by Leona Fox
“I’ve only got one suitcase,” Leda said. “I think I can manage. I’ll come over to the shop tomorrow and see if I can help find the Saint who got me my shop back.”
In the car on the way home, Sadie and Betty were discussing how awful it would be to have to wait for someone to die to get the one thing you want most in the world back again. When Sadie pulled around the corner, she saw a teenager in a gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his head, standing in front of her shop, his back to her.
“Oh my God,” Betty said. “He is spray painting on your window.”
Yes, he was. He had a can of black spray paint in his hand. She pulled the car to the curb and jumped out, running towards the young man. He had legs that were twice as long Sadie’s, and besides that he had to be twenty years younger. She didn’t have a prayer, but she tried to catch him all the same. When he went speeding around the corner a block ahead of her she pulled up and stood on the sidewalk, hands on her knees, puffing.
Betty and Mr. B caught up with her a few moments later. She was still trying to catch her breath.
“Got away, did he?”
Betty fished a bottle of water out of her bag and handed it to Sadie. Sadie took a swig and handed it back.
“Come on,” Betty said. “We need to go back and call Zack.”
“What is it,” Sadie said between breaths, “about my windows that makes people think they need to paint on them? First George, and now this dude,”
They went back to stand in front of the shop. Murderer had been painted across the window in neon orange.
“Isn’t that lovely,” Sadie said. “Wonder if George had relatives we didn’t know about. If he’d been alive I would’ve guessed this was his work.”
Betty just shook her head.
They went in the shop and Sadie called the local police, and five minutes later two cruisers with flashing lights were parked in front of the shop. Zack left an officer out front to take pictures while he came in to get Sadie’s statement.
“I’m not waiting for that kid to confess before cleaning my window,” she said. “Having murderer written across the glass makes me a target. Or at least it makes me feel like a target.”
“I’ll call Sam Thornton,” Zack said. “He’ll get that off there for you. When we catch the kid we will make him pay the bill.”
“Thanks, Zack,” Sadie said. “I’m feeling a little vulnerable. I don’t like having murderer scrawled across my window. It feels like I’m tattooed with it.”
“Hey, now. We’ll have that off within the hour. And I’ll have Officer Weston tape some news print over it until Sam gets here.”
Sadie nodded. “Okay,” She said.
She looked into Zack’s worried eyes. “Am I allowed to look for the kid who did this?” she asked. “It’s not related to the murder.”
“I’m not sure I agree with you on that, but I’ll give you a pass. You can look for the guy who sprayed graffiti on your window.” He dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
“I’m going back to my office to order a platoon of officers to look for our vandal.” He thrust his chest out. “Ordering officers around makes me feel important.”
Sadie laughed as he left. She loved that he was willing to make himself look ridiculous to make her smile.
“So what do you think?” Sadie asked Betty. “Is that a high school student, or a college student?”
“High school,” Betty said. “Should we go cruising again?”
“I don’t know,” Sadie said. “The last time we left, murderer was spray-painted on the window.”
“True,” Betty agreed, “but if we go now there will be a cop watching your storefront for you. That won’t be true later.”
“Okay,” Sadie said, “If we are gone long enough maybe the window will be cleaned before we get back. That would be nice.”
They headed back out to the car, Sadie steadfastly refusing to look at her shop window. Hopefully when she came back the word would be gone like it had never happened. They drove to the far side of town where the high school was located. The kids must’ve been on lunch break because they were everywhere. Sadie drove slowly, and they tried to look at every face, but they didn’t see the boy in the gray hoodie. Or at least they didn’t recognize him.
“Let’s think about this,” Sadie said, “who do we know that could convince a kid to spray-paint ‘murderer’ on a window in broad daylight? That’s a special skill.”
“Or a really stupid kid,” Betty said. “I’ll bet you the murderer is trying to place the focus on you so that it doesn’t ever land on them.”
“Yeah, but if this kid gets caught then the focus is going to be squarely on the person who got him to do this,” Sadie said.
“Not if he doesn’t roll over,” Betty said.
“What you mean roll over?” Sadie asked.
“You know, fink. Tattle. Squeal.” Betty looked at her with her eyebrows raised.
“Good Lord,” Sadie said. “Do you spend all your spare time watching gangster movies? Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“Just living the life.” Betty smiled. “And I’ve got brothers.”
“I guess that explains it,” Sadie said.
“But back to the point, maybe where we need to be looking for this kid isn’t the high school. If you needed someone to spray-paint something, where would you find such a person?”
“I’d go to where the taggers hang out. Places with big expanses of blank wall but not a huge population of people. The train yard, or warehouses after hours. The underpass on the freeway,” Betty said.
