From the Queen Read Free Page A

alley. The frame was warped, the sash pushed up. She knelt, poked her head inside, then withdrew from the opening and stood. She looked at Ellen Gallagher. “There’s no evidence of forced entry but it appears someone pushed aside a table to be able to climb inside. Is this window kept locked?”
    Ellen Gallagher shivered in a thin cotton blouse and black wool skirt. She swallowed convulsively. “It wouldn’t lock. I couldn’t make it lock.”
    Annie stared at the partially open window. It couldn’t have been easier. Last night when the marina and shops were deserted, someone slipped along the boardwalk. “Hyla, how about the surveillance cameras?”
    Hyla’s cool green eyes scanned the passageway. She jerked a thumb. “The way they’re mounted, at either end, it isn’t likely they show this window. I’ll see what they show. And I’ll check for fingerprints, but perps who plan a crime don’t usually leave any.”
    Annie doubted the thief was barehanded. It had been a good night for gloves. She was quite sure gloved hands patiently jerked and pushed and pulled until the old window was raised high enough to permit entry.
    â€œFor now,” Hyla’s voice was as expressionless as always, “let’s go inside and Ms. Gallagher can tell me about the missing property.”
    It was cold inside the shop, but the window wouldn’t be pulled down until Hyla dusted for fingerprints that weren’t there. The three of them stood at the counter. As Ellen, wretched and drained, spoke in a dull monotone, Annie looked around the shop. She spotted a tartan plaid shawl in a pile of clothing. She hurried to the stack, picked up the shawl, shook it, then returned and draped the thick wool around Ellen’s slumped shoulders.
    Hyla listened, making an occasional note as Ellen described the letter from the nursing home and her mum’s old friend and how she’d send the money though it was such a lot and when the box came how she’d thought perhaps, Agatha Christie and all, that the book might be worth a little money, and taken it to Annie.
    Annie remembered too well. Ellen’s blue eyes had been young and excited and now they were stricken and defeated.
    Hyla looked at the counter. “So the book was in the pink quilted thing when you left last night. Where did you put it?”
    Ellen, moving woodenly, stepped behind the counter, pointed below the rim. “I put it right down there on the shelf. That’s where I put my ledger and cashbox every night.”
    Hyla’s thin face remained expressionless.
    Annie guessed at her swift thoughts, a book worth anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars left on a shelf in a shop with no burglar alarm, no surveillance cameras, no security. Sure, the department patrolled during the night, showing up at unexpected times, flashing Maglites here and there. Petty crime was not much of a problem on a sea island accessible only by ferry. Crime happened, the occasional burglary in rural areas, stolen hubcaps and cell phones when the island teemed with vacationers in the summer, but burglaries on the boardwalk shops were rare.
    Hyla tapped her pen on her notebook. “Who knew the book was here?”
    Ellen lifted a shaky hand, pressed thin fingers against one cheek. She slid a hesitant, shamefaced look at Annie.
    Annie wasn’t surprised. Ellen prattled. Ellen was open and guileless and yesterday afternoon no one could have helped observing that she was hugely excited. “Who did you tell?”
    Ellen’s thin shoulders hunched. “I didn’t think it was wrong. I guess,” the admission came in a doleful voice, “I didn’t think at all. I was here and I was so pleased. I sat right down to write Ginny and when Mrs. Benson came in, why the first thing I knew, I was telling her all about it. Well, not everything. I didn’t tell her that I talked