Trouble in Paradise - [6]

Bailey peered at it. “Hard to tell just by looking. Might be blood, but it could be dirt.”

Toni called out to the salesgirl through the doorway. “Where’s the store owner?”

As the person most likely to know the layout of the mall and where all the doors were in this store, the owner made for an attractive suspect.

“At home, probably. She doesn’t come in much.”

She. A woman was less likely to be a kidnapper, but then again Tammy Susie was a pretty small target, even if she was, as Erica intimated, a tad chunky. “Why not?” I asked.

The girl shrugged. “It’s hard for her to get around. Grieta’s pretty old.”

Old. But to this girl that might mean thirty-nine. “How old?”

“We just threw her a party for her eighty-first birthday.”

Eighty-one was a little too old to handle the kidnapping. At least, without help.

“Does anyone work here besides you?” I asked.

“No. Not anymore. Renzo, that’s Grieta’s nephew, used to work on the weekends, but he just left for school up in Amherst.”

“How’s the store doing? Sales good?” Bailey asked.

I knew she was fishing around for motive. If the store was going under, an owner might get desperate enough to collaborate in a kidnapping scheme for some quick cash.

“Sales are okay…”

The way she trailed off told me sales were nothing to write home about. Maybe we were onto something.

“Okay… but not good,” I said. “Is Grieta maybe a little strapped for money?”

“Grieta? Strapped for money?” The girl laughed. “Her husband left her a fortune. This store’s just a hobby.”

I won’t lie. The owner wasn’t looking like our best suspect.

“Do you remember seeing anyone else in the store at the time the little girl was here?” Toni asked.

“I think the lady who works for Tammy Susie was here. I’m pretty sure I showed her a pair of Tahitian pearl earrings.”

Tahitian pearls are not cheap. That Erica has nice taste. And I bet she’d love to hear that she works “for” Tammy Susie. Not to mention the fact that the salesgirl had called her a “lady”-teenage shorthand for “old.” It was probably best that Erica had stayed outside. “Did anyone else come into the store?” I asked.

The girl frowned, then looked up at the ceiling. I watched her eyes move back and forth for a few seconds, as she played back her mental video. “It’s possible someone walked in and then walked out without my seeing them. But if you mean someone who could’ve gotten past me and into the dressing room area without my noticing, no way.”

We’d reached the bottom of this well, and it was bone-dry. I asked Bailey to collect Erica and meet Toni and me outside the newly discovered back door.

After a few minutes, Erica and Bailey came into view. Even if I hadn’t been looking for them, I’d have noticed Erica. She held her head down and shot furtive sidelong glances at the crowd around her as she walked. She may as well have been wearing a sign around her neck saying, I JUST DID SOMETHING HORRIBLY WRONG. I told her as much and warned her to chill out. Then I showed her the bracelet and told her where we’d found it.

Erica paled. “That’s Tammy Susie’s. But I don’t understand. If even the salesgirl didn’t know about that back door, then how could some stranger figure it out? You said it was hidden by a mirror.”

Apparently Harvard hadn’t been a complete waste. “Obviously, whoever took Tammy Susie out of there knew the lay of the land. Maybe the owner’s nephew told someone about it.” It was just a guess but, all things considered, not a bad one if I did say so myself. “But the salesgirl didn’t see anyone else in the store. So whoever took Tammy Susie came in through that secret door and left with her the same way.”

“I didn’t notice any security cameras in the store, did you?” Toni asked.

“No,” I said. “You see any cameras that might’ve picked up activity outside the shops on your way here?” I asked Bailey.

She shook her head. “Nada. We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way: canvass the area and ask whether anyone’s seen her.”

Toni added, “And hope to get very, very lucky.”

Finding the hidden door and the bracelet had a sobering effect on all of us. With the last vestiges of hope that Tammy Susie had skipped out on her own now pretty much obliterated, we moved with greater urgency, working the shops most likely to be on the kidnapper’s escape route, showing Tammy Susie’s photo and asking if anyone had seen her.

But we kept getting the same response: “No, sorry,” or just a shake of the head.

I looked at my cell phone. We’d been at it for only one hour, but the pressure of time passing was making me sweat. We couldn’t put off notifying the police for much longer. The only thing that kept me from insisting on doing it right now was the knowledge that we were already way ahead of them. At this point, if we called in the police, they’d only waste precious minutes redoing all of our legwork. The best thing to do now was hit every place in the immediate vicinity that we-mainly Erica, who knew Tammy Susie and the area-could think of. Given our lack of success so far, that wouldn’t take long.