CHAPTER ELEVEN

Allison didn't want to leave Uncle Bob's office. She was filled with an irrational surety that the moment she set foot back in the store, she'd see the petite blonde with the jade pendant come striding through the front doors like a gunslinger.

Irrational. Yes. It was totally irrational. There was no way for the blonde to have found her. Scoot had been well out of Century Plaza by the time she could have gotten her feet and her bearings back.

Even if someone had followed, Scoot would have lost them during the transition back into Allison. Booger might not have been the greatest guard-dog, but he would have given her some kind of indication if a stranger had been nearby.

So, though she was holding her breath in anticipation and dread, she made herself leave the safety of the office.

Betty was long gone, and business was picking up. It usually did in the afternoons, once school got out and more people left work. Weekends were the busiest, except for holiday Mondays when Uncle Bob liked to sell everything at half-off.

The Beekers had evidently decided on the headboard and were now trying to figure out how they were going to get it home. They didn't have a car; Allison knew that Mr. Beeker was a janitor up at Dixie Lanes, the bowling alley on the corner, so he walked to work. And Mrs. Beeker took the bus to the big Shop-N-Go grocery store a mile up Prewett, where she worked nights as a checker.

Uncle Bob, done dealing with one problem customer, moved on to a young guy who wanted to donate his computer. By the look of him, he was an Atherton College student who must've just upgraded, a dude who'd gotten a Dell. Sadly, the thrift store couldn't take used computers. Something about the tubes or the chemicals. Then Uncle Bob hustled over to the Beekers and offered them the services of Donny Fielding. Donny, who had played high school football before discovering beer and flunking out, was a moose whose main talent was lifting and carrying heavy things.

Allison took up a post by the donations bin, where a long table had been set up for sorting. She dragged a large cardboard box up onto the table and opened it. Clothes. Baby clothes. Though they'd been washed, the ghost-smell of old spit-up wafted out.

She took cute tiny garment after cute tiny garment from the box, inspecting each. A small hole or missing button was okay, but anything with huge rips or broken zippers went into a second bin destined for the dump. As she went, she scribbled prices onto cardstock tags and stapled them to the sleeves, cuffs, necklines or waistlines. Fifty-nine cents, ninety-nine cents, a buck twenty-nine.

Shooting wary looks at the door each time it opened, she told herself not to be so jumpy. All right, maybe she had reason to be jumpy. Maybe Scoot had gotten them both in over their heads this time.

But what, really, could the mystery blonde do? It wasn't like she'd go to the police. How would that look? Call up and report a stolen purse … one that happened to contain a firearm and a pile of cash? Not likely.

From the baby clothes, she moved on to a box of old magazines. Women's magazines, outdated copies of Cosmopolitan and Glamour and Elle. The smell lingering on these was like some Dickensian spirit, the Ghost of Perfume Samples Past, but it was a far sight better than stale baby-urp.

She bundled the magazines back-to-back and slipped each pair into a clear plastic bag, which she folded over at the top and sealed with a row of staples. Cardstock tag – ninety-nine cents. What a bargain. Double feature.

Next was a purse. Not one of her donations. It had been cleaned out, except for a balled-up gum wrapper caught in the lining. She bent a cardstock tag around the handle, stapled it. Two dollars and forty-nine cents. It could go hang on the rack with the rest of the purses, backpacks, fanny packs and tote bags … some of which were hers.

That was the trick, one of the perks of her job. Once she had gone through the purses, spying into the lives of the women who'd owned them, she always brought them here. The purses, maybe the occasional wallet or scarf or pair of gloves. They'd be tagged and put on display, and if anyone should ever happen along who recognized a particular bag, well, Sherwood Second-Hand got donations all the time. Often anonymously. There were mornings when Uncle Bob or Allison showed up to unlock and found the bin so full that the excess had been piled against the front doors.

Oh, but she wished she had gone through the rest of the buttercream-leather purse. She had been so spooked that she'd only wanted to get out, get away. Not wanting to find anything more. Anything worse.

What could be worse?

Opening a plastic grocery sack that bulged with someone's unwanted shoes, Allison made a wry noise. She could have found a severed hand in there, for gosh sakes … that would have been worse. Or hard drugs, or kiddie porn.

She had been lucky in her purse-snatching career so far to have run across comparatively few really bad things. A fair amount of pot, either in baggies or in joints, which she had thrown away. A vial that she surmised had been crack cocaine, which she had chucked down a sewer grating. Once, horrible Polaroid photos of a woman and a Doberman, which she had burned and felt unclean for days afterward.

Maybe, she thought as she lined up the individual shoes in hopes of finding their mates, she shouldn't look through the rest of the blonde's purse after all. Maybe she should stuff everything back in there, weight it with a couple of bricks from the vacant lot, and toss the whole thing into the river.

Sneaker … pump … slipper … aha! Another sneaker. Which didn't match. Leopard-print ankle boot with stiletto heel. Snazzy! The matching boot had the heel broken off, though, too bad. Into the reject pile.

Somehow, she got through her shift. She sorted, she hung up clothes, she took a turn on the register when Lyle went on break, she directed traffic as Donny single-handedly moved the sections of a donated sectional sofa into the furniture area.

By quarter to seven, her nerves had calmed. She was no longer sure that the blonde was going to walk in and accuse her, or skip right over the accusations and put a bullet between her eyes. The spent adrenaline left her feeling tired and hungry, and all she wanted was a big meal and then a long sleep with the covers pulled up over her head.

She and Uncle Bob were the last ones to leave. "Plans for tonight, Allie-girl?" he asked as he locked up.

"I told Jamie that I'd come over for dinner."

He smiled and raised an eyebrow. "Oh-ho!"

"Don't you start," she said. "We're friends, that's all."

"Nice young man, though," Uncle Bob said. "Smart as a whip."

"I don't think he's my type."

"Sweetie, you don't have a type."

"Gee, thanks. I'll go out with anybody, is that it?"

"I didn't mean it like that." He gave her a thoughtful look. "It's not the wheelchair, is it?"

"No! How shallow do you think I am?"

"Well," he said, drumming his fingers on his chin, "you are a Montgomery."

Allison stuck out her tongue. "I'm half Sherwood, aren't I?"

"Don't know," he said. "I think your mother had all her Sherwood blood transfused right out of her when she married your dad."

"So true!" Allison said, resisting with effort the urge to roll her eyes.

"Not the chair, then?"

"No, Uncle Bob, it's not the chair! If you must know, it's that I don't think I'm his type. We're friends. A guy and a girl are allowed to be friends nowadays without it having to turn into some complicated thing, you know."

"Now, how could a clever, pretty girl like you not be his type?" He regarded her skeptically. "You're not saying that … well, that Kurt Oberdorfer might be more of his type?"

"I never said that, and I'm not saying it now."

"All right, all right, your nosy old uncle will keep out of your business. See you in the morning."

He had parked in the lot between his store and Dixie Lanes, an arrangement that the bowling alley managers allowed because Bob Sherwood, along with Gus Oberdorfer, Mike Hartnet, Ralph Wilkowsky and Al Chesterton formed the core of the longest-running bowling teams Dixie Lanes had ever seen. The Sixth Street Strikers, as they called themselves, held a canned food and toy drive every Christmas, sponsored community events like egg hunts on Easter and Halloween trick-or-treating at the local shops, and took turns supervising the Little Strikers junior bowling league. If the neighborhood was a small town unto itself, that bunch comprised its town council … old white guys to a man.

Allison watched him go, then turned back down 6th and headed for Jamie's place. He didn't live above his store the way Needles and Tisha, Nathaniel Caron, and several of the other area business owners did. Instead, he had a ground-floor two bedroom unit in the Greenview Apartments, a fancier building than Allison's.

Halfway there, she remembered she had offered to bring dessert, and took a quick detour around the block to the bakery. It was two doors down from a Weight Watchers, which had always struck Allison as fiendishly sadistic.

The bakery was warm, well-lighted and redolent with brown sugar, cinnamon, dough, and chocolate. A man who looked like he had never and would never attend a Weight Watchers meeting if his life depended on it – which in fact it might – was in the process of sliding a sheet of cookies into one of the ovens. More cookies sat cooling on wire racks. They were chocolate-chip-walnut by the lumpy look, each one the size of a hubcap, and Allison's mouth watered.