“Okay, but where around here? Where do taggers hang out in our town?” Sadie asked.
“Two places,” Betty said, “the train yard out near Hyattsville, and the old abandoned granary. Probably the granary is the best bet, because when they run out of space on the outside they can paint on the inside. Apparently there was some kind of contest going on. Someone came up with an award for the most popular mural. If that’s what you call it.”
“Fine. Let’s go to the granary.”
Sadie put the car in gear and pulled away from the school. She noticed a man standing near the front entry watching her, so she waved and smiled. No point in giving him the wrong idea. She certainly didn’t need anything else derogatory painted on her window.
They parked two blocks away from the old granary. Sadie felt their car might be too tempting a target if she parked closer, and she really wasn’t interested in a new paint job. There was a group of kids sitting on a retaining wall next to the drive. Half of them were smoking cigarettes and they all had on jackets with big pockets. Sadie could see the spray can lids poking out from some of them. She felt a little intimidated until she noticed Mister Bradshaw’s tail going mile a minute. He wasn’t intimidated at all.
“Look at the cute dog,” one of the smokers said, and Sadie realized it was a girl.
She kind of assumed that all the taggers would be boys. Well that’s what she got for being sexist and making assumptions.
Mr. Bradshaw took a running leap and jumped up on the wall next to the girl. He put his front feet on her upper arm and licked her chin. She laughed such a carefree laugh and Sadie realized that this tagger was just a normal girl. Sadie apparently had more than one stereotype to get over.
Mr. Bradshaw made his way along the wall, saying hello to all the artists sitting there, then jumped down and came back to Sadie’s side.
“I was wondering if you could tell me something,” she asked. “Has there been someone around here asking if you would paint something on a window?”
“Who’s asking?” said the first girl.
“I’m Sadie Barnett, this is Betty, and you’ve already met Mr. Bradshaw,” she said.
“His name is Mister Bradshaw? How cool.”
The girl glanced at her friends. One shrugged, two nodded, and the last one scowled at her.
“I’m Becca,” she said. “There was a guy around here two days ago. He o
ffered to hire any of us to write certain words on a shop downtown. None of us were interested. We had no desire to go to jail.”
“That doesn’t mean one of the others didn’t do it,” a boy with shock purple hair said. “The guy was paying decent money.”
“What did the guy look like?” Betty asked.
“You know, kind of old. Thin,” Becca said.
“His face was really narrow,” said purple hair.
“That could be quarter of the men in town,” Betty said.
“Let’s go inside and see if we can find our guy,” Sadie said. “Thanks for your help.”
The group nodded or grunted noncommittally, except for Becca, who jumped off the wall to give Mr. Bradshaw one last pat on the head.
“If you want to get in,” she said, “you need to go around the back and look for the place where there is a piece of metal leaned against the wall. It’s covering up the open door. You can just knock it down, someone will come along and put it back up again later.”
They thanked her again and headed around the back of the building. The ground was broken up in places, and Sadie was worried there might be broken glass, so she picked up Mr. Bradshaw and carried him. They picked their way through tall weeds and rubble until they found the place Becca told them about.
Betty tried to move the metal sheet but couldn’t, so she did what Becca suggested and pushed it over instead.
Chapter Five
It was dim inside the building, with deep shadows cast by the light coming through the dirty windows. They could see that the other end of the building was brighter, so they headed that way. They were in the section of the building that must’ve been offices and workrooms, but when they reached the end of the hall they stepped into what must have been a grain bagging area. Somewhere farther along would be grain warehousing.
The reason this area was so much brighter wasn’t that the windows were cleaner or facing in the right direction. No, what they had down here was a generator that was powering a big bank of floodlights. The lights were focused on a wall probably four stories high, and there was a platform suspended from the ceiling that looked like the kind of thing window washers used on skyscrapers.
The boy on the platform wore a gray hoodie, with the hood down, and on his head and enormous pair of headphones. He hadn’t seen them come in. Betty plucked at Sadie’s sleeve and backed away, but Sadie kept moving forward.
“We should call Zack,” Betty said quietly.
But now that she had him in her sights, Sadie felt extremely reluctant to wait on the cops to come get him. She moved forward until she was within 15 feet of the wall he was painting a story above her. It was beautiful work, and the contrast between this and what he had done on her window was striking. The floor under where he was working was littered with paint cans and lids. She picked up a lid and tossed it at him.
The first lid missed, but the second one she threw hit him squarely on the back of the head. He jumped about a mile.
