Suspicion. Ginny Aiken

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СКАЧАТЬ A river of senior citizens flowed in, each one with a shopping plan in mind.

      “Hey there, sunshine!” Mr. Mason Cutler called out. “It’s my lucky day. If I have to take blood pressure medicine, at least I get to see the prettiest girl in the Carolinas whenever I pick it up.”

      Steph handed him his bag of pills. “You’re too much of a flatterer, Mr. Cutler. But I love you anyway.”

      Miss Patience Doolittle, former school principal and professional spinster, as she identified herself, sidled up to the window. “Don’t you pay any attention to the old coot, Steph. He’ll yap your ear off if you let him.”

      It never changed. The two should have married decades ago, but for one reason or another they hadn’t figured out they couldn’t live without bouncing ideas and arguments off each other.

      Yet.

      She still held out hope for them.

      Steph smiled. “Here you go, Miss Doolittle. I have your arthritis meds ready for you.”

      “Hey, Steph!” Darcy called. “Any more of those padded insoles? Seems everyone’s dumping their sandals for real shoes, and the things are flying outta here.”

      Steph gave her directions to the stash of extra foot-care products. Then she went back to her queue of senior citizens.

      The next hour rushed by as it always did. Before long, the antacids shelf was bare, the lotion, cologne and dusting powder area lay ravaged, and the neat pyramid of nutritional supplement shakes she’d had Jimmy construct ten feet away from her counter had been reduced to its two bottom rows.

      Dawn Stallman, activities manager at The Pines, plunked down a bottle of shampoo, two boxes of tissues and a non-prescription antihistamine product on the counter. “I think they’re about ready to move on to our next invasion.”

      Steph rang up the handful of items. “I don’t mind them. I think they’re sweet and wonderful.”

      “Oh, they are. But they’re the quirkiest bunch you could imagine, too. And I love them.”

      With a smile, Steph handed Dawn her bagged purchases. “I’ll be out to give my talk on skin care on Saturday afternoon.”

      “Thanks. You’ve really made a difference. Most of them are taking better care of themselves since you started your preventive-care program. And you will touch on diabetics’ skin problems, right? They listen to you.”

      Steph nodded. “It’s not a big deal. They’ve all done so much for their families and the town…the least I can do is help them raise their comfort level now that their bodies have begun to give out.”

      After a hearty round of goodbyes, Dawn marched her troops out to the retirement community’s bus, and Darcy darted off to Miss Tabitha Cranston’s boarding house, where she worked as the housekeeper. Scott’s Pharmacy grew silent again—too silent. Steph loved what she did. And every struggle it had taken to get to where she was these days had been well worth the effort. She felt God had called her to serve Him by caring for His children’s medical needs.

      “Hey, Miss Steph,” Jimmy said. “Would you just take a look at this? It’s ruined. Who would do such a thing?”

      Steph leaned across her counter behind the pharmacy window and reached for the blood pressure cuff box the teen held out. One corner had been cut away with almost surgical neatness and precision. Her stomach sank.

      This was the sixth damaged package they’d found after four weeks’ worth of Pines residents’ Wednesday shopping trips. Problem was, Steph couldn’t imagine any of her seniors in the role of vandal.

      She sighed. “Let me have it. I’ll have to check it out.”

      When she’d opened for business, Steph had been determined to offer the most reasonable prices possible and still make enough profit to keep the pharmacy open.

      In five years of business, she’d avoided all vandalism. Sure, every once in a while she noticed the typical shoplifting kind of attrition, but no actual malicious damage. Until now. These many ruined items in four weeks weren’t typical.

      Then again, there was nothing typical about the night before. She’d never felt any danger while at her store, but she’d been mugged. A thought crossed her mind. She stared at the box with its cutout on the side. Could there be a connection between the mugging and the vandalism? Should she report this to the detectives? It didn’t seem particularly important, but they’d told her to notify them if she thought of any detail, no matter how seemingly insignificant.

      This certainly fell into that category.

      If it turned out to be nothing, she’d feel totally stupid. But if it was connected to the mugging, and she didn’t call the cops, then they might be missing a potentially crucial clue.

      Steph sighed. She had to call the PD.

      Again.

      A few minutes later, the pop of Mimi Larson’s ever-present bubble gum came over the phone. “We’ll have someone out there right away,” the Loganton PD’s dispatcher said. “It doesn’t sound like much, Steph, but I guess I can have the officers check it out for you.”

      In spite of Mimi’s dismissive assessment, Steph couldn’t deny the uneasiness in her gut from the moment Jimmy had handed her the torn box. She knew the store’s true rate of attrition. Six items in four weeks wasn’t it. And such neat, surgical destruction?

      No way was that normal. Even if it didn’t make any sense.

      This was her little world, everything she’d worked so hard for. She’d overcome all the issues that came from her attention deficit disorder so as to finish her schooling. Then she’d had to work hard to raise the seed money. The licensing tests had posed a monumental challenge, and all the other hurdles she’d had to jump in order to open her store had nearly gotten the best of her. But she’d stuck it out. She wasn’t about to let some dishonest crook tear down her efforts now.

      When the CB radio in Sheriff Hal Benson’s department cruiser crackled, he listened, even if it was only to eavesdrop on one of the police departments in his county. Like now.

      “Delta-202,” Mimi from the Loganton PD said.

      “Go ahead,” Wayne Donnelly answered.

      “Steph Scott at the pharmacy’s reporting what might be vandalism…but it’s kinda weird.”

      Hal bolted up in his seat. Steph? Vandalized?

      He turned the cruiser around on the side road and listened more intently.

      “10-4. It’s kinda quiet today. I’ll go check it out.”

      “10-4, Delta-202. And thanks.”

      Hal was tempted to turn on his siren, but who in his right mind used a siren for a vandalism call? Especially when the local police could and would handle it just fine. Still…

      It was Steph who’d called. And she’d been mugged last night.

      While it was just too pathetic to still be carrying a СКАЧАТЬ