She bought a Dutch apple pie from Mrs. Oberdorfer's friend Netta, another sweet-faced older lady with a hint of an accent and long pure-white braids that had probably once been as yellow as daffodils. She also caved in and bought a couple of the cookies, and sampled the broken pieces of gingerbread and shortbread piled in shallow bowls atop the glass display cases.

Walking back, she passed the Weight Watchers again just as a group of heavyset women came out. Allison felt them staring at her, at the slim girl carrying what was obviously a pie-box and a white bakery bag. The combination of resentment, envy, raw craving hunger and self-disgust in their expressions made her want to flinch.

Across Dunley from the Weight Watchers, to make matters worse, Lucky Sue's Diner was upwind and giving off powerful grease fumes. Everything at Lucky Sue's was griddle-fried or deep-fried. Burgers, bacon, chicken, onion rings, onion blossoms, fries, curly fries. It was also one of the few places in town that had deep-fried Twinkies on the menu.

A few minutes later, relieved to be away from the baleful glares of the overweight women, Allison and her pie and cookies arrived safely at Jamie's front door.

The Greenview Apartments were not totally inaptly named; it was possible to see some greenery from the windows on the east side of the building, where trees and a small neighborhood park and a parochial elementary school stood on Pine Street. Jamie, however, had a view of the covered parking slots and the alley and the stairs that climbed the side of the Eight Ball Bar to the pool hall.

He had left the door ajar for her, and she nudged it open with her foot. "Hello?"

"In here!"

His apartment was three times as large as hers and much nicer, with all of the furnishings down low and widely spaced to accommodate his chair. She had only been here a few times, once to help Donny deliver the mammoth roll-top desk, but had been given the grand tour.

The second bedroom had been turned into a study, with even more bookshelves for a guy who already spent his days surrounded by them. Here was where Jamie wrote his stories, and where he fussed over them endlessly, not wanting to send them out to magazines unless they were perfect. He had both a typewriter and a computer, and said he preferred the former for his writing while the latter was primarily used for games and surfing the 'net.

Jamie had goldfish and angelfish and neon tetras in an aquarium with a bubbling sunken ship fixture, and a single irritable Japanese fighting fish named Bruno. Bruno had elaborate scarlet and indigo fins and lived in a glass punchbowl, endlessly cruising its watery home with such menace that you expected to hear the low, thrumming theme from Jaws.

Allison found Jamie in the kitchen, aggressively bright with yellow cabinets and white tile. It was full of good cooking smells that reminded her of the kitchen at home, though certainly not of her mother. Marian only ventured into the kitchen to give instructions to the cooks and caterers.

"I brought pie," she said.

"Hostess pies from the 7-Eleven?"

"Real apple pie from the bakery." She set the box on the countertop. "How's the meatloaf?"

"Coming right along." He had potatoes boiling on the stove, a pot of brown gravy simmering, and an orange mound of baby carrots poised to go into a third pot where water steamed.

The question, which had come and gone in her mind all afternoon, popped out before she knew it was going to.

"Hey, Jamie? Would you kill someone for fifty thousand dollars?"

**

CHAPTER TEN

Elvis had gone on to another song, one Allison didn't know. Bob frowned and sat up, taking his feet off the milk crates. "Allie-girl, Allie-girl, what do you need a gun for? Has someone been bothering you?"

"It's nothing like that –"

"Some crazy guy, you just let me know and we can have that taken care of. This is a good neighborhood. We look out for ourselves and we look out for each other. Do you think I would have encouraged you to move here if I thought it was a bad place?"

"No, I –"

"So if you're not feeling safe, we have to fix that, but I'd hate to see you carrying a gun. We'll get you some of that pepper-spray stuff, sign you up for some self-defense courses. I should have thought of it sooner, a pretty young girl like you and all the times you spend out roaming, you should have something like that, just in case. But there's no sense in getting you in trouble with the law, either."

"I'm not!" Allison said, blushing hotly.

"Why do you need a gun?"

"I don't need a gun."

Bob rubbed his pate, disturbing his comb-over. "What are we talking about, then?"

"Never mind."

"Never mind? I think not. If someone’s been bugging you, following you, some stranger or boyfriend who won't take 'dumped' for an answer, I need to hear about it."

"I can take care of myself, Uncle Bob, really. Nobody's bugging me. And, sheesh, the way you're talking it sounds like you'd hire someone to –"

Her thoughts broke off with a snap, or maybe it was the decisive snap of a last puzzle piece fitting into perfect place.

"Allie?"

"Oh, whoa, hey," she murmured.

Uncle Bob, his disorderly office and his Elvis music faded out. She was thinking of the blonde in the forest green business outfit. She looked like the least likely hired killer anybody could imagine.

And yet … a gun, twenty-five thousand in cash, and that folder …

She wished she had taken a better look at the folder and its contents. Wished she had listened more closely to the tape.

"Allison, are you okay, hon?"

It was nuts. Wasn't it?

Of course it was. She had been listening to Uncle Bob talk about how in this neighborhood, they looked out for each other. How, if some creep was stalking her, she should tell him and he'd have it taken care of. Like Needles took care of the flasher that had shown his version of bratwurst to Gretchen Oberdorfer … took care of him to the tune of two broken arms and worse.

All of that floating around in her head, was it any wonder she'd come to such a conclusion about the blonde with the buttercream-leather shoulder bag? When, really, there was probably another explanation, a perfectly logical and perfectly innocent one, for the things that had been in her purse.

She shook herself. "Sorry, Uncle Bob. I got thinking about something else."

He leaned closer, his blue eyes not so much twinkling now as penetrating. "I can tell something's up, Allie-girl, something's on your mind. I promised your mother that I'd keep an eye on you, remember. While I've broken more than a few promises to my baby sister, this is one I'd like to keep."

"I'm fine," she said. "No creeps, no stalkers, no psycho ex-boyfriends. I haven't even dated anybody long enough to qualify as a boyfriend, let alone an ex. What have you been telling Mom about me, anyway?"

Four years ago, at the age of eighteen, Allison had announced to her stunned family that she didn't want to go to college. That, in fact, she wanted to move out on her own, get a job, and be independent. It had not been a speech that received rave reviews from the Montgomerys. They couldn't believe that anyone, least of all one of their own children, could reject their wealth, their influence, their luxurious country-club and high-society lifestyle.

Her father waxed wroth, saying that if she wanted to do such a foolish and irresponsible thing, she'd have to do it without any help from him. The money meant for college would be put away in a trust fund and she would have no access to it until she came to her senses. The car, the cherry-red birthday Corvette, would be taken away. So would the allowance, which by then had gone up to a hundred a week. He had hoped that he could scare her into complying, but all his threats had done was to make Allison more belligerent and determined.

Her mother had been crushingly disappointed. Hilary was too caught up in her ballet career to even think of marrying yet, and Susan's mother got to have all the fun and bask in the glory when Susan and Daniel Jr. married. Marian had been banking on Allison to go to college long enough to find a husband, thereby letting her plan the idyllic storybook society wedding. The fact that Allison had no interest in prospective bridegrooms mattered not one bit in these maternal dreams, which were so brutally trampled underfoot by Allison's uncaring, callous, selfish desire to lead her own life.

Finally, seeing that they could not dissuade her, and perhaps coming to an unwilling understanding that she really did not care about the money, the connections, and the privilege, her parents had consented to let her move out. They might even have been glad of it, since clearly, whatever her DNA, she was no true daughter of theirs in spirit.

But they had imposed one condition. A condition that her father perhaps thought of as a dismal fate guaranteed to bring Allison groveling home again. They wanted her to go to work for Uncle Bob at his thrift store. Surely this humiliation would get through to her, would teach her a lesson.

Wrong.

She'd loved the thrift store from the moment she had first set foot inside. It had been like a larger version of the purses, an entire building full of oddball items. Mostly trash, occasionally treasure.

Dealing with the donations, or with the customers, offered Allison the same secret peek into the lives of strangers that she got when rifling through the contents of a stolen purse. Everything, and everyone, had a story to tell.

There was the one woman who had undergone weight-loss surgery and came in every month to drop off the clothes she could no longer fit into, while buying smaller ones. She had told Allison, laughing and shamefaced at the same time, that once she reached her goal, she would go on a huge spending spree at the ritzy downtown department stores and blow a fortune outfitting her sleek new body, but until then she would get by on second-hand.

