Free Muller, Marcia, [McCone 01] Edwin of the Iron Shoes(v1, shtml) Page B

have forty-eight hours, exactly, to finish this inventory and get out of the shop. By noon, day after tomorrow, you are to be gone.
    "If I see or hear of you talking to anyone involved with the case, if you harass anyone, like the Hemphill people or Mrs. Ingalls, I'll see that you never work again in any investigatory capacity. You will go back to guarding dresses in department stores, where, in my opinion, you belong!"
    I took a step backwards, still speechless.
    "In addition," Marcus went on, "I'm putting a twenty-four-hour guard on this building, in case your so-called murderer returns. I don't want it on my head if you get yourself stabbed to death while inventorying this trash."
    He had ridiculed my suggestion that the intruder and the killer were the same person, but he thought it important enough to put a man on the shop.
    I looked at my watch and cleared my throat. "It's one o'clock."
    "What?" Marcus was moving toward the door, but he turned to look at me.
    "You said forty-eight hours. That's one o'clock the day after tomorrow, not noon."
    Several emotions warred for possession of his face: anger, disgust, and a trace of admiration. Disgust won out.
    "You won't learn, will you?" He turned and stalked out.
    "Nope," I said to an empty shop, "I won't learn."
    I had forty-eight hours. Marcus had overestimated by a generous margin the time the inventory would take. With hard work, I could wrap it up this afternoon. That left me with almost two days to find Joan's killer.
    And, I thought glumly, maybe end up back in Better Dresses.

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CHAPTER 12
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    Of course, I'd better not cross Greg Marcus's path in the next forty-eight hours. It was a risk, but not a great one. I gathered the lieutenant planned to spend his time trying to pin the killing on Charlie Cornish. I would spend my time otherwise.
    I wanted to wrap up the inventory in a hurry, so I went back to the workroom and rummaged around for the records of Joan's purchases. In an old trunk, covered with labels from European hotels, I found a blue cloth binder with the words "Items Bought" scribbled across its cover. I took it to the front room and compared it to my lists.
    By sunset I had assigned a value to almost every item in the shop, based on what Joan had originally paid. The exceptions were Edwin; Bruno; five paintings, including the Madonna on Edwin's wall; and the wicked-looking bone-handled knives, the missing one of which was the murder weapon.
    The ledger went back only five years, so I returned to the trunk to look for an older one. Under a jumble of office supplies, business cards, old income tax returns, and check stubs, I came across a second notebook that took the purchases back another seven years. On page three, a notation read: "I stfd dg, prt of lot purch Cncrd Auct Hse fr Bigby—pd to Bigby $I7.50."
    Decoding it, I decided Bruno must have been one of a group of items that Joan had bought out in Contra Costa County for Austin Bigby, the little red-headed dealer down the street. I smiled, imagining Bigby letting fly with his legendary temper and refusing to allow Bruno in his shop. Joan must have bought the monstrosity from him out of pity for it.
    This ledger would probably solve my few remaining problems—a good thing because I was anxious to get out of the shop and on with my murder case. Besides, I was hungry; the chocolate bar had been a long time ago. I decided to take both ledgers and the unidentified paintings with me to compare at home. Edwin and the knives I didn't need; I'd never forget what either looked like. I filled a cardboard carton and loaded it into my car, then went to lock up.
    When I came back from checking the rear door, Charlie was standing by the cash register, a bag from a fast-food restaurant in his hand.
    "I wanted to apologize," he said, extending it to me. He looked pale and tired but otherwise visibly none the worse from last night's spree.
    I burrowed into the bag and pulled out a