The Sunset Gang (8 page)

"It does sound silly."

After supper, he went back into the bedroom to read his
book and Bernice prepared the bridge table and snacks for the impending canasta
game.

"Don't say anything to the girls," he called from
the bedroom. He had not been able to concentrate on his book.

"You don't think it's any of my friends?" she
asked, a touch of indignance in her tone.

"Everyone is a suspect," he told her, coming into
the living room. He imagined how Hercule Poirot might say it. Going over the
list of suspects in his mind, he concluded that there must be at least
twenty-five, not including the maintenance people. And, of course, there was
always the possibility of someone simply breaking in while they were away or
asleep, an idea that frightened him. Although it had never happened, he had
vowed that he would feign sleep if he ever heard a prowler roaming around
inside their place at night. That was one of the advantages of having little of
value, he had thought. Let them take it.

Forcing himself to stay awake until after the canasta game
was over, he padded to the kitchen in his bare feet and started to open the
cabinets. She came into the kitchen, and stood beside him.

"Notice anything missing?" he asked.

She looked at him and shook her head.

"They are my three best friends."

"Is there anything missing?" Be cool and
dispassionate, he told himself. Disregard emotion. He watched Bernice go
through the refrigerator, checking its contents.

"Really, Seymour. This is ridiculous. I don't take an
inventory. I only know something's missing when I need it."

"Then we'll have to take inventory."

The next morning, they did so. Then they stocked up again
at the supermarket and when they got home he wrote down each item on a yellow
pad, which he kept in his drawer with his socks and underwear. It wasn't until
a week later that he had use for it again.

"I could swear I bought two Philadelphia cream
cheeses."

He put down his book and brought out the inventory.

"Don't swear. It's all in here. We did buy two cream
cheeses."

"And I'm sure we ate one."

He realized then that the inventory only recorded what they
had purchased, not what they had eaten.

"Is it possible we ate two?" he asked.

"Possible. But not probable. I would know if we did.
You know, Seymour, a woman does know her own kitchen. It's an instinctive sixth
sense."

"But hardly scientific," he said pompously.

She looked at him strangely. "You sound like Sherlock
Holmes."

"Hercule Poirot."

"Who?"

"Forget it," he said testily. "Let's just
assume that the cream cheese is missing."

When she had gone, he carefully checked the inventory,
trying to remember what they had eaten during the past week. He noted that two
cans of asparagus tips had disappeared and he could not remember having eaten
them.

"Did we eat asparagus tips last week?" he asked
when she had returned.

She thought for a moment. "No. I was saving them for a
Sunday dinner."

"Then they're missing."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure." He stroked his chin.
"Someone has developed a cunning system for robbing our food. It's
disgusting. Money out of our pocket."

She sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and watched him.

"And it has to be one of your friends," he said.

"How terrible," she responded.

The idea of it, the mystery of it, sent joyous shivers
through Seymour Shapiro.

"I think it's an absolute disgrace," Bernice
mused. He could see her anger mount, her face flush.

"You mustn't jump to conclusions," he said,
feeling the hollowness of his attempts at placation while his mind revved up
with ideas to force a solution. He needed a plan, a trap.

"You don't think about it," he said. "I'll
work on it."

"How can I not think about it." She sighed, not
daring to fix suspicion on any one person, yet reviewing in her mind the
playing habits of her friends. Did any of them cheat at canasta or mah-jongg?
she wondered. But they would have to be clever to get past her. Surely it could
not be any of them, her closest friends.

As his mind became absorbed in the solution of the mystery
of the food disappearances, his concentration on his mystery books faltered,
and he would daydream over them, his mind groping for details of all the people
that came in and out of his house, the suspects. Bernice's closest friends were
her regular mah-jongg players--Judy Stein, Marcia Finkelstein, and Harriet
Feldman. Then there were the husbands--with the exception of Harriet--and then
the clique from the pool and the casual friends from the clubhouse. They were
all Bernice's friends and acquaintances. Unfortunately he had never observed
them with any real interest. They were simply shadows in his conscious life,
passing in and out of his vision, like birds floating across the sky, barely
noticeable.

But he noticed them now, finding the habits of his earlier
time, before the thefts, a useful tool. He could sit around with his nose in a
book quietly observing his wife's friends as they came and went. He no longer
read in the bedroom, but planted himself instead in the big easy chair in the
corner of the living room while they played their games and observed. He tried
to catalogue them in his mind, tried to separate them as individuals and
imagine their motivation.

"How can you concentrate, Seymour?" someone would
invariably ask him, turning from the bridge table for the inquiry.

"Practice," he would say pleasantly, coolly
observant, taking the opportunity to drink in the details and mannerism of the
person that asked the question. His eye scanned their pocketbooks, measuring
their size, noting that the bread would simply have been too big to fit in any
of them. As for the men, they rarely brought anything along that could be used
for transport. No one who entered their condominium was free from observation.
Many of them took the sudden interest for sociability on his part.

"Seymour Shapiro looks like he's coming out of his
shell."

"It's about time."

But when Bernice found a Sara Lee cake missing, she burst
into tears.

He checked the inventory on the yellow sheets. When an item
was consumed, he had methodically crossed it out. "It's gone," he
said simply. The plot thickens, he told himself.

"This is making me a nervous wreck," she told
him. "Aside from being suspicious of my friends, I wonder if they think
I'm acting strangely."

"Well, one of them is acting strangely."

"You still think it's one of them?"

They had installed double locks, careful to lock them both
when they went out. At night, he checked the locks and the windows. There was
simply no way for a thief to enter. And Bernice was a light sleeper, more
restless now than ever. At the slightest creak in their condominium, she would
shake him out of a sound sleep.

