"Not going to swim a few more laps, Anne?" Jack Mac Clarey asked. "Good way to work off yesterday's dinner."
"I can do that at the mall," his niece Anne Thorne said. "Jason is on duty at the fire station, so it's me, Drea and Sharon against the shopping frenzy."
"Well, it is the slow time of year for us."
Anne hurried inside. It may have been the L.A. Basin, but it was still a November morning. She hastily shed her damp swimsuit and dried herself off. A set of underwear was pulled from her drawer without seeing it. A t-shirt and denim mini skirt were next, and for shoes, she decided on sneakers as she would be on her feet most of the day.
On her return downstairs, she met with two other women, Jack's wife Sharon and Drea Rogers. Anne had lived with her aunt and uncle since her mother's death many years before. Drea on the other hand, had a very strained relationship with her natural parents. Fortunately, Drea had good relationship with her stepmother, who had always treated Drea as a friend. The two were guests for Thanksgiving dinner, but Drea spent the night so she could more readily join Anne and Sharon on their shopping excursion.
"Not joining us today, Jack" Drea asked.
"And miss the Oklahoma-Nebraska game?" Jack said. "Four generations of Mac Clareys were born in Oklahoma."
"Only on account of your brother," Sharon teased.
"You worked at Bullock's before we were married and your books were published. You know more than anybody here that it'd be better to wait until tonight to go."
"I know, but I wanted to spend some time Drea and Anne, the same way you want to give Mike the proper instruction about football. Lord knows all three of you need some time away from detective work. Besides, if you think today is going to be bad, you ought to try the weekend before Christmas."
"Besides," Anne put in, "she only decided to come if I did the driving.
"Let's go," Drea urged. "It's almost nine and it's probably already crazy."
By some miracle, there were some empty parking spaces. They far were from the mall building, but none were averse to walking. It would get them inside faster than going in circles for ten minutes looking for somebody to pull out.
"One lap of each floor, no go backs if we pass something," Sharon said as they made their way through the parking lot.
"Okay by me," Drea said.
"Same here," Anne put in.
They strode through the entrance, stopping only long enough to put money into the Salvation Army kettle. The first stop was a bookstore. Sharon wanted to get something for Mike. At nine, he was probably ready for the Hardy Boys, but Sharon thought here were enough detectives in the family. In addition to her husband and niece, her brother was a detective for the San Diego police department, and her sister was a private detective working out of Washington, D.C.
She found some suitable books, and made her way to the cash register. As she approached, she collided with a male customer. After he looked Sharon in the eye, he did a double take and examined the photo on the inside flap of the dust jacket.
"My wife is a big fan-'' he began.
Sharon held up a hand. "You're not the first," she said and pulled a pen from her purse. "What's her name?"
When that chore was out of the way, the trio made their way to the nearest anchor store, which happened to be Sears. The soon encountered an old friend of Sharon's from her time at Bullock's. Carrie Simmons was now an assistant manager and greeted her friend cordially. "Carrie?" called a cashier. "I can't get an answer from the operators!"
Just then, Carrie's walkie-talkie radio came to life. "Carrie, this is Hank in A.P. I sent Jackie down to the operators about fifteen minutes ago and I haven't seen her or heard from her since."
"What's A.P.?" Anne asked.
"Asset Protection," Carrie answered. "Security."
The four women made their way down to the operator's office. On arrival, they were shocked to find three women seated on the floor. One was about fifty, another about Drea and Anne's age, the third maybe eighteen. All had a strip of duct tape over their mouth and tape around their ankles. Their wrists were also bound. Without a word, Drea and Anne were beside the captives and trying to release them.
Once the three were released, Drea thought she recognized one of the three. "How do you know Jackie?" Carrie asked.
"College," Anne said. "She and I were in a few criminology classes together."
"You're right," Jackie Haskell said. "I met you a few times. Drea right?"
"The cash box," the older operator said as she pointed to an empty drawer.
"Rosa, could you and Kayla go over things in the main office with Jackie?" Carrie said. "I'll take over here. Helluva thing to happen on Black Friday."
"Black Friday?" Drea wondered.
"The day after Thanksgiving," Sharon said. "The Christmas rush is often the difference between a loss for the year, or finishing in the red, and a profit for the year, or finishing in the black."
"Drea and I are private detectives," Anne said. "Is there anything we can do to help?"
"I don't see how it could hurt," Carrie replied.
Due to the number of people involved, the session was held in a training room, the kind where newly hired employees saw training videos. There they met the head of A. P., (Asset Protection) Hank Jackson. Jackson was a muscular former college defensive end who somehow lacked what was needed to make it in the NFL. He had a tape recorder handy. "We were just going about the daily routine when the two of them came in," Rosa said. "They had guns and wore stocking masks."
"Do you agree Kayla?" Jackson asked.
"Yes," the young woman replied. "One funny thing, ya know, only one of them talked."
