Killer Pancake

It was nine-fifteen. As I climbed into the van, the curious voices rocketing around in my brain began shooting off again. What could that camera above the Mignon counter record? What did the printouts and the ledger show? If Shaman Krill was under arrest, what harm could it do if I went down to the store and just looked around a little bit? If I could be there when Prince & Grogan opened, maybe I could snoop uninterrupted. If somebody like Stan White bothered me, I could use as my excuse the fact that I was looking for the receipt that Frances was so furious I’d lost.

I revved the van and took off for the mall. When I arrived, I realized that people were as reluctant to shop on the morning of July the fifth as they were to go to church. I felt foolish going into Prince & Grogan when the doors were finally unlocked. The place was virtually empty.

When I arrived at the department store offices, I announced to the woman behind the credit window: “I need to see Lisa in accounts payable. Is she in yet?”

“I don’t know. You can check.”

Lisa was not in. I rifled through the stacks of printouts on her office floor until I came to the one marked Cosmetics. I scanned each of the folded pages, but they yielded only columns of numbers, and then rows of numbers across from the columns under headings like YTD. Doggone it.

Determined, I picked up the accordion-folded sheaf, slipped the printout under my blouse, and headed out of Lisa’s office. If I compared the printout to the ledger, maybe it would all make sense. Hugging the printout to my body, I rode down the escalator.

The Mignon counter looked as if a bomb blast had hit it. Tape held together the web of remaining glass. Plywood covered the bare spots. The broken blind was also haphazardly covered with strips of plywood. Harriet Wells, her blond hair frothed up in another of her twists, her Mignon uniform crisp, was tidying up. She looked up at me with a surprised, happy face.

“You’re the last person I expected to see here!” she said with a high, tinkly laugh. She sat on her stool beside the counter and scowled. “This is always a slow morning.”

I shifted the printout around and said, “Listen, Harriet, I’m looking for a receipt that I might have dropped in here the other day, when Nick fell—” She tilted her head at me appraisingly, then closed her eyes and shuddered. “—anyway,” I went on, “the purchase wasn’t for me, it was for someone else, and now they’re wanting the receipt, and blaming me that I lost it.”

Before she could answer, a male customer came up to the far side of the counter and began to test perfumes. Harriet slid off her stool, came over to the counter and reached underneath for a Tupperware container of muffins.

“Are you hungry?” she asked with a bright smile.

My stomach reminded me that I had had quite a bit of caffeine and nothing substantial in the last three hours. “Of course. Especially for something you’ve baked.”

“These are made with sour cream,” she confessed as she took the top off the container. “But see if you can guess the other ingredient. You’re so good at that.”

I took a bite. Sour cream, though fattening, was a good ingredient for keeping things fresh. I even had a pound cake recipe that required that the finished cake be wrapped for twenty-four hours before being served. The muffin was buttery, rich, and delicious. It was flecked with tiny bits of green that tasted like mint.

“Can’t tell what it is,” I said, then looked down at the customer testing perfumes. It was Reggie Hotchkiss. My heart sank.

“Okay, Harriet,” he crowed. “Tell me what was so important you had to see me on a Sunday morning.”

“Look in the trash, if you want,” Harriet said over her shoulder. “This shouldn’t take long … I never tell Hotchkiss a thing. You can try in front of the counter too, although the cleaning crew’s been in to vacuum up all the glass and … you know.”

Did I ever. I scooted behind the counter and slipped the computer paper out of my blouse. What a relief. I just hoped Harriet hadn’t seen it When Reggie quizzed Harriet and sprayed one cologne on his right arm, the other on his left, I looked up at the security camera. From where it was positioned, it could take in the entire front of the counter, the cash register—at right angles to the counter—and the file cabinets and storage areas behind the counter.

Harriet was murmuring questions to Reggie, and he replied more expansively and loudly to each inquiry. Eventually he began to yak about perfume, citrus versus floral, pine versus patchouli. He seemed to be ignoring me, but I’d seen him do that before. I took another bite of muffin.