Chapter 12
Katherine recalled the place keenly, with great fondness, and the place that now stood in front of her… definitely was not it.
“Oh, rats,” Mrs. Chrysler said.
Rats? said Mr. Scruffles.
No, dear, said Ember. It’s an expression of disappointment, I believe.
“Well, so many other things have changed, Imogene. I suppose it’s to be expected,” Katherine said.
She took in the rest of the street, which now bore an array of specialty shops that were, like this one, furtively fenced or coyly shuttered.
The open patios were gone, replaced mainly by bushy and spiky plantings that didn’t encourage lingering.
“The sign is still here, though,” Mrs. Chrysler said, gazing upward at the carved picture of a honey dipper next to an oozing honeypot.
“Um, Imogene—”
Before Katherine could stop her, her friend was plunging through the shop door.
“Whoa,” Ruben breathed, flushing scarlet, after he’d followed the two ladies inside. “Um, what are we doing in here? Have you told me and I’ve forgotten?”
No one immediately answered. They simply stood frozen inside the threshold, having been met by a veritable forest of imaginative undergarments and an array of other thought-provoking items lining hooks and shelving on the walls.
Mr. Scruffles was trotting merrily up to one of these tantalizing objects, apparently intent on batting it onto the floor.
“It’s a—”
“I know what it is,” Mrs. Chrysler cut off Katherine irritably.
“The sign was a—”
“I know what it was now, all right?”
“Um, ladies?” Ruben ventured again.
“Look, it’s still got the best vantage on the street, all right?” said Mrs. Chrysler.
“For what?” asked Ruben.
“For learning more about the mining operation,” Katherine said.
“For a stakeout. This is Merchants Lane, Ruben. Although I’m not surprised you don’t recognize it.
This is where it all started. Edward Splint’s old office is over there.
” She pointed back through the door they’d just entered while Mrs. Chrysler carried on and bellied up to the counter in the rear of the store, tapping the bell smartly for service.
“Welcome to Honeypot, do you want a personal shopper?” an employee recited flatly, arriving behind the counter from a back room.
When his eyes caught up to his mouth and beheld the wrinkled trio before him, he quickly covered eyes and mouth together.
“Ohmygods, please say no,” he whispered behind his hands.
Katherine regarded him critically. The young man, whose name was Jonesey (it said so on his nametag), had likely considered himself quite free of any and all hang-ups; you had to be, in this line of work.
But somehow this party of visitors struck a raw and twitchy nerve.
He was likely, Katherine suspected, always very respectful of his grandmother.
“No, no. That’s all right, young man,” Mrs. Chrysler said kindly, angling for a better look at his face. Katherine was tempted to peel his fingers open just on principle. “I prefer to shop for these kinds of items by myself.”
“Right, yes.” He withdrew his hands from his face. “I’ll just, uh, go finish up doing the inventory and leave you to it, then,” he said.
“Wait a minute, not so fast,” said Mrs. Chrysler. “I do have a couple of questions for you.”
“Perhaps someone else could help you?” he said, looking quickly about, presumably to find someone else on shift.
“No, no, you’ll do fine. All I want to know is…” She pointed across the street, then turned back to face him. “That space over there, 1402A—does that still belong to the Eagle Heights Development Cooperative?”
The clerk allowed himself a slight sigh of relief. “Yes, I believe so.”
Mrs. Chrysler nodded with satisfaction. “And does a family by the name of Splint run it?”
“I’ve heard they do. I’ve never seen the sister, but the brother’s around all the time.”
“Come in here often, does he?” Mrs. Chrysler waggled her eyebrows in a disconcerting way.
“I-I really can’t say.”
“All right. Do you know what kind of business he does, then?”
“Something to do with real estate, I think?”
“Buying land? Selling land? Building on land?”
“All of that, from what I’ve heard.”
“Perfect,” Mrs. Chrysler said. “You’ve been very helpful, young man. Anything else you can tell me about him?”
“Like what?”
“Oh, anything at all.”
“Not really, ma’am. I just work here.”
“Purchasing habits, then?” Mrs. Chrysler raised her eyebrows.
The clerk squirmed. “That’s against store policy.”
“Fine,” Katherine said, putting the conversation out of its misery. “And if we buy a few things”—she took in the shop’s contents, avoiding Ruben’s wide eyes, and wondered inwardly what those purchases might reasonably be—“how long will you let us just park ourselves by that window?”
“Um… twenty minutes?”
