Bone Dance (31 page)

Rayette tapped on the glass. “Are you open yet?” She was wearing the outfit she had bought yesterday, a mauve blouse with a rhinestone yoke and orange track pants with a sports logo written down one leg.

“No, not yet. Five more minutes.” Always the same routine, every morning. Zen wondered why Rayette never left home five minutes later.

“Can I come in? I won't be in your way.”

“Sorry, it's against regulations.” As if there were regulations governing the opening hours of the Good Neighbours Second Hand store at the corner of Main and Mill.

“I won't tell.”

“I've got this one more bag to open. Then you can come in.” Zen lifted her hand, to show she'd just brought in a green garbage bag, abandoned at her door overnight by a zealous spring cleaner. She could tell by the heft it was full of boots and shrunken woollen sweaters.

Rayette's eyes lit up, as usual, at the thought of one more bag of delights, and her the first to see it. Zen could see the drool forming. If Rayette knew how many unopened bags there were in the storeroom, she'd go mad.

Moving to the back of the store, Zen ambled down the
aisles, tossing errant items back in their home bins as she went. Customers were so careless, poking around in the merchandise indiscriminately.

Someone rapped on the glass. Zen turned to shake her head at Rayette, but Rayette's place had been taken by Constable Fray. Six foot four and looming. Built like a marathon runner spread out over too much length. He had something in his hand, a skinny pale arm attached to a girl who looked like she needed an escape route. A vandal, no doubt, but Zen hadn't noticed any of her windows broken this morning.

She opened the door, stepped aside to let Fray and the vandal in, then blocked Rayette with a firm hand on the rhinestones. “Sorry, looks like official police business. I won't be open for another fifteen minutes, I'm afraid. Can't flout the regulations when the law is on the premises.”

“That's not fair.” Rayette stamped her running shoes. Comfortable shoes for a long day at the bins. Bought last Thursday for fifty cents because they had no tread left.

“It can't be helped. Why don't you go down to the Wiggly Finger for coffee? Come back in half an hour.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. And who'll get in ahead of me?”

“Tell you what, you take a break, and I'll stay closed until you come back.”

Rayette's face lit up. “Deal.”

Zen turned her attention back to Constable Fray. He was standing beside the bin of ladies' undergarments. “What can I do for you, Jeremy?”

“Allow me to introduce,” he swung his charge in front of him like a curling broom, “Sasha Dempster. Sasha's been found guilty of shoplifting and sentenced to fifty hours community service. I thought she could work it off in your store.”

Sasha's gaze drifted over the cash register, trickled across the
used shoe rack and landed on the hat tree. Sasha was wearing stained blue jeans and a Gap
T
-shirt with a little plastic sticker on the chest stating
S
/
P
.

“You're bringing a shoplifter to work in a store? Would you send a chocoholic to work at the chocolate factory?”

“Sasha specializes in Gap. She won't lift this used stuff. Look at her.”

Zen looked. Sasha's nose was wrinkled in disgust at the sights in the baby clothes bin.

“What about my cash register?”

“What'dya got in there, dimes and quarters? She's not a thief, she's a shoplifter. I'm supposed to find her a placement, and there aren't a lot of options in town.”

“Jeremy Fray, this won't work. I don't need any help.”

“Oh, yeah? I happen to know that your Aunt Maude is off on a theatre tour in New York with my Aunt Helen, so you'll be short staffed until Maude gets back.”

Zen sighed. He had her on a technicality.

Maude swirled around, singing in the hotel room bathroom. “. . . shake it . . . do the hokey pokey . . . yourself around . . . all about. Boom!” Red, white and blue reflections sparked off the chrome fixtures. “How do I look?”

“Like a patriotic sausage in a sequined casing. Honest to God, Maude, you should have thrown that thing out thirty years ago. Or thirty pounds ago. Whichever came first.”

“You're just jealous. This is my lucky dress. And my lucky purse.” She held up a beaded green and yellow bag shaped like an elephant with tassels and fringe. “I always get lucky in this outfit. Always get to do the hokey pokey.”

“Maude, you're over sixty. Give it up. Your pokey is getting pretty hokey.”

“You're just jealous of my figure, Helen Fray.”

“Your figure is as sagged as mine, and we have tickets to
Same Time Next Year
. I can't believe you'd skip it for a night in a bar.” Helen went back to the row of cardboard boxes on the small writing desk. “You want any more of this chop suey? Because if you don't, I'm eating it. It's really good.”

“Nope, it would spoil my makeup. Don't wait up.”

Day Two. Seven and a half hours down, forty-two and a half hours to go. Zen walked through it one more time. Sasha was dumber than a toasted marshmallow.

