Alex Harris 00 - Armed

rising in her voice. “Where did it happen? Did they catch who did it? Oh, no, not someone from the factory?”
    “I found her. Lying on the floor. I needed a shovel and went out to the factory and oh, Sam. Her eyes were…” I ducked my face in my hands and started to cry. Sam rushed around the desk and put her arms around me.
    “It’s all my fault,” I said through gulps of air. “If I’d gone into the factory right away to look for a shovel instead of being such an idiot about those damned mannequins! And now one of them is after me. I didn’t take the arm,” I said thinking back to my garish nightmare.
    “Okay.” Sam rocked me gently while I sobbed, getting tears and God knew what else on her new silk scarf.
    “What’s going on in here?” Neither of us had heard our assistant arrive. “Why are you crying?” Millie Chapman asked.
    I pushed away from my older sister and looked up. “Sit down. I have something to tell you.”
    “Does it have to do with Mrs. Scott being killed? It’s in the morning paper.” Millie handed it over, taking a seat across from me.
    I took the paper and silently read the article.
    “I’m the employee who found the body.”
    “Oh, God!” Millie stood up, the bells on her sweater jingling. “What we need is some hot tea.” She sprinted into the small kitchen and banged things around returning a few minutes later with a tray and three cups of steaming liquid.
    “Here, drink this. You’ll feel better.” Millie handed me a mug along with several more tissues. “What do the police say? They never tell you the whole story in the papers.”
    I sniffed the concoction taking in the undeniable scent of cinnamon and clove and something else. With Millie—who at any given time could be involved in whatever the current craze was—one never knew what she might add to the drink.
    Millie plopped her bell-laden figure into the stuffed chair next to the desk. A fringe of bangs framed her round face and no one knew for sure what color her eyes were. She wore contact lenses that came in an endless supply of colors. Along with her penchant for trying anything new, she also liked to dress appropriately for the various holidays, and had added bell earrings and bells tied to the laces of her ankle boots.
    “Actually, the paper is pretty accurate.” I scrunched my face up in a thoughtful manner. “I don’t remember any reporters there last night. The police really don’t know much. There found no sign of any break-in or struggle and Mrs. Scott’s purse sat in plain sight with nothing missing. Who’d want to kill her? What reason could someone have for killing an assistant at a mannequin factory, for God sake?”
    Sam added with a grimace, “With the arm off one of those things. Do you think there’s a connection?”
    “Probably the first thing the murderer saw,” I said, trying hard not to think of my nightmare.
    “I wonder how Mr. Poupée is doing.” Sam asked.
    “He was there,” I said. “I ran to call the police and I smacked right into him. He almost gave me a heart attack.”
    Sam pushed a strand of her thick, light brown hair over an ear. The hair I wished I had.
    “I thought you said you were alone.”
    “At the beginning Then he showed up.”
    “Why?”
    “Why?” I gave my sister a quizzical expression but the gears in my head started to turn. Why indeed? Maybe he had been there the entire time.

CHAPTER FIVE

    “He owns the place,” I said a second later. “Though the police seemed to think it odd he just happened to show up after hours. He told them he planned to meet Mrs. Scott at a restaurant down the road, but she never showed so he got worried her car might be stuck in the snow. They questioned him for over an hour. This Detective Van der Burg…” I shook my head to dislodge the image of his tall, well-toned physique. “I think he suspects Mr. Poupée.”
    I grabbed a jar I keep on my desk and pulled it closer to scoop out a handful of M&M’s, meticulously picking the blue ones and sliding them across the desk to my sister who I knew would eat anything—even a blue M&M.
    “That’s just wrong.”
    “Of course it is. Mr. Poupée couldn’t hurt a fly.”
    “Not that. This.” I tossed another blue M&M onto her pile. “What we’re they thinking.” I couldn’t figure out how blue ones ended up in a bag with glorious autumn colors. Have I mentioned autumn is my favorite season?
    Sam leaned across the desk and tugged the jar from my