The Sunset Gang by Warren Adler Page A

Seymour asked, feeling his sense of
power usurped.
    "From the moment she took the first box of sugar from
us about six months ago."
    "You never told me," her husband stammered.
    "What was I to tell you?" she said, patting him
on his fat thigh. "That one of my best friends was stealing?"
    "I think you should have," he said. "Food is
expensive."
    "You could have at least told us," Judy Stein
said.
    "What was I going to say: 'Harriet is a thief'?"
    "Something like that," Jake said.
    "Don't think I didn't agonize over it," she
continued. "But was I the one that was to take away her pride?"
    "But she was stealing," Seymour mumbled.
    "At first I thought perhaps she had taken it and
forgotten to tell me that she borrowed it. But then when I discovered the
elaborate way she had devised to do it, I knew that there was something far
more serious afoot. You see..." there was an element of resignation in her
tone, a confession, "...she had a container strapped to her thighs. She
simply pops an item into the container, and carries it out under her
dress."
    "You saw this?"
    "By accident. They don't build these condominiums too
well and the bathroom door in the bedroom was never a good fit. I was looking
for a pencil and quite by accident I saw her slip the sugar box in the
container while she was in the bathroom."
    "The bitch," Jake said.
    "It's like one of your mystery stories," Bernice
said, turning to Seymour.
    "And the motive?" Seymour said, hoping to win
back his authority over the situation. "There is no crime without a
motive."
    "She was starving," Marcia said after a long
pause.
    "How could she be starving?" Seymour asked
contemptuously.
    "That's what I thought at first," Marcia said.
"But then I began to think about it. Have any of us ever seen her at the
supermarket lately? And notice how much more she eats than the rest of us when
we play. She never talks about money and I've probed her on numerous occasions
about her getting social security. She hardly knew what I was talking about.
And she had no children. Her husband died nearly twenty years ago--which
probably means that most of her insurance is gone."
    "But that's only your intuition," Seymour snapped. "You have no proof."
    "And if I did?" Marcia asked. She turned to each
person in the room like a flashlight examining every inch of a prison yard.
    Seymour looked away. They were not
really unraveling this mystery. They were leaving loose ends. Nothing would be
clearly resolved. The most galling aspect of what was happening was that they
seemed willing to live with this irresolution.
    "So what do you all intend to do about it?" he
asked, feeling a mounting irritation.
    "I have no idea," Marcia said. She seemed cool
and assured and it was obvious that she had given the matter a great deal of
thought. "Pride." She shrugged.
    "She could, you know, get food stamps," Phil
Finkelstein said.
    "She should," Jake Stein said. "She should
put her hand in the till like the rest of the freeloaders. I would."
    "Don't be so sure," his wife said. "I'd be
so humiliated. You wouldn't catch me dead giving food stamps in payment for
food."
    "If you were starving, you would."
    "Never."
    "Neither would Harriet," Marcia said.
    "She would rather steal?" Seymour asked. "Is
that a better alternative?"
    "I can't look into her head, but I can
understand," Bernice said.
    "So one alternative," Marcia continued,
"might be to confront her quietly. Just one of us suggesting that she seek
help, like food stamps or welfare."
    "Welfare?" Bernice asked. "My God, we'll
destroy her."
    "It would be better than stealing," Seymour said. "You owe it to each other to confront her. It has got to stop. It has
got to be resolved. It's costing us all money. It's another mouth to
feed." His voice rose: "You can't allow this."
    "Why not?" Bernice asked. She watched her
husband, ashamed at his lack of compassion, disgusted with the absence of
empathy.
    "This is life. Not your books," Bernice said
quietly.
    "What has that got