Killer Pancake

Gentileschi’s features hardened. “Mrs. Schulz, let’s go.”

As we walked back through the china department, I took a new tack. “I hope you told my husband the details of Hotchkiss’s record, if he didn’t know already.”

“You bet.”

“So tell me,” I continued, “how are you going to analyze these films you were talking about? I mean, where are your cameras?”

He gave me a look that told me I’d lost any tactical advantage I’d had. He wagged a finger at me and said, “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, come on.” We started our descent on the escalator. “I’m just wondering how you saw me. I mean, technology must have changed the way you do things over the years.”

Nick Gentileschi puffed out his chest. “Things haven’t changed that much, I can tell you that.” He raised one of those eyebrows. “And we’re talking some years.” He gestured to a protruding area that framed the entrance to the store just inside the doors. The three-sided frame, which looked like a walled-in deck that had been painted the same color as the store walls, was about six feet wide and deep all the way around—up one side of the entrance, spanning the top of the door, and coming down the other side of the entrance. It faced the Mignon counter. About five feet up the horizontal section of the frame, a large vent extended the length of the front. “I can’t tell you how the cameras work, but I can tell you how we used to do most of our security. See that boxed-in area across from the Mignon counter? They decided not to get rid of it when they renovated the store.” I nodded and studied the large, protruding structure as we descended the escalator. I had never even noticed it before. “It’s called a blind,” Gentileschi went on. “We used to sit up there.”

“A blind?” I repeated.

“Yeah, we’d sit in the blind. Like a duck blind, you know? The place where the hunters sit to watch for the ducks. You can see out, but whoever is hunted can’t see in. Anyway, we’d look out through those vents to see what was going on in the store. We’d watch people. Say a woman picks something up, maybe a bottle of perfume. She wants to steal it but she isn’t sure. She hawks all around….” He slitted his eyes and looked from side to side in imitation. “That’s hawking. She could spend ten minutes trying to make up her mind whether she’s gonna swipe it.” He chuckled. “So say she finally doesn’t lift it. That would really piss us off. So we’d squirt her with Windex. Right through that vent on the blind!”

“Why, Nick,” I said demurely, “I never imagined a security guy could get away with that kind of behavior.”

We had reached the first floor. His warm, moist hand shook mine briefly. “You’d be surprised,” he said. He winked roguishly.

And on that happy note, he headed off for men’s suits.

“Gosh, what happened to you?” exclaimed Dusty when I returned to the Mignon counter. She was picking up the last of the plastic boxes and arranging them on a cart. “What were you doing?”

Harriet Wells, who was waiting on a black woman, tilted her head and smiled to acknowledge my return. Dusty and Harriet must have known I wasn’t stealing anything. Why didn’t they speak up in my defense when they saw Stan White leading me away? Maybe they were taught not to trust anyone. Given what had been happening around this mall lately, perhaps they were spooked by anyone acting odd in their domain.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” I told Dusty, “except trying to see if you were free. But you were talking to some guy.” I gave her a naive, questioning look. “A tall blond guy? I mean, you looked as if you were very involved with him.”

She laughed and waved this away. “Harriet did put me down to work through lunch. So if you come over and let me do your face, you can buy something for your sick friend and we can talk, all at the same time. Then if another customer comes along, if you don’t mind, I can wait on him or her, and then get right back to you.”

I was hungry but said that was fine, helped her stack the last of the plastic boxes on the cart, then asked if I could use the phone by the counter. She told me to go ahead, she’d be right back. Then she wheeled the cart away. I called Southwest Hospital and asked if Marla Korman had had her atherectomy yet. Someone at the nurses’ station reported that Marla had not gone yet, and they did not know when she would be going. Typical.

I meandered over to the counter and listened to Harriet tell her customer that, believe it or not, she, Harriet Wells, had just had her sixty-fifth birthday, and just look at what Rejuvenation cream had done for her skin. The black woman put a ninety-dollar bottle of the stuff on her credit card.

“Here we are,” said Dusty brightly. She nipped behind the counter, flipped through a file box, and retrieved a card.

As she was writing my name at the top, I slid onto one of the high stools on my side of the counter and said, “Tell me where the cameras are.”