And there was the guy who came in every week without fail, looking for board games, which Allison suspected he sold on the Internet for a tidy profit. She had once seen him almost capering with glee when he found a set of old Lawn Darts, the kind that had been discontinued because of their deadly metal tips but which apparently sold for big bucks. Jamie said that the same guy made regular stops at the Readmore, looking for role-playing games.

"I haven't been telling her anything," Uncle Bob said, in response to Allison's question about her mother. "Only that you're fine and well, you're not starving, you're not sleeping in a cardboard box."

"As far as they're concerned, I might as well be," she said. "They'd croak if they ever saw my place."

"Well, it is a little run down," he said. "You're always welcome to the rooms above the garage, if you want."

Uncle Bob lived on Pine Street, in a long skinny house that looked tiny from the front and like a railroad car from the inside. He had a detached garage in the back, with a two-room apartment over it. At the moment, the utilities in the apartment weren't hooked up and he used it to store all the spare furnishings and possessions he'd moved out of his house to make room for his ever-growing collection of records and music memorabilia.

"I like my place," Allison said. "Besides, I'm supposed to be independent, aren't I? How could I be independent living over your garage?"

The phone hidden somewhere in the papers on the desk let out a braying buzz. Bob excavated it. "Yes?"

As he talked – to Virginia, by the sound of it – Allison let her thoughts go back to the blonde, the gun and the money. What if the blonde was a hired killer? A hit man, or hit woman if you like. Maybe things like that did happen in the real world, and not just on the cop shows.

If it was true, how pissed must she be?

How pissed, and how alarmed and scared?

Another chilly glissando ran down Allison's spine, just like the one she'd gotten when she had first seen the gun.

Pretty damn pissed. Pretty damn alarmed. Pretty damn scared.

Suppose that the blonde had just … what did they call it? Had just been offered a contract on someone's life.

Whose life?

The guy in the pictures. The muscular guy on the sailboat.

Again, the chill, spreading out through her body. She had only glanced at the photos, but had seen enough to know that the man in them had been handsome, smiling, cheerful.

So, suppose that he was the target. Suppose the blonde had been given the information, the weapon – wouldn't she have her own weapon? Allison didn't know – and the cash. The payment. Some sort of contingency. Half now, the rest on completion? That'd be fifty thousand dollars.

Fifty thousand dollars to kill someone. To take a human life.

Was that enough?

People did some pretty gross and unbelievable things for that kind of money, if reality TV shows were to be trusted. People ate live spiders and immersed themselves in tubs full of rancid animal parts for that kind of money. People lied, betrayed, and cheated.

Would they kill?

Probably.

The blonde, then. Assume the blonde is the kind of person who would accept money to shoot a guy, to murder him. She gets her preliminary payment, her gun, all the details … and then …

"And then someone steals her purse," whispered Allison, feeling pale and cold all over. "Some skateboarder knocks her down and makes off with her purse. What's she going to do? What does she have to do?"

Uncle Bob was still talking, explaining to Virginia with the aggrieved air of someone repeating himself for the umpteenth time that, no, they didn't buy used items. No, not even for store credit. It was all donations.

"She has to get her stuff back," Allison said, still whispering. "She has to find the purse-snatcher. And … and make sure nobody else knows. Ever."

"Tell him to hang on, I'll be right down," Uncle Bob finally said, in a grumpy tone. He got up and turned off Elvis. "Time to get to work, Allie-girl."

"Okay," she said, barely aware of what she was saying.

It was a strange feeling, realizing that someone wanted to kill you.

**

CHAPTER NINE

Mr. Gavins wasn't in the hall when she left. The only person she saw was three-year-old Billy Strevyk, playing with toy cars on the grubby hallway carpet. The door behind him was open, and through it issued the smell of cooking pot roast and the sounds of one of the afternoon shows, something too raucous to be Dr. Phil but not quite trailer-trash enough to be Springer.

The Strevyks had two of the units and the connecting kitchen. Mr. Strevyk had been laid off from his job on an auto assembly line and now minded the house and kids while his wife worked. Whenever their paths crossed, Allison always saw a sort of hurt befuddlement in his eyes, as if he couldn't understand how his life had come to this.

On the stairs, she passed Mr. Gavins after all. He had his now-empty pillowcase slung over one meaty, hairy shoulder and a box of Tide in his hand. There was no need for conversation; his doctor had advised him to take the stairs instead of the elevator as much as possible, and he was wheezing and sweaty-faced as he trudged up the last few steps with the air of a climber finally reaching the peak of Everest.

Her landlady was in the entryway, pushing a vacuum that wheezed almost as badly as Mr. Gavins.

"I'm telling you, Allison," she said without looking up, as if carrying on an earlier conversation, "I finally appreciate the difference between suck-and-spit, and suck-and-swallow."

If asked, Allison might have expected a woman like Teddi Lace to have a whiskey-roughened voice with a smoker's rasp. Instead, she affected a cooing little-girl voice like the actress Jennifer Tilly, which made the things she said seem even dirtier.

"Uh … yeah," Allison said.

"Swallow, you bitch," Teddi said to the vacuum. It rolled back and forth, picking up bits of paper and cat litter and spraying them out from under its undercarriage.

Ex-stripper, possibly ex-porn-star and ex-prostitute as well, she claimed she'd once had the face and figure of a living Barbie doll. Now, though, the living Barbie doll had put on fifty pounds … most of it in the chest. Each of her boobs was bigger than Allison's entire head, though considerably less firm.

Teddi had a slight pooch of a gut, a slight sag to her rear, and lots of unconvincing brassy-blonde hair in a Farrah Fawcett 'do. She slathered on too much make-up, but to Teddi's credit, she didn't do herself the further disservice of trying to shoehorn herself into clothes designed with much younger and shapelier women in mind. Instead, she was mostly seen in a succession of drawstring sweat pants and men's triple-X extra-tall flannel shirts that still had a job of it bridging the gap of her canyonesque cleavage.

Allison went around the chugging, grinding, laboring vacuum and let herself out onto the street. The sun was low, golden rays slanting like melted butter between the buildings and lending even this part of town a hazy daydream charm.

The two blocks stretched between Prewett at the top of the hill and Pine at the bottom. Prewett was a sleazy main drag, all fast food and bowling alleys and motels. Pine was quieter, tree-lined, residential.

What Allison liked best about her neighborhood was that, in a weird sort of way, it was a small town unto itself. She wouldn't have thought such a thing was really possible in the bustling but anonymous heart of the city. People still knew each other here. They talked to each other … even more, they talked about each other.

It was like living in the middle of a soap opera, where you quickly got to know all the characters and their problems. Allison hadn't been a resident of Dunley Street for two weeks before she'd learned more about the people around her than she'd ever known about the other 'good' families with whom the Montgomerys associated.

She had heard about Teddi Lace's checkered past. She had heard about Martha. She'd heard how Mike, who ran Mike's Pool Hall, had a drinking problem. And how Samuel "Needles" Jefferson from the tattoo parlor had once broken both the arms of a flasher who'd exposed himself to little Gretchen Oberdorfer … and how that had just been the beginning of the luckless pervert's punishment. She knew that Ralph the barber had lost his wife to cancer, and Al the bartender had lost two wives to divorce and was up to his eyeballs in alimony and child support payments.

Some of the secrets of the neighborhood remained secrets, though. She didn't know, nor did anyone else, exactly how Jamie Tremayne had ended up in that wheelchair. Nobody knew whether Kurt, the middle Oberdorfer son, had officially come out to his parents, or if the family was playing a game of willful ignorance and denial.

And then there were the weird kind of secrets. She didn't know what the deal was with Mama Delilah, who some people said was a voodoo queen, and others said was just the requisite crazy old neighborhood cat lady … though she did know that Mama Delilah's one milky cataract-filmed eye made her skin crawl. It was enough to make a person sympathize with that guy from the Poe story, who had chopped up the old man and buried him under the floor … here, you fiends, the beating of his hideous heart.

People said that Nathaniel Caron, who sold crystals and incense and Tarot cards, and charged forty bucks a session as a 'psychic advisor' was really about as psychic as Uncle Bob, and that the only reason he kept a roof over his head was because he bore a striking resemblance to Johnny Depp. A steady clientele of teenage girls and older ladies alike were willing to pay that forty bucks for an excuse to hold his hand and look into those dreamy dark eyes.

