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GERTRUDE WAS FEELING discouraged when she walked into Goodwill on Monday morning. She wasn’t making much progress on this case, and had accomplished essentially nothing over the weekend except a steady stream of circular thought. But what bothered her most was her certainty of Roderick’s innocence, and she couldn’t stand not knowing why the cops thought he was guilty.
Sherri greeted her when she walked into the store. “Willow’s in the back. Go find her, and she’ll put you to work.”
Gertrude nodded somberly. On her way to the swinging doors, she passed Azalea, who was rearranging DVDs.
“What are you doing?” Gertrude asked, a little more crankily than she’d meant to.
“I’m putting the movies in alphabetical order.”
“Why?”
“Because it looks nice,” Azalea explained.
Gertrude continued toward the back and was met at the swinging doors by Willow.
“You’re late again,” she scolded.
“Booby-traps,” Gertrude explained.
“I think that term is offensive to women,” Matt declared from a bin to their right.
Willow glared at him. “Eavesdropping is also offensive to women. And booby-traps have nothing to do with breasts. Good grief, Matt. Get a life!”
Matt swore at her, but Willow ignored him.
“Come on, Gertrude. We don’t have time for him. Today is pull day. We’ve got lots of work to do.”
“What in tarnation is a pull day?” Gertrude asked.
“Every Monday is pull day. We switch the tag color today.”
Gertrude stared at her blankly.
“So, you might not have noticed,” Willow began, speaking patronizingly slowly, “that all week yellow-barbed items have been half-off. On Mondays, that changes. Today, red stuff went half-price. So we have to go through and pull all the yellow-tagged stuff off the shelves.”
“Oh!” Gertrude exclaimed, actually excited. “And what do we do with the yellow stuff?”
“It goes to Gorham,” Willow said. “Come on, we’ll start in toys. There’s usually not much stuff left there.” Willow began to push an empty blue bin toward the toys.
“What’s Gorham?” Gertrude asked, following her.
“Gorham, Maine,” Willow said, reverting to her condescending tone.
“I know that,” Gertrude snapped. “But why do we send stuff to Gorham? What’s there? A Goodwill bargain barn?”
“No. The pound store.”
“The pound store?” Gertrude repeated. She felt her heart rate increase at the very words. “What exactly is a pound store?”
Willow parked the bin and began picking through the toys. “It’s exactly what it sounds like. You can buy this stuff and pay for it by the pound.”
“You’re kidding!” Gertrude could suddenly think of nothing else but getting herself to this pound store.
Willow stared at her. “Are you going to help or not?”
Gertrude began to push the puzzles around, but she wasn’t really looking at the tags. “So what happens? They have scales at the checkout?”
“Yep.”
“Wowsa,” Gertrude said. Despite her lack of attention, a yellow price tag jumped out at her. She pulled the Scrabble game from its shelf. “This has a yellow sticker. So it goes to Gorham now?”
“Yes,” Willow said, as if she were talking to someone incredibly stupid. “Now you put it in this here bin,” she said.
Gertrude dropped it in. Then suddenly she exclaimed, “Oh Mylanta!” so loudly that Willow actually jumped.
“What?” she cried. “Did you see a spider?”
“That’s it!” Gertrude cried, and then looked around for a spider.
“What’s it?”
“How does the stuff get to Gorham?”
“A truck.”
“When does the truck come?” she asked breathlessly.
“I don’t know. Sometime Monday night. Why does it matter?”
“Because that’s where the lamp must have gone.”
“What lamp?” Willow asked, reasonably enough.
“The ugly green dead-bird-lamp! It wasn’t in any of the bins, or any of the recycling boxes, or any of the trash cans, or the dumpster, and it was so big, someone would have noticed if someone tried to walk out of the store with it—”
“What lamp?” Willow barked.
Gertrude looked at her. “Will you drive me to the pound store?”
Willow laughed. “What? Like right now?”
“Yes! It’s a matter of life and death!”
“The life and death of a lamp?” Willow asked.
“Of course not!” Gertrude snapped. “Will you take me or not?”
Willow laughed again. “You’re nuts. I’m at work. You’re at work, for that matter. We can’t just take off. And even if we could, I wouldn’t take you. Do you know how far Gorham is?”
“I need a smoke break,” Gertrude said, and turned and headed toward the bathroom. She had no intention of smoking, obviously, but that excuse seemed to work for others, and she needed some alone time to think. How was she going to get to Gorham? It had to be a hundred miles away. She didn’t even want to think about how much that would cost in a taxi.
Calvin. It had to be him. He was the only option. Her only chance. But how was she going to convince him to drive her to Gorham?
