Ramsey Rules Page 8

  “I do,” he said. “But I’m not going to.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I think that might be a bridge too far. We should just leave it. Try for a bad date the next time.”

  She nodded. “We could do that. Today was probably an aberration.”

  “Probably.”

  “I’m off Wednesday. That has to be a bad date night.”

  “It’s hump day.”

  Ramsey’s lips twitched. “Right. Way too much pressure.”

  “What about Friday?”

  She shook her head. “Afternoon turn.”

  “I’ll be coming off night shift. What if we go biking in the morning? Have lunch together before you go to work?”

  “All right.” She supposed it was some subtle inflection in her voice that made him suspicious of her answer, or maybe it was just that she answered so quickly.

  “You have a bike, don’t you?”

  “I will.”

  “Ah. When’s the last time you rode one?”

  “Does spin class count?”

  “No.”

  “Then I was six and it had training wheels.”

  He gave a short laugh. “Okay. Don’t buy a bike. I’ll think of something. Be ready at eight. I’ll pick you up after I change from my shift.”

  Ramsey nodded but then sucked in her lower lip and betrayed her uncertainty.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “We’re really going to do this? A second date? I’ve only ever had two second dates since I moved here.”

  Sullivan’s head jerked a little in surprise. “Two? That’s it?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Your choice or theirs?”

  “Mostly mine, I suppose.”

  “Then three dates would be a first for you.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

  “Right.” He swooped in, ducking his head for another kiss, this one like punctuation at the end of a sentence. A period, not a question mark. “Good night, Ramsey.”

  “Good night, Sullivan.”

  She walked around the car and headed for the porch. There was no point in telling him not to wait until she was in the house; he would do it anyway and she really didn’t mind. She pulled her keys out of her clutch and used one to turn the door lock and the other to turn the deadbolt. She glanced over her shoulder as she let herself in. Yes, he was still there, standing beside the driver’s side door now, leaning casually against the car, his arms folded across his chest. She thought he might have smiled, but she couldn’t be sure with the street light at his back. Her heart stuttered once and then she disappeared.

  11

  Ramsey leaned comfortably against the wall near the entrance to the Ridge’s Starbuck’s café. She held an iced mocha latte between her hands and occasionally took a sip. This was perhaps her favorite spot in the store. She could drink her coffee and scan the aisles. It hardly felt like work.

  Her position gave her an unobstructed view of the self-checkout stations. Personally, she never used them, but lots of people did, and many of them thought they could scam the system.

  One particular customer caught her eye. Ramsey made her to be in her early thirties. The woman was a bottle blonde who hadn’t attended to her much darker roots for at least a month. Ramsey idly wondered if she was letting her natural color grow out or if other matters in her life had taken on a new, higher priority. This customer did not have the obvious signs of drug use. Neither did she carry the weighty burden of poverty that slumped shoulders and added careworn lines to even young faces. She was small enough to put Ramsey in mind of Kay Dobbs, which was not a point in the woman’s favor. She wore jean shorts, a white spaghetti strap tank topped by a boyfriend shirt, and strappy sandals with a two-inch heel. She sported long nails that may or may not have been all her own, but they looked like eagle talons dipped in the blood of prey. Ramsey narrowed the color down to either Crimson Tide or The Red Pool.

  While Ramsey watched and sipped her coffee, the woman began to empty her loaded cart. The products she was scanning and bagging were varied. There was something from almost every department. Ramsey categorized and alphabetized them in her head. Clothes and cosmetics and cleaning supplies. Over-the-counter remedies and outdoor equipment. DVDs, dishtowels, and detergent. Pillows and plants and pots and plates. And then there was the food. It was in a category all its own.

  As the woman selected item after item to scan, Ramsey was put in mind of a clown car or even more apropos, the magic satchel that Hermione carried in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from which she was able to produce every kind of thing.

