“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Don’t the police—?”
Godwin interrupted, “The police have put out an all points bulletin asking for help capturing one Robert Henry Germaine, wanted for grand theft, theft by fraud, and—something else, I can’t remember what. They have a photograph of him.” Godwin frowned. “It’s not a very good photograph, which is pretty clever of Mrs. Germaine.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember when Mary Kuhfeld lost a lot of weight and had a Glamour Shot taken of herself all made-up to look like a model?”
“Yes.”
“Well, her husband said that if she ever ran away from home and he didn’t want her back, that’s the photo he’d give the police.”
Betsy laughed, and the jiggle made Sophie jump down and stalk off. Betsy said, “I see what you mean. Allie’s helping her husband hide by giving the police a photo that doesn’t look much like him.”
“That’s right.”
She nodded. “Well, that’s understandable. And clever, certainly.” She thought briefly, then suddenly flashed on something he’d said earlier. “What did you mean, he gave you the eye?”
“I mean, during his speech, my good old reliable gaydar went ping! So I smiled at him as he went out and he smiled back. I actually think he would have stopped, but he was surrounded by about half a dozen women who were escorting him out, talking sixteen to the dozen to him.”
Betsy laughed. “His wife might not have liked that, Goddy,” she said.
“His wife wasn’t at the banquet. She was at a meeting of chapter presidents.”
“During the banquet?”
“I know. It was supposed to end before the banquet started, but they got caught up in something—no one knows what—and had their meal sent up.”
“Still, I can’t believe he’d actually give you the eye with people who know Allie watching.”
“Unless he knew he would never be seeing any of them again,” Godwin pointed out. “One of the women told me they walked him out to his light blue Lexus in the parking garage, and he drove off, never to be seen again.”
“You really think he’s gay?”
“Well, my gaydar is generally reliable, but I’d never met him, and never even seen him, until the banquet last Friday evening. Have you?”
Betsy thought. “Now I think about it, no.”
Goddy shrugged. “Maybe his gate swings both ways. You can feel her out about it, if you like. May I send her up?”
“Oh, I don’t know—” Betsy didn’t mind so much that Godwin saw her in dishabille, but Allie Germaine was a different story. Betsy looked around at the mess in the room, at her ratty bathrobe, and recalled that she hadn’t had a tub bath since the accident. “My hair, this place—” she said.
“I’ll get you a comb. And this place isn’t so awful, really. Here, let me put some things out of sight.” He picked up the cat and a trashy novel and headed for the bedroom with them.
Betsy called after him, “But what if she expects more than I can do?”
The door closed and Godwin came back. “Oh, please don’t say no! She’s sitting right in the shop, ruining the ambience.” He rummaged in her purse, coming up with a comb, mirror, and lipstick. “Please, please?” He handed her the comb and said, “She’s so upset and sad, and she says you’re her last hope.”
Betsy looked despairingly at her face in the little mirror, then over it at Godwin’s pleading expression. “Oh, all right. Send her up.”
Godwin waited until Betsy finished with the comb and began applying lipstick, then hurried out. Betsy put away her knitting and tried to smooth some of the wrinkles out of the robe with her fingers. It was too big on her so it covered the even more wrinkled nightgown under it, and the ugly plastic casing under that. She had barely gotten past the wince of pain any movement of her leg brought when there was a light tap on her door, which Godwin had left ajar.
“Come in, Mrs. Germaine!” she called, and braced herself. She was sadly certain she would not be able to help this woman.
Four
TONY Milan had read the story in the Star Tribune—the first time in a long time that Tony had read a newspaper for more than the sports and comics—and watched two follow-up stories on the morning and evening news. He learned that Robert Germaine, Account Executive of the National Heart Coalition, had run off with a check for over twenty-four thousand dollars. The check had been presented to him by the Treasurer of the National Committee of the Embroiderers Guild of America. It had been collected by EGA for women’s heart research. Germaine had last been seen getting into his car in the parking ramp at the Hotel Internationale in downtown Minneapolis, to which he’d been escorted by five members of the local chapter. The police were looking for him. There was a photo on page six of the newspaper that Tony recognized as a copy of the one that was on the wall of the third floor of the Heart Coalition’s headquarters in a long row of executive portraits.
So maybe Tony had been put off by the presence of all those women walking Bob Germaine to his car—because Tony was supposed to have that check, not Bob. His plan had been to go to the hotel, waylay Germaine as he was leaving, and take the check. Then around three on Saturday afternoon he was to drive to the airport. Tony had had a plane ticket to Madagascar, best of the few countries left that had no extradition treaty with the USA, and an almost-authentic passport. Instead, here he was, four days later, in a hospital bed.
But now Germaine and the check were both missing. How had that come about?
He had no idea.
Tony had spent at least an hour last night trying various methods to recall what happened four days ago. He had some experience in recall, having been through a dozen or more drug-and alcohol-induced blackouts. He could usually get a glimpse of events, but not this time. This made him wonder at first if maybe he’d had the car accident on his way to the hotel, but the nurse said he arrived at the hospital around eleven that night. Where had he been? His plan called for him to be at the hotel around half past five, and he remembered leaving work in time to do that.
