“Cassidy! It’s so good to see you. You never visit.”
“Sorry, I’ve had searches come up and had to go up north for a funeral and then more searches. I haven’t been home much.”
“What are you working on now? I know you don’t just come over here to chat with an old lady. Some reason always brings you over and I’m always fascinated to see what it’s going to be next!”
“Well, now that you mention it, I’m looking for someone. She is sixtyish, small, in great shape for sixty. She has a penchant for expensive jewelry and manages to get expensive pieces with startling regularity. I thought someone like that might show up in your groups occasionally.”
“You just described half the women in the elite group.”
“The elite group?”
“You know, the rich, the uppity ups. I’m not one of them. They have teas and bridge nights and garden parties. They don’t care about me. I’m the Boggle champion and the Scrabble champion in our circle of friends.”
Her husband, Wally called out from the other room. “That’s because you use your whole vocabulary in a single day!” He never interfered or eves dropped on Hazel’s conversations unless he could compliment her. At least that’s the way she seemed to take it. I thought he was just being sarcastic.
“This woman would probably hang out with normal people because she wouldn’t want the uppity ups to out class her.”
“Hmm, small, sixtyish, you know sixty year old people in great shape don’t usually hang out at the senior center. They think that place is for old people. People only go to the senior center once they really feel old. Why, I know a few people in their sixties and seventies, even their eighties who have groupie friends at the gym! If she’s in great shape maybe she goes to a gym.”
“You can’t show off expensive jewelry at the gym. It just gets in the way.”
“I’ll ask Melba Troast and Winnie Dixie. I’ve got a few connections between the Boggle group and the uppity ups. I bet we can come up with some names if we just try.”
“She can’t know we’re looking for her. If gossip makes its way to the wrong ears she’ll take off for another city.”
“So she’s new around here?”
“Within a year or two.”
“Well that narrows it down a lot! Most of the people I know have been in Joshua Hills for decades.”
That got the ball rolling. Then I got to thinking that it couldn’t hurt to check out the gym. I hadn’t thought to watch for Agnes there but it made sense that a sixty-year-old cat burglar had to stay in shape. And it made sense for her to go during the middle of the day when there was no use staking out houses. So I drove down to the gym and staked out a spot on an elliptical machine because the elliptical machines were stationed higher than the treadmills and gave a better view of the room.
I quickly found out that there must be hundreds of women in town fitting Agnes’s description, so I began wandering. I feigned ignorance about how the machines worked while an older person was near and then talked to them while we fixed the problem.
“These seats never budge!” I said struggling with the handle and lifting the seat to adjust the machine. “I get a better workout adjusting the machines than I do using them!”
“Here,” a woman said. “You pull and I’ll lift. How far do you want it?”
“Just a notch or two.” Actually, I didn’t really want to move it at all I just wanted to break the ice and talk. The seat moved and I got on even though it was now set all wrong for me. “I don’t know how you do it. Here I am only twenty-six and I see people all the time here your age that can out do me!”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be seventy-two in August.”
“Seventy-two? I’d have never guessed. I try to guess how old people are and I always guess young here.”
“That’s because exercising helps keep a body fit and a fit body looks younger. It really does help. I feel so much better after coming here. Look at that man. How old do you think he is?”
“Sixty?”
“He’s seventy-one and came in second in the state in weight lifting for his age division. What about that woman?”
“Fifty?”
“I think she’s sixty-four but she claims she is sixty. Her husband is sixty-eight and he says she lies about her age.”
“If she looks fifty why does she say she is sixty? Why not just go for fifty while she’s at it?”
“Too many people know her husband. She wouldn’t want people to think a fifty-year-old woman would marry a sixty-eight year old man. Better to be a young looking sixty than an old looking fifty.”
And so I went from machine to machine working out with all the wrong settings and talking to a most interesting set of people. By the time I went home I could hardly move.
