“Fig jam,” she said. “For the investigation.”
Everyone looked at the jar.
“How is fig jam for the investigation?” Ruth asked.
“It creates a relaxed atmosphere,” Ida said. “People talk more when there’s a nice cheese board.”
“There isn’t going to be a cheese board.”
“There could be.”
Darlene came back through the door with another carton, took one look at the counter, and set it down with more force than strictly necessary. “Will that be all?”
“Yes, thank you,” Nans said warmly. “You’ve been very helpful.”
Darlene’s expression suggested she very much doubted that.
Outside, the afternoon air was sharp after the cool of the shop. Ida had the crackers open before they reached the corner, working the packaging with the focused efficiency of someone who had been patient long enough.
Ruth waited until they were halfway down the block. “Did you see that?” she said. “She hauled two cartons of cabernet like they were grocery bags. Crushed a cardboard box with her knee without blinking.”
“I noticed,” Nans said.
“She’s got the upper body strength to crack a skull.”
“She was nervous,” Ida said, getting the first cracker to her mouth at last. She chewed. Nodded. “These are good.”
“She did seem nervous,” Nans agreed.
They walked in silence for a moment, the kind that settles when everyone is thinking the same thing and waiting to see who says it first.
Ida reached into the bag for the triple cream brie and examined it with the seriousness it deserved. “If she’s innocent,” she said, “I’ll eat this entire brie by myself.”
Ruth looked at her. “You were going to do that anyway.”
Ida considered this. “That’s fair,” she said, and started looking in her purse for something to spread it with.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Wash ’N’ Wonder looked like the kind of place where socks went missing.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead in that particular frequency that suggested they’d been doing it for twenty years and resented every minute. A wall of dryers tumbled away on the left, throwing off waves of hot, chemical-scented air. The vending machine in the corner had a handwritten sign taped to it that read Out-of-Order.
Ruth walked in like she owned the place, a basket of neatly folded laundry balanced on one arm. Behind her came Nans, then Helen, then Lexy, and finally Ida, who was carrying a basket that contained a jumble of clothes including a cardigan with what appeared to be a gravy tidal wave down the front.
Lexy looked around at the plastic chairs and the dripping spigots and the man asleep on a bench in the corner, hat over his face.
“This is a perfectly normal errand,” Ruth announced to no one in particular.
“Is it though?” Lexy said.
“Load the machines. Don’t make eye contact with the back wall.”
There was a man already sitting in the row of plastic chairs. Back facing the door. Newspaper up. He was reading the classifieds with the focused intensity of a man who absolutely was not reading the classifieds. He hadn’t looked up when they walked in. He didn’t look up now.
Ruth set her basket on the sorting ledge and began pulling things out with the calm efficiency of a woman doing exactly what she’d come here to do.
Ida put her basket down, unzipped her purse, and produced a travel-size can of stain remover.