The answer turned out, in practice, to be as long as they wanted. Unabashed senior citizens are hard to shift, impervious even to thoroughly embarrassed or pointed glances.
“Again, what are we doing here?” Ruben asked when they were settled on wooden crates in front of the shop’s black shutters, which provided a better view out than they did in. With an ill-concealed air of nonchalance, he asked, “You frequently shop at this kind of… establishment?”
Katherine flushed. “This is a stakeout, Ruben,” she said, tucking into her bag the silky garment she had ended up hastily pulling off a rack and paying for, figuring she could tailor it into something respectable, or at least more flattering, later.
“Watching how things operate. Learning about a target so you can make a plan. Something that a proper thief does to prep for a heist. We did the same thing over forty years ago.”
“Aha. Then you do know this place well,” Ruben erroneously concluded. He looked curiously around.
“The management’s changed here, Ruben,” Mrs. Chrysler said, fiddling with the object she herself had purchased.
“It was a teashop then.” The item sprang to life with a whir in her fingers and she struggled to hastily relocate the switch that would extinguish its buzzing clockwork.
“Well, that’ll be fun later,” she chuckled after she’d stopped it and tucked the item into her bag.
Ruben’s eyes widened.
Katherine redirected his attention. “Over there,” she pointed, “that’s our target, remember?
That’s where you thought the Heist-Off was?
Where you blew up the safe? That’s Splint’s old office.
His kids, a son and daughter, evidently, run it now.
We’ve got the plop from Eagle Heights, but we need to know more if we’re going to get any leverage for Sister Agatha. ”
Ruben nodded gravely and watched out the window. “So, what are we looking for?”
“Anything and everything,” Mrs. Chrysler answered. “Who goes in. Who comes out.”
“Aha.”
Moments oozed into minutes, which soon melted into an hour.
A dozing Ruben woke with a start when his chin slid off his hand.
Ember was on his lap, curled into a ball.
Mouser was drooling on his shoulder, and the other cats were at his feet, batting about something rubbery.
“So, what are we learning so far?” Ruben asked, trying to mask the fact that he’d been asleep at all.
Mrs. Chrysler’s own eyelids were looking heavy. “Well…” She shifted on her uncomfortable seat. The truth was that nothing much had happened yet. “These things can’t be rushed, you know,” she grumbled.
Katherine sighed. The most interesting thing she’d seen was a squirrel pop out of the gap between two shingles at the Splints’ roofline and scamper up a tree.
Time would pass a lot more pleasantly, she reflected, on a cushioned patio chair with a scone or two.
She stretched her aching back and considered getting out the book she’d brought.
“I can see people moving inside the building,” she said, “but I can’t make out what they look like or what they’re doing. And no one’s come out or gone in yet.”
Mrs. Chrysler assented with a nod and returned to her staring.
Ruben gave up the pretense of even trying.
“Well, as long as we’re waiting,” he said, watching Tilly and Mr. Scruffles play at his feet.
Mr. Scruffles had torn the tag off of something and was tossing the little bit of paper about happily, stamping on the attached string and then flicking it away again.
“How about that story?” Ruben swept up the tag Mr. Scruffles was enjoying in one movement, attracting the cat’s notice.
“About why you quit the business while you were still so young?” He deftly passed the tag to his other hand in a clever sleight that caused the black cat to recoil in shock when Ruben showed his first hand to be empty.
Where is it? Where’d it go? It was just there! Mr. Scruffles said.
It was! Tilly added in similar disbelief. This man doesn’t know any magic, does he?
Katherine glanced at Mrs. Chrysler as she seemed to consider Ruben’s request. The old man opened his hand to reveal the tag, and Mr. Scruffles quickly snatched it away and hustled into a corner after it.
“All right,” Mrs. Chrysler said, but she didn’t go on.
“So,” Ruben said, after a beat. “Why did you give it up?” He looked to Katherine for the answer, but she directed his gaze to her friend with a tilt of her head.
“Sometimes,” Mrs. Chrysler said with a sigh, “you just realize you want something different from life.”
“Like what?” Ruben asked, uncomprehending.
Mrs. Chrysler looked around, and the clerk, watching them from his counter, turned hastily away. “Like blissful peace with the one you love,” she said.
Ruben’s brow stitched. “I was married too, but I don’t think ‘bliss’ ever entered into it. Unfortunately.” He cast his eyes at Katherine a moment. “Must have been someone really special,” he went on, “to make you want to change your whole life like that.”