Hiding in Plain Sight

by Valerie Sherrard

  “Okay.” I swallowed hard, trying not to feel sad. “I’m awful glad you called.”

  “Me too. Bye.”

  “Bye,” I said. I held the phone for a couple of seconds until I heard the click, just in case. Then I slowly put the receiver back on the cradle and took a deep breath.

  I told myself that it would be ridiculous to cry, but I knew I was on the verge anyway. A sharp pang of loneliness jabbed me right in the stomach and made it kind of hard to breathe properly.

  Tears were threatening to form when I felt something land in my lap, purring loudly.

  “Ernie!” I said, startled. “What are you doing?”

  In answer, he rubbed his face against my arm a few times, kneaded me like a lump of dough, and then curled into a ball and made himself good and comfortable. He continued to hum like a little motor and gland me with the side of his face. It was a welcome distraction, and I found myself patting him and scratching his chin gently, which made him purr even louder.

  “You’re not such a bad guy, are you?” I said. “I’m not sure how we’re going to get you out of the spot you’re in over the broken peacock, but I’ll see what I can do. Mom might give you one more chance, but you’ve got to start behaving a bit better.”

  I was right in the middle of my speech when he suddenly jumped down and walked off. It occurred to me that he’d sensed my mood and come to comfort me, then left when he figured the job was done. That made me really determined to somehow persuade Mom to let him off this time.

  Turned out, though, that there was no persuading needed. When they got home I explained what had happened and begged Mom not to evict the poor little guy.

  “Well, now, it was just an accident,” Mom said. “We’ll just put anything valuable out of harm’s way while he’s here.”

  While Dad went off to make himself a snack, she patted Ernie and told him it was okay. Her reaction was nothing like what I’d expected, and I told her I was surprised how well she’d taken it.

  “There are some things that are, uh, easier to part with than others,” she whispered, winking at me. “In fact, do you think you can get him to knock over the ceramic elephant in my sewing room, too?”

  “Mom!” I was shocked in spite of my relief. “Aunt Denise made those things for you!”

  “Yes,” she said sadly, “I know. That’s why they’ve been on display all this time.”

  Then she scooped Ernie up and kissed him on the forehead. He did not look impressed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I was nervous going to NUTEC the next morning. It was impossible to predict what kind of reaction there’d be to Mrs. Thompson’s arrest, and I was afraid if some-one said the wrong thing I might give myself away. I know it’s human nature to joke about things that make us uncomfortable, but if anyone made a crack about my best friend’s mother, I didn’t trust myself to remain neutral.

  It was a relief, therefore, to find that the mood at the office was serious and concerned.

  Janine looked outright angry, and she turned toward me as soon as I crossed the threshold and said, “Marion was arrested!” The look on her face was almost accusing, like it was my fault that this terrible thing had happened.

  It took me a second or two to realize that Marion was Mrs. Thompson, though I must have heard her first name at some time in the past — likely without it really registering. Having made the connection, I stood there silently, not knowing if I should say anything. I couldn’t pretend I knew nothing about it, but commenting would be likely to give me away. Fortunately, others were arriving just then and they all had some-thing to say about the new development.

  “You can’t be serious,” Stuart Yaeger said while his wife shook her head disbelievingly. Apparently they were hearing the news for the first time. “They actually laid charges?”

  “I’m sure she’ll be cleared,” Darla spoke from the doorway. “The evidence is all circumstantial. In the meantime, the best thing we can all do is focus on our work. That way, when she returns, everything will be running smoothly.”

  “Maybe there’s more than just circumstantial evidence,” Debbie Yaeger remarked. “The police must feel that they have a strong case if they’ve gone this far with it. Who knows, maybe they’ve learned something new. Has anyone heard anything … like if they’ve found an eyewitness or something?”

  No one had. I would have been surprised if there’d been anyone around in the middle of the night in this particular part of town. I thought Debbie’s idea was a bit silly, but maybe she was just trying to make sense of an arrest that went against everything she knew about Mrs. Thompson.

  On the other hand, what did I honestly know about her?

  Lying in bed the night before, thinking and thinking, that exact question had come to me, and the more I thought about it the more I had to admit that I really know very little about Mrs. Thompson. She’s my friend’s mom, yes, but aside from saying “hi” and answering the usual parent questions (like, where are you girls going and what time will you be back) I never even talk to her.

  Well, I figured that the best way to learn a bit about what kind of person she was would be to get the people she works with talking about her. I couldn’t come right out and ask if they thought she was capable of committing a crime, but maybe I could come up with something a little less direct. Something that wouldn’t make it obvious I was fishing for information. I needed to find some way to get them talking.

  Aside from the morning’s discussion about the arrest, the day was fairly uneventful. Janine actually did some typing and filing while I continued getting the month’s bills ready to go out. She seemed much quieter than the day before, which may have been because she was busier but was more likely because she was absorbed with thoughts of her boss’s problems. I thought it was nice that she was so concerned.