She left the bathroom and headed toward the back to grab her coat. Then she called the CAP bus. She thought about leaving through the donation door, but didn’t want Sherri to worry that the murderer had struck again, so she headed up front.
Sherri was checking out a customer. “I have to go,” Gertrude said.
“Why?” Sherri called out as Gertrude headed for the door.
“Sorry, can’t explain. It’s an emergency.”
She hurried out into the cold and then stopped three feet from the door to wait. She breathed a visible sigh of relief when she saw Norman behind the wheel. She threw herself into the van.
“You OK, Gertrude? You seem a little, well, flushed.”
“I’m fine, Norm,” she said and slammed the door behind her. “Don’t suppose you can drive me to Gorham?”
“Gorham? Why?”
“Can you or can’t you?”
“Well, no, I don’t think so. I mean, if you had some sort of medical appointment, we could probably get you a ride, but I’d have to talk to my supervisor.”
“No, never mind. There’s no time. Just take me home.”
When they stopped in front of her trailer, she was alarmed to see her front door ajar. She leapt out of the van and made a beeline for her steps, but as she ascended them, she met Calvin coming out of her trailer.
“Calvin!” she exclaimed. “What in tarnation are you doing?”
“I saw her!” he exclaimed right back.
“Saw who?”
“The burglar! I called the cops. They should be here any second, but I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to catch her in the act, but she went out a window.”
Gertrude pushed past him into her trailer. She looked down at the mess on her floor. “What happened here?”
“What happened is, you didn’t tell me you had the place rigged, and I came running in here and fell flat on my fanny! That’s what happened!” He turned around to show her that his entire backside was covered in baby powder.
“Aw shucks, Calvin! I was trying to capture the culprit’s footprint!”
“Well, you may have, but then I wiped it out. You could have picked something less slippery! I’m only wearing my moccasins. Not exactly hiking treads.”
“OK, but you saw her?”
“Indeed, I did. As I was flopping around in your Blue Rose Talcum powder, I saw her go out through that window,” he said, pointing.
Gertrude walked over to the window, which was still open. The perpetrator had apparently climbed over her recliner to get out the window. She gasped. “Calvin, look!”
Calvin started across the room to her and then stopped. “Are there any other traps I should be aware of? Maybe a landmine or deadfall?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Just watch out for that tripwire, right there,” she said, pointing.
“What’s that do?”
“Sets off an air horn,” Gertrude explained.
“What’s an air horn going to do?”
“Hopefully scare the snot right out of the bad guy! Now, get over here and look at this.”
He crossed the room and looked at her find: a perfect imprint of the front half of a shoe, as if the intruder had pushed off the recliner to get out through the window. “Well, I’ll be darned. It worked, sort of.”
“Yep! I’ll say!” Gertrude took her phone out and snapped several pictures of the footprint, as they both heard approaching sirens.
Calvin met the deputies at the door. “Watch your step,” he said. “It’s a mite slick right here.”
Hale entered and looked down at the white powder all over the floor. “Uh ...” he started, but then he looked up and saw Gertrude. “Oh great.”
“Don’t oh great me, you meanieface! Someone has broken into my house multiple times, and I guarantee you it is the same person who killed Tislene Breen. They’re after me now because I’m hot on their tail.”
“Don’t you mean trail?” Hale said.
Gertrude ignored him.
“Are you sure it’s the same culprit?” Calvin asked. “A few months ago, you were sure your prowler was the stripper from your last case.”
Gertrude smiled at his use of the word “case.”
“If it’s happened multiple times, why haven’t you called us?” Hale asked. “Why haven’t you filed a report? And why are you smiling?”
“Because I have done your job, again!” Gertrude declared. She dragged a tote into place and climbed atop it so she could reach for something on her piano.
“Careful!” Calvin said. “Do you need me to get something? Maybe a safety harness?”
“Got it!” Gertrude cried triumphantly, as she dropped back to the floor with a crash. She handed a small camera to Hale. “This is motion-activated. You might have to watch some cats moving about, but it should also tell you exactly who broke in. Now, if you’ll dust the place for prints”—Hale looked around wonderingly—“I’ll leave you to it. Calvin and I have to get to Gorham, STAT!”
“Where did you get such a thing?” Hale asked, looking over the camera. He looked impressed.
“Cabela’s Bargain Cave,” Gertrude said. “It’s for wildlife. But I don’t really care much for wildlife.” And with that, Gertrude headed out of the trailer, expecting Calvin to follow, which he did.
“Do you know if anything is missing?” Hale called after her.
“Watch the tape! See if she took anything!” Gertrude called back. “We’ve got to go!”
A few seconds later, Gertrude and Calvin heard the air horn go off.