Finding Sarah

by Terry Odell

  “Let me think.” She tried to replay the exact chain of events. “Chris showed up and we were talking. But no, he definitely left before Gertie came in.” She raised her palms. “My shop is such a tiny operation. What could anyone gain by having it robbed?”

  He gave his head a quick shake setting that wayward lock of hair bouncing. One corner of his mouth curled upward. “If we knew the answer to that one, we might solve a lot of crimes a lot faster.”

  His smile widened, and she couldn’t help but notice how it warmed his entire face. Something inside her warmed, too, and she blinked in surprise at her reaction. “I guess you’ve seen a lot of this.”

  “Enough to know people will do crazy things for even crazier reasons. The first thing you learn is to leave your assumptions at the door.”

  “Well, I still don’t see how any of this is connected to your Gertie, but I’ll help any way I can. The sooner you find my merchandise, the better. What else can I tell you?

  “That should do it for now. Thanks.” Randy closed his notebook and placed everything back in his briefcase. “I’d appreciate it if you kept everything relating to the case confidential.” He pulled out a business card and handed it to Sarah. “You call me if anything unusual happens. Any time.”

  After Randy left, she studied his card before putting it in her purse. He’d said to call any time. Of course he’d say that. Cops were always on duty, weren’t they?

  Unable to settle, Sarah ran a hot bubble bath. Her head pillowed on a rolled-up towel, she closed her eyes, soothed by the soft crackle of popping bubbles. As the hot water released the tension in her body, burning tears threatened. She was not going to cry. Crying wouldn’t solve anything. She brought her right hand to the chain around her neck where David’s thick gold band hung. On the anniversary of David’s death, she’d gone to his gravesite and moved her own wedding band from her left hand to her right and vowed that the crying was over.

  The chill of a bath gone cold made her realize she’d drifted off. She got out and bundled herself into David’s old plaid flannel robe. This was the only piece of him she hadn’t been able to part with when she’d cleaned out the closets. Even after so many washings, she swore she could still smell his essence when she put it on. Enveloped in the robe’s softness, she felt the swirling tide of her emotions begin to ebb. Dwelling on her misery wouldn’t help.

  Without warning, the tears returned, streaming down her face. Tears of self-pity? Of grief? Guilt? Or maybe anger. Sarah didn’t care—she threw herself onto the couch and succumbed until she was exhausted. When the phone rang, she let the answering machine pick it up, too drained to move. Randy’s voice pulled her from the couch. Could he have found her things already?

  When he told her he needed yet more information, her heart sank. She couldn’t deal with more questions tonight. “Can we do it tomorrow? I’ve got a class at St. Michael’s after work, but I’m usually home by eight-thirty.”

  “Eight-thirty. It’s a date.”

  She hung up and stared at the phone. Date? No, that was a figure of speech. They were trying to solve a crime.

  Chapter Three

  First thing the next morning, Randy jogged up the three steps to Chris Westmoreland’s massive front porch and rang the bell. He composed his face into his friendly-but-firm interview expression and waited, enjoying the warmth of the early morning sun. Sounds of padded footsteps followed by a growled, “Who’s there?” came from behind the door.

  When Randy identified himself, the door swung open. Chris stood before him, unshaven, wearing leather slippers and an expensive robe. Robe? No. A dressing gown, complete with the monogrammed pocket. “What can I do for you, Detective?”

  Randy displayed his badge. “I have a couple of routine questions. I understand you were in That Special Something shortly before a robbery yesterday.”

  Chris nodded and motioned him inside. Randy took in the large, elegant and decidedly masculine space, with a fieldstone fireplace and dark wood wainscoting. A group of framed black-and-white landscapes adorned one wall, while three abstract watercolors dominated another.

  “I heard about the robbery on the news. Poor Sarah. If I’d had any idea, I would never have left the shop. I still wonder if I could have prevented it.” He perched on the edge of an oversized brown sofa and gestured toward a large leather easy chair. “Please, sit. How can I help?”