  It occurred to Ramsey that the woman was setting up a new living situation. She was not wearing a wedding band so maybe she’d left her things behind when she left her boyfriend. It happened. Ramsey worked out an entire backstory for the woman while she continued to scan and bag. By the time the customer was prepared to run her card or insert her cash, Ramsey had developed a heart-tugging scenario that could have been fodder for a soap opera or a Nicholas Sparks novel.

  Ramsey saw the woman pull a bankcard from her purse. There was no way to tell at her present distance if it was credit or debit. Whatever it was, it did not have a chip because the customer ran it through the slider, paused, stared at the screen, and slid it again. There was another pause, a frown, and the woman made a third attempt at getting the machine to recognize her card or her fund balance. Something was successful because Ramsey saw her finally stop tapping her foot in frustration and nod with evident satisfaction. The woman started to push her cart away when something caught her eye. She stopped, pulled out a five-pound bag of potatoes from under the cart and held them up for scanning. When the machine beeped, she ran her card again, this time managing to get the machine to accept it on the first try. She tossed the potatoes under the cart and started out.

  Ramsey tossed her mostly empty coffee cup in the trash and stepped forward to halt the customer’s progress. “May I see your receipt?” The woman made no response, simply stared at her blankly. Ramsey pulled her store identification out of her back pocket and held it up for the woman to read.

  “Why?” the woman asked.

  Ramsey couldn’t decide if the woman should get points for not posing the question belligerently. How a customer responded to a request to see a receipt was not indicative of innocence or guilt. Innocent customers sometimes snapped and snarled, taking real offense to what they perceived as an accusation. Shoplifters had a variety of responses. Some were aggressive in their language and their posture. Others bluffed, producing a story that was so convoluted as to be unbelievable. Still others managed the confrontation with disarming equanimity. Ramsey put this woman into that final category.

  Ramsey said, “I suspect the self-scanner was not working properly. You could help me confirm that, but I need to see your receipt.”

  The customer reached into her purse and after a little digging, she produced the potato receipt. She handed it over.

  “This is fine, but it’s only for the bag under your cart. What about everything else?”

  “Well, you’re right about the scanner. Something’s wrong with it. It didn’t produce a receipt.”

  “Really? That’s odd. When that happens, a light goes off to alert a cashier to the problem. Let’s give it a look. You’ll want a receipt for your records. What if you have to return something?”

  “Oh, but that’s no problem,” the woman said as she accompanied Ramsey to the scanner. “Southridge has a generous return policy. You don’t always need a receipt.”

  “True.” Ramsey apologized to another customer who was getting ready to use the self-scanner and told her they had to resolve a problem. The customer thanked her and moved on. “Then you’ve shopped here before,” she said to the bottle blonde.

  “Sure. It’s a nice store. Everyone’s friendly.”

  Ramsey nodded, pressed her code into the machine, tapped a few more keys, and brought up the machine’s recent purchase his
tory. “See here,” Ramsey said, pointing to the screen. “There are your potatoes. The SKU, the price, date, and time. All there. Now…” She punched the keys again. “See here? Those are the purchases made by the person before you. Looks like they bought mostly food items. Canned goods. Pasta. Some cheese. You don’t have those items.”

  “I think I do.”

  Ramsey shook her head. “Fresh fruits and vegetables. Meat. Deli items. Chips. Dip. Milk.” She accepted the woman’s astonished stare as her due for tracking the purchases in her head. “What you did was pretend to run your card. You made a nice job of showing frustration and then success. Was that for me? Did you make me?”

  The woman said nothing.

  “We can try your card, this time in the slider, not beside it. If the machine takes it, you’re good.”

  “Good?”

  “I’ll have to talk to Paul. He’s the manager, but generally he’s easy going. He has the authority to let you walk. No call to the cops.”

  The woman took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I don’t have enough to pay for all of this in my bank account.”

  “Ah. It was debit card.”

  “Yes.” Then, with a perfectly straight face, she said, “But I have cash in my car. I can pay for everything. I just need to run out to get it. I’ll leave everything here.”

