Without a Trace (6 page)

Luckily we’d arrived early enough that it wasn’t too crowded, and we soon found a free table in the General Nonfiction section. I could see Ned scanning the titles on the shelves as we sat down. He loves to read anything and everything he can get his hands on, and is always looking for new material.

But instead of grabbing a book, he turned his attention to me. “Let’s hear it,” he said simply. “I can tell you’re on the trail of something especially interesting. And not just because you were late.”

“Really? What do you mean?” I asked in surprise.

Instead of answering, he merely pointed at me. I glanced down and belatedly realized that I was still wearing the same clothes I’d had on all day. In my great hurry to get to the movie theater from Simone’s house, I hadn’t ever gotten around to changing for my date.

But unlike Bess, Ned isn’t one to notice clothes too much. So I knew that probably wasn’t what he was talking about.

I put my hand to my hair, wondering if it was that obvious that I hadn’t brushed it since that morning. My fingers encountered something oddly hard and prickly up there.

“Ugh!” I exclaimed, yanking at the strange object.
It turned out to be a short, thorny branch—probably a piece of wild rose cane that had gotten into my hair while I was peering into Simone’s overgrown garden from the rose hedge earlier in the afternoon. I was a little surprised that Bess hadn’t noticed and removed it for me, but not at all surprised that I hadn’t noticed it myself. I’d had a lot more interesting things on my mind all afternoon than my own hair.

Ned grinned. “Either Bess convinced you to try some really weird new fashion statement, or you’re so distracted by some exciting new mystery that you haven’t bothered to glance in the mirror lately.”

“Guilty on the second count,” I admitted, quickly running my hands over my hair to check for any more stray debris. “Let’s order something to eat, and then I’ll tell you all about it.”

Ned nodded. At that moment Susie Lin hurried toward our table with her order pad in hand. Not only is she the head cook, but the main waitress as well.

I glanced at the chalkboard propped up over the cash register, where Susie always writes the daily specials. One of the entrées caught my eye immediately: zucchini fritters.

“Oh!” I said, suddenly remembering the other mystery I was supposed to be investigating. In all the excitement over the theft at Simone’s house, I had nearly forgotten about the vegetable vandal for the
moment. But now I wondered if there could possibly be any connection between the two cases. Hadn’t I already noted the odd coincidence of the zucchini smasher turning up in town on the same day that Simone and Pierre had moved in?

“Hi, Nancy, Ned.” Susie greeted us in her usual quick, clipped voice. “What can I get you this evening?”

Susie is one of those people who never seems to stop moving. She sometimes reminds me of the ball in a pinball machine as she bounces from one end of her long, narrow restaurant to the other, taking orders, bringing food, and clambering up the rolling ladders set into tracks in the bookcases to fetch books for people from the higher shelves.

“The shrimp enchiladas sound good, don’t they, Nancy?” Ned commented as he looked over at the Specials board.

“They do sound yummy,” I agreed. “But I think I’m going to try the zucchini fritters.”

Susie’s eyes widened, and she flung up her hands so violently that the pen she was holding went flying. “Zucchini?” she exclaimed. “Please, don’t even
talk
to me about zucchini!”

I was startled by
Susie’s violent reaction. Had she been a victim of the zucchini smasher, too? Maybe I had been too quick to categorize that case as merely a pesky problem between neighbors.

“Wait,” I said quickly, ignoring Ned’s surprised look. “Have you been having, uh, zucchini-related problems lately?”

Susie sighed loudly, pushing back a strand of her long, straight black hair. “Aye-yie-yie, I’m sorry, Nancy,” she said. “It’s been a long day. And yes, part of the reason has to do with zucchini, believe it or not.”

“What do you mean?” My mind was racing, already imagining some sort of vast zucchini conspiracy. But I forced such thoughts out of my head as I listened to Susie’s answer. Better to keep an open mind and
work from the facts, not jump to conclusions.

“It all started at lunchtime yesterday, when I was writing up the dinner menu for the next couple of days.” Susie gestured toward the Specials board. “I’d just written down the zucchini fritters when Bradley Geffington came in. You know him, don’t you? He manages the bank next door.”

“Of course,” I said, and Ned nodded, although Susie’s question was probably mostly rhetorical. In a small city like River Heights, practically everyone knows everyone else.

“Bradley comes in here a lot for lunch,” Susie went on, leaning on the table as she talked. “In fact, he usually takes his break early so he can get here before it gets crowded—and before we run out of cheese biscuits.”

Ned smiled appreciatively and nodded. Susie’s cheese biscuits are legendary.

“So yesterday he was a little later than normal. The place was packed, so he stopped near the counter to look for a table. He saw what I was doing—like I said, I was writing up the dinner board and I’d just written down the zucchini fritters. Well, you would have thought I’d written that I would be serving live squirrels with cyanide sauce for dinner!” Susie looked annoyed as she recalled what had happened. “Bradley started ranting and raving. At first I thought he was
angry because there were no free tables or something. But he kept saying zucchini this, zucchini that—I still don’t know what he was going on about, because a moment later Harold Safer from the cheese shop came in. The two of them started arguing and yelling at each other until I was afraid one of them was going to take a swing at the other. I finally had to kick them both out so they wouldn’t scare off my other customers.”

“Weird,” Ned commented. “I thought those two were pretty good friends. They live right next door to each other.”

I had to agree that there was something weird about what Susie had just said. Why hadn’t Mr. Safer mentioned running into Mr. Geffington when I’d talked with him earlier? Had he simply forgotten, or had he kept the encounter from me on purpose?