Last night he’d fallen asleep while trying to shake loose the memory and so triggered a dream about it, a dream in which he’d ridden a horse out to the airport and hit Germaine on the head with a black Nike sports bag after which some woman had presented him with the embroiderers’ check as a reward.
Which he was sure was not what had actually happened.
Maybe in some kind of weird coincidence, Bob Germaine really had stolen the check himself. Funny how Tony hadn’t spotted Bob as a fellow crook; he was generally pretty good at that. Still, Tony’s acquaintance with him was slight; about all he did was glimpse him in his office as he handed his secretary a fistful of mail twice a day. Though now he remembered that he had sat through a speech Germaine gave to the staff a few months ago, about increasing efficiency. Tony had thought to ask about getting a motorized mail cart, but something about the look of the man changed his mind.
Wait a minute. Tony thought hard. Somewhere, sometime, Tony had heard Germaine practicing a speech. In a big empty hall, maybe. Someplace where his voice echoed. Tony could actually remember some phrases from it; it was a speech about gratitude. There wasn’t a big hall at the Heart Coalition headquarters, so where had that been? Tony had been standing near enough to touch Germaine—maybe. The more he tried to tease the memory from his head, the more it turned to smoke. It was probably another dream, because what would a mail-room clerk be doing listening to an account executive practice a speech?
Tony had had ambitions to rise through the ranks when he came to work for the Heart Coalition. He got the entry-level job through the assistance of Post-Prison Friends, an organization that helped people on parole get honest work. He actually meant to go straight this time, after his second trip to the joint.
However, and understandably, most companies weren’t interested in hiring a two-time loser, particularly someone with a record of theft on top of drug use and drug sales. But one—a cha
rity that was feeling charitable—consented to give him a chance. He had to start at the bottom, of course, so he was given a place in the mail room. He’d thought janitorial was the bottom, but Janitorial Services was unionized, with good pay and full benefits. Such a high-tone department was not willing to consider hiring an excon on parole. Mail-room clerking was the real entry level, at least at the Heart Coalition. The work was easy enough, sorting mail by name and department, taking a cart twice a day to pick up and deliver letters and packages on three floors. Then weighing outgoing mail and putting postage on it from a meter. A woman who worked in the mail room showed him the ropes—it turned out he was her replacement, and after four days of letting her carry most of the weight, she was gone. After that it was just him and Mitch. Mitch was grim, a pissant about everything. The woman had bored him enormously, of course, being a know-it-all female, but she had nothing on Mitch for bossiness.
So, naturally, Tony quickly came to hate the job. He stuck at it, having been serious about going straight, but after four months he was thoroughly fed up. The work was boring and the mail room full of petty rules, like starting the morning mail run at nine-thirty, not nine-twenty or nine-forty, and keeping the mail room picked up—what was the unionized janitorial staff for, anyhow? And Mitch was an everlasting pain in the ass, always finding something to ride Tony about. So Tony decided to fall off the honesty wagon. He began by lifting an item here and there, but it wasn’t enough to make staying with the job worthwhile. Then he remembered a con a fellow inmate had told him about, and here he was in the perfect place to try it.
To his delight, it worked, and soon he had an extra, if irregular, income that enabled him to have a life outside of work. It might have gone on for years—so long as he didn’t get greedy enough to make anyone notice—but Tony couldn’t resist continuing picking up items here and there that the owners left right out in the open. Cell phones, wallets, watches, and rings (people took them off when washing their hands), gold pens, iPods, once even a take-out mu shu pork lunch that smelled too good to resist.
Mitch eventually began remarking about things going missing—and Mitch didn’t know the half of it—so Tony decided this was a clue he’d better quit. If Mitch found proof Tony was a thief, it might lead to an investigation that would reveal the great scheme Tony was running. Tony began to look for a good reason to quit—then found out about this big check coming in. Twenty grand, maybe more. What a swell good-bye to the place if he could intercept it.
Usually talk about a big check didn’t reach as far down as the mail room—no need to tempt the peons, after all—but this time it did, because it was unexpected. It wasn’t the result of a fund drive, this was something extra, run by a bunch of females who did embroidery-type sewing. Tony once had a shirt covered all over with hand-done embroidery, an expensive gift from a friend. Tony had seen a photograph of a pink heart they’d embroidered—the boss made a poster of it and put it up in the lobby of the Heart Coalition. These females were embroidering these hearts and selling them, and instead of a couple hundred bucks, they had raised twenty grand.
Tony had taken a good look at the poster, because it had the embroidery club’s logo on it: EGA in fancy lettering. He’d recognize it when the check came into the mail room. Getting his hands on this check—and not having to take the deep discount he’d get if he merely sold it to a fence—was going to make a sweet good-bye to this stupid nothing job and pissant Mitch, and the suit-and-tie jerks up on the third floor. He was going to sting these people good.
Then came the bad news: The check wasn’t going to be mailed in, the Heart Coalition was going to send someone to pick it up and thank the embroidery ladies in person.