“What’s wrong with you tonight?” Rusty asked. “You act like you just ran the L.A. Marathon.”
“I did! I went to the gym and talked to all the old people there. I must have used every machine in the place! Those old people almost killed me!”
“Wait a minute. You went to the gym to talk to old people?”
“It was Hazel’s idea. She said old people in good shape don’t hang out at the senior center. They go to the gym. I figured a cat burglar might have to stay in shape but the old people at the gym can all out do me.”
“You went to the gym looking for Agnes Cooper?”
“I’m lucky I didn’t find her! I was in no shape to do anything about it if I did. I’m going back tomorrow. If a seventy-five year old woman can out stair step me I’m in trouble.”
He smiled. “I don’t want you looking for Agnes Cooper. She’ll slip up one of these days. I’m worried about Hazel scaring her off.”
“I didn’t give Hazel a name, just a set of characteristics to watch for. If she finds anybody matching the description she’ll be over here on the double. I just hope she doesn’t try to walk here again.”
“Forget about Agnes Cooper.”
“I can’t. You got me curious. She isn’t dangerous. She isn’t going to come after me with a loaded gun. She won’t even know I’m looking for her. I can slip into circles that you don’t have access to. The police don’t go to Boggle matches at the senior center, but I could, if I just talked to Hazel and expressed an interest.”
“Boggle matches?”
“Yeah, Hazel’s the area Boggle champ. You didn’t know that?”
“No, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least. Hazel probably runs through the entire dictionary in a day. What makes you think Agnes goes to our gym. There’s four others in town.”
“Our gym is the most popular. If a woman wants to develop a group of friends she’s going to go where people are.”
“Well, I’m not going to tell you to stay away from the gym. And I won’t stop you from talking to the neighbors. But I really wish you would just drop the hunt for Agnes Cooper. There are bigger fish to catch out there than a sixty-five year old woman who likes expensive jewelry.”
“But Agnes is doable. I can find Agnes. It just takes patience and connections. I can make connections. Plus, if I can find Agnes under the right circumstances she can be brought in easily instead of running her down in some midnight chase through a neighborhood.”
He sighed knowing he couldn’t stop me from thinking about it and I bet he kicked himself for even mentioning Agnes to me in the first place.
The good news was I was going to be in good shape by the time I found Agnes Cooper. I had been a regular at the gym for a long time. I trained there before academy and easily ran five miles. Then we had moved out of town and the gym seemed a long ways away and the hills nearby invited hiking and exploring. Hiking and exploring were okay exercise but I’d let a lot of things slip without knowing it. I could hike. I could carry my pack. I could shoot dead on. But I was getting out of shape as far as the gym went.
I knew if Agnes went to the gym she could go any time of the day or night but I thought she would go during the day because she would be on stake out when families were coming and going and she would be breaking and entering under cover of darkness. I tried all the weight machines. I attended aerobics classes. I even did yoga. But I didn’t see Agnes.
“Have you tried the water aerobics class?” Hazel asked me when I came to her aching and discouraged.
“Water aerobics? I had enough trouble keeping up in regular aerobics.”
“Older people go for water aerobics because it provides a workout without stressing the joints. You ought to try looking there.”
“Did you talk to Winnie and Melba?”
“How could I not? Wally thinks I talk a lot but that’s because he never goes near them!”
“Did you figure out anybody that matched my description?”
“No, everybody we could think of had been in town much longer than two years. But I’m not giving up! I’ve got eagle eyes for this woman. What did she do?”
“If I told you that, word would get out and she’d make a run for it.”
“Are you saying I’m a gossip?” she said in mock offense.
“I was counting on it. I need a gossip right now.”
“Wally!” she called out. “Wally, get in here.”
Wally peeked around the wall.
“Have you noticed any attractive sixtyish women with expensive jewelry? Has anyone come on to you lately at the matches or games?”
“You’d actually ask him that?”