They also said that the little house Nate ran his business out of, which huddled between the Dunley Apartments and Red Bowl Teriyaki, had been the site of a murder back in the 1920's and that the ghost of a young woman still turned up in mirrors, window glass, and any other reflective surface.

Allison crossed the intersection on a diagonal, waving to the only car currently moving. The driver, Tina Wendmeyer from the video store up by the 7-Eleven, tooted her horn and raised a hand in return.

Once across the street, she was in the Dog Haus zone, awash in the aromatic goodness that surrounded the corner shop where the Oberdorfers had been fattening up the locals for twenty years. Her mouth watered as helplessly as that of any of Pavlov's test subjects. Hot dogs, bratwursts, salami, pepperoni, corn dogs … if it was meat in a tube shape, it was on the menu at the Dog Haus, either served hot and ready to go, or available from the deli counter.

When she had first moved here, Allison had discovered that she could easily eat two meals a day at the Dog Haus. A grilled bratwurst on a bun, served with a heaping side of Mrs. Oberdorfer's German potato salad – tender paper-thin slices of potato melting in sour cream, bacon and cheese – was sheer heaven. She had also discovered, shortly thereafter, that she didn't dare eat two meals a day there if she wanted to stay trim. Not after putting on four pounds in two weeks.

These days, she allowed herself a trip to the Dog Haus a couple of times a month, usually every other Saturday or on a special occasion.

Two doors up, past the Close Shave, was Sherwood Second-Hand. It was set back from the sidewalk, under a portico roof with a perpetual pigeon problem. Trash cans and squat, columnular ashtrays of pebbled concrete flanked the entrance.

Signs on the glass doors promised 50% Off All Red Tags, 20% Off Seniors Every Day, Early Bird Special – Buy One Get One Free All Clothing Items Before Ten A.M., and Donations Gladly Accepted.

"Sherwood Second-Hand," she said, reaching for the door. "Robbing the rich to give to the poor since 1992."

Inside, the store was spacious and well-lit by florescent fixtures. The floor was tan-flecked-with-green linoleum, the ceiling off-white. To her immediate left was a large wooden bin for donations, which was a third of the way full of bagged clothes and cardboard boxes of toys and dishes despite the posted hours. To her right, a row of changing room stalls and a rack full of rejected try-ons.

A year ago, Uncle Bob had hired teenage Jake Oberdorfer to paint murals on the interior walls. "Putting the punk's graffiti talent to good use," he had explained, grinning his patented Uncle Bob grin. As a result, the walls were almost entirely covered with images from the Robin Hood legends. Robin and Little John duking it out with quarterstaves. Friar Tuck. Maid Marian. Will Scarlet. Prince John.

Except that Allison thought that somewhere along the line, either Uncle Bob or Jake had gotten Robin Hood mixed up with William Tell and Legolas from the Lord of the Rings movies. She certainly didn't remember reading about Robin Hood shooting apples off of anybody's head, or riding a shield down the steps of Nottingham Castle in a smooth skater-move that even Scoot wouldn't be nervy enough to try.

Lyle Kane, a not-too-bright but amiable enough guy a few years older than Allison, was at one of the registers, selling a stack of puzzles to Winnie from the craft store. He bobbed his head in greeting as Allison came in. Winnie smiled cheerily and waved.

A few other people browsed the aisles. Allison saw the Beekers from one of the apartments downstairs from hers arguing over a headboard, and Caroline Dressler digging through a tray of flatware in hopes of finding a matching set.

In the toy section, Needles' girlfriend Tisha was telling their four-year-old son Isaac that he could choose one stuffed animal from the bin or one baggie of action figures – old He-Man toys, with a couple of Happy Meal prizes mixed in.

Seeing Allison, Tisha raised her voice. "You need your nails done, girl!" she said, shaking back long bronze-dyed beaded cornrows. She had gorgeous mocha skin that she refused to let Needles touch with his tattoo inks, and the kind of figure that Teddi Lace might have envied even back in the day.

"What's wrong with my nails?" Allison held out her hands and looked at them.

"They're short, they're uneven, they're bare and they're boring," Tisha said.

"Besides that."

"Besides that? Besides that, you've got a cuticle nightmare going on. Give me one hour, and you won't believe the difference."

"I bet I wouldn't," Allison said, though of course a manicure with the fancy, jazzy polishes that Tisha liked was out of the question. She couldn't very well make her transformation into Scoot with shaped, buffed, sparkling-gold nails and perfect cuticles, now, could she?

"Mama, I have this one, it little, and the hero-men?" Isaac asked, holding up a small floppy stuffed tiger and the action figures.

Tisha gazed down at him and blew out a fond sigh, and Allison had the feeling that Isaac was going to get what he wanted. Mama Delilah, the maybe-voodoo-queen, was Tisha's great-grandma. If the bloodline did possess any powers of persuasion, they'd resurfaced in the youngest generation.

"Sounds like you've got some negotiating to do," Allison said. "See you, Tish."

"Don't you forget about those nails," came Tisha's parting shot as Allison continued toward the back of the store. "I hate to have a hex put on you just to get you in my door."

Swinging metal doors opened into the thrift store's back room, which was the great land of Not-Yet. It was a hodgepodge of donated items not yet sorted and priced, broken items not yet hauled off to the dump, and holiday decorations not yet in season. A short hallway led to the staff room, where Betty Tullia was in the process of taking off her smock.

"Allison, thank goodness, I thought you might not remember," Betty said.

Her purse was open on the bench in front of the dented steel row of lockers, and Allison took an automatic peek inside. Grandma-clutter. Half-eaten rolls of Life Savers, crochet hooks, a coupon-saver with frolicking puppies on the cover, a disposable camera.

"But here I am," Allison said. She opened her own locker.

The staff room was a windowless space that also included a card table, chairs, a coffee maker, a microwave, a small fridge, the old-fashioned time clock that no one ever used, a water cooler and a single swaybacked couch with burnt orange cushions. The walls were hung with posters gleaned from Hank Cotterman's travel agency showing exotic locales like the glaciers in Alaska, Ireland's misty fields, sunny Mexico, the African savanna and that Disneyland castle in Bavaria.

The smocks were really aprons, but Uncle Bob never called them that. Maybe because Lyle Kane and Donny Fielding would balk at wearing anything called an apron. They were a bright shamrock-color, probably intended to be the famed Lincoln green of the Merry Men, with a gold bow and white arrow stitched above the lettering. Deep pockets in the front, suitable for holding a heavy stapler, pens, a bunch of the little cardboard tags used for pricing clothes and bagged toys, and a roll of stickers used for pricing other things.

"Thank you so much for doing this," Betty said. She patted her purse. "I'll take pictures. Penny is such a darling. And I'm not just saying that because she's my granddaughter. She'll be the star of the show."

"Hope so. Is Bob in the office?"

"Listening to that music of his," confirmed Betty. "'Bye, Allie."

"Bye." She pinned on her nametag – Hi! My Name is Allison! – and shut her locker.

The short hall continued on to a bathroom, and at the end of it, a flight of stairs climbed to Uncle Bob's office door. Allison could hear Elvis doing "Heartbreak Hotel," the song filled with the scratches, pops and hisses that only came from a record player.

She tapped, heard The King turned down. "C'min!" Uncle Bob said.

Allison did so. The office was even smaller than the staff room, with a tinted window so Bob could survey his domain without being seen except as a smoky shadow behind the glass.

There was not much in the way of a family resemblance between Allison's mother and uncle. Marian Sherwood Montgomery was a small graceful china doll of a woman, with a soft cloud of auburn curls and limpid, expressive sapphire eyes. Her brother Bob was tall and stocky and red-faced, with a comb-over fringe of grey all that remained of a flaming red head of hair. His eyes were a light cornflower blue, twinkling behind spectacles. Put him in a fake white beard and a red suit, and hey, presto! Santa Claus. He did it, too, every year, though no longer at his sister's family's house.

He had a monstrosity of a desk, the flesh-colored paint peeling off gunmetal steel, the top of it hidden beneath piles of papers. His chair was a wooden slat-backed swivel on wheels, which he had rocked back to the point where it was about to tip over, his feet up on a stack of milk crates, one foot bopping in time to the beat.

What had possessed her grandparents, who seemed so normal in all other ways, to name their children Robin and Marian was beyond Allison. Her only guess was that Granny Helen, who had always been hopelessly enamored of Sean Connery, had been inspired by the movie in which Connery played an aging Robin Hood.

