Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Wash ’N’ Wonder looked like the kind of place where socks went missing.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead in that particular frequency that suggested they’d been doing it for twenty years and resented every minute.
A wall of dryers tumbled away on the left, throwing off waves of hot, chemical-scented air.
The vending machine in the corner had a handwritten sign taped to it that read Out-of-Order.
Ruth walked in like she owned the place, a basket of neatly folded laundry balanced on one arm. Behind her came Nans, then Helen, then Lexy, and finally Ida, who was carrying a basket that contained a jumble of clothes including a cardigan with what appeared to be a gravy tidal wave down the front.
Lexy looked around at the plastic chairs and the dripping spigots and the man asleep on a bench in the corner, hat over his face.
“This is a perfectly normal errand,” Ruth announced to no one in particular.
“Is it though?” Lexy said.
“Load the machines. Don’t make eye contact with the back wall.”
There was a man already sitting in the row of plastic chairs. Back facing the door. Newspaper up. He was reading the classifieds with the focused intensity of a man who absolutely was not reading the classifieds. He hadn’t looked up when they walked in. He didn’t look up now.
Ruth set her basket on the sorting ledge and began pulling things out with the calm efficiency of a woman doing exactly what she’d come here to do.
Ida put her basket down, unzipped her purse, and produced a travel-size can of stain remover.
“Ida—“ Ruth started.
“What? I have a stain.”
“Lower your voice,” Ruth hissed.
“I’m whispering.”
The man behind the newspaper did not react. He turned a page.
Ruth loaded two machines, fed them quarters, and sat in the plastic chair directly back-to-back with the newspaper man. She did not look at him. She looked at the washing machines.
The others settled in on either side of her, Nans at one end, Helen next, then Lexy, then Ida, who had somehow produced a package of crackers and was eating it with focused intent.
“You’re late.” The voice came from behind Ruth, flat, unhurried, not loud.
Nans studied her cuticles. Lexy looked at the spinning drum in front of her.
“Thank you for agreeing to speak with us,” Ruth said, in the same tone she used to open town committee meetings.
“I’m not speaking with you. I’m sitting behind you. There’s a difference.”
Ruth kept her eyes on the machines. “We’re looking for a particular piece. Porcelain cat, ornate bronze base, older piece. We want to know if it’s moving.”
The newspaper didn’t lower. “Cat.”
“Porcelain. About two feet tall, the base is distinctive — leaf-and-scroll casting, heavier than it looks.”
Mickey was quiet for a moment. A dryer buzzed across the room. The man in the corner with the hat shifted slightly and went back to sleep.
“Nothing,” Mickey said. “Nobody’s floated it. No whisper, no buyer, no back-room chatter. If someone’s trying to unload it, they’re not using any channel I know.”
Ruth absorbed that. “Which means?”
“Which means either they don’t know what they have, or they do know, and they’re sitting on it.”
“How long do people usually sit on something hot?”
“Depends how nervous they are.” Another page turned.
“Smart play is a storage unit. Pull it off the market for a few months, let things cool, then sell it somewhere far enough away that nobody recognizes it. Half the stolen goods in this county spend three months in a climate-controlled box before they go anywhere.”
Nans leaned forward slightly, elbows on her knees, still facing the machines. “You own storage units.”
“I own a lot of things.”
“Do any of them have cameras?”
The newspaper lowered two inches. Lexy caught a slice of Mickey’s profile — sharp jaw, reading glasses, the expression of a man who was recalculating. The newspaper went back up.
“All of them,” he said. “If somebody hauls that cat through one of my gates, I’ll know about it. I’ll be in touch.”
“Appreciated,” Ruth said.
A beat of silence. The machines hummed. Then Mickey muttered, with the weary specificity of a man airing a genuine grievance, “You know what kills me? Half the town is storing junk in those units they couldn’t sell at a yard sale with a free-puppy sign.
I got one woman in 14B — broken lamps, ceramic chickens, and six years of bad decisions.
Unit looks like a therapy session fell over. ”
Ruth kept her voice neutral. “Who?”
The newspaper dipped. Just once. Just enough. “Trash-to-Cash Tina. Two payments behind and one motivational post away from losing the whole unit at auction.”
The name hit the row like a stone dropped in standing water. Lexy pressed her lips together. Nans looked at the floor.
Ida, however, was not made for subtlety.
“Ha!” The sound came out bright and sharp, bouncing off the tile walls and the metal machines and the sleeping man across the room, who startled awake and knocked his hat off. “I knew that woman had debtor energy. The way she haggles at the—”
Every head in the laundromat swiveled toward them.
The sleeping man stared. A teenage girl on her phone looked up. A woman folding towels near the door stopped mid-fold.
Ruth’s spine went rigid.
Nans turned to Helen and said, in a carrying, exasperated voice, “I told you this blouse could not go in hot water.”
Helen, God bless her, didn’t miss a beat. “I followed the label exactly.”
“The label says cool. You said ‘close enough.’”
“I said slightly warm.”
“It’s pink, Helen. It was white this morning.”
Lexy pressed her hand flat against her mouth to keep from laughing.
The woman with the towels went back to folding. The teenager lost interest. The sleeping man found his hat and settled back in.
Behind the newspaper, barely audible over the dryers: “Amateurs.”
Ruth waited a full thirty seconds before speaking again. “Can you flag it if the unit goes to auction? Before the notice goes public?”
“I can do that.”
“And if anyone brings in a cat—”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be in touch.”
Another pause. The newspaper folded with the crisp efficiency of a man declaring a meeting adjourned.
“If anyone asks,” Mickey said, “I’ve never seen any of you in my life.”
Ida turned just slightly toward the wall. “That stings, Mickey. I feel like we’ve really connected today.”
“Take your bleach and go.”