Shakespeares Counselor Page 0,10

I discreetly sprayed cleaner on a weightlifting bench after a particularly sweaty guest had used it, and got the vacuum out to suck up clods of dirt tracked in by a guest who'd been running in the mud yesterday.

Mostly, I grew angrier by the second at Byron, the twenty-four-year-old man who shared my shift. I watched Byron loaf his way through his workout, making himself friendly with every female in the place except me. Me, he tried to dodge.

Byron was sculpted. You could tell he thought of himself that way; sculpted as a Greek statue, sensuous, masculine. That is, if Byron knew any of those words. Byron was a waste of space, in my opinion. In my two weeks at Marvel, I couldn't count the times I had hoped he was the thief. Unless people would pay the high membership fee just to gaze upon Byron, he was a poor employee: pleasant to those people he liked, people he felt could help him, and rude to the guests who couldn't do anything for him, guests who expected him to actually work. And he'd fondle anything that stood still. Why Linda Doan had hired Byron was a mystery to me.

"I need to go put some more towels in the women's locker room," I told him. "Then I'm going to start my own workout."

"Cool," said Byron. Mr. Articulate. He began doing another set of ab crunches.

I took the pile of towels into the tiled locker room. Someone was taking a shower when I walked in, which was surprising because it was a little early for the rush we got about ten, ten-thirty. The water cut off as I reached the shelves where I stacked the towels. I was walking lightly because I always do.

I caught a guest red-handed. She was going through my purse, which I'd left temptingly propped against an extra pair of shoes by my locker. It took me a minute to mentally leaf through the pictures I'd tried to commit to memory, and finally I came up with her name: Mandy Easley.

Mandy became aware of me after I'd watched her get a twenty out of my wallet and flip open the credit card compartment. Mandy was only in her twenties, but she looked like a hag when her eyes met mine. Her dark brown hair was still wet from the shower, her narrow face was bare of makeup, and her towel was wound around her modestly, but she still didn't look innocent. She looked guilty as hell.

"Oh! Ah, Lily, right? I was just getting some change for the Tampax machine," she said, in a jittery voice. "I hope you don't mind. I didn't have the right change, and your purse was just sitting here."

"Machine takes twenties now?"

"Ah, I ..." The twenty fluttered from her fingers as she stared down at the purse, exactly as if it had just materialized in her hands. "Oh, that fell out! I'm sorry, let me just put it back in ..." and she fumbled for the bill. She was one big twitch.

"Ms. Easley," I said, and by my voice she knew I wasn't going to smooth it over.

"Oh, shit," she said, and covered her face with her hands as if she was overwhelmed with shame. "Lily, honestly, I never did anything like this before." She tried to squeeze out some tears, but couldn't quite manage. "I just have such bad money problems, please don't call the cops! My mom would die if I had a record!"

"You already have a record," I observed.

Her face flashed up from her hands and she glared at me. "What?"

"You have a record. For shoplifting and passing bad checks." The computer had told us what employees and guests had been present at Marvel during the time the various thefts had occurred, and twenty-three-year-old divorcee Mandy Easley's name had recurred. Jack had run a check on her.

"We'll be glad to refund your membership money by mail after you hand us your card," I said, as I'd been instructed to do. "When I have your card in my hand, you can go."

"You're not going to call the police?" she asked, unable to believe her good luck. I felt exactly the same way.

"If you return your card, then you can go."

"All right, Robocop," she said furiously, relief shoving her over the edge of caution. "Take the damn card!" She turned to yank it out of the pocket on her shorts, which were draped over the bench behind her. She extricated the plastic card