much higher than after the Hug’s situation occupies more Parson attention than a will. You are, in effect, making off with close to a million dollars in Hug property, however your contract may be worded.”
“Oh, very shrewd, Lieutenant!” Chandra said appreciatively. “That is precisely why I am leaving now. Once I am gone and my macaques gone with me, it will be a fait accompli. Disentangling the situation, legally and logistically, would be hideous.”
“Are the macaques still at the Hug?”
“No, they’re here in temporary quarters. With Cecil Potter.”
“And when are you leaving for Massachusetts?”
“Things are already in motion. I myself will go on Friday with my wife and children. Cecil and the macaques go tomorrow.”
“I hear you’ve bought a nice place outside Boston.”
“Yes. Very much like this, actually.”
In walked Surina Chandra clad in a scarlet sari encrusted with embroidery and gold thread, her arms, neck and hair blazing with jewels. Behind her were two little girls about seven years of age – twins, Carmine thought, astonished at their beauty. But the emotion was gone in a second as his eyes took in their apparel. Matching dresses of lace covered in rhinestones, with stiff, full skirts and little puffed sleeves. Both an ethereal ice- green.
Somehow he got through the introductions. The girls, Leela and Nuru, were indeed twins; demure souls with enormous black eyes and black hair in braids as thick as hawsers straying over their shoulders. Like their mother, they smelled of some eastern perfume Carmine couldn’t like – musky, heavy, tropical. They had diamonds in their earlobes that left the rhinestones for dead.
“I love your dresses,” he said to the twins, hunkering down to their level without approaching them too closely.
“Yes, they are pretty,” said their mother. “It’s difficult to find this sort of children’s wear in America. Of course they have lots sent from home, but when we saw these, they appealed.”
“If it isn’t a rude question, Mrs. Chandra, where did you find the dresses?”
“In a mall not far from where we’re going to live. A lovely shop for girls, better than any I’ve found in Connecticut.”
“Can you tell me where the mall is?”
“Oh, dear, I’m afraid not. They all look much the same to me, and I don’t know the area yet.”
“I don’t suppose you remember the name of the store, then?”
She laughed, white teeth flashing. “Having been brought up on J. M. Barrie and Kenneth Graham, of course I do! Tinker Bell.”
And off they drifted, the twins waving back at him shyly.
“My children have taken a fancy to you,” said Chandra.
Nice, but unimportant. “May I use your phone, Doctor?”
“Certainly, Lieutenant. I’ll leave you in private.”
You sure can’t fault them on manners, even if their ethics are different, Carmine thought as he dialed Marciano, his fingers trembling.
“I know where the dresses come from,” he said without preamble. “Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell, two words. There’s one in a mall outside Boston, but there may be others. Start looking.”
“Two stores,” said Marciano when Carmine walked in. “Boston and White Plains, both in classy malls. You’re sure of this?”
“Positive. Two of Chandra’s little girls were wearing dead ringers of Margaretta’s dress, except green in color. Thing is, which Tinker Bell would our Ghosts patronize?”
“White Plains. It’s closer unless they live near the Mass border. That’s possible, of course.”
“Then Abe can go to Boston tomorrow, while I take White Plains. Jesus, Danny, we’ve got a break at last!”
Chapter 23
The Tinker Bell at White Plains was located in a mall of smart clothing and furniture stores interspersed with the inevitable delis, fast-food outlets, drugstores and dry cleaners. There were also several restaurants catering more for lunch than dinner. It was a new structure on two levels, but Tinker Bell was too canny to situate itself one floor up. Near the entrance on the ground.
It was, Carmine noted as he surveyed Tinker Bell from the outside, a very large premises entirely devoted to clothing for girl children. They had a sale going for overcoats and winter wear; no cheap nylon stuff in here, all natural fiber. There was even, he saw, a section devoted to real furs through an archway that said
He entered with as much confidence as he could muster, looking – and feeling – utterly incongruous. Apparently he had a neon sign on his forehead blinking COP on and off, as women moved quickly away from him and the store assistants started to huddle.
“May I see the manager, please?” he asked one hapless girl who didn’t make the huddle in time.
Oh, good, they could remove him from the floor! The girl led him immediately to the back of the merchandise and knocked on an unmarked door.
Mrs. Giselle Dobchik ushered him into a tiny cubicle stuffed with cardboard boxes and filing cabinets; a safe sat to one side of a table that served as Mrs. Dobchik’s desk, but there was no room for a visitor’s chair. Her response to the sight of his badge was unruffled interest; but then, Mrs. Dobchik struck him as the kind whom little ruffled. Mid-forties, very well dressed, blonde hair, red-varnished nails not long enough to snag the goods.
“Do you recognize this, ma’am?” he asked, removing the shell-pink lace dress Margaretta had worn from his briefcase. Out came Faith’s lilac dress. “Or this?”
“Almost certainly Tinker Bells,” she said, beginning to feel the inside seams, and frowning. “Our labels have been removed, but yes, I can assure you that they’re genuine Tinker Bells. We have special tricks with the beading.”
“I don’t suppose you know who bought them?”
“Any number of people, Lieutenant. They’re both size tens – that is, for girls between ten and twelve years of age. Once past twelve, a girl tends to want to look more like Annette Funicello than a fairy. We always have one of each model and color in each size in stock, but two is a strain. Here, come with me.”
Following her out of her office and over to a large area of glittery, frilly party dresses on dozens of long racks, Carmine understood what she meant when she said two the same size and type was a strain; there must have been upward of two thousand dresses in hues from white to dark red, all picked out in rhinestones or pearls or opalescent beads.
“Six sizes from three years to twelve years, twenty different models, and twenty different colors,” she said. “We’re famous for these dresses, you see – they walk out as fast as we can get them in.” A laugh. “After all, we can’t have two girls in the same model and color at the same party! Wearing a Tinker Bell is a sign of social status. Ask any Westchester County mom or child. The cachet extends into Connecticut – quite a few of our clients drive in from Fairfield or Litchfield Counties.”
“If I may collect my dresses and briefcase, Mrs. Dobchik, could I buy you some lunch? A cup of coffee? I feel like a bull in a china shop here, and I can’t be good for business.”
“Thanks, I’d appreciate the break,” said Mrs. Dobchik.
“What you said about two girls wearing the same Tinker Bell to the same party leads me to assume that you do keep fairly detailed records,” he said, sucking at a chocolate malted through a straw – too much kid stuff.
“Oh, yes, we have to. It’s just that both the models you’ve shown me have been perennials for some years, so we’ve sold a big bunch of them. The pink lace has been out now for five years, the lilac one for four. Your samples have been so abused that it’s not possible to tell exactly when they were made.”
