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Theodosia looked around. “But I’m in the middle of...”
“Now!” Delaine screamed with such volume she caused the overhead chandelier to tinkle and sway. “We need your help now!”
“Um...”
“Go ahead,” Drayton told her in a calm voice. “I’ll wrap things up here.”
“Theo?” Delaine’s eyes were wide and pleading. “Please?”
“Okay,” Theodosia said. “Give me a minute to grab my purse.”
21
Delaine drove way too fast (and rather badly) at the wheel of her BMW as they raced over to Mignon’s shop on King Street. From outside the place looked quaint and adorable, a tall, narrow redbrick building with an azure blue door and a wooden sign above the front window that proclaimed belle de jour in large embellished gold letters. Underneath, it read, gifts, clothing, and ephemera à la française. Two miniature Eiffel towers flanked the doorway, and the distinctive tricolor French flag waved and snapped from a pole above the shop.
Inside was another story.
The place should have been charming and gorgeous but now it was a mess. Black and red loops of spray-painted graffiti stained the walls and the merchandise was in disarray and strewn everywhere. The shop looked positively ransacked, with stacks of T-shirts dumped right along with boxes of French chocolates, trays of jewelry, and crystal goblets. A heavy Directoire table was overturned, French stationery had been trampled, and tubes of pink and red Bourjois lipstick lay scattered and broken across a Chinese rug.
But the walls were the real horror. They were covered in hostile scrawls and symbols that included numbers, letters, and nonsense words.
“Mignon!” Delaine cried as she and Theodosia rushed past the damage.
“Oh, honey, you came!” Mignon cried, throwing herself into Delaine’s arms, where they both burst into tears and clung to each other, quaking like aspen leaves in a thunderstorm.
“And I brought Theodosia,” Delaine finally managed to squeak out. “She’ll know what to do.”
Actually, Theodosia didn’t know what to do, but after taking a careful look around, she discovered a uniformed officer standing at the back of the shop, just outside a small office. He was writing on a pad of paper and talking on his cell phone.
When the officer hung up, Theodosia stepped in his direction and said, “You got the callout?” His nametag read j. barr and he was young, early thirties, tall and lanky, with an earnest, almost boyish, face.
Officer Barr looked up, said, “Yes ma’am,” in a pleasant tone of voice. “Fact is, I was cruising down the alley, investigating what might have been a dumpster fire last night, when I got the call.” He twiddled his pencil and pointed toward the back of the store. “Cruiser’s parked in back.”
“So you were here right away,” Theodosia said.
“Mm, about four minutes after the 911 call came in to dispatch.”
Mignon turned away from Delaine and said, “It took forever!”
There was a commotion at the front door and then two more uniformed officers walked in. One of them looked around, took off his hat, and said, “What a mess.”
Which prompted Mignon to throw herself into Delaine’s arms again and bleat out several more high-pitched sobs.
Theodosia wasn’t sure if Mignon was truly upset or caught up in a kind of pervasive hysteria. But she knew that only Mignon could give these officers the critical information they needed.
“Mignon,” Theodosia said in a sharp voice.
“What?” With her face buried in Delaine’s shoulder Mignon’s voice was low and muffled.
“We need your help,” Theodosia said.
Mignon turned, wiping tears from her cheeks as her eye makeup streamed down in dark rivulets. “How am I supposed to help?”
“These officers need to know exactly what happened,” Theodosia said.
Officer Barr said, “We really need you to try and answer a few questions, ma’am.”
“Go ahead, honey, tell them your tale of woe,” Delaine prompted. She pulled a hankie from her purse and swabbed at Mignon’s face, smearing her makeup and only making things worse.
