Out of the Cold by Norah McClintock Page A

down on it.

    Â Â .    .    .

    â€œI still can’t believe she spat at me,” she said. Morgan had spotted Aggie, the woman she had talked to at the shelter, as we were dividing up the places that we needed to visit.
    â€œI guess she doesn’t like to be called a liar,” I said.
    â€œWell I guess
not
,” Morgan said. “But why did she spit at
me
? You’re the one who made her angry.”
    Morgan had dragged me over to where Aggie was standing, rooting through some garbage bins in an alley alongside a convenience store, and had demanded, as only Morgan can, that Aggie repeat what she’d said earlier about Mr. Duffy. At first Aggie didn’t want to talk, so Morgan fished in her pocket and surrendered all of her spare change. Then, when Aggie repeated what she had told Morgan, Morgan looked triumphantly at me. When I (stupidly) told Aggie what everyone else had said—that Mr. Duffy couldn’t have quit, because he had passed out from drinking too much—Aggie had flown into a rage. That’s when she’d spat at Morgan.
    â€œI think she was aiming at me,” I said, “if it’s any consolation.”
    â€œIt isn’t,” Morgan said.
    A sad-looking man in a grease-spattered apron shuffled over to us.
    â€œI’ll have a latte,” Morgan said.
    The man shook his head and gestured at the menu signs that hung over the counter.
    â€œI think your choices are coffee, tea, or beer,” I said.
    She looked at me as if I must have been mistaken.
    â€œEspresso?” she said to the man.
    He shook his head again.
    â€œTwo coffees,” I said.
    The man shuffled away.
    â€œPerfect,” Morgan muttered.
    â€œLet’s drink our coffee, get warm, and go over what we found out. Then we’ll get out of here,” I said. My dad had been right. When you start out knowing next to nothing about a person, when that person doesn’t have any forms of ID, it takes a lot of legwork just to gather some puzzle pieces, never mind assembling the puzzle. “I’ll go first.”
    â€œNo,
I’ll
go first,” Morgan said. “I want to get this stuff out of my head and out of my life.”
    The aproned man slid a couple cups of murky coffee in front of us. Next to each cup were two little containers of cream. Morgan peered at them as if they contained poison. But she peeled the tops off both of them, sniffed the contents, dumped them into her cup, and stirred. She took a sip and made a face.
    â€œWell, at least it’s hot,” I said.
    Morgan made a face, pushed her coffee aside, and started to tell me what she had found out: “He hung around at least three of the six thrift shops in walking distance of the homeless shelter. I say
at least
’cause the people I talked to at the other three shops couldn’t say for sure whether he’d ever been in their stores. That photo that Mr. Donovan gave us isn’t the greatest.” We had made a photocopy of it. Morgan had taken the original with her. I’d shown the copy to a few people, but Mr. Duffy’s face was pretty hard to make out. “But for sure Mr. Duffy visited three places on and off over the years, looking for a pair of pants, a shirt, a sweater—stuff for winter. But—and explain this—lately he started looking for other stuff: clothes for a small girl, a warm coat for a woman. When he bought that stuff, he always ended up bringing it back a couple of days later.
Always
. What do you think that’s all about?”
    I had no idea.
    Morgan continued: “There are two pharmacies in the area and two small grocery stores. The people in all of those places recognized Mr. Duffy. They all acted like I was crazy when I asked about him. They said he was a nuisance. One of the pharmacies got a clerk to follow him around whenever he was in the store. They were sure he was stealing stuff. But they never actually caught him.