“In the morning, you bring in any bags that have been dropped off overnight and heave them onto the pile.”

“What if there aren't any?”

“There usually are.”

“If there aren't, do I wait for them?”

“No, you thank whoever stole them and carry on. Our first task is to tidy up. People leave things in the wrong bins all day. They change their minds half way across the store and toss the thing, whatever it is, into the closest bin. You go around the bins and sort them out.”

“What if I don't know what the item is or where it belongs?”

“Hold it up. Read the signs.”

“Oh. I didn't think I'd have to work that hard.”

Zen tried not to sigh, or scream, or whap the kid upside the head. Remain calm. Move on to the next issue.

“If there's no one in the store, you can open a new bag and
sort it into the correct bins. If the doorbell chimes, you leave the storeroom and come back onto the floor. You always stay on the floor when there are customers.”

“Why?”

“Shoplifters.”

“You're kidding, right?” Sasha's little pierced nose wrinkled.

“What, you don't think people would tuck a torn windbreaker under their shirt, or jam some used undies up their sleeve? They would, and they do. So keep your eyes peeled. I'm sure you'll recognize the signs.”

“Okay.”

“See that woman at the door? That's Rayette. She always tries to get in early. Don't open the door until ten o'clock sharp.” This morning, Rayette wore a pink satin kimono over biking shorts and a tube top.

Rayette tapped on the glass and held up her wrist, showing her watch.

Zen pointed to the back room and held up one finger.

Rayette grinned and nodded.

“Come on, we have to go to the back room now and open a bag so we have some new things to put in the bins before we open the door. Rayette likes that. Makes her feel special.”

Sasha blinked. “Special?”

“Yes. If you do something nice for a customer, she keeps coming back.”

Zen led the way to the mountain of green bags.

“Wow, there sure are a lot.”

“It's spring. Lots of people cleaning out the closets. Mrs. Witherspoon died this winter, and now her family is clearing out the stuff so they can sell the house. We'll get a lot of bags and boxes in the next few weeks. So it's important you learn this next step. What we don't want in the store this week are
more snowsuits. What we do want is summer clothing. So before you open the bags, you feel them.”

Sasha stuck out tentative fingers and prodded the closest bag.

“What do you feel?”

“Boots. Big ones.”

“Good, and where there's boots, there'll be mittens and scarves, so we don't want that bag. Toss it over against the far wall. Pick another.”

“Cool. This is like a game.” Sasha smiled for the first time since she had begun serving her sentence. She poked a couple more bags, and in a moment her fingers were tickling the bags like Jelly Roll Morton tickled the ivories. “This one,” she said, “has dresses and skirts.”

Sasha tore the twist tie off the bag. Dresses and skirts tumbled out.

“Good call, Sasha,” Zen said with a grin. “You may have a latent talent.”

Sasha did a little dance like a football player who has just scored a touchdown. Together they carried the booty out to the store and tossed it in the appropriate bins.

Zen nodded toward the door. “Let the games begin,” she said. Sasha crossed to the front of the store and unlocked the door.

Rayette exploded through the door like a sprinter out of the blocks.

“Helen? Helen, wake up, please wake up. We got trouble.”

Helen rolled over and opened one eye. “Wha? Maude? What time it is?”

“Five.”

“Five in the morning? Are you crazy?”

“Shift over. I gotta sit down. This is too awful.”

“You're not kidding. I need about two more hours sleep.”

“Shut up and listen. We gotta get out of here. We got big trouble.”

“What, you got yourself pregnant?”

“No, silly. Worse than that.”

“Your hokey failed to pokey?”

“No, I met this man.”

“Jeez, Maude, are you getting married? Do you need me as a witness?”

“Will you stop jabbering and listen? I met this man. My age, about fifty, and handsome and rich.”

“Your age or fifty? Which is it? You're older than I am, and I'm sixty-one.”

“Do you mind? I'm trying to tell you something important here. So he said he'd never met anyone quite like me, and he pulled out a diamond ring, honest he did, and I don't want to hear any of your wisecracks. He says let's get married tomorrow.”

“And you fell for it.”

“There was no falling, oh, I guess there was once we got to his hotel room. Didn't I tell you this dress works every time?”

“Yeah, the hokey gets pokeyed. Sometimes I wonder why I bother going on bus trips with you.”

“Just listen, will you? So anyway, we get to his hotel room, and he wasn't too bad, considering . . .”

“Considering he had to leave his teeth in a glass?”

“. . . but about an hour ago, I rolled over . . .”

“And crushed him?”

“. . . and he's dead.”