“But that’s not all,” Susie continued, rolling her eyes. “I was still trying to figure that one out a couple of hours later, when some woman I didn’t know with a French accent came in. She’s having some kind of party tomorrow night, and she wanted to order a bunch of my baked goods and canapés and stuff for it. When she saw the zucchini fritters on the menu, she started babbling about
courgettes
and gardens, and insisted on buying up as many fritters as I could make for her right then.” She shrugged. “I told her they’d probably be a little stale by tomorrow
night, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“That was Simone Valinkofsky,” I told Susie as Ned shot me another surprised glance. “She just bought the Peterson place on Bluff Street.”

“Well, I guess the fritters were popular, because right after she left with my whole supply, three or four other customers came in wanting to order some. Seems they’d heard about them from people who’d tried them at lunch. And on top of that, I had the usual run of little kids looking at the menu and yelling about how zucchini tastes like boogers! The worst were those loud Callahan twins and their little friend Owen. The three of them carried on until their mothers dragged them out without ordering.” She sighed loudly. “I know, it sounds silly to complain about this. It just seems like everyone in town is suddenly getting weird about zucchini.”

“Tell me about it,” I muttered under my breath, though I couldn’t help smiling at Susie’s story about the zucchini-hating little kids.

After her tirade, Susie seemed to feel much better. “Anyway, there are no zucchini fritters left,” she told Ned and me. “But the enchiladas are excellent tonight, if I do say so myself.”

“Great. We’ll take two orders,” Ned said, glancing over at me. I nodded, and Susie rushed off toward the kitchen.

Tapping my fingers on the table, I stared at the top shelf of the bookcase across the way, though I wasn’t really seeing the rows of books about animals and pet care. I was thinking about the zucchini case. Did anything Susie had just said have anything to do with the vegetable vandal, or was the zucchini connection just a coincidence? I wasn’t sure yet, though that sixth sense of mine was tingling again.

Suddenly I noticed that Ned was staring at me, smiling his familiar patient smile.

“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he inquired, arching one eyebrow at me. “Or do I have to wait and read about it in the paper like everyone else in River Heights?”

I giggled. “Sorry. Brain in overdrive,” I apologized. “Believe it or not,
two
cases turned up this afternoon.”

I quickly filled him in on the zucchini smasher and then on Simone’s robbery. Ned listened intently, not saying much until I was finished. Then he leaned back in his chair. “Weird,” he said. “Any theories yet on who’s behind either crime?”

“Well, the zucchini case suddenly seems to have plenty of leads and clues now that everyone is talking about zucchini. But no one has any real motive,” I replied. “And the Fabergé egg case has an obvious motivation:That egg has to be worth a ton. But there are no clues or leads. Really, almost anyone in town
could have committed either crime. The door to Simone’s house was wide open when the egg was taken, and of course Mr. Geffington’s garden isn’t exactly Fort Knox either. In both cases, it’s a matter of good timing.”

“Good point,” Ned said. “But the right timing can be a tricky thing. Even in the middle of the night, someone might have looked out the window and seen whoever it was out there in the garden bashing vegetables. And the egg thief was taking an even bigger chance, sneaking into that house in broad daylight. He could have no way of knowing whether someone might return at any moment and catch him.”

“Right. In fact, the French guys think that almost happened.” I furrowed my brow. Something about what Ned had just said made me think of something else. “Unless, of course, that person
did
know just where everyone was. Or wasn’t worried about being caught in the house.”

“What do you mean?” Ned played with his fork, tapping it softly on his water glass. “Are you thinking it was an inside job?” Ned’s not into mysteries in the same way I am, but he’s more than smart enough to follow along when I’m in full hypothesizing mode.

“Maybe,” I said. “The guys never actually said that they all returned at the same time from their tour of the neighborhood. In fact, they said something about
a couple of them going inside—Jacques and René, I think it was—while the other two were still outside. And of course, Simone beat them all home according to what they told me.” It was hard to imagine nice, friendly, intelligent Simone being the thief. But stranger things had happened. If the egg was insured, she would get a lot of money for its loss.

“Of course, it still might have been an outsider who just saw an opportunity and went for it,” Ned commented. “But it sounds like you need to talk to Simone and the guys a little more.”

“Definitely,” I agreed. “I’m not ruling out the passing stranger thing yet, but it’s just too coincidental that Pierre’s friends all turned up about an hour or two before the egg was stolen. I’m glad I’ll have the chance to talk with them and observe them tomorrow night at the party.”

“Party?” Ned repeated, as I belatedly realized I’d forgotten to tell him about the get-together.

Before I could fill him in, though, another voice spoke up from just behind my right shoulder.

“Party? What party?”

I glanced up and
saw a pretty, dark-haired girl standing behind me. I sighed.

“Hello, Deirdre,” I said.

Deirdre Shannon is my age, and her father is also a very successful local attorney. And we’ve known each other forever. Aside from that, the two of us don’t have a whole lot in common. I always like to see the best in people, even the criminals I catch. But there’s not much
best
to see in Deirdre as far as I can tell—although Bess would probably suggest
best dressed.
Since Deirdre seems to care more about her wardrobe than she does about most people, she would probably take that as a compliment.

Now she was standing there at our table, completely blocking the aisle of the cramped restaurant
and smiling flirtatiously at Ned as if Generic Boyfriend #37 wasn’t standing right there next to her. Deirdre seems to have a new guy on her arm every time I see her, so it would be a waste of time trying to keep track of the specifics.

“Nancy,” Deirdre responded coldly. Then she turned a brilliant smile in Ned’s direction. “Hey there, Ned. Did I hear you say you’re going to a party this weekend? Anything fun I should know about?”

Ned shrugged. “Sorry, Deirdre, it’s not really that kind of party,” he said politely. “It’s just a get-together for some of Nancy’s new neighbors.”