Grimal snickered. “Now that’s what I call an innovative and cutting-edge shopping experience.” I shot him a nasty look. He pointed to the knife through the victim’s head. “Get it? Cutting-edge?”
Bob and Florence Nightingale stared at him.
“Can I see some identification?” Bob asked.
Grimal’s brow furrowed. “What for?”
“To make sure you’re really chief of police.”
“Oh, he is,” I said as Grimal sputtered. “And this is actually him on a good day.”
“How about we review the tape and find the suspect?” the police chief grumbled.
We rewound the tape, following me backwards through my long and fruitless search for my grandson’s birthday gift. We could not see anyone tailing me or taking any interest in me. We then shifted to other customers, tracing them as they went through the store. We saw nothing suspicious.
“Okay, let’s switch to the catwalk,” Grimal said.
“We don’t have cameras up there,” Florence Nightingale said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“To save money, mostly. These cameras are expensive, and it costs a lot of employee hours to keep track of them all. There are no customers up there to monitor, and with all the employees being strip-searched at the ends of their shifts, there really is no need.”
“Wonderful,” Grimal moaned. “You have cameras watching every spot except the murder scene?”
Florence Nightingale shrugged. “Sorry.”
“Wait,” I said, pointing to a camera on the ceiling. “The security office is filmed too? Why don’t I see that on the monitors?”
“The security office is monitored from the manager’s office,” Bob said, his voice flat.
“Is there a security camera in the manager’s office?” Grimal asked.
“Yes. That’s monitored from the Regional Manager’s office.”
I need to get out of here, I thought.
“Fine,” Grimal said with a sigh. “Switch to the camera covering the doorway leading upstairs and rewind over the past several hours. The victim died in the early hours of this morning, so he must have been killed here or moved here around that time.”
Bob did as he was asked. We watched in fast reverse as the doorway stood unused through the morning until an hour before opening time, when we suddenly started to see employees going in and out. We watched them closely, looking for anyone who wasn’t in an employee uniform or anyone who was carrying a bag or box big enough to contain the late Sir Edmund Montalbion.
Nothing.
Stumped, we reviewed the previous day and night, spending more than two hours staring at people moving jerkily backwards at high speed. It was wearing on the eyes, I can tell you. Still nothing.
We then went back to the night when the victim was murdered and went through more slowly, freeze-framing on every face, hoping to spot someone who was wearing an employee uniform but wasn’t actually employed at SerMart. Bob and Florence Nightingale were able to identify every one of them.
“Is there any way to get into the upstairs gallery from the roof?” Grimal asked. I raised an eyebrow. He was being unusually thorough today.
“There is an emergency exit up there, but the alarm sounds if it’s opened. There’s no record of an alarm. Besides, it’s locked from the outside. You can go out but not in.”
“Do you have cameras covering the outside?”
“Yes, but not the roof. We’d be able to see anyone climbing up, though.”
We ran through the past forty-eight hours. Nothing.
“We’re getting nowhere,” Grimal grumbled.
“Surely you must be used to that by now,” I said with my sweetest sweet-little-old-lady smile.
Before he could say anything, a red warning light flashed on one of the camera feeds and a little buzzer sounded.
“What’s that?” we both asked.
Bob pointed. One of the employees, an older man with a potbelly that put Grimal’s to shame, was leaning against a shelf, mopping his brow.
“He looks worn out, the poor dear,” I said. “Is that some sort of medical alarm?”
Florence Nightingale shook her head. “The cameras are programmed to spot any lack of movement among the employees. We then sight check them to see what they’re doing. If they’re not working at the assigned pace, they lose Productivity Points. A low Productivity Point score can keep them from being promoted or getting a raise. And, oh dear…”
She was watching a computer spreadsheet Bob had opened up. He had run down a list of employees to a name, Preston La Salle. I could see the name on the sick employee’s name tag. Bob went through several columns of data to one marked Productivity Points. He lowered the points from eighty-five to eighty.
“I knew he’d fail,” Florence Nightingale said. “Wonderful. Another awkward conversation for this shift.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The Productivity Points are scaled to maximize productivity. If they fall below a certain point, the employee is terminated and we hire someone else. We have a lot of applicants, so that’s not a problem.”
I made an angry gesture at the man still trying to catch his breath. “But he looks ill!”
“All the more reason to let him go. Health insurance payments will cut into our profit margin, and I will lose some of my own Productivity Points.”
I treated her to a level gaze. She took a step back, shocked. I can have a nasty glare when I want to.
“If you tell me that practice is innovative and cutting-edge,” I said in a low voice, “there are going to be two murders in your shop today.”
“Okay, okay!” Grimal cried, raising his hands while the two SerMart employees went pale. “It’s been a stressful day for all of us. How about we all calm down, shall we?”
“I’m quite calm,” I said, keeping my voice soft and even. I’ve found that people are far more intimidated by someone who doesn’t lose their cool than someone who does. It helped when I had an M-16 in my hands, but in our overly litigious society, you don’t need one.
Grimal turned to the manager. “Have you fired anyone recently?”
“We’ve only been open two weeks,” Florence Nightingale said.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“We’ve only fired five people so far.”
“Only?” Grimal and