  When closing time arrived I was hungry, so I decided to grab something to eat before going to see Mr. Stanley. I wanted to drop off the book he’d asked for, which I’d picked up at the library at lunchtime. I was going to get a six-inch sub, but then I thought of the hospital food and instead ordered a foot-long — steak and mushroom with lots of veggies. I hurried to the hospital and got to his room while it was still nice and warm.

  “Bless your heart,” he said half a dozen times, happily munching down his half. “Now this is food!” His own meal, just like the day before, sat almost untouched beside a cup of melting ice chips.

  After we’d eaten, we talked about Ernie (there seemed no need to mention the accident with the peacock), then I gave him Seventeen, fetched his glasses from the bed stand, and said I’d be by again the next day.

  My next stop was Betts’s place, and after such a fruitless day I dreaded going there. Mrs. Thompson seemed happy to see me, though, and in slightly better spirits than the day before.

  “I have a copy of the file here, just like I promised. And you know, Betts has so much confidence in you that it’s starting to be contagious. She tells me you’ve solved other crimes in the most amazing way, and, why, I suppose some people just have a certain knack for that sort of thing. So, let me get that file from the other room and you can have a look at it.”

  I took it from her feeling like a total fraud. I’ve been lucky and happened on to some solutions in the past, it’s true, but I was getting nowhere with this, and I hated to see her so hopeful when I was probably going to let her down.

  “I’ll take this home and look at it where I can concentrate,” I said after I’d glanced through it quickly. While I’d flipped pages, she’d stood beside me with an expectant air, like I might, at any minute, leap to my feet, shout “Aha!” and solve the whole thing.

  “Oh, well, okay.” She sounded disappointed but covered it with an overly bright smile.

  “You know, I really can’t promise anything,” I said, feeling like a criminal myself.

  “Of course not, dear. You just do your best. I’m sure it will all be fine in the long run.”

  Betts walked part of
the way home with me. “You must have some ideas,” she said.

  “The thing is, Betts, I don’t know any of these people. It’s hard when I have no background or anything to go on. I mean, I can’t even tell if someone is doing anything unusual or out of character.”

  “I see what you mean,” she agreed, nodding, but then shrugged it off. “You’ll still figure it out, though. I know you will. You have to.”

  “I’ll sure try,” I said, pushing down feelings of hopelessness. Changing the subject, I asked her how things were with her and her boyfriend, Derek.

  “Okay, I guess.” She shrugged.

  “He knows you’re home, right?”

  “Yeah. I called him Saturday, after you left. He’s supposed to come over tonight.”

  Something didn’t seem quite right about that. If he hadn’t seen her for two weeks before she called, why was he taking until Tuesday to see her?

  “Was everything okay with you two before you went away? Uh, I mean…”

  She laughed. “Before we pretended to go away. I know, it’s weird. My mom was kind of in a state and some of the ideas she came up with then weren’t what you’d call totally sane.”

  “I guess anyone would be pretty upset over some-thing like that and not thinking exactly straight.”

  “I guess. It was awful, though, stuck in the house, not allowed to go anywhere or call anyone.”

  “I’m surprised your mom answered the door the day I saw her and went over to your place.”

  “That’s only because I saw you and I told her if she didn’t let you in I was going to.”

  “Right. Well, anyway, like I was asking, were things okay with you and Derek the last time you saw him?”

  “I suppose. But you know, it’s not the same as it was before. I’m thinking it might be time to dump him.”

  “What do you mean, it’s not the same? What’s changed?”

  She stopped walking and turned to face me. “He’s, like, all wrapped up in other things all the time. When we started going out everything was great. He used to pay a lot of attention to me. Now there’s hardly any, I dunno exactly, romance, maybe. No, it’s more like excitement. That’s just not there anymore.”

  “You still like him, though, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I like him. I’m just not sure if it’s that way now.” She laughed and shook her head. “This probably isn’t the best time for me to make this kind of decision. Anyway, I’m starting to sound like some stuck-up, high-maintenance girlfriend, which I don’t really think I am.”

  “No, you’re not,” I agreed. And she isn’t. She just never seems to really know what she wants, and every relationship ends like this — with a note of dissatisfaction. Derek had outlasted all previous boyfriends, though, and I’d thought she was quite happy with him. They’d broken up once before, around my birthday, which was on June 11, but that hadn’t lasted twenty-four hours.

  On a selfish note, it was great for me, too, because Greg and I double-dated with them sometimes. You know how it is when you have a best friend and a boyfriend and you want to spend time with both of them but you can’t always work it out, and then some-one feels left out? That’s never been a problem since she’s been seeing Derek.

  We talked for a few more minutes and she said she was going to wait for a few weeks to see how things went before making a decision. She left for her place then, and I hurried home to have a good look at the file.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  There wasn’t much in the file that was new information to me. Mainly, the evidence repeated the things I’d already been told, like that the window was broken from the inside to make it look like someone had come in that way and that Mrs. Thompson was the only one (at that time) who had keys to get into the offices, as well as the only one who had the safe combination.

  I dialled the Thompsons’ phone number. It rang three times.

  “Hello, Mrs. Thompson?”

  “Yes, dear. Did you want Betts?”

