Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2003

“Yeah. That was pretty terrible, all right,” he said. “And the papers are giving it space, which doesn’t sit well with the management either.”

“So?” I said.

“So I don’t know.”

“Look, Frank,” I said, deciding to take a hard line, “you can help me crack this case and be a hero, or you can try to hush it up and get nothing but trouble. You’re not on the force anymore, remember?”

I could almost hear the gears grinding in his brain, trying to figure if that made sense. Finally he said, “You seen the log?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well — it’s all those thefts. The Merchants Association complained, so we tried tighter controls and supervision, but stuff is still going.”

“And Judy thought you should call me?”

“I wanted to give it a couple more days.”

“Anything else?”

“Ah... no.”

“All right, then. I’ll see you about eleven.”

We hung up and I went back to the kitchen where I found Ginny emptying a teapot into a large mug. Ginny stood about a foot shorter than I did, and the similarity between us ended at that point. She was thirty-four and looked twenty-five, for one thing, whereas I was forty in both fact and appearance. She’d inherited classic French features from her mother and classic French curves either from her mother or somebody else — maybe her father, who was Latvian — so we didn’t look alike in that way either. Otherwise she had black hair, a fair complexion, an I.Q. of two hundred or so, and a calm and generally reserved manner with only one notable weakness, an irrational attraction to ugly, oversized detectives.

“Did you — how is Judy?” she asked. “Would they tell you?”

“In intensive care,” I said. “Critical but stable is my impression. Still unconscious.”

She stepped over to the table, sat on a kitchen chair, and pushed the waves of hair back from her face. “R. J.,” she said, “I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, but... you have to find this person quickly.”

“You mean Judy’s assailant.”

“Assailant, yes. Stop it at that, before the term becomes murderer. Of Judy — or you. You’re both at risk, I think.”

“And other people, too,” I pointed out. “But, all right — pedal to the metal at Speedway Mall. That’s what I told you last night, in fact. And in answer to the question you haven’t asked yet, the main problem at Speedway is a rash of thefts. Have you looked at those?” I gestured at the security log in front of her.

“I just came to that section, I’m afraid. Come and sit next to me. We’ll look together.”

So I sat and we looked. After a minute or so, Ginny said, “Bring me a piece of paper and a pen, would you, please.” I got them from a drawer.

“Do you see what I’m seeing?” she asked, as she began making notations.

I looked a little more. “Well,” I said, “there are about a hundred stores in Speedway, and I’d guess not over fifteen are on here, but—” I stopped and leafed quickly through the six-page list. “Wow! Orchid Records. Mason’s. Catterson Furs! Ginny — those stores have security sensors at the exits.”

“What?” she said, looking up from her notes.

“You can’t shoplift anything from those stores — or not without a heck of a lot of trouble. Their merchandise has a label or a sealed-on container or an embedded computer chip that sets off an alarm if it isn’t deactivated or removed by a salesclerk.”

“But, it’s those stores and—” she looked down at her notes “—and three others, Slade Jewelers, California Kitchens, and The Wedge, where... And look, look at the dates.”

I looked, we looked, and in five minutes we’d worked out what was happening in pretty clear terms. Someone was targeting those six stores for expensive and in some cases fairly large articles, targeting them over and over, in fact, on Wednesdays and Fridays, if the pattern of Thursday and Saturday reporting meant anything.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I — you’re the expert on this type of thing, but my opinion is that — have there been any arrests?”

“No,” I said. “The last column tells the status. Three or four apprehensions on theft in other stores. Kids, I’d guess — but this doesn’t look like kids.”

“No. To me it looks far more like, oh, a carnival of crime — or organized crime in a very special sense. Someone has analyzed security at Speedway Mall and found a weak spot.”

“Six weak spots. And you’re right about it being professional work, Ginny. The only items taken are fenceable goods. Look at this: fur stole, food processor, diamond bracelet, a box — an unopened box, Ginny — of the latest album by The Grateful Dead. Not that we’d be interested, but...”

“No.” She smiled a rare, sardonic smile before continuing, “Although doubtless it is a popular seasonal gift and already in short supply — unlike the new boxed set of Handel’s Messiah that I’m parenthetically hoping to find under our humble tree. Fortunately for me, though, that album is almost certainly not a fenceable item, and no one could ever accuse it of having anything to do with Christmas.”