Tucker, who had been curiously expressionless since the police had arrived and hadn’t said much before then, shrugged. “She vanished pretty quickly. Didn’t even say good-bye. But then—maybe she just doesn’t like loud noises.” His sarcasm wasn’t blatant, but it was there.
With a clear air of humoring him, Lewis held his pencil poised. “Okay, did anybody get her name?”
“Desmond,” Margo said. “Cait Desmond. I called her a miss, but she mentioned a husband later, so she’s a missus.”
Quietly, Tucker said, “She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.”
“Wasn’t she?” Margo frowned at him.
“Some men notice. I do. No rings at all.”
Margo looked back at Lewis. “Okay, then either she was a wife who likes bare fingers or she lied about the husband. Although I don’t know why she would have.”
Still quiet, Tucker said, “When you left her alone and started back here, she got up and moved toward the wardrobe. I was on the other side of the shop, but I saw her. A piece of furniture blocked my view for a moment, and by the time I moved to get a better look at what she might be doing, she was returning to that chair where you’d left her. And if I had to come up with a word to describe her attitude, it would have to be—surreptitious.”
“You are a novelist, are you not, Mr. Mackenzie?”
The implication was clear, but Tucker didn’t rise to the bait. “I am. But I’m not in the habit of imagining things unless I’m getting paid to do so.”
“Funny that you’re just now mentioning what you…saw,” Lewis said coldly.
Without offering an excuse, Tucker merely said, “I started toward the wardrobe then, no more than vaguely concerned, but Margo got there before me. She and I were both knocked off our feet when the thing fell; by the time I got up, the customer was already out of the shop. It seemed more important to make sure Margo was okay, so I didn’t take the time to rush outside and see where the woman went after she bolted out the door.”
“A gesture of courtesy I very much appreciated,” Margo told him.
Tucker inclined his head gravely, but his gaze remained fixed on Lewis. “I’ll buy that she was startled—the whole building shook—but there was no reason why your average customer would run away without even stopping to find out if everybody was all right. Or returning to check after the first panic might have driven her outside. Goes against human nature. Unless, of course, she had something to do with the…accident.”
Lewis drew a breath and let it out slowly, the picture of a man holding on to his patience. “As I keep telling you, Mr. Mackenzie—as I keep telling all of you—there is no sign the wardrobe was tampered with. And since none of you claim this customer was standing behind it pushing, I fail to see how she could have had anything to do with the accident.”
“And you’re so sure that’s what it was. Even though Sarah’s house burned down yesterday, probably due to arson. Even though she was supposed to be alone in the shop today. Even though there’s no logical reason why that wardrobe would have fallen on its own. You don’t find that to be at all suspicious.”
“Surprising, maybe. Coincidence, certainly.”
Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “Every cop I’ve ever met in my life believes there’s no such thing as coincidence. Funny that you do.”
“Not funny at all.” Lewis was visibly stiff now. “The world is full of strange things, Mr. Mackenzie. This is just one more strange thing.”
After a moment, Tucker looked silently at Sarah, and she said immediately, “Then we won’t keep you any longer, Sergeant Lewis. Thank you for listening.” She neither rose nor offered to shake hands.
He hesitated, his notebook still open, then closed it with a snap. “I’ll be in touch, Miss Gallagher. About your house. We’re still investigating that, of course.” He gestured briefly to his men, and all three left the shop.
Margo got up, went to the front door and locked it, and turned over the sign so that it read CLOSED. Then she returned to her chair. “Okay. You two want to let me in on this? What’s happening here?”
Tucker said nothing.
Sighing, Sarah turned a bit in her chair so that she faced the other two more squarely. “I knew there was going to be an accident—a bizarre accident—here in the shop today,” she told Margo. “But I thought it would happen later today, in the afternoon. And…it was supposed to be fatal.”
Margo blinked. “I was supposed to be…dead?”
Mildly, Tucker said, “As a writer always in search of the right words, I take issue with the phrase ‘supposed to be.’ Let’s just say that Sarah saw a future event that didn’t turn out quite as she expected it to.” He was looking at her steadily.
Sarah met his gaze, her own startled.
He smiled. “Somehow, you managed to change Margo’s destiny.”