"I heard something."

He listened, his ear cocked, his breathing shallow. Then he
quietly got out of bed, admiring his own courage, and slowly inspected the
apartment. When he was certain that no one had entered, he checked the food
inventory. In the morning, he noted that Bernice looked tired and drawn, the
dark circles under her eyes deeper, and she was beginning to lose her bounce.

"I told you to let me worry about it."

"Easier said than done."

He had not been able to find a correlation between the
objects found to be missing and the visits of her friends, although he had, he
thought, observed them carefully when they left. The problem was, he deduced
finally, that the discovery of the theft only came about when Bernice decided
on the use of the foodstuffs. This meant that he had to check the inventory
twice a day, once in the morning and once at night before he went to bed.

"Maybe we should leave it alone," Bernice said
one night as they both lay restless and unable to sleep. Her remark was a broad
hint at her own suspicions.

"You know who it is?"

"No." She paused. "I really don't want to
know. It will only bring us grief. Obviously one of my friends is a very sick
person."

"A kleptomaniac."

"Isn't that someone who steals and doesn't know
they're stealing?"

"Yes."

But the conversation went no further that night.

It was only after he discovered that a box of tea bags was
missing one night after the mah-jongg game that the suspicion narrowed down,
confirming what they had both suspected. It was one of her best friends, one of
the three women with whom she shared a great deal of her time. He debated with
himself as to whether he should tell her about the latest theft, deciding,
finally, that it would be better not to mention it until he was certain, dead
certain which one it was.

"Anything missing?" she asked with trepidation after
her friends had left.

"Nothing," he lied. Why cause her any more grief,
he thought, forcing himself to stay alert. When they played together in his
living room, he watched the three women. They seemed pleasant, absorbed in
their game, chattering and gossiping between games, but taking the play
seriously. Occasionally one of them would rise and go to the bathroom. Rarely
would any of them go into the kitchen and when one did he watched her closely.
When they had gone, he checked the inventory. Nothing was missing. He admitted
to himself that he liked the idea of the mystery being strung out, since it
absorbed his interest now, dominated his thoughts day and night.

One night after they had gone, he rushed to his bedroom
dresser drawer for the inventory. The yellow paper was gone. Searching under
his socks and underwear, he could not find it. Then he opened the other
drawers, wondering if he had misplaced it. Bernice heard the drawers banging as
Seymour's temper rose. She came into the bedroom, watching him.

"I threw it away," she said quietly.

"You what?"

"I threw it away."

"Then you know who's doing it."

"No," she said. "I've decided I don't want
to know."

He felt his exasperation, watching her. He noted her
tiredness, her sagging jowls.

"But she's stealing from us. It's wrong."

"Yes, it's wrong. But I still don't want to
know." She touched his arm. "Please." A tear teetered on the
bottom of the lid of one of her eyes. "I love my friends."

"It's money out of my pocket," he said, unable to
hide his disgust. "It's tough enough as it is."

"I'll eat less," she said. She went into the
bathroom to prepare for bed. Listening at the door, he heard her sobs. She does
know, he decided.

But he ignored her entreaties and began memorizing the
inventory of their food, checking it as unobtrusively as possible each morning
and each night. It was impossible for him to leave it alone. A mystery must be
solved. That was the premise of all the books he had read. All the loose ends
had to be neatly tied.

A few weeks went by and he discovered a missing steak and a
jar of instant coffee. It was the missing coffee that triggered his
malevolence. He knew that one of the three women had taken it the night before,
although he had not noticed how it was done, remembering only that it had last
been seen on the kitchen table.

"No coffee?" he asked innocently at breakfast the
next morning as he stared into a cup filled with hot tea.

"I must have run out," she said, her eyes darting
nervously about the kitchen.

"You know better," he said. "We were robbed
last night. It's a disgrace, a positive disgrace." His voice rose.
"There are certain rules of behavior.... "The words trailed off as he
saw her body sag into the other chair at the table. Her hands shook as she
leaned her head against an upright arm supported by her elbow. On the verge of
tears again, she tried to speak, but her lips could only tremble.

"One of those three women is not your friend," he
said, patting her shoulder. "These are the hard decisions of life."
He was conscious of having seen the words somewhere in one of his mystery
novels.

"It doesn't matter," she said finally. She was on
the edge of hysterics.

The tone of her voice frightened him momentarily, then
steeled his resolve. I will find out, he vowed.

"If I want to share my food with other people, I will
make the choice," he said, sincere in his logic. She nodded, a kind of
symbol of surrender.

But she had not been totally without guile. When she
visited the houses of her friends, she would peek into their refrigerators and
cabinets, noting that they seemed well stocked, nor was there a hint of
suspicion in the demeanor of any one of them.

"I have looked into all of their kitchens," she
said, under control now.

He got up and paced the room, his mind turning over,
feeling the excitement of the deduction process. He thought of Maigret, the
slow, ponderous, methodical Maigret, who understood motives with a sure
instinct.

"Did you learn anything from that?"

"I'm afraid not," she answered hesitantly.
"The usual things, boxes and cans."

He thought for a moment.

"Did you lift them?" He felt the thrill of
discovery.

"Lift them?"

"Were they full or empty?"

"I don't understand."

"It's quite easy to use empty cans and boxes to
simulate a full larder."

"Larder?"

It was a bookish, literary term, most commonly used in
British mysteries.

"Storeplaces for food," he said pedantically.

"I didn't think--"

"It's obvious that the woman is clever and has
developed a foolproof system of theft. It is possible, of course, for a
kleptomaniac to be clever, but this seems to me to be the work of someone of
calculating cunning." He looked at Bernice, his eyes narrowing. "Try
seeing if there is actually food in the cans and containers."