  Randy set his briefcase on the floor and lowered himself into the chair. “Do you remember seeing anyone before or after you stopped in at Ms. Tucker’s? Older woman, well-dressed?”

  Chris hesitated, as if he were replaying the morning. “No, I went straight from Sarah’s to Salem. Sorry I can’t be of more help.”

  “Actually, you can,” Randy said. “I’d like your fingerprints. Strictly for elimination, of course. We found prints in the shop and it would help if we knew which ones were yours and which might belong to the robber.”

  Randy remembered what Sarah had said and studied Chris’ reaction. She’d have been disappointed. Calm, collected, without a hint of indignation. He could usually read his suspects. Chris’ cool green eyes had no trouble meeting his own, yet they didn’t lock on the way liars’ often did. Liars either stared you down or never met your gaze.

  “Of course, Detective. Do I go to the police station?”

  “No, I can do it now.” He pulled the kit from his briefcase and rolled Chris’ prints onto the ten card. Chris remained nonchalant, showing little interest in the process until Randy was done. Then he examined his fingers with some disgust.

  Randy handed him a foil-wrapped cleansing towel. “This should take it off,” he said.

  While Chris worked on removing all traces of the ink, Randy packed everything back into his briefcase.

  Chris escorted him to the door, still wiping his fingers. “Sarah’s a nice woman,” he said. “We go back a long way. Her husband’s suicide—a real tragedy.”

  “I agree.” Randy pulled himself up to his full height and smiled at Chris. “It would be a real shame if anything else happened to her.”

  * * * * *

  Randy parked his pickup under a light in the far corner of St. Michael’s parking lot and flipped pages in his notebook. He asked himself why he hadn’t waited and met Sarah at her apartment as planned. When he’d decided to give her a ride home from her class, it seemed logical. But what had possessed him to get here over an hour early? And at a nursing home, yet. He gave himself an internal kick in the head and started reviewing his notes. Even in the parking lot, memories of Gram threatened to overwhelm him. He popped the plastic lid from his takeout coffee and sipped.

  He let his mind float, searching for connections, but he needed more dots to connect. Eventually, the coffee made it clear he couldn’t sit out here much longer. He put everything in his briefcase and quick-stepped across the parking lot to the building’s entrance.

  After a stop in the men’s room, Randy ambled down the speckled linoleum hall to the recreation center where the silver-haired receptionist had told him he would find Sarah’s class. At least the smell of antiseptic wasn’t so strong here. Ten feet from the open door, he froze. After a deep breath, he found his wall of detachment. At the doorway, he had to stop again. Gram was gone. It’d been eight years, he reminded himself.

  Sarah’s voice centered him. He stood to one side, peering through the door. His mouth dropped open and he clamped it closed. Sarah roamed around a room of a dozen or so elderly men and women, some in wheelchairs, some sitting at tables, some standing. All worked with slabs of wet, gray clay. Dumbfounded, he studied Sarah as she moved from one person to the next, offering encouragement, taking their gnarled hands and helping them shape the clay into whatever their mind’s eye projected.

  His automatic cop assessment—white female, late twenties, brown hair, blue eyes, five-four, one-fifteen—hardly did Sarah justice.

  Deep chestnut hair that shimmered in the light. Stone blue eyes that reflected every thought in her head. H
e snorted as he thought of the way that would go over in a briefing.

  She must have heard him, because her head snapped toward the door. Wearing a plastic apron, covered to her elbows in clay, she straightened and raised her eyebrows. And smiled.

  “Keep going everyone,” she said. She crossed the room, hands raised in front of her like a surgeon after scrubbing. “Does this visit mean you’ve found something?”

  He hated to erase the look of hope from her face. “Sorry, not yet. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t realize this was the kind of class you meant. That you were the teacher. I guess I saw you sitting in some boring lecture and we’d sneak away and finish our business early. But you’re busy. I can come back.”