  “No, actually, I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Oh. Well, go ahead.”

  “Last summer, when you went on holidays, some-one must have had the keys, right?”

  “Yes. Darla would have had them, just as she does this year. She always fills in for me.”

  “What’s to have prevented her from making a second set?”

  “Oh, I see where you’re going with this. No, I’m afraid that won’t work. You see, we have the main lock changed every three months for security reasons. The locks are always changed within a week of my return from holidays. On top of that, they would have been changed again several times since then. The keys in use right now were almost brand new when the robbery occurred and no one other than myself had them at any time.”

  “You never leave them anywhere that one of your staff could just pick them up casually and go somewhere quickly to have a copy cut?”

  “Absolutely not. I know this probably doesn’t help me, but that’s one thing I’m particularly careful about. Those keys are on my person all day. In fact, I wear them on a key belt. First thing I do every morning is clip them on to that. For someone to get a copy, why, they’d have to take me along, too.”

  “Do you keep a spare set somewhere that someone might have discovered?”

  “There is a spare set, but no one knows where it’s kept, and accessing it without me finding out about it would be almost impossible. It’s not even kept at the office.”

  “Okay, well, I just thought I’d check on the whole key thing.” I did my best to keep my voice neutral, but I admit I was feeling pretty disappointed. I’d thought I’d hit on something important that might help clear Mrs. Thompson, but it was more likely to help the prosecution!

  “What about the safe combination?” I almost did-n’t want to ask, in case it further strengthened the case against her. Still, I had to know.

  “The safe combination … oh, I guess you want to know if someone else has it while I’m away, and so forth. Well, actually, no. When I’m on holidays, anything that needs to be locked up is kept in Darla’s filing cabinet in a small, fireproof lockbox. It’s not nearly as secure, but in spite of the measures we take to protect our data, theft isn’t really all that usual. A person would have to know what was in development and when it was functional before they’d know which disks would be worth stealing.”

  “What if you forgot the combination to the safe, or…?” I hesitated, not really wanting to say what I’d been thinking.

  “I keel over and die?” she laughed, finishing the sentence for me. “I have it written down, in my safety deposit box at the bank, where I keep my important documents.”

  “Are the disks password protected?” I felt more discouraged by the minute and almost didn’t want to ask any more questions. Everything she’d told me so far only made her look guilty.

  “Of course. But there’s no code or password that can’t be broken if you have the time and know-how. Or even the right program.”

  “Okay.” I couldn’t think of anything else, and anyway, as I’ve said, her answers weren’t helping. “Well, thanks. I’ll call back if I need to know anything else.”

  “You do that, dear.”

  I dropped the phone back into the cradle feeling less hopeful than ever, but I forced myself to open the file again. A manila envelope on the bottom of the stack of papers caught my eye and I pulled it out and opened it.

  Inside were eight-by-ten pictures of the conference room, all taken on the day of the robbery. I slid them out and spread them across the kitchen table, looking at them as if the culprit might suddenly materialize there.

  I noticed the fridge right away, because it’s not normally in the conference room. It looked very much out of place, sitting between the water cooler and the safe. The police had even taken a couple of shots of it with the doors open. The exciting contents consisted of a small milk carton, coffee cream, a couple of plastic containers holding unidentified foods, and a plastic bag with three or four apple
s in it. The freezer was empty.

  The conference table and filing cabinets had been photographed too, even though the table was bare except for the stone eagle and the filing cabinets appeared to be locked and untouched. The books I’d seen on top of them seemed undisturbed. I noticed that there was a big fern and a spider plant on the cabinets, sitting at opposite ends. The fern looked like the one in Darla’s office, and the spider plant, if I was right, was now in the reception area, hanging in the corner.

  The window had been photographed from a number of angles, but there wasn’t really much to see aside from the fact that it was broken.

  There was a picture that puzzled me for a few moments — a big dark blotch on the carpet. Then I remembered Janine telling me that either the fridge or water cooler had leaked and they’d had to call in a repairman. I tossed that picture aside without wasting any more time on it.

  The shots I spent the most time looking at were those of the safe. I’m not sure why I stared at those pictures so long, since they weren’t likely to tell me anything. The big heavy door on the front of it hung open, and it was easy to see that the thief had been selective in what he or she had taken. Small stacks of envelopes and plastic cases holding computer disks sat in it practically undisturbed.

  I closed my eyes and visualized the room, the long row of filing cabinets, the corner where the safe sat, the window, the desk, the water cooler, the table. I could almost imagine myself in there, walking around, getting the feel of the place.

  It didn’t help.

  After that, I spent a good hour flipping through page after page of statements from the staff. Basically, they all said the same thing — they didn’t know anything and hadn’t been involved. I drew each person’s statement out of the pile one by one and read them carefully, beginning with Joey’s.

  No, he had no knowledge of the robbery. He’d been home at the time it occurred. No witnesses to his whereabouts. No idea as to who could have done it. I was struck by the totally disinterested tone of his answers and wondered how someone could spend all that time developing a program and then be so complacent about its loss.