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Pearce got out the map and he and Yasmin pored over it for a while, calculating distances and times.
“The next big town is more than an hour away and we’re close to the exit for the National Park we planned to visit. There’s a little town just before the turnoff so why don’t we look there first and see if we can avoid having to go on then come back?” suggested Pearce.
“Can do.”
The town was smaller than “little”. It was pretty much just a general store which also sold fuel and takeout. While the men fueled up the mobile home and washed the windscreen and headlights, Yasmin wandered into the store thinking of buying some fresh fruit for lunch.
She changed her mind when she saw the sad-looking foodstuff on display, but there was a rack of postcards and she thought it might be nice to send cards to a few of her relatives and former work colleagues.
After all, I can’t moan about not being connected to people, when I never bother to do the connecting, can I? she thought guiltily, mentally counting the number of days since she’d last checked her emails.
She purchased half a dozen postcards and stamps from a surly-looking teenager with ear buds in her ears and the music from her iPod so loud Yasmin could hear it too, then sat out front at a picnic table to write them.
A beaten-up brown car pulled around the back of the building as Yasmin sucked the end of her pen and wondered what to write to her aunt.
The men were still busy with the motor home when Yasmin remembered they’d run out of bottled water, so she picked up her postcards and her purse and went back inside to buy some.
The refrigerators were on the far side of the little store, and as she passed the door into the stockroom she heard a man say angrily, “Is that all you’ve got? That won’t last me a week.” Huh! Dissatisfied customer.
She grabbed half a dozen bottles of water and turned to go to the cash register, when a gray-haired woman with a bulging tote bag came out of the stockroom and went to the till, popping a switch under the counter, opening the cash drawer and taking out a handful of notes. The woman dropped the money in her tote, adding in a couple of cartons of cigarettes, which were on a shelf behind the counter.
The brown car pulled up out front, the woman hurried out and climbed into the car, which raced off.
Did I just see a robbery? Or am I imagining it?
Yasmin walked cautiously to the stockroom and stuck her head inside. An older man and the teenager were tied up, and lying on the floor.
“Holy shit!” Yasmin pulled out her cell phone, switched it on, took a few photos of the people then hurried to undo them. “Are you all right? Should I call 9-1-1?” she asked.
“I’ll call Sheriff Beeton,” said the man.
“Fat lot of good he’ll do,” said the teenager, surlier than ever as she pulled duct tape off her mouth and looked at the smashed ear bud of her iPod.
“Yup, likely a waste of time, but if he doesn’t come out we can’t claim the insurance,” the man replied as he hauled himself to his feet, patted the girl on the shoulder, and limped over to an old-fashioned wall phone.
Yasmin stared at them both, then at the wide open back door. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked the girl.
“Not unless you have a spare set of ear buds,” the teen replied. Then a grin broke across her face. “Hey, maybe the insurance will pay for a new set as well as for the crates of cigarettes.”
“Is that what they stole?”
“Cigarettes, soda, and some candy. Best part of five hundred bucks gone.” The teen was back to being surly.
Pearce and VJ wandered into the store to pay for the fuel, but the man didn’t want to touch the cash register in case the woman who’d robbed it had left fingerprints.
“How about we give you the cash then and head on our way?” suggested Pearce. VJ nodded.
“No, we can’t leave. I saw the woman and want to give her description to the Sheriff,” Yasmin said.
“You saw the robber?”
“Oh yes. I got a good look at her face as she took money from the till. She had gray hair tied up in a bun, and high cheekbones—”
“You saw the robber? You looked at her? Why weren’t you hiding? What were you even doing in here when a robbery was happening?” VJ’s voice was rising higher and higher. By the end of his sentence he was almost screaming.
Yasmin just stared at him, amazed. “I bought postcards, then I came back inside to get water. We’re out of bottled water.”
VJ grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Are you crazy, woman? You could have been shot, beaten, killed! What were you thinking? Don’t you know enough to drop to the floor when there are criminals around?”