  “Well,” said Ramsey, similarly poker faced. “You can take the potatoes. They’re already paid for.”

  “Oh. Right. Of course.” She bent, picked them up, and pushed the cart out of her way so she could exit.

  Ramsey circled and blocked her. She badly wanted to set her arms akimbo but resisted the urge as over-the-top posturing. “Really, lady? Really? Do I impress you as being that gullible?” Ramsey threw up an arm to block the five pounds of potatoes coming at her head. What was it with these tiny women swinging bags of food? Jeez.

  Ramsey’s forearm took the full force of the blow. She cradled it as she ducked to avoid the second time it came around, and she was out of the bag’s reach when the woman launched it. The bag thudded hard against the wall behind her. It was hard not to imagine what that would have felt like upside her head. She winced.

  “Whoa. Lady. Give it a rest.” Ramsey released her throbbing forearm and thrust her uninjured arm forward, palm out. “Don’t,” she said as the woman reached for another bag. There was a certain amount of transparency in the yellow Ridge bags, and Ramsey could see her reaching for the one that held two cans of Scrubbing Bubbles. Ouch. She didn’t wait for this bag to be used as a missile. She grabbed the end of the cart and pulled it out of the woman’s reach. In her peripheral vision, she saw the commotion had attracted bystanders.

  Where was her on-shift partner? Where was Paul? Had anyone called the police?

  One of the nearby cashiers had turned on the light at her station. It was blinking furiously. She made the universally accepted sign of a phone call, holding her thumb to an ear and her pinkie close to her mouth, and nodded to Ramsey.

  Ramsey pushed the cart behind her so there was nothing between her and the bottle blonde. The woman missed her opportunity to back out of the aisle a few moments earlier. Sharon from customer service had come around with a cart full of items for returning to the shelves and used it to block the woman’s retreat.

  “I need you to come to the office with me,” said Ramsey. She saw her coworker in the Loss Prevention Unit approaching from the left. Mel Summers was in his early fifties, and when he wasn’t watching the cameras in the monitoring room because he didn’t feel like walking, he typically patrolled hardware, camping, and automotive. He looked like he belonged there.

  He came to a halt a little to the left and behind the woman’s shoulder and grinned at Ramsey. “Caught it on the camera. If you hadn’t blocked that swing I guess we’d be calling you Mrs. Potato Head.”

  “Ms. Potato Head,” she said. “And you’d call me that once.”

  “Uh-huh. Right.” Mel Summers had a toothy smile set off parenthetically by cheek pouches. It would not be long before they could properly be referred to as jowls, but for the time being he looked as if he were storing M&Ms or honey roasted nuts. He passed a hand over his balding head and squinted as he observed the scene. “Police been called?”

  “Heather did it, but you should have.”

  “Yeah, well, I thought I should get here as fast as I could.”

  Ramsey had always thought walking and talking was a challenge for Mel, but she’d have another opportunity to share that opinion with him. God knew, he gave her plenty of chances.

  Ramsey addressed the customer again. “Mel and I would like you to accompany us to the office. This doesn’t have to be difficult. We can hear you out. Make sense of what happened. I’m thinking you have a story. Something along the lines of you left the bum but not soon enough. He took your stuff, cleaned out your bank account, and disappeared. What does that sound like?”

  The woman stared at Ramsey. She folded her hands, wrung them together. “It sounds like you know me.”

  “I know him. C’mon.” She absently rubbed her forearm. It was still throbbing but there was no acute pain. “Let’s go. That’s Mel behind you. He’ll bring up the rear. It suits him.”

  The woman’s faint smile showed a bit of sympathy. “Horse’s ass?”

  “You know it.”

  “I heard that,” Mel said.

  “You were meant to,” Ramsey told him. “This way.” She waved the woman forward and stepped slightly to the side so they could walk together. As she passed the cart, she pushed it backward in Mel’s direction and told him to bring it along.

