039 The Suspect Next Door Read Free Page B

end.”
    “Please call me Nancy,” Nancy corrected her when Kate Hayes had gone.
    “Sure,” Trisha said, barely managing a smile. “Well, what do you want to start with? I’ve got a lot of work to do back in the stockroom, so—”
    Nancy noticed that the minute Kate Hayes left the store, Trisha’s eager attitude dropped away. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just tag along with you, to get a feel for the place,” Nancy said.
    “That’s up to you,” Trisha said with a shrug, leading her back through the door to the stockroom.
    “What kind of security system do you have here?” Nancy asked.
    “Oh, Vanities is well-protected,” Trisha answered, pointing to electronic devices spaced along the walls up near the ceiling. “We have a supersophisticated alarm system, complete with video cameras. There are magnetic tags on most of the merchandise and electronic locks with codes on the front door and the door to the loading area in back.”
    “Then it would be pretty hard to break into from the outside,” Nancy murmured. “How many hours a week is Ms. Hayes here?”
    “About three hours a day, on the average. Except when she’s on a buying trip. Then she can be gone for up to two weeks at a time.”
    So there really was no efficient way of preventingan inside job, Nancy thought as they made their way past racks of clothing.
    She wondered if there was a way of keeping track of when each employee was in the store. “Are the people who work here on a set schedule?” she asked.
    “Not really. There is a schedule, but it’s always being changed. Most of the sales help is part-time. There’s no logging-in system on the registers, or anything like that. Ms. Hayes mostly leaves us alone to get our work done.”
    Nancy realized that meant it would be relatively easy for anyone who worked there to tamper with the camera system and sneak merchandise out the back way to the loading dock.
    “Who knows the electronic code on the doors?” she asked.
    “Just Ms. Hayes,” Trisha answered. “And me, of course. One of us is always here to open the store. But the codes are changed weekly.”
    From the police the day before, Nancy knew that the amount of merchandise stolen was large. Too much for one person to smuggle out during working hours. Someone must have found out how to open the coded locks, disarm the security system, and rob the store while it was closed.
    “Is there somewhere private for me to interview the rest of the staff?” Nancy asked when they stepped into Trisha’s small inner office.
    “Sure,” Trisha answered. “You can use my office.” Although she was being cooperative,Trisha’s manner had not warmed up. She went to her desk and took out a few sheets of paper. “I’d better go up front and open the cash register. We really don’t have that many people working here. I’ll start sending them in right away.”
    In the brief time Nancy was alone, she checked out Trisha’s office. On the desk were inventory sheets and employee records. In the top drawer was a huge account ledger. Everything relevant to the store’s business was probably in this office. Nancy would have to go through it all later.
    She wondered about Trisha. After all, who in the store was in a better position to carry out a series of thefts? But if Trisha was behind it all, why would she have blown the whistle? The thefts might have gone undetected for a long time, but she had called them to Kate Hayes’s attention instead.
    Nancy heard a knock on the door. Charlene Rice was standing in the doorway, looking nervous. “Trisha said you wanted to see me. I really don’t know anything. I didn’t even know there’d been any robberies until Trisha told me.” The words spilled out of Charlene. From the way she looked at Nancy, it was as if she thought she were about to be sentenced.
    “Well, come on in, anyway. There’s a lot I need to know about the store and how it operates,” Nancy said with a friendly smile.
    Charlene