"Allie-girl," Uncle Bob hailed.

In here, the walls were not covered with travel agency posters or fanciful murals, but concert posters and album covers. The shelves were full of records, organized in a system that made sense to no living being but Bob himself, and the pride of place in the room was given to a table where the record player sat.

"You know," Allison said, smiling, "you can get a better sound from a CD."

"Heretic." He made as if to swat her, but she was well out of reach and they both knew it.

"Smaller, too," she said. "Better storage. Because, you know, one of the operative words in CD is compact."

"Silvery Frisbees," he said. "Saucerian slipped disks. Vinyl, Allison Danielle. As God intended."

And yet, once you dug a little below the surface, there were some similarities between brother and sister. This deep and abiding love of music, for instance. True, in Marian's case it was all classical stuff and opera, while Bob's true loves spanned the big band era right up through disco, but neither could be happy without music in their lives.

"As God intended? God listens to records?"

"If He does, you can bet it's on vinyl."

Instead of going on to tease him about MP-3 players and digital playlists, she heard herself ask, "Uncle Bob, do you know anything about guns?"

**

CHAPTER EIGHT

She unzipped it slowly, thinking about the woman from whom she'd snatched it, playing a mental guessing-game. That added to the fun, seeing if she could predict what sort of objects might be in the purse based on what its owner had looked like.

Most of the time, she got it right. People were fairly predictable. But there had been a few startling exceptions.

Like the hard-faced woman with the rigid posture, who had reminded Scoot of nobody so much as the scary Englishwoman who ran that Weakest Link game show. Her purse had been iron-grey and square, but inside of it Scoot had found a high-tech vibrator, a pair of wispy hot-pink panties, and a knobby circular thing that she later learned was a cock ring.

Or the harried, overweight mother of three whose purse Scoot had relieved her of in a grocery store parking lot. There amid the half-eaten cookies, Happy Meal toys, moist towelettes and broken crayons, had been an honest-to-god switchblade with an onyx handle … and when Scoot popped the blade, it was crusted with dark stuff that sure looked like blood.

Or, her favorite, the stylish handbag that had belonged to a leggy, model-beautiful redhead in a seafoam green sheath, gold heels and a patterned seafoam and gold silk scarf. Inside, amid the usual make-up and hair spray, had been a black leather trifold wallet with a driver's license and business cards identifying the model-beautiful redhead as Adam Villiers, veterinarian.

The woman who'd owned this buttercream bag had been petite, Scoot remembered. Petite with platinum-blonde hair in a pixie cut, fair skin, aquiline features. Very pretty in a fragile, elfin way. She'd worn a jade pendant on a gold chain, and a dark green business suit.

Scoot hadn't meant to bowl her over. The bag had been heavier than she'd anticipated, and it had jerked on the blonde's arm and thrown her off her feet. But if Scoot had stopped to check on her, she would have been caught. The only thing to do was keep right on going.

A little blonde in Century Plaza. That meant a businesswoman, maybe a lawyer. She'd kind of had that Sex in the City air about her, a deceptively delicate-looking creature who could be a real ball-buster in the courtroom and kittenishly playful in bed with the defense attorney.

So, the purse would have a cell phone, maybe a Palm Pilot. Not much cash but a ton of credit cards …

The first thing she took out was a tape recorder. A mini-corder, the kind used for dictating memos. It had a tape inside. Scoot rewound it, pressed "Play."

Just as she'd thought … it was a tape of two people at a business lunch. Ordering drinks, ordering food. Something about a job. She pushed "Stop," planning to listen to the rest later. It would be boring, legal talk always was, but there might be something interesting in there too. The two people – a woman who had to be the blonde, and a man with a sexy voice – sounded like they might have something else going on.

Next was a manila folder, which probably pertained to whatever case they had met to discuss. Scoot flipped it open, saw a few photos of a handsome blond man with a great tan. Could this be Mr. Sexy-Voice on the tape, perhaps?

The papers didn't look like what she thought legal briefs should look like, but then, her only experience was derived from shows like Law and Order. She set the folder aside and delved into the purse again.

A sealed 5x7 envelope, thick and full. She took it out, turned it over.

Blank. No address, no return address, no stamp, no postmark. It had not been mailed.

She slit it open, and her jaw hit somewhere in the vicinity of her collarbones.

The envelope was stuffed with cash.

A lot of cash.

Scoot's breath escaped in a whoof. She riffled the edges of the bills with her thumb. Hundreds. The envelope was full of hundred-dollar-bills, rubber-banded together in stacks.

"That can't be right," she murmured after a quick count and some mental arithmetic. "That'd mean … that'd mean there's twenty-five thousand bucks here."

All at once Scoot felt the back of her neck prickle. She looked around. It occurred to her that she was sitting on the floor of her shabby apartment with the cash cost of a new car in her lap and the balcony drapes wide open. She couldn't think now if she'd locked the hall and kitchen doors or not.

She jumped up, drew the drapes, checked the locks. If someone had pounded on her door that very second, she would have wet her pants and maybe had a heart attack to boot. Never mind that she was twenty-two and in good shape. She would keel over, dead.

Twenty-five thousand dollars!

Was it a bribe? A payoff?

Hell, for all she knew it could be ransom money, lottery winnings, or counterfeit bills.

Who in the hell went around with 25 G's in her purse?

Scoot crammed it all back in the envelope, re-sealed it with strips of masking tape, and then crammed the envelope under the seat cushion of her ratty old recliner. She went to the hall door again and squinted through the peephole. Her nerves were buzzing, and she wouldn't have been surprised to see the petite blonde standing right there.

Or maybe a couple of guys in dark suits and sunglasses, like the FBI agents always looked in movies. The men-in-black, wasn't that what they were called? There were men-in-black, and men-in-white-coats, and if the way she was feeling now meant that she was going crazy, then maybe the men-in-white-coats would turn up, too.

The hall, as far as she could see in the distortion of the fisheye lens, was empty. She opened the door and stuck her head out. Just then, a door at the far end opened and old Mr. Gavins stepped out, shirtless, scratching his hairy potbelly with one hand and lugging a pillowcase full of laundry with the other.

She grimaced and ducked back in, quick. Closed the door. Locked it. And, for the first time since she had moved into the Dunley Apartments, hooked the chain.

The purse still sat on the carpet, its mouth gaping, the zipper-edges like a multitude of tiny teeth. There was another envelope in it. A big manila one, the padded kind used for mailing.

Telling herself that the smart thing to do would be to shove everything back in there and ditch the purse in the nearest Dumpster, Scoot nonetheless went back to it and hunkered down.

"Besides," she said into the stillness, which was only broken by the irregular herky-jerky tick of the grotesquely ugly sunburst clock over the television, "the nearest Dumpster is the one where Martha hangs out. She could use the money, yeah, but it'd get her killed."

With thumb and forefinger tweezing like pincers, she got the corner of the envelope. It was heavy. Scoot prodded the shape through the sides, both hearing and feeling the faint pip-pip-pip of bubble wrap giving way.

Solid. Lumpy.

"I'll probably regret this," she said, and tore open the end so she could peek inside.

A gun.

"Holy crap!" Scoot almost dropped the envelope, had a vision-flash of the gun going off when it hit the floor and maybe putting a bullet through her ankle, and gingerly lowered it into the seat of the recliner. She tipped it, and the gun slid out.

She was no judge; aside from an old skeet-shooting rifle that had belonged to some Montgomery ancestor or another, she had never seen a real gun up close. But it looked like an antique. A revolver, not an automatic. In good shape. Polished, shiny. The handle had the mellow, satiny gleam of ivory.

Scoot stood over the gun, rubbing the heels of her hands up and down the sides of her face. Her hands were cold, but her face was numb, so that was all right. The fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck were quivering on end and it felt like the ones on her head would have liked to do the same. Despite the stuffy heat of the apartment, she was all-over goosebumps. Glissandos of ice strummed up and down her spine.

"Shit, shit, oh shit," she whispered.

Her mind grasped desperately at straws of explanation.

The petite blonde was … um … an antiques dealer? In the movie biz, and this was a prop?

Every instinct told her otherwise. This was no prop. This was a real, actual, could-kill-you gun.

Was it loaded?

The goosebumps that had begun to settle now hunched up again.

