“Come on back,” Jeremiah said. He scooted over, relinquishing his spot in front of the desktop. Bridget moved around the counter and took over his position. She opened up the camera feed by clicking on an icon on the screen. There were six cameras in the shop, one aimed at each of the registers—the café register and the bookstore register. The other four were angled so as to cover the rest of the area. She clicked on the one that was positioned to offer a bird’s eye view of the café’s seating area.
She heard Jeremiah slurp his drink, just over her left shoulder. “What are we looking for?” he asked gamely as she scrolled back toward the footage from that morning.
“My dad thinks he left a folder here last night,” she said. “But it’s not on the table he was sitting at. I’m hoping some café patron didn’t walk off with it by mistake.”
The video feed stopped abruptly at 7:00 in the morning. The still shot that showed the tables in the café featured six bare tabletops. The books that her father had been reading the night before, and his manilla folder, were both missing. She tried to rewind further, but the software wouldn’t allow it. “What’s going on?” she asked. “My staff gets here at 6:00. Is there any footage of the store from 6:00 to 7:00?”
Bridget knew that her staff was supposed to arrive at 6:00 to start opening duties. The public wouldn’t be allowed in until 7:00, but there was a lot to do before then. The bookstore workers, including Jeremiah and another sales clerk, also didn’t arrive until 7:00, since the bookstore portion of the shop required less preparation than the café.
Jeremiah slurped his mocha, and then spoke. “The cameras are on a timer now. They come on when we open to the public. During off hours, we only have one camera on, and it’s the one over the front door.”
He reached for the computer mouse, and Bridget let him have it. “Here we go...” he said. He switched the feed so that it showed a camera positioned on the exterior of the building. It was angled down to show a view of the front door. “Will this help?” he asked, as he rewound the tape until it showed 6:00 a.m.
Bridget felt doubtful that it would. She was more interested in the table, inside the café. “I don’t know,” she murmured.
Jeremiah played the video feed at a high speed. Bridget noted that Christine had arrived promptly at 6:00, Adrienne showed up at 6:05, and Sean ambled through the doors at 6:12. At 7:00, Jeremiah showed up. The video feed showed him flipping the open sign, and then dragging a big sandwich board out onto the sidewalk in front of the shop. Soon after, the public started to arrive.
“Sean’s usually so punctual,” Bridget muttered. It surprised her a bit that he was twelve minutes late for his 6:00 opening shift. “At least, he is whenever I’m working with him.”
She reached for the computer mouse and started clicking on icons that would take her back to yesterday’s video footage. She found the interior video feed from Monday evening. At 5:55 p.m., she could clearly see her father sitting at a table. The manilla folder, as well as about a half-dozen books and a container of juice, was out on the table in front of him. Then at 6:00 p.m. on the dot, the video feed stopped. That was the hour that the shop closed to the public. Darn it, Bridget thought to herself.
“Sean probably puts on a bit of a show for you,” Jeremiah said. “Playing the good employee bit. Some of my staff do it, too. They act one way when I’m around, and completely different on my off days. I hear about it from the other staff members. You know the saying: when the cat’s away, the mice will play.”
“I guess,” Bridget said absentmindedly. She was too focused on the screen to really take in what Jeremiah was saying. She rewound again to 5:55 p.m. and pointed. “That’s the folder,” she said. “It’s definitely there.”
“So it was there yesterday evening, and gone this morning,” Jeremiah said. He took a big slurp of his drink.
“Yeah,” Bridget said. “And I need to figure out where it went.” She thought for a moment, to the tune of Jeremiah’s slurping. Then she said, “So you open the doors to the public at 7:00, right? And before that, they’re locked.”
She looked at him. He nodded.
She looked back to the screen. “My employees each have keys to let themselves in,” she said thoughtfully. “But the door stays locked until you arrive... What time did your sales person get in?” She stepped away from the computer to make room for Jeremiah as a woman brought a book up to the counter.
“Ohhh... the new Buster Leeman!” Jeremiah said, ringing the book up. “He’s my absolute favorite sci fi writer these days.” He picked up the book to scan it. “I loved this one. The main character is, like, my total hero.”
Bridget could see why Jeremiah succeeded in the bookstore. His passion for literature was obvious. He chatted with the woman for a few minutes, and then once she was gone, he turned to Bridget.
“I’m usually alone over here in the bookshop for the first hour we’re open,” he said. “Then at eight, Varun comes in.” He moved the computer mouse around, clicked a few times, and then pointed to the screen. “There’s Varun!” he said.
Bridget peered at the image. It was an older gentleman named Varun, entering the book shop and greeting Jeremiah. The two chatted by the table of bestsellers for a moment, and then Varun walked off.
She furrowed her brow. “So the only people in here from six to seven were my staff members, Christine, Adrienne, and Sean.”
Jeremiah made an exaggerated frown. “Sheesh. I guess when the cat’s away, the mice will steal folders, hm? What’s in the folder, anyway? You said it’s your dad’s?”
“It’s just some stuff to do with his work,” she said.
“His invention? The new kind of plastic?”
She nodded, and backed away. She didn’t want to go into details about how valuable the information in the folder was. It was bad enough that she’d been so naively open about it the day before. The fewer people that knew about the folder’s contents, the better.
In a mental fog, she walked back toward the café.
That folder contains his life work, she thought. Sure, Dad’s absentminded, but I believe him when he says he left it here at the café. It must be around here somewhere.
She was determined to find it. Between helping her staff handle the mid-morning rush, she searched every nook and cranny of the café, with no luck.
At five after eleven, Sebastian arrived, with the same ill-fitting pants and surly attitude that he’d been adorned in the day before.
She was too distracted by her folder search to pay him much attention. Instead, she asked Christine to spend the remainder of her shift training Sebastian on the register. He’d done so poorly with the espresso machine the day before that Bridget figured they’d tackle that again on a day that was slow as molasses. For now, it was safer to have him on the register with Christine.
Danny showed up at one, and Bridget reported that she hadn’t yet found the folder. “I’m sure it will turn up, Dad,” she said, as he wrung his hands and peered under and around the table, just like she had. “We’ll find it. In the meantime, keep searching your place. Maybe it’s there somewhere.”