What a gyp! That check was his, good as in his hand, until some big shot took it from him. What was wrong with sending it through the mail? Bigger checks had come into the mail room, Tony had seen them. And wasn’t a written letter better than a verbal thanks? Jerks, all of them, from the embroidery ladies to the big shots upstairs. They were the thieves, taking the check away from Tony, after it was almost right there, in his hand!
So all right, all right, a little thought brought a new idea, a different way to get hold of the money. They were going to send some hotshot executive to pick it up? Fine, Tony knew where the event was being held, he’d go over there himself. It was a downtown hotel and it had an attached parking garage. Someplace, in some lonesome corridor or down in the dimly lit garage, he’d mug the executive and take his watch and wallet. By the time they figured out the check was gone, too, Tony would have run it through his system, pulled the cash, and be long gone. He made a point of refreshing his memory of what this Germaine fellow looked like so he’d know him outside the hotel.
Then…something. Tony was pretty sure he hadn’t done the mugging, or it would be Bob in the hospital, not him. But instead, there was a police hunt for Bob Germaine.
So what the hell had happened?
Damned if he knew.
“Tony?” asked a voice from the door. He looked over and there was the pissant himself, in person.
“Hey, Mitch!” said Tony, pretending to be glad to see a familiar face.
“How’re ya doin’?”
“Aw, I’ll be all right once they let me up,” growled Tony, posturing just a little. In fact, they’d had him out of bed this morning, and he’d been surprised at how far away from his eyes the floor was.
“When do you think they’ll cut you loose?”
Tony grinned. “What’s the matter, you miss me?”
“Would you believe I do? We got a temp in there now, and I’m not sure he knows how to read. So have they said anything about letting you go?”
“As a matter of fact, they have. The doc came in this morning and said maybe tomorrow. Problem is, he said I should stay home for a week, to finish healing. And then there’s going to be a problem walking—I’ll need crutches for three weeks, and a cane for a while after that. I messed my knee and my ankle up good.”
Mitch grimaced. “That’s too bad.” Then he smiled. “And it didn’t do your handsome face any good, either.”
Tony smiled back. He was a good-looking man, much better looking than Mitch. “Well, my face will heal.” He didn’t add “But yours won’t,” but Mitch got the jab anyhow, and his smile went away.
Mitch said gruffly, “Well, we’ll hold your job for you. You’ve got some sick leave coming and there’s even some vacation time—four days, I think. So you’ll get a paycheck for a while. I want you to call in every couple of days to let me know how you’re doing. What the hell happened, anyway?”
Tony shook his head. Funny how the truth was all right this time. “I haven’t got the slightest idea. I have a skull fracture and the doc says it gave me a severe concussion. I remember leaving work, and I think I remember driving out of the parking lot—and then it’s just blank. I left work around five, and the accident happened around ten or ten-thirty. I was in the hospital when I woke up. My car is wrecked, the ambulance people had to use the Jaws of Life to get me out, but I don’t know how it happened.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Mitch. “You’re sure you don’t remember a thing?”
“Not a thing. It’s been bugging me, I can tell you. The doc says parts of my memory may come back, or I may never remember any of it.”
“Well, I’m glad you remember clocking out of work. We coulda been hit with a workers’ comp suit.”
“That’s my boss,” cracked Tony. “Always looking on the bright side.”
Five
ALLIE Germaine was about thirty-five, maybe a little older, of medium height, very slim, with bright brown eyes and short-cropped, dark, curly hair. She wore a copper pantsuit ornamented with a red scarf, and low-heeled copper shoes. Normally so vital she virtually thrummed, today her energy seemed barely adequate to get her up the stairs and into the room.
“Hello, Mrs. Germaine,” said Betsy, speaking gently because she was so shocked by Allie’s obvious fatigue.
Betsy replied, “Thank you—oh, and thank you for the cookies, they were delicious.”
“You’re welcome, of course. We all love you and miss you in your darling little shop. But I’m not up here just to exchange pleasantries, of course. Betsy, the most dreadful thing has happened.”
“Yes, Godwin was just telling me. I’m afraid I haven’t been watching the news lately, or I would have known. Here, sit down and tell me more.”
“Thank you.” Allie sank into the upholstered chair set at ninety degrees to the foot of the couch. She relaxed for just a moment, then looked up at a high-pitched sound. “What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s just the cat. I had Godwin put her in the bedroom so she wouldn’t bother us. She loves visitors; she hopes they’ll feed her.”
Allie smiled a tight little smile, then sobered. “It’s all been like a nightmare; I simply cannot believe the things the police think Bob did.”
“What do they say he did?”
“Well, that he’s a thief! That he took the EGA check and made off with it.”
“Was it presented to him personally?”
“Yes, of course. He made a thank-you speech on behalf of the Heart Coalition when it was handed over. That was at the banquet Friday night. Then he was walked to his car by five EGA officials, who watched him drive away.” Allie swallowed a sob. “The EGA officers say he drove off in the car alone, no one was in it with him. And—and he hasn’t been seen since. The police are out to arrest him.”
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