  Once the police arrived, nothing about the woman’s story held together. Ramsey had not been hopeful that it would. She had offered up the explanation to invite the woman’s cooperation, not because she believed it was true. It was a strategy, nothing more. It no longer surprised her that it worked as often as it did. People did not necessarily believe she had personal experience with the story they told, but they almost unanimously believed she was a sucker for it.

  The woman’s debit card did not match the name on her driver’s license, not first, not last, not middle initial. The Virginia license had expired almost a year ago, and when it was through the system it tagged to a couple of misdemeanors, driving under the influence, and three unpaid speeding tickets. There was a bench warrant for failure to appear in court while on probation.

  Ramsey’s take on Cindy Ann McKeever was that she was a cool one. On a hunch, supported by the expired license, she left the interview room to walk out to the parking lot. She found Ms. McKeever’s partner behind the wheel of a rusting Camaro listening to Wiz Kahlifa with the volume pumped. The car vibrated. He was a skinny Caucasian sporting a two day stubble as dark as coffee grounds. She collected buggies from a nearby stall to get a closer look. He had a shaggy head of hair that hadn’t been introduced to a comb in days. He wore a black T-shirt with the Steelers logo on the front. The short sleeves were rolled up to his armpits like a greaser from the fifties. She sighed. Couldn’t he have been a Cowboys fan or maybe worn a wife-beater tee?

  She memorized the license plate, make, model, and color of the car and pushed half a dozen buggies into the store. She told the officer what she found, and Cindy Ann was not so cool that she didn’t give her boyfriend away.

  After the police officer left, Ramsey shooed Mel out of the office so she could write her report. She was three-quarters of the way through when Paul walked in.

  “Someone’s here to see you.”

  “See me?” She looked past his shoulder but couldn’t see anyone. She jerked her chin at him. “Where were you when I got clobbered?”

  “Doing my job. Loading bay. We had a shipment snafu. Twenty pallets of paint. Bisque. I had to make a decision to either send them back or see if I can sell them.”

  Ramsey didn’t ask what he decided. She knew he would sell them. It would be to his benefit to do so. “Did you see the recording?”

  He nodded. “M
el found me. I watched what happened. Are you all right? Do you need to file for comp?”

  “No.”

  “Write it up anyway. Separate incident report. I don’t want it coming back to haunt me. If you’d missed that swing, you’d be—”

  “Yeah,” she said, interrupting. “I know. Ms. Potato Head.”

  He wiggled one bushy black eyebrow as he shrugged. “I was going to say Tater Top, but Ms. Potato Head works too.”

  She waved him away and tried to see past him again. “Is it Officer Longabach? Is he back with questions?”

  “No.” He stepped aside and opened the door wider to admit the person still out of Ramsey’s view. When Sullivan Day walked in, Paul winked at Ramsey and walked out. He closed the door behind him.

  “You!” she said. Her jaw remained a trifle slack.

  “It still sounds like an accusation,” he said, mock-frowning at her. “I’m going to have to think about that.”

  Ramsey pushed the papers in front of her out of the way and leaned back in the stiff, barely padded, no-arms office chair. She kept petitioning Paul for a new chair from the office supply center, but he said he didn’t want her to get too comfortable. She threaded her fingers together and rested them against her midriff and angled her head to regard him curiously.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. He was in uniform so she suspected the visit was job related. “Did Mel actually call something in? He hardly ever does.”

  Sullivan shook his head as he studied her. “Radio transmission. Didn’t know you were the one assaulted until Karl reported it. Potatoes?”

  Ramsey held up one hand, spread her fingers. “Five pounds.” She demonstrated how she blocked the blow. “I was lucky. Bruised but not damaged.”

  “Is that you or the potatoes?”

  “Funny.” She saw that he still looked concerned. “Sullivan. I’m fine. Really.” Ramsey raised her forearm. “I don’t know if it will raise a bruise. I shouldn’t have said that. And you”—here she jabbed an index finger in his direction—“shouldn’t be here. Don’t you have speeders to catch, cats to rescue, meth labs to raid?”