. And I brought an offering for Daisy, too.”
Tori smiled. “You got that outside my door, didn’t you? You can’t believe how much catnip grows around here—it’s unnatural. I snitch a few leaves every time I come in. The maintenance man keeps yanking it out, but it’s the gift to cats that keeps on growing.”
“I’ve got a patch for my guys behind my back door, too.”
“Daisy! Daisy!” Tori called and a plump tabby came running into the living room.
“Look at you,” Kathy said, bending low and crushing the leaves between her fingers. The cat stood on her hind legs, her purr going into overdrive. She took the leaves from Kathy’s fingers, leaving them wet with slobber.
“Oh, my. I’m going to need to wash my hands.”
“You can do it at the kitchen sink. Meanwhile, I just made a fresh pot of coffee. We can drink it and stuff ourselves with your cookies. Follow me.”
Kathy dumped her duffle and purse and followed Tori through the small living room and into the kitchen. It, too, was compact with only a round Formica table and four chairs clustered around it. She looped the plastic bag over the back of a chair before marching over to the sink, where she squirted a generous supply of hand soap onto her fingers, working it into a frothy lather, and then rinsing. Grabbing a couple of paper towels, she dried her hands, before discarding the toweling. Then she marched over to the table where she withdrew the Tupperware container and set it on the table while Tori gathered cups and plates from a cabinet above the granite counter. She set the table, got out milk and sugar, then poured the coffee and joined Kathy.
“I’m sorry I could only get tonight off. It’s a holiday weekend and everyone thinks they deserve a day away from work, but not me.”
“That’s okay. Are you happy there?”
“I love the work. I wish I was working in a different venue, but then I’ve bored you with that subject far too many times.”
Tori smiled, but it soon faded. “At least there’s something you enjoy. Right now my life feels so small.”
“How come?”
“Billy, mostly.”
Kathy nodded. She’d never liked the guy. He wasn’t good enough for Tori, but then nobody was. Still, she’d had her share of man trouble and wasn’t about to judge Tori’s choice when it came to a partner.
“We don’t need to go there,” Tori said, selecting a cookie and taking a bite. She chewed, swallowed and smiled. “Why is it your cookies always taste better than mine?”
“It’s my secret ingredient—the same one my Grandma Nancy put in all her baked goods.”
“Love,” Tori guessed.
Kathy laughed. “You got it.”
Tori shook her head. “I’m sorry the old gal’s gone.”
“Don’t go there. You’ll have me in tears within a second,” Kathy warned. She sipped her coffee and glanced in the living room where Daisy had flopped in a happy daze. “So what’s been happening around here that’s so mysterious?”
“Theft,” Tori said simply.
“What have you lost?”
“My underwear.”
“From the laundry room?”
Tori nodded.
“Sounds like a pervert.”
“From what I’ve heard, the really skeevy guys like soiled underwear so they can sniff it when they they…” she paused. “… pleasure themselves.”
“Ugh!” Kathy said and shuddered. “But your guy seems to like clean underwear.”
“I guess it’s a guy who’s stealing them,” Tori said. “But how can I be sure?”
“Are there any other women your size in the building?”
Tori shook her head. “But if I keep eating these cookies, I’ll soon be the size of one of my neighbors.” That said, she picked up another cookie and began to nibble on it.
“What about in the other buildings?”
“I can’t say I’ve paid attention to those neighbors. I mean, I come home from work, make supper, get on the Internet, and then go to bed.”
“Same routine when Billy’s here?”
“Pretty much. He works nights, remember?”
Billy was a bartender, which was how Tori had met him. She wasn’t the kind to bar hop, and had been out with a bunch of her teacher
friends for a girls’ night out when the group had decided to patronize an Irish pub in the Park Avenue area of the city. Tori had always gone for working class guys, while it was Kathy who’d ended up with the more cerebral type. Tori’s father was a businessman, but she’d always seemed to identify more with her hard-working grandfather, who ran a bait-and-tackle shop on Lotus Bay an hour from the city. And she’d made no bones about the fact that she felt more at home with her grandparents than her parents. They had that in common, too. Tori at least still had her paternal grandparents; Kathy’s were long gone.
“Has anyone else noticed anything missing?” Kathy asked.
Tori shrugged. “My one neighbor, Marie, isn’t the chatty type. The bottom two apartments are rented out to guys. I’ve never run into them in the laundry room. I’m pretty sure one of them takes his laundry to his mother. He’ll go out on a Sunday with a big garbage bag full of stuff and come back hours later with the same bag—not that I spy on my neighbors or anything. I just like to look out the window—especially on snowy nights.”
“And thank goodness we haven’t had any of them for a couple of months,” Kathy put in. She took another sip of her coffee. “What about the storage lockers?”
Tori looked thoughtful. “I hadn’t thought to see if ours had been tampered with. It’s got a padlock on it.”
“When was the last time you looked?”
Again Tori shrugged. “Must have been months ago—when I put the Christmas decorations away.”
Kathy drained her cup. “Why don’t we go have a look?”
“Why not?” Tori agreed. She, too, drained her cup and rose from her seat. She grabbed her keys from a rack on the wall. “Come on.”
Kathy followed her friend across the living room and down the stairs to the shared laundry room, which was quiet, with nothing in either the washer or the dryer. A door straight ahead led to another room. Like the outside door to the building, it wasn’t locked, either. Tori switched on the light before she entered.
“Our locker is over here,” she said, but stopped. “What the—”
Kathy looked around her. If there was a padlock hanging from the hasp, it was long gone. “I take it Billy’s the only other person with a key.”
Lorraine Bartlett - Tori Cannon-Kathy Grant 00.5 - Panty Raid Page 1