  “I can’t talk now, but I could use another pair of hands. As long as you’re here, can you help?”

  “I don’t know anything about this.” He started inching toward the door, trying not to look at the people in the room, trying to push away the memories they dredged up.

  She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Neither do most of them. It’s therapy more than art. Just offer encouragement.”

  “Hey, Sarah!”

  Randy followed the crackling voice to its source, an elderly woman whose hand trembled as she tried to shape a mound of clay into what Randy could only envision as a differently shaped mound of clay. “I need one of those stick things.”

  “Why don’t you help Mrs. Rasmussen? She had a stroke a few months ago and she needs to use her right arm more. There’s an apron by the sink and tongue depressors on the table—help her hold it and move it along the clay with her.”

  He could feel the color draining from his face. “I’m not sure I can be much help.”

  “Relax. It’s not supposed to end up being a Maria Martinez. It’s the doing that’s important.”

  Forget Gram. Maintain. “Got it.” He rebuilt his wall and went to help Mrs. Rasmussen.

  At seven-thirty, staff escorted the residents from the room. Randy followed Sarah, helping as she collected tools, folded plastic sheets and wiped down tables.

  “You look happy,” he said. “How was work?”

  Her eyes were blue Christmas lights. “I haven’t had so many customers in weeks, even if most of them probably came in out of curiosity. They bought, which is good enough for me right now.”

  “And this? You obviously enjoy it.”

  “Maggie, my neighbor, got me started doing this about three years ago. Lately, it’s the high point of my week.” She started covering the unfinished creations with plastic wrap. “Why don’t you ask your questions while I finish cleaning?”

  “I can help,” Randy said.

  “No, thanks. I need to be doing something,” she said. She turned her eyes to his, and he thought some of the light had dimmed. His gut twisted at the thought he might have caused it.

  Randy retrieved his briefcase, pulled out his notepad and pen. He took a seat at an empty table. “I understand.” He clicked his pen open and printed the date and time on a clean page. “I want to know everything about your store.”

  “There’s not much. After college, David and I managed the shop. Back then, our merchandise was the mass-produced, everyday stuff you could find anywhere. We wanted to add that special something—that’s what we called the shop when we bought out the previous owner. It took a while, but we convinced some of the local craftsmen and artisans to let us carry their work on consignment.”

  “You’d think they’d have jumped at the chance to have someone showcase their work.”

  Sarah collected scraps of clay and dumped them into a large plastic bucket. “About a year later, we found out they’d heard we weren’t reliable. Rumors in the art community, but we proved them wrong.” She added water to the bucket, covered it, and looked at him. “Do you think that might mean something?”

  “I told you, I like to find out as much as possible about a case. I’m looking for common denominators. Go on.”

  “We had the normal business snafus. Little things. Broken merchandise, shipment mix-ups. Things like that happen. I remember some exclusive hand-painted dinnerware that ended up at a rival shop in Cottonwood.”

  “What shop?”

  “Pandora’s. Wait a minute. Anjolie.” She dried her hands and took a seat across from him.

  “What are you talking about?” He could almost see the synapses firing as he waited for her to answer.

  “I don’t know how or if this fits, but Pandora’s is one of our chief competitors. It opened right after we took over our shop. Some of our orders ended up there. And Anjolie—it was her silver that was stolen—showed up right after the robbery yesterday. She pulled the rest of her stuff. Said she got a better offer from Pandora’s. I could understand if she wanted to move her things. We didn’t have a contract.” Her eyes widened. “Do you think Anjolie’s lying about Pandora’s? Do you think she had something to do with the robbery?”

  “I need to pay Anjolie a visit and ask her. What’s her full name?”

  “Anjolie Gaudet.”

  “Do you have her address?”

  “I’ll get it for you.”

  “Was there any kind of pattern to the stuff that was lost or broken?” Randy asked. “Same kind of merchandise, same manufacturer, anything that would connect them?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Any other problems? Unhappy customers? Someone trying to buy you out?”