She didn't know how to tell if it was loaded or not. Short of pulling the trigger, which she was not about to do. The neighborhood around Dunley and 6th might not be the best, but it wasn't such an urban wasteland that a gunshot would go unnoticed.

Okay. A gun.

A gun and a pile of money.

Think about this. Think about it rationally.

But Allison didn't want to think about this, rationally or otherwise. She wanted to get out, get away from the problem and let distance and routine help bring it into some sort of perspective.

Thankfully, she had just the excuse she needed. It was time to go to work.

**

CHAPTER SEVEN

Allison had first become Scoot when she was about fifteen and already feeling stifled.

They had such expectations, the Montgomerys. Private schools and country clubs, tennis and ballet. Charity balls and political dinners. French lessons. Old money. Good manners.

No freedom. Nothing wild, nothing fun.

So, she'd started shoplifting. Out of boredom. Knowing it was wrong but having to do something to relieve the monotony. The Montgomery monotony.

It had been little stuff, mostly. Stupid stuff. A lipstick here, a pack of gum there, a piece of fake jewelry, a bottle of cheap perfume. The items didn't matter and the price certainly didn't; in those days, she got fifty bucks a week allowance and if she needed more, all she had to do was ask Daddy.

What mattered was the rush, the tremendous walloping thrill of risk and excitement that she got whenever she slipped something into her pocket. Her heart would hammer at a furious pace as she walked toward the door, trying to look calm, cool, aloof. Each time, as she approached the exit, she'd wonder … would an alarm go off? Would a security guard chase her?

But it was too easy, so she soon graduated to stealing packs of cigarettes, bottles of alcohol, boxes of condoms. Allison herself didn't smoke, drink, or screw, so she ended up giving these ill-gotten gains to the 'bad girls' at her school.

And, always … would she get caught? Would they call the cops? What would her parents say if they had to come to the police station and bail her out? Would the other girls rat on her? Would she get expelled?

She never skipped classes, aware in some subconscious way that she'd only be hurting herself by doing that, but she did start lying to her parents about after-school activities. They thought she was in French Club, Drama Club, Glee Club, when really, she was downtown hanging out at the malls and the arcades.

And then she had gotten involved with the skaters. They were the ultimate in coolness and attitude. They had the freedom she craved, and casually indulged in crazy stunts and death-defying risks.

Of course, they were none too interested in welcoming her into their fold. Not a rich private school girl. They'd think she was stuck up and snotty, even if she wasn't. Here, at last, was a group into which she couldn't buy her way with stolen smokes or impress her way with her parents' money and connections. She had to earn her way in by doing what they did.

Then providence, in the form of Uncle Bob, brought the answer. He got the twins skateboards for their birthday. Black with red wheels and flames for David, black with electric-blue wheels and lightning bolts for Steven. And complete gear – helmets, knee pads, elbow pads, the works.

Mom had pressed the flawlessly manicured tips of her fingers to her temples in a futile attempt to forestall one of her migraines. She had conveniently forgotten her own rather humble upbringing when she'd landed Daniel Montgomery, and now acted like her working-class brother was a mortal embarrassment.

"They're all the rage with the kids these days," Uncle Bob had said. "Davey will be a natural, you just watch. And Steve, it'd do him good to get out in the fresh air and exercise."

Uncle Bob didn't know his nephews very well.

A month later, neither board had ever been used, so Allison had figured her brothers wouldn't notice if she happened to requisition them. She taught herself to ride, having to sneak around because if her parents ever got wind of her new hobby, she was sure there'd be hell to pay.

It wasn't ladylike, and worse, it wasn't classy. It was low. Right down there with dirt-bike racing and monster truck rallies. A bare step above cockfighting, competitive eating or spitting for distance.

Allison loved it. She'd started thinking of those secret training sessions as "scoot time." And of the wild inner Allison unleashed as "scoot Allison."

Her biggest challenge in those early days was keeping her battle scars hidden from her family. Despite the pads, her knees and elbows were soon scabbed over, and she was no stranger to road-rash on her palms.

When she'd finally felt skilled enough to debut at the skate park, she discovered one final problem that she hadn't considered. Most of the skaters were guys. Most of the girls who hung around with them were not that interested in the sport for its own sake, but were girlfriends or groupies. The few that did skate seemed only to do so in hopes of attracting the notice of one cute skater boy or another.

So, when Allison showed up with her board, she found herself the object of a lot of unwanted attention. The guys hit on her or did a lot of adolescent hooting and sniggering. The girls despised her for trying to horn in on their turf. No one seemed to care that she knew how to ride.

The answer? Scoot.

Like her sister the ballerina, Allison was tall for her age and had what Hilary liked to call a 'willowy' build. In other words, narrow hips and barely any tits whatsoever. While this had its downside, it was a definite bonus when it came to dressing like a boy. Frumpy, slouchy, baggy clothes being the fashion helped, too. All she had to do was tuck up her long hair under her cap, and she could readily pass for a slim teenage boy, at least as long as no one came within a few feet.

Then, once she'd mastered the skateboard and the art of disguise, she started snatching purses.

Shoplifting had become dull. She had never been caught, not once. Even the time she'd set off an alarm by carrying a stolen CD past the sensor, the store manager had not questioned her glib excuse. She'd gone into fitting rooms and put garments on under her street clothes and walked out with them. She'd lifted a diamond tennis bracelet, by far the most valuable of her thefts thus far, and gotten away with it.

Somewhere along the line, though, the fun had gone out of it. She hadn't been getting the same thrill anymore, not even when she tried to kick it up a notch with the more expensive items.

It was, she'd gradually come to realize, impersonal. Flat, and faceless. Oh, they said shoplifting was not a victimless crime, because it caused prices to go up so that the average consumer took it in the shorts, but really, all she was doing was hurting the big anonymous corporations. Hurting? That was a laugh … even if she took ten CDs a day, she doubted it would be more than a ripple in the profits.

The purses, though …!

Her first purse hadn't been a snatch, but a finders-keepers kind of thing. She had been Scoot that day, pleasantly exhausted from an afternoon of wheeled stunts, pushing along in a mellow, lackadaisical sort of manner.

Push … and coast … push … and coast … headed for the parking garage where she'd stowed the Corvette her parents had given her for her Sweet Sixteen. It had been waiting outside the house, cherry-red with a big white bow. They’d all gotten cars for their sixteenth birthdays. A silver Porsche here, a turquoise-blue Beemer there … it was just the way the Montgomerys did things.

She'd been coming up on a bus stop, and saw a chubby middle-aged lady heave herself onto the city bus, leaving her purse sitting on the bench.

"Hey!" Allison, still disguised as Scoot that day, had called. "Hey, lady!"

The woman had looked around, seen Scoot, and gone wide-eyed with alarm. Probably mistaking Scoot for a junkie, gang member, or generic punk, she had nearly leaped up the bus steps, mouthing frantically at the driver. The door wheezed shut.

"No! Lady, you forgot your purse!" Scoot had shouted, but the bus pulled away from the curb with a gassy exhalation of exhaust.

Grabbing up the purse, she had gone flying down the street on her skateboard, after the departing bus. But pedestrian traffic on the sidewalks slowed her and drew a lot of dirty looks and some swearing, and the bus kept going.

Scoot had not known what to do, so she'd taken the purse with her back to the car. There, her Scoot-clothes in the trunk with the board, she had opened it and started going through it.

And oh, how the excitement had coursed through her! Not because of the contents; the most exotic things in there had been a metal box of cinnamon Altoids and a ticket stub from a matinee showing of an extended director's cut of Titanic. It was the thrill of going through someone else's stuff.

This was not faceless and impersonal. This was as personal as it got. She'd gone through every compartment and pocket of that purse. She read the woman's shopping lists and receipts, criticized her choice in cosmetics, ate some of the curiously strong mints, looked at pictures of the kids.

It was, she'd found, even more exciting than the shoplifting. Lasted longer, too, because the rush she got from swiping a bracelet had usually faded by the time she was out of the store. Exploring a stranger's purse, really taking her time with it and being thorough, could entertain her for quite a while.

A woman's purse was such a trove of secrets, too.

She remembered visiting her Sherwood grandparents, a few duty-visits to their retirement community in Arizona, and when Grandpa Art had needed a pen, Granny Helen had not told him to get one from her purse.

"Bring me my purse," she had said.

