Deborah's instincts, as she called them, had never been wrong. She had spotted the caterer who watered the wine. She had spotted the committee treasurer's little arrangements a full season before the audit. She could read a room the way her husband read a contract, and what she read now arranged itself with the smooth click of a lock: a woman handling a great deal of merchandise. Reaching. Unhurried. No sales associate attached to her. No one vouching for her presence.
She told herself she was being careful. She told herself stores lost fortunes to people who counted on being given the benefit of the doubt, and that doubt, withheld, was a civic duty.
What she did not tell herself โ what she would never, in all the months that followed, quite manage to say โ was that she had made her decision in the first three seconds, and spent every moment after merely collecting evidence for a verdict already delivered.
Deborah set the cream jacket back, precisely, on its rail. She moved, with her handbag held close in the crook of her arm, to the end of the aisle where a display of evening bags gave her a reason to stand. From there she could see without appearing to look. This, too, was a skill. Her bridge group would have called it discretion.
The woman lifted the midnight dress, turned it, checked โ Deborah leaned a fraction forward โ checked the lining. The price tag. Well. They all checked the price tag, the careful ones, to know what the item was worth on the street. Deborah had read an article. She remembered the article the way she remembered most things that agreed with her: completely.
The girl said something and the woman laughed again, quieter, and smoothed the girl's hair off her face with a tenderness that Deborah registered and discarded, because tenderness was exactly what a clever one would perform.
Minutes accumulated. Deborah browsed a table of clutches she did not want. She watched the woman move toward the fitting rooms carrying more than any honest customer needed to carry at once โ the dresses, certainly, and something folded, a suit perhaps, gray. A lot of clothing. An armful of clothing, going into a room with a door that closed, in the part of the store where the cameras โ Deborah had read this too, or heard it, which in her mind was the same archive โ could not follow.
Her heart had begun to do something she chose to interpret as vigilance. It felt, if she was honest, remarkably like the pleasure of being right early.
She drifted, as if by accident, past the suit rail and back again, close enough to catch a fragment of their talk โ schools, photographs, a father's name spoken lightly โ and she filed even that away as performance, because a performance, in her experience, was exactly what innocent talk sounded like when a guilty person had rehearsed it. The girl had good shoes. The woman had good posture. None of it altered the shape Deborah had already seen, and shapes, once seen by Deborah Lawson, did not dissolve merely because the details refused to cooperate.
A sales associate passed โ the young one, Emily โ carrying a pair of shoes, and Deborah very nearly spoke then. She stopped herself. Not yet. A woman of her standing did not make scenes on suspicion alone; she waited until suspicion had ripened into something she could present, the way she presented everything, as a favor to the room.
The fitting-room door closed behind the woman and the girl.
Deborah looked at her watch. She began, deliberately, to count the time they spent inside โ because time, she was certain, would prove her right, the way it always had, about everyone.
Chapter 5: The Warning
Deborah Lawson did not approach Emily Ross directly. Women of her standing rarely approached; they positioned themselves to be approached.
She took up a place beside the evening bags, one cream clutch in her hands, and waited until the sales associate โ Emily, the badge said, a girl Deborah had dealt with before and considered sweet but soft โ came within the orbit of a lowered voice.
"Emily, dear."
Emily turned with her ready smile, a pair of heeled sandals still in one hand. "Mrs. Lawson. I didn't see you'd come in. Shall I start a room for you? The cream jacket is stillโ"
"In a moment." Deborah let her gaze travel, significantly, down the floor toward the walnut doors of the fitting rooms. "I wanted to ask. That woman. The one who just went in โ with the girl, and all those dresses. Do you know her?"
Emily blinked. "I โ yes, I've been helping them. She's trying a suit, and her daughter's looking for a formal dress. Blue."
"Helping them," Deborah repeated, gently, as if tasting something for spoilage. "And before that? Did you see her come in? Has she โ purchased here before, that you know of?"
"I don't think I've seen her before, butโ"
"No. Neither have I, and I am here constantly." Deborah set the clutch down with care. Her voice stayed warm. Her voice was famous on committees for staying warm while it moved furniture. "Emily, I am only going to say this because I would want someone to say it to me, if it were my store being โ well. She has been on this floor a long time. Handling a great deal of merchandise. She went into that room with an armful of clothing, and she has been in there โ " a glance at her watch, though the minute hand had barely been consulted before โ "quite some time. I would keep an eye on that woman, if I were you. A close eye."
Emily's smile did not vanish, but it changed jobs; it was holding a door now instead of opening one. "Mrs. Lawson, they seem perfectlyโ"
"They always seem, dear." Not unkindly. That was the art of it. "Last spring, at the Galleria, my friend Lorraine lost โ the store lost โ thousands, in one afternoon, to a woman with a daughter in tow. The daughter is part of it. It makes everyone relax. It made you relax, didn't it?"