Pentimento

Chapter 7 - Marjorie

Three days later a woman walked into a coffeeshop, with Rose's eyes fixated on her. A bag full of papers around her shoulders. Rose felt slightly intimidated by her leather jacket and sunglasses that she wore like she solved multiple art heists a week. But when she smiled and introduced herself, Rose was just eager to work with her.

"A coffee?" she asked Marjorie.

"My goodness, please. A whole pot if they have it? I didn't sleep at all last night."

With a steaming hot pot of coffee in the middle of their eight-person table, Marjorie started sifting through her papers.

"How are you doing?" Marjorie asked.

"Great and not so great. To be honest, I haven't allowed myself to think about all of this for a long time, it's a little bit overwhelming now."

"I can't even imagine! I just have to say, I was elated you called."

Rose blushed and filled two mugs with steaming coffee.

"I don't think the police ever looked into my tip about a guy I recognized," Rose said after Marjorie had told her about her flight.

"Did they sit you with a sketch artist?"

"I don't think so..."

Marjorie rolled her eyes and sighed, "not unusual. Like, at all."

"So, you research these cases yourself?"

"Well, sometimes I let students do a project around one of the cases, but mostly, yes, it's just me! I get tips through my website as well!"

Marjorie added her materials to the small pile that Rose had gathered. The schematics of the museum was the largest paper, it spanned from side to side on the table. Then there were small piles of legal documents, police reports, and news articles.

On the map were five red dots, one of which bore Rose's name. Standing beside the table, she pointed at it, "That's me! How did you know? Is that... where they found me?"

"Approximately, this is as exact as I could get it from the reports and the photos of the blood spatter."

Rose looked at Marjorie with her eyes wide open.

"Oh, apologies, that's quite insensitive of me. Sorry..." Marjorie, who wasn't used to talking to people involved with the heists she worked on, didn't know what to say.

Rose shook her head, "no no, it's fine. It's time I start talking about it, it's just something I never thought of. I bled on the floor then?"

"Yes, it was quite a lot. I can imagine they thought you were dead."

Rose sat back down in her chair. She covered her mouth with her hands.

"But he didn't shoot me."

"That's exactly what has bothered me for so long! No offense, but it would have been way more logical to kill you too."

"No offense taken..." mumbled Rose, who had gotten used to Marjorie's cru enthusiasm already.

"I'm sure it was because he knew me. I recognized him too, but I cannot remember why. I had seen him before, I'm sure!"

She stared out the window, where people were battling the rain. It felt weird that Marjorie knew more about the heist than her. She shuddered at the thought of her laying on the stone-cold floor, James's body in the kitchen and the robbers just walking around.

Marjorie took a small pile of papers and put them on the table in front of Rose.

"Not to be cocky but I'm fairly sure your guy's name is on this list. I want you to think about whether you want-" Marjorie couldn't finish her sentence, Rose had already taken the files. Her eyes flew over the names until they stopped in their tracks. There was a name she recognized. Dr. Evert Headley.