And he had done it. Had carried that purse – a big, black, heavy old-lady purse with the gold clasps – all the way into the kitchen and waited beside her, humble as a church-mouse, while she had rooted around to find a pen.

A man wouldn't willingly look in a purse, Allison had determined.

Part of it might be some deep-rooted homophobia, him thinking that if he opened a purse or even held it in the wrong way, some inner switch would get thrown and the next thing he knew he'd be wearing ladies' dresses and singing show tunes.

But most of it was fear, a man's plain and simple fear of what he might find in there. What if there were tampons? Or feminine hygiene spray or some other dubious, icky product? What if there was proof of an affair in there, love letters or motel room keys or pressed flowers?

She even suspected that some men thought they might open their wife's purse and find a voodoo doll, or a vial of poison, or a fat insurance policy with his name on it. They harbored some hidden belief that there was death inside, just like they had that deeply buried superstitious fear of women themselves.

Women, who bled in monthly cycles and had incomprehensible mood swings. Women, who may or may not have teeth down there … they didn't, of course, everybody knew that … but didn't all rumors have some basis in fact? Would you want to be the one to stick the most important part of your anatomy into that strange darkness and find out for sure?

And just as a man's car was an extension of his you-know, to be shown off and compared and bragged about, a woman's purse was an extension of hers. Dark, mysterious, containing sought-after treasure.

Finding that first purse, mundane though its contents had turned out to be, had been like a brilliant bright light going on inside her. She was hooked, as hooked as anyone had ever been by a drug.

She tried to control it. Not quit, no, not give it up … but control it. Not go nuts with it or anything. Taking purses was a lot more dangerous than shoplifting. It required that up-close-and-personal contact. The victims tended to notice right away, and scream or shout or chase after.

A couple of times, they had thrown things. Scoot had been beaned in the back of the head and damn near knocked in front of a taxicab by a lady who had chucked a plastic water bottle. She had been smacked in the face once by a furled umbrella, and bombarded with oranges from a shopping bag held by a stout woman who was a fearsome shot.

Others on the street reacted, too. When a hue-and-cry went up, some lady shrieking, "Thief! Thief!", people turned to look. Sometimes they'd try to be heroes. Scoot lost her favorite baseball cap three years ago to a newspaper vendor who'd tried to grab her as she whizzed on by, and once a clean-cut Eagle Scout type had tackled her clean off her board. As they'd struggled, he got a good feel of what little tits she had through her quilted flannel shirt. He had yanked his hands away so fast he'd nearly given himself a whiplash, and sputtered an apology as his face went brick-red, thus giving her the opportunity to make her getaway.

The skateboard helped with all that. Usually, she could strike and be half a block down the street before the victim realized what had happened. A running person looked guilty, but everyone was accustomed to seeing kids on wheels slalom recklessly through pedestrians or plunge into traffic. And if she had to, all she needed was to get around a couple of corners or into a semi-private spot long enough to do a quick-change.

Over the years, she had honed her routine, adding little touches like the duffel, and the plastic garbage bag to hide the purses in. If she did it right, by the time anyone came charging along in pursuit of Scoot, all they'd see would be innocent Allison.

She still smiled at the memory of the first time a sweating, panting man had puffed to a stop and looked past her, then asked if she had seen a kid on a skateboard go by. "Scuzzy little prick, about so tall, skinny, had a ball cap and a jacket and his pants three sizes too big. Snatched a purse off a woman back there. Did you see him?"

Allison, who had reversed the jacket, hidden the hat, and whipped a long wraparound denim skirt over the pants, told him that yes, she had. "He went that way," she'd said, pointing with one hand while the other held the stolen purse at her side, making no effort whatsoever to hide or conceal it.

The man had thanked her and jogged on, and once he was out of sight she had retrieved her board from where she'd kicked it under a mailbox, and been on her merry way.

That had been a good purse, too. Small, but nice things came in small packages, wasn't that what they said? She'd found a lovely scuffed-suede wallet in there, a silver filigree heart-shaped pendant on a silver chain, an unopened bar of Toblerone white chocolate, and a fancy gold pen.

It was the infinite variety, the infinite possibility that appealed to her. She'd taken tiny beaded evening bags from elegant ladies on their way to the theater, and she'd taken funky patchwork-quilted satchels from hippie women in shapeless dresses and Birkenstocks. Old-lady purses like the one Granny Helen had, black and clunky and full of laxatives, prescription medicines and reading glasses. Teenager purses with Flirty Boys pins stuck to the strap. A stitched leather purse made to look like a decorated horse-saddle. All kinds of purses with all kinds of contents.

Like Christmas every time. A real Christmas, a fun Christmas. Like how she imagined Christmas might be if Mom's personal shopper hadn't gone out with lists from each kid so that they all knew exactly what they'd find under the tree.

She'd lost count a long time ago of how many purses there had been. Maybe a hundred and fifty, spread over the past six years.

Now, this one.

This supple buttercream-leather number with the long strap.

**

CHAPTER SIX

Another gap in the board fence opened onto a rutted gravel alley that ran between Prewett and Dunley.

Allison looked through as she threaded her hair into a single ponytail. She saw a delivery truck parked at one end by the bowling alley and a familiar homeless woman rooting through the Dumpster against the wall of Winnie's Crafts at the other end.

"Hi, Martha," she said, passing the woman.

Nobody knew Martha's real name. The folks who lived and worked around 6th and Dunley called her that after Martha Stewart, because she was always going through Winnie's trash to collect scraps of fabric, yarn, fake flowers and other such fripperies. She lived over in the vacant lot tucked in behind the Dollar Stop, in a corrugated tin lean-to that was tidier and better-decorated than Allison's own apartment.

Winnie threw a lot of perfectly good items into the trash because of Martha. She had tried just giving them to her, had tried inviting Martha to come into the store, but neither of those approaches did the trick. When openly offered anything, even the ultimate homeless-person triple-C of change, cigs or coffee, Martha scurried away.

Martha didn't return Allison's greeting. Her lips were moving, constantly, silently, as she pawed through the Dumpster looking for treasure.

Jamie Tremayne, who had the Readmore Bookstore across the street from the alley entrance, called her silent self-talk 'responding to internal stimuli,' which was a fancy way of saying that she was in constant conversation with the voices in her head.

Allison popped out of the alley and onto Dunley Street, duffel bag swinging at her side. Now she looked like she'd been out at the gym, nothing more sinister than that. Black spandex bike shorts, open jacket, white tank top over a sports bra, sneakers. Ponytail bobbing at the back of her head.

Jamie himself was out in front of the bookstore, stocking a rolling cart with old paperbacks. A Magic Marker sign announced that they were a quarter apiece, or five for a dollar. The front windows of the store were full of taped-up posters, fliers, and announcements of local events. Between them, the interior could faintly be glimpsed, with its high, dusty shelves of used books.

He saw Allison and paused to wave, resting books in his lap. Like her, Jamie wore his hair in a ponytail, though his was shorter, honey-blond, and tied with a black velvet ribbon like he thought he was Amadeus.

She waved back, and cut diagonally across the street toward him. As always, she felt a pang of guilt as she skipped lithely out of the way of oncoming cars and up onto the curb.

Jamie had told her time and again that she shouldn't feel guilty. "You have two perfectly good legs and you shouldn't be ashamed of using them."

Then, he had cast his gaze downward in a theatrical ogle, though she'd been wearing a calf-length corduroy skirt at the time, about as sexy as a nun's habit.

"Nope," he went on, winking. "You shouldn't be ashamed of them at all!"

Still, whenever she saw him in that wheelchair, there was that pang. It was different when he was in the store, behind the counter, and she could delude herself into thinking that he was sitting in an ordinary chair.

"Milady Allison Montgomery," he said as she reached him.

"Jamie, Lord Tremayne."

He scoffed. "Please! I prefer Sir Jamie."

"Sir Jamie it is. What's the catch of the day?"

"Bodice rippers," he said, fanning a bunch of paperbacks so she could see the covers. "Women with their dresses falling off, men with their shirts open. High-spirited heiresses and roguish scoundrels. Throbbing loins. Interested?"

"Are you trying to sell me a book or proposition me?"

"Book? What book?" He tossed them over his shoulder into a cardboard box and showed her his empty hands.

She laughed. So did Jamie. He was twenty-five, three years older than her, and had what he called a not-totally-useless degree in English. "Because I do work in the field," he'd said, indicating the used bookstore with an expansive gesture.