Pulling the headphones from his ears, he looked down at her to say, “What the hell?” but his voice trailed off when he saw who it was. Sadie could see him thinking frantically.
“I guess you’re one of those artists who paints anything for money,” she said. “I hope it was worth it.”
“Lady, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, but his words lacked conviction. His eyes were scanning the room and Sadie thought he was working out how to get away.
“Who hired you to paint my window?” She asked. “You tell me and I won’t press charges.”
“Sadie!” Betty hissed under her breath, “You can’t promise him that.”
“Sure I can,” Sadie hissed back, “I didn’t promise Zack would press charges.”
While they were hissing at each other, hoodie boy began pulling the platform upward by way of a rope and tackle arrangement. The women stared at him.
“Where does he think he’s going when he gets the top?” Betty asked.
“I don’t know, but he must know something we don’t, otherwise why is he going up?” Sadie squinted. “I can’t see anything up there, it’s all in shadow.”
“I’m calling Zack,” Betty said. “We need backup.” She pulled out her phone and dialed.
Sadie heard her telling Zack where they were, but she noticed a rope that dangled from the platform now nearly reached the floor. She strode forward and grabbed it thinking maybe she could keep the platform from going any higher. She yanked and the platform tipped.
The boy grabbed the railing to steady himself. “What do you think you’re doing?” He asked. “I painted your window so now you’re going to kill me?”
“No.” Sadie said, secretly relieved he had fallen. “I just want you to apologize and pay for the cleanup.”
“Lady I didn’t even write any swearwords on your window. Why are you so worked up?”
He was frantically trying to get the platform to rise again, but Sadie had tied the rope around her waist and he couldn’t lift her.
“I’ll tell you what,” she called up at him. “You come down here and let me write murderer on your forehead. See how you feel about that by the end of the day. Or we'll make it easier. We can write criminal instead, that at least would be true.”
“Painting old factories does not make me a criminal,” He said.
“Maybe not, but defacing my store window does,” she said.
Betty came up behind her. “What is he doing?” she asked.
Sadie squinted up at the platform. It looked like he was climbing the rigging. He’d left the platform and was shimmying up one of the ropes that supported the stage. Her heart caught in her throat. If he fell and missed the scaffold it would kill him. She grabbed Betty’s arm and squeezed.
“I know,” Betty said. “It’s frightening.”
Sadie’s chest hurt and she had to remind herself to breathe. Betty was gripping her wrist so hard that Sadie’s hand was going to sleep. But he didn’t falter. He swarmed up the rope and climbed onto a ledge at the top of the wall. Sadie realized that he must be standing at the top of the block of offices, which clearly rose at least three stories.
“He’s going to get away,” Sadie said.
“No he’s not,” Zack said from behind her.
Both women jumped, Sadie would’ve scolded him except he was on his radio giving instructions to apprehend their tagger.
“Stay here and yell if he comes back this way,” Zack said, and he ran back through the office hallway.
While they were waiting, Sadie examined the wall in front of them. It was the beginning of a gigantic mural. He had been painting the flying mane of a horse that was half flesh, half fire. She was mesmerized by the work and stood with her mouth open until a police officer appeared at the top of the wall. He glanced down at where the women were standing and said something into his radio before disappearing back the way he came. Zack reappeared not long after that, shaking his head.
“Couldn’t find him,” he said when he reached the women. “Too many bolt holes in this place. Officer Brown thinks he’s in the roof girders.”
“You know where to find him now,” Sadie said. “Or do you think he’ll abandon his artwork?”
“Hard to tell,” Zack said. “We don’t have the manpower to watch this place constantly, so we’ll have to get lucky. At least now we know what he looks like – and his tagger name. It’s more than we had before.”
Sadie and Betty took Mr. B back to the car in silence. Sadie was downcast. They were so close and they lost him. Betty still looked pretty spooked.
Sadie’s spirits raised some when they got back to the shop and the paint had been cleaned away. Her storefront was back to normal and that at least was cause for celebration.
Leda was waiting at the door, chatting with Officer Weston who had been overseeing Operation Clean Window. Leda smiled when she saw Sadie and Betty approach.
“There you are,” she said. “I hear you’ve had some excitement here today.”
“A tagger sprayed murderer across my window,” Sadie said. “We almost caught him out at the old granary, but he got away.”
“Someone paid him to deface Sadie’s window,” Betty said. “I’d bet anything if we find that person we’ll find the real murderer.”
“Let’s go inside and have some coffee,” Sadie said. “I’ll go next door.”
“You bought last time,” Betty said. “It’s my turn.”
“No, let me buy,” Leda said.
“You all have been so supportive, I’d like to repay your kindness.”