“When you’ve been married as long as we have nothing surprises you anymore. Everybody knows the widows are notorious flirts. As long as they get flirted back to they are happy. So, my husband flirts with younger women? I think it’s funny. Just as long as he doesn’t score!” I laughed to myself thinking of Wally scoring with some widow lady. “You just wait, Cassidy, some day you’re going to be my age, and when you are every widow in the county is going to be after Rusty. You better be on your toes.”
I better be on my toes right now! I thought. Divorcées can be just as bad, even worse.
I went to the gym when a water aerobics class was scheduled. I walked through the locker rooms to the pool to see what was involved. I saw women three times my size squeeze into colorful spandex and I thought, no thanks. Cat burglars hate water.
Next, the city offered classes to senior citizens. I looked over the offerings. How to Make a Quilt in a Weekend. Cooking for One or Two. Creative Courtship. I wondered about that one, then decided that’s where all the widows got their tips from. Self Defense. It showed a picture of a person using their cane as a weapon. Hmm, maybe Agnes would take a self-defense class, if she was worried about getting caught. Yeah, and maybe she’s a retired karate teacher, too. The more I thought about Agnes Cooper the more I wanted to meet this woman and it didn’t really make sense. All she had done was break into a few houses, okay, well, many houses, and take some jewelry. There was only one piece of jewelry I cared enough about to be upset about its loss and I wore it all the time so I couldn’t really identify with the victims, but I could identify with Agnes. I could see why she did what she did. I thought it would be fun to break into a house and see if I could navigate inside without detection. I didn’t want to take anything and I didn’t want to scare a hapless family half to death, but the idea held appeal to me, nonetheless. If I could choose a victim I decided it would be Chase. He’d broken into my house undetected. I thought it would be fun to surprise him for a change. I was almost sure he’d identify me before he shot me. Okay, enough day dreaming, Cass, what’s your next step? I didn’t have a car, or an address, or a pattern. I only had a list of characteristics and a picture. I was sure there was a pattern somewhere. The police just had not discovered what it was yet.
Rusty accidentally gave me the break I needed to make another stab at Agnes. He went off to work and left Agnes’s file on his desk. It seemed wrong to open it. It was none of my business. But I was good at seeing things other people missed. What if I could see something in it that the police passed over? I didn’t pour over every page leaching out all Agnes’s secrets. I wasn’t interested in her past arrests or where she went to school or her last known address. I was sure the police had paid Agnes’s address a visit. What I found of interest was a list of places she had broken into and a few pictures of jewelry she had stolen. Wow, she did have an eye for the spectacular. I couldn’t imagine a woman showing off a ring like the one pictured without everyone in the room remembering. I made a quick copy of the list of houses and pocketed it. I got out a map of the city and looked up each address in the order they were hit. Then I drove to the houses and studied them to find similarities. Very quickly, I wished I had paid closer attention while I had the file handy. I’d like to know how she broke in and what made her decide to. Sitting outside a house thinking about how I would break in didn’t help a whole lot. I watched the house in the afternoon when I thought moms would be picking up kids from school and taking them home. I really wanted to be there in the evening when the people were getting home from work but I needed to be home cooking dinner during that time.
The house I staked out first revealed very little to me. Agnes could have broken in easily in broad daylight here. The neighborhood was quiet. The upstairs windows were open. It was a large brick affair, a mansion compared to normal houses. It was custom built, to be sure. None of the houses in this neighborhood looked alike. My Jeep seemed out of place. This neighborhood was the home of rich people’s cars, not dirty off road Jeeps.
When a car finally pulled up, a uniformed person got out. It was an older car, and they parked on the street. The woman came back and pulled cleaning supplies from the trunk and entered the house using a key she already had. I looked over the car. No advertising. Later, a BMW pulled up to the house, the garage door opened automatically and closed before the driver exited the car. I had to leave before the woman in the uniform left. I hadn’t learned much at all but I wasn’t discouraged. I had a whole list of houses. Something would turn up.