He also wrote, though as far as Allison knew, she was the only one he'd ever allowed to read any of his stories. And she'd had to pay for that privilege with some honesty of her own. Jamie knew something about Scoot. Uncle Bob had to have some idea, and Eva Cesare might suspect, but Jamie was the only one who knew a part of her secret truth.

"What are you up to tonight?" he asked.

"Nothing much. I'm working from four to seven, covering for Betty so she can go to her grandkid's school play."

"Plans for dinner?"

"There's a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli with my name on it."

Jamie made a face. "What kind of a friend would I be if I let you go home to the Chef? No, no, no, Allison. You're dining chez Tremayne this evening. I'm making my mother's meatloaf recipe, with mashed potatoes and gravy."

"Real mashed potatoes?" she asked, shooting him a skeptical eyebrow.

"Good God, no! The instant kind, flakes from a box! What do you take me for?"

"If it's the instant kind, I'm there," she said. "What time?"

"Seven-thirty?"

"Okay, but I'm bringing dessert."

"The last time you volunteered to bring dessert," he said, "you showed up with four packets of iced animal cookies from a vending machine."

"I'll do better, I promise."

"Then it's a date." He grinned up at her, then wheeled his chair around to go back inside and answer the door.

Mrs. Oberdorfer had come up to browse the bodice-rippers while they'd been talking. Now she, too, grinned up at Allison. She was a tiny round lady with two fluffy Princess Leia buns of hair on the sides of her head and a curl hanging down her unlined pink forehead.

"Ah, young love," she said, pronouncing it "luff."

"I didn't know you read this kind of thing, Mrs. O."

"I was meaning you and Jamie."

"Oh, hey, you've got us wrong. We're just friends."

"Hmm. But, yes, I like these books. Maybe they are not so much like real life, with the fiery passions and the fighting, but they are fun to read. Just don't tell Lindie. She would be shocked to know her mother-in-law reads such things."

"What about Maggie?" Allison asked, referring to the other Oberdorfer daughter-in-law.

Mrs. Oberdorfer flapped a hand. "Maggie, she reads them too. Eric told me. She is always either reading these or watching that Dr. Phil. Does that make sense to you?"

"Not really, but I don't watch Dr. Phil."

"I have tried, because he looks a little bit like my Gus. Don't you think so?"

Allison smiled. Gus Oberdorfer was a large, burly man of sixty, and she supposed that he did vaguely resemble the famed television shrink.

"The problem is," Mrs. O. went on, "that what you read in these books and what you hear on his show do not fit together. I should like to see Dr. Phil step into one of these and tell this …" she looked at the back cover of a Serenity Townshend, "… this Alaric Hawke that he needed to help out around the house. Can you?"

"Not really. I better go. See you, Mrs. O."

"Allie?"

"Yeah?"

"Netta's Bakery. Over on 5th Street. Tell Netta I sent you, and that you want the Dutch apple pie."

Saying that she would, Allison continued down Dunley, past the locksmith and the pet groomer. She crossed the street to the imaginatively-named Dunley Apartments and let herself into the entryway.

Her mail always smelled like burnt dryer lint because the laundry room with its three finicky machines was on the other side of the wall from the row of mailboxes. A dark hallway led to the first-floor apartments, including the unit belonging to the landlady. To reach her own, Allison had a choice between a claustrophobic stairwell and an elevator that was as slow and jittery as a palsied old man.

She chose the stairs, thinking that her mother would have a heart attack if she could see the peeling paint, water stains, and worn-through spots in the durable mustard-yellow carpet. But Marian Sherwood Montgomery had never clapped eyes to her middle child's current digs, and if Allison had her way, that was how it was going to stay.

Her apartment wasn't technically an apartment. It was technically a studio, a single bed-slash-living room that shared a kitchenette with the unit next door. The carpet was mustard-yellow in here, too, and the paneling a cheap knotty pine that made the small space feel even smaller. But the bathroom had an amusing old clawfoot tub, the shower curtain suspended above it on a metal ring, and there was a balcony just barely big enough for a white resin lawn chair and a cute little tripod barbecue.

Allison unpacked, dropping the garbage bag with the purse in it onto her thrift-store recliner and stowing her duffel bag on the single closet's top shelf. Next she unlatched the sliding door that led into the kitchen.

Eva Cesare, her neighbor, was a med school student who also worked as a waitress and was trying to help her only surviving brother break away from drugs and gangs and get into community college. As a result, Allison hardly ever saw her.

They got along fairly well and had yet to have any big arguments over the kitchen, though sometimes Eva's brother Hector would come over and help himself to Allison's stash of Mountain Dew in the fridge.

Speaking of which …

She "did the Dew," popping open a can and slurping down the bile-green fizzy liquid. The caffeine percolated through her system and the bubbles inspired a hiccup that was not quite a burp.

Supplementing the soda with a package crackers, cheese-flavored and sandwiched with peanut butter, she went back into her room and thumbed through the dryer-lint scented mail.

K-Mart ad … Val-U-Pak coupons … postcard reminding her of a dental appointment … letter from her kid sister … travel agency brochure … credit card application.

The ad, the coupons, and the application went into the trash. She flipped through the brochure long enough to admire the crystal-blue tropical waters and think that maybe someday she would like to take one of those all-inclusive vacations. The dentist's reminder went up on the corkboard by the phone.

The letter from Missy, she opened and read. It was printed on lined paper in careful sticklike letters. Missy was ten, the youngest of the brood and the only one that Allison really regretted leaving when she moved out on her own.

Dear Allie, I miss you, when are you coming home? David is going to tennis camp this summer and Steven to music camp so it will be boring here. Mom says it won't because I will have Danny to play with but Danny is a baby and he bites me. I drew you a picture so you remember who I am. Love, Missy. The signature, unlike the body of the letter, was an elaborate cursive scrawl with the tail of the 'y' swooping into a long curlicue.

Allison sighed as she set the letter down and picked up the folded sheet of drawing paper. Missy was better at art than she was at putting her thoughts into words, so the picture was quite good. Sad, but good. It showed the big house in the background, with various stick-people on the porch. Even as stick-people, Allison could guess who most of them were.

There were the twins, David with his tennis racquet, Steven with his flute. There was Daniel Jr., the eldest, with his wife Susan – Susan was depicted with her mouth wide open as if yelling – and their fat baby son, Daniel III. There was Hilary, four years older than Allison, in a ballerina's tutu. And there were Mom and Dad, Marian and Daniel Montgomery.

And, larger in the foreground looking alone and apart from the house and the family on the porch, was a girl-figure with long red hair and enormous sorrowful grey eyes.

It tore her heart to see Missy's picture. How she wished she could have brought her baby sister with her. No one else in the family had time for Missy, or understood her. But it was impossible. Allison knew she couldn't take care of a ten-year-old girl, couldn't provide a good home, structure, guidance, discipline and balanced meals for her.

"Hell, I can't even provide those for myself," she said to the empty room. "I was going to eat canned ravioli for dinner."

No, what it all boiled down to was that Missy would have to learn the hard way what Allison herself had learned. That if you were a Montgomery and a misfit, you could forget hoping that the family would adapt and embrace your differences. You could only wait it out until you were old enough to escape on your own.

It wasn't as if Missy were being abused, starved or even neglected. Overlooked, yes, and misunderstood, but those things did not warrant a Child Protective Services caseworker.

Reading the letter and seeing the picture had left her so down in the dumps that Allison almost forgot about Scoot's prize until her glance happened upon the garbage bag, still sitting in the recliner. She checked the time – not yet three in the afternoon, which meant she had a full hour before she had to leave for work. Plenty of time to change clothes and examine the purse.

She took a quick shower. The building's water heater was old and balky, so a quick shower was the only way to make sure of a hot shower. And as charming as the clawfoot tub was, she had yet to satisfactorily fill it with steaming hot water.

Dressed in comfortable old jeans and a man's white shirt, she left her hair loose and dashed on a bit of blusher and eyeshadow. This, too, would have horrified her mother if Marian had been here. Allison could only recall once in her life when she had seen her mother without a perfectly made-up face and perfectly styled hair, and that had been in the hospital after Missy was born.

Sitting on the floor in front of the little table that held her television, Allison unzipped the roomy buttercream-leather purse and reached inside.

**