Something like a thrill went through me.That wasn’t the behavior of an honest citizen.That certainly wasn’t the behavior of a confused old woman.The wordheistcame back to me.
(Also, I deeply regretted sayingstrategeryin front of Deputy Bobby.)
When the woman reached the next store—a gift shop owned by an out-of-town company, notorious among locals for hawking cheap, generic junk—she darted inside.
I went after her.
Inside, the whir of a fan competed with the voices of shoppers.A woman held up an oversized T-shirt (the graphic showed a hand throwing the peace sign), measuring it against her teenage—and clearly grumpy—son.A heavyset man in a Roll Tide hat was smelling factory-produced “artisan” soaps, making a face after each one before gamely moving on to try the next.And—
There.The white-haired lady was ducking behind a wall of display cubes holding, yes, even more T-shirts.
I darted and glided between tourists, circled around the T-shirt display, and caught a glimpse of my quarry slipping out the back door.She didn’t move like an old lady, that was for sure.I sprinted after her.
As I neared the doorway, the tail-end of a conversation reached me: “—don’t know; he must have seen me—”
I stepped out of the shop and saw the woman I’d been following.She had turned, as though waiting for me.And, I noticed, she’d gotten rid of my ice cream cone.I had a single moment to experience a burst of outrage.
Then something struck me at the ankles, and I tripped.
I pitched forward, lost my footing on the narrow steps, and crashed down onto the worn pavement of the alley.The landing drove the breath from my lungs, and as my brain tried to reboot, I gasped for air.I was vaguely aware of someone poking and prodding at me.I caught a whiff of a smell I couldn’t quite place—like vinyl or plastic.Somehow, I flopped onto my back.
Staring up, I recognized the woman I’d been following.Next to her was another woman—white, middle aged, and holding a cane (which I realized, with a kind of brain lag, she had used to trip me on the stairs).In her other hand, she was carrying an enormous beach bag stuffed full of clothes that still had the security tags on them.She was wearing what I could honestly call the most hideous hat I’d ever seen.It was knit.It was befeathered.It was drooping and shapeless and multicolored, and whoever had made it had worked shiny, metallic strands in with the yarn.It looked, I thought, like what Tinkerbell’s puke might look like.And I realized I might have a concussion.
“He followed you,” the second woman said.
“It’s not my fault!”the first woman said.“How was I supposed to know?”
The second woman made a disgusted noise.“Way to go, Joan.You ruined everything.”She stared at me a moment longer.Then she spat and said, “Let’s find Phyllis and get out of here.”
3
They were gone by the time I could take a full breath.I got to my feet.I made my way to the mouth of the alley.The music from a calliope rolled down from the next intersection, mixed with the familiar, excited babble of tourists.They thronged the block: a man shepherded two sulky tweens across the street with zero regard for oncoming traffic (Deputy Bobby would have had a fit), and a middle-aged woman was blocking half the sidewalk as she tried to button up a quilted parka (this is a Pacific Northwest thing—I mean, it wasJuneand people acted like they were polar explorers), and two excited little girls had decided this was an opportune moment to test drive their new hobby horses (literally, not figuratively).But there was no sign of the two women who had—what was the polite way to saybeat the crap out of me?
My hands were scraped.My shoulder throbbed.And—I discovered a moment later—my wallet was gone.
My wallet was gone?
But it was.And when I went back and checked the alley, I didn’t find it.I remembered one of the women poking and prodding at me, and the only conclusion seemed to be that they’d taken my wallet.And my ice cream.
So, maybe I hadn’t been too far off when I’d called this whole debacle a heist.I mean, heists—by their nature—always involved more than one person.And these ladies were clearly in the business of heists—not just my ice cream or my wallet, but also, I suspected, that beach bag full of clothes.
So, what was I going to do about it?
I could tell Deputy Bobby, but there were two problems with that.First, by the time I found him, the women would probably be gone.The second woman had said they needed to find Phyllis and leave, and that sounded like they weren’t going to stick around while I pulled Deputy Bobby away from traffic duty.If they got away, I didn’t think I’d be able to track them down—I didn’t have a good description (aside from that hideous hat), and I only had a first name.There were probably a fair number of women called Joan, especially of a certain age.
The other (more serious) problem was that I’d look like a wuss.I mean, I hadn’t exactly taken it like a man when a little old lady had stolen my ice cream cone.And while Deputy Bobby and I werejustfriends (I mean, even if I’d wanted it to be something more—which I didn’t—he already had a boyfriend), the thought of running back to him with my tail between my legs, to tell him a story about how some senior citizens were mean to me—well, that was too much for my already shattered dignity.
That was that.I was going to have to find them myself.
It turned out not to be quite as simple as I’d imagined.
“One of them had white hair,” I explained to a mom.She was busy wrangling a boy who was trying to peg passersby with an old-fashioned yo-yo.“And the other had an ugly hat.I mean, truly hideous.”My earlier flash of genius came back to me.“Like if Tinkerbell threw up.”
The mom stared at me; she dodged the yo-yo, without even seeming to see it, as it whistled toward her head.And then she looked around.
I followed her gaze, and my heart sank.
Just about every third person was a white-haired lady.And ugly hats—sun hats, bucket hats, knit caps, trucker hats—stretched as far as the eye could see.