  “Not really.”

  The way she hesitated told him there was more than she was saying. “Not really, but …?”

  Sarah manipulated a leftover scrap of clay. “When we were trying to expand, David and I needed money. Diana’s husband—he was her fiancé at the time—thought owning part of a gift shop would be a nice wedding present and his investment helped us out. Diana tried playing shopkeeper a couple of times, but between the commute from Portland and fact that it entailed actual work, she stopped caring. Now, it’s strictly a financial relationship. As long as she gets her check every month, she’s satisfied.”

  “You think she wants more?”

  When Sarah locked her blue eyes on him, Randy knew he was dredging up memories she wanted to put away, and every question he asked caused her pain. But, painful or not, doing his job was the way to make things right. He shoved those thoughts deep down where they couldn’t disturb his objectivity.

  “Our will said that if anything happened to both of us, Diana would get the shop. She’s saying that since he’s gone, she deserves half.”

  “Why the sudden interest?”

  “She didn’t get a whole lot after moneybags Scofield divorced her. The house, a small allowance, and her twenty percent of That Special Something. And twenty percent of not much doesn’t even cover her nail appointments. God forbid she should have to get a real job. She keeps telling me to sell, or make it into a Hallmark franchise or something. As if she has a clue how that could happen.”

  Randy heard the bitterness. But he also heard the pride. “You don’t want to do that, do you?”

  Her eyes flashed bright blue. “Never. Things were bad after the accident. I held on. I can ride this out.”

  “I’m sure you will.” He glanced at his notes. “Not much more. You talked about some waylaid shipments, mixed-up orders. Do you remember when the problems started? Before or after your husband’s accident?”

  Sarah’s lips tightened and the muscles in her jaw clenched.

  Damn. He’d hurt her again. Without thinking, he reached across the table to take her hand, catching himself before he did, pushing a lock of hair out of his eyes to disguise his stupidity. “Sorry if this is painful.”

  “No. David’s gone. I have to get used to that. But sometimes … We were so happy … It’s hard …”

  She lifted her head. When their eyes met, his physical response had him shifting in his seat. He was working a case, for God’s sake. “Go on.”

  “I’d say there were always glitches, but I didn’t pay a lot
of attention. David did the bookkeeping. Afterwards, I assumed I was messing up orders because I was such a wreck. But you have to understand, things like this happen. It’s part of the business.”

  Something more hid in there, and it was his job to find it. “What else?”

  She paused, twisting the ring on her finger. “Not much—unless you count the fire.”

  “Fire?” He flipped to a clean notebook page. “Tell me about it.”

  “It happened in January. It wasn’t very big. A short in the electrical system—faulty wiring, overloaded circuits. I didn’t lose much merchandise, but I had to close for almost two weeks while they repaired the damage. Those two weeks cut into my Valentine’s Day profits. And then, I had to fight with the insurance company. They didn’t want to pay the claim.”

  “Did they?”

  “Yes, but I had to have inspectors and adjusters come out three or four times. Seems like there was some discrepancy in the reports. A computer error, they said, once it was straightened out.”

  “Sounds like you’ve overcome some troubles.”

  “I’m sure it will be quiet again tomorrow. But things should pick up once Easter sales get going.”

  “I’m sure they will.” He closed his notebook. “I think the worst is over. Can I do anything else to help? Please?”

  Sarah filled a large plastic dishpan with hot water and started cleaning the sculpting tools. “I guess you can dry. There are towels in that drawer.” She pointed with her chin. “Can I interrogate you now?”

  He laughed. “Fire away.”

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said. “Let me guess. You played basketball in school, right?”

  He chortled and shook his head. “Debate team in high school. I was tall, but totally uncoordinated. Couldn’t get a ball near the hoop if I was standing on a ladder. Rowed in college. No fancy footwork required. Just had to be able to count.”

  “So you’re a six-foot-something cop who doesn’t like doughnuts and you don’t play basketball. Any other surprises?”