The Fan Letter by Nancy Temple Rodrigue Page A

clearance sales.
    The others could see Leslie visibly cringe at the thought. She answered slowly, “No. You see, nothing here really goes out of style. That's one of the keys to good buying.”
    The girls wrote down “No” and asked what the cheapest thing in the store was.
    Probably your earrings , Leslie thought, but answered, “Some of the lingerie begins around twenty dollars.”
    “Oooh!” Fluffy squealed. “Twenty dollars just for underwear?”
    “We don't carry underwear. That would be a satin camisole.” Leslie gave the returning Mona a glazed look that the owner knew meant “Get me out of this now !”
    The girls closed their notebooks and headed back to the dresses. As one of the girls reached for a shimmering pink gown, Leslie warned, “No, no. Don't touch. Hand oil on silk doesn't come off.”
    “You touched them,” Muffy obstinately pointed out.
    Leslie held up her hands for them to see. “My hands are specially treated.”
    “Oooh! Cool!”
    “Any other questions, answers, comments, observations, queries, statements?” as Leslie herded them towards the door.
    “No, like, that's all, I'm sure,” Buffy replied, still cheerful. “Thanks ever so much. Do you carry prom dresses?”
    Leslie's smile froze again. “Oh, sorry, no. We don't have the room. Nuts.”
    “Bummer! Maybe, if, like, you got rid of that old piano you could in a neat circle rack,” Muffy offered, pointing at the baby grand.
    “I'll mention it to the owner. Thanks for coming. Bye, bye,” as she closed the door and turned to face her co-workers. “Not one word,” she warned as she walked past them and into the lounge where she put her head on the table.
    All of the other women stood outside the door and shrilly shrieked, “Oooooooooh!” before they returned to their duties.
    Wayne had sat unnoticed by the armoire throughout all this. He had already paid for the silk scarf he had no use for and had it wrapped. Now he arose and left, likewise unnoticed. He tossed the carefully wrapped package into his trunk and decided he wanted another look at Leslie's apartment tomorrow. It was too close to closing time to carry this out tonight.
    He sat there, just for a moment, behind the wheel of his car. He had conflicting information and was trying to sort it all out in his mind. She had been both gushy teenager-like and all business in her letters to Phillip Beck. She had blushed and gotten nervous when a stranger got overly familiar with her. Then she had sweetly made a group of silly girls look like, well, silly girls without their knowing what she was doing to them.
    The investigator chuckled to himself. “I'd like to see her get good and mad at someone! Wow!”
    He headed back to his apartment to make some notes for his first report to Sarah Beck.
    At ten minutes after six, he rolled his newspaper back into a bundle and put it outside on his door mat. At six fifteen, from the corner of his front window, he watched Leslie walk past their building to the mailboxes. At six eighteen, he opened his door to retrieve the paper he had just set there and startled the disappointed look off Leslie's face as she headed for the stairs leading up to her apartment.
    “Hello, again,” he said cheerfully. “That was some performance you gave.”
    Leslie was looking at him as if he were a green Martian and had suddenly sprouted wings.
    “At your store…earlier today…three high school girls? We met right before that,” he hurriedly explained.
    Remembrance flooded back and she blushed at her forgetfulness. “I'm sorry. I…I'm a little preoccupied.”
    She didn't hear from the publisher or from Phillip Beck , Wayne told himself. “Those girls were really something.”
    Leslie shifted uncomfortably and glanced up the stairs to the sanctuary of her front door. “Sometimes we get students who really are interested in retailing or sometimes designing. Most of the time we get Fifi and Scooter who go to every store in the mall and then come to