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

She’d been listening, I think, but she’d also been looking down at the handkerchief in her hand. She finally raised her head, saying, “You mean, I suppose, that I kept back the insurance claim. I didn’t, actually, although I was going to. Mrs. Siwinski had made an appointment for the previous Friday morning to see me regarding an unspecified complaint concerning mall security. That was the morning after the hit-and-run. I was so busy with the usual Christmas uproar that the fact that she didn’t come in didn’t register — I had two or three crises that ate up her appointment time and my lunch hour, too. The insurance form didn’t arrive in the mail until Monday, and that was when I realized that the temp who missed the appointment was the woman who had been run over in the parking lot.

“I felt very neglectful. The Christmas Temps were my program until this year, and I had a hunch that Barb, good as she was—” Judy paused to look at Sammons. “—good as she was, would not think to send flowers or a get-well card from Speedway Management. Somehow I’m the one who always does those things. Also, one look at the form told me I had to call the hospital for information, and when I did I was shocked to hear that she had died — and that the cause of death was being withheld until the medical examiner’s report was finished.

“This was all very grim to me, and it came right on top of a meeting with the Merchants Association about the shoplifting problem. The next day I called the hospital to see if they’d heard the cause of death yet, and I was told, rather indiscreetly, I suppose, that she’d been smothered and it was a police matter.”

Judy took a long drink of water before she went on. “Hearing that, I got — well, I know now that I went off the deep end. I marched over to Frank’s office — I hope you forgive me, Frank — and laid out this... this scenario, I suppose, where some security people were doing the shoplifting and Mrs. Siwinski discovered it and was killed before she could tell the mall management about it. Frank and I hadn’t seen eye to eye on the shoplifting all along, and I’m afraid I said some stupid things and we parted on bad terms.” She looked at Malin with an appeal in her eyes.

He shrugged and said, “Hey, forget it. I mean... if you’d been right, it would be different, you know, but there obviously was a gang involved, so I knew you were wrong. I felt a lot worse about you getting shot than about what you said, except — I’m glad you know the truth.”

“So anyway,” I said to Judy, “then you called me.”

“Yes. But I did something else that seemed, well, unimportant at the time, but probably wasn’t, from what you’ve been saying. After I called you I spent half an hour unloading my frustrations on Barb Becker, and I, well, I couldn’t bring myself to accuse security personnel to anyone but Frank, so I just said something about how I had a suspicion that the shoplifting might be the work of mall employees.”

“Which was exactly the wrong remark to make — right,” I said. “We know that part of the story from Barb. She went home at five while you stayed on, and she had a lengthy argument with Mike Cooksey about the whole affair in which your suspicions played a prominent role. And at that point Cooksey panicked completely. My guess is that Tom Alton had told Mike that murder wasn’t on the program and if he got caught he was on his own, so he went in for more murder to cover himself.

“I checked the custodial work schedule on a hunch and discovered that, the night before you were shot, Cooksey had been assigned to clean the security office. He’s just the kind of guy to nose around in the drawers at the counter for no good reason and come across the pistol being held there for pickup. We know for a fact that Tuesday at around six thirty he was in the security office making a complaint about minor vandalism to his car. On one of these occasions, but probably the second, he stole the gun.

“What we know for sure is that he was lurking around the management office an hour or so later in his custodian’s uniform, and when he saw you head to the ladies’ room, he followed you in, and...”

“I don’t remember it at all,” Judy said. “You could be talking about someone else.”

“You were very lucky,” Ginny remarked, speaking for the first time, “although it may not seem that way. Mike Cooksey had probably never fired a pistol before, so even at close range he hit you in nonvital spots, and since the pistol only contained two rounds, he couldn’t follow up from even closer. And R. J. found you very quickly, too.”