"I had seen two people enter the dock area, on the monitors," Jackie said. "I headed down here quick as I could, but didn't catch them. Then I realized how close I was to the operators and headed this way. They'd just finished cleaning out the drawer when I arrived. They hit me over the head, then tied me up."
"Wasn't anybody on the loading dock?" Drea asked.
"Because we need all the receivers at merchandise pick up," Jackson replied.
"Sounds like whoever pulled this off knew some of the geography of the store," Anne said. "Not to mention the fact you keep some of the cash here."
"We do it so large denomination bills can be changed with going to the store's vault," Jackie explained.
"A Disgruntled employee," Drea suggested. "Or somebody who was fired recently."
"We had a guy fired a couple month ago," Jackie said. "He was slipping stuff out the loading dock."
"These two were women," Rosa said.
"That's right."
There was a brief pause as they pondered what to do next.
"How long would it take to learn how things work around here?" Anne asked.
"I don't understand what you're getting at," Jackie said.
"I do," Drea said. "You think somebody might have taken a job just to case the place?"
"Exactly!"
"From what I've noticed, about two or three weeks," Rosa said.
"It was that way for me," Kayla confirmed.
"Then that's the way to go," Anne said. "Let's check for somebody who worked here for, say, somewhere between two weeks and a month."
"How about Sandy?" Rosa asked.
Jackie excused herself to got to the personnel file and pulled one for a Sandra Sue Abbot. "Started September the 25th of this year, quit abruptly October 23," she reported. "She said Bullock's made a better offer from an application she had filled out the same time she did for us."
"That one's easy to check out," Drea observed.
A quick phone call to Bullock's confirmed no such person worked there. "Perhaps she works at a different Bullock's," Sharon suggested.
"I doubt it," Jackie said. "She live about five minute from here."
"Have they hung up?" Anne asked, pointing to the phone.
"No." She turned her attention to the phone "Hold it, I think somebody has something to say."
"Ask them if they had somebody familiar with the cash system who worked briefly there and them supposedly left for a better paying job."
Jackie relayed the message, then confirmed Anne's suspicions, "There's somebody named Susan Sandra Abbot, her start and end dates are about a week before the Sandra's."
"Sisters?" Sharon wondered.
"Probably," Drea said.
"We have a photo of her," Jackie said. "They asked us to fax them a picture."
"Do it." Jackson ordered. "And fax it to the other stores in the mall, and to mall security."
The photo was removed from the file and faxed to various places in the mall. During the time it took to send the faxes, Sharon wondered aloud if they might not be too late stop the thieves.
Anne thought about it for a while then said "Remember that time we went Christmas shopping and we had to take stuff to the car?"
"That's right," Sharon said. "You still had the Cavalier. We got overloaded with stuff, so we dropped it off in the trunk and went back in for more. We had somebody furious at us who wanted to take the parking space."
"So you think these people might drop the stuff in their car and come back in?" Drea asked.
"It's possible," Anne said. "Today all you would do is blend into the crowd, which would only serve to slow you down anyway."
"They're armed." Kayla remembered.
"So am I," Anne said. She patted her, purse, snug at the right hip, with a long strap over the left shoulder. When all the big anchor stores were notified, all their security departments and mall security had one walkie-talkie tuned to the same channel.
After some time, a message came over the radio stating the suspects were entering Bullock's. "That's the nearest big store," Jackie observed.
"They may or may not be following a pattern," Drea said.
"We can always figure that out later," Anne said. "Let's go."
In a few minutes, Anne, Drea, and Jackie were on their way to Bullock's, making the best time they could in light of the crush of shoppers. "Anything new?" Jackie asked her radio as they entered the store.
"No," was the answer. "They're on the wrong floor, making like legitimate shoppers."
More time passed, then the radio reported the suspects heading downstairs, to where the three were. A longer pause occurred, then another message. "I lost them! I was distracted by somebody grabbing watches at the jewelry counter, and I lost them."
"What's the quickest way to cash drop?" Jackie asked.
"You with a blonde and a brunette, both tall?"
"Yes."
"There's a set of double doors behind you, beneath a camera. Got trough those doors and turn left."
The three women raced through the door and turned left, with Anne in the lead. They found the cash room, and the two suspects in stocking masks. Their backs were to the door, as they were busy tying the women inside. "Hold it right there," Anne said calmly, with the barrel of her .32 automatic at the suspect's head.
Soon, other security people were on the scene and Susan and Sandra Abbot were in handcuffs. The two women in the cash room were released and the tapes that had been placed over their mouths were removed. After Drea was dropped off, and Sharon and Anne were back home they related the story to Jack.
"Fascinating," he said. "You didn't charge them anything, did you?"
Anne laughed. "Oh no. But we did get a hundred bucks worth of gift certificates from the stores. And believe me, we put them to good use!"
THE END