The Blue Cap

Simone arrived at the market before anyone else on Monday.

She had told her mother she was meeting friends. This was true, technically. She had not told her mother that she was also investigating a crime.

The Monday market was the quietest of the week. Some vendors didn’t bother opening at all. The ones who did were the serious ones — the farmers with fresh produce, the butchers with their coolers, the bakers who needed to sell yesterday’s bread before it went stale. The Savannah grass was still wet from the rain that had fallen overnight, and the air smelled of damp earth and frying oil and the particular tang of the green-skinned mangoes that nobody bought after Saturday.

Mrs. Leung was there.

Simone approached the stall slowly, the way you approach an animal you don’t want to startle. Mrs. Leung was arranging sweetbread on a tray. Her hands were fast, precise. She did not look up.

“Good morning, Mrs. Leung.”

Mrs. Leung looked up. Her eyes were red. Not crying red — tired red. The specific red of someone who hadn’t slept.

“You’re the friend,” Mrs. Leung said. “The quiet one.”

“Yes.”

“You came with the other girls yesterday.”

“Yes.”

“What do you want?”

Simone had prepared for this question. She had lain in bed last night thinking about what to say. The truth was too much. A lie would be detected.

“My grandmother lost her recipe book when she died,” Simone said. “My mother still talks about it. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t entirely a lie. Her grandmother had died three years ago in San Fernando. There had been a notebook of recipes that no one could find afterwards. Simone’s mother still mentioned it sometimes, on the days she missed her own mother most. The way she said the notebook — as if it were a person — had stayed with Simone.

Mrs. Leung’s face softened. Just a little.

“Thirty years,” she said. “My mother’s handwriting. Her coconut bread was famous in Princes Town. People came from San Fernando to buy it. She used to write things in the margins — more sugar on a wet day, less on a dry one — things she never told anyone in words because she said the book would teach you better than her mouth could.”

Simone said nothing. She had learned, from her own mother, that grief liked to be listened to and disliked being interrupted.

“How did someone take it without breaking the lock?” she asked, when Mrs. Leung had stopped looking at her hands.

Mrs. Leung looked at her sharply.

“You ask a lot of questions for someone who just wanted to say sorry.”

Simone didn’t answer. She had learned that silence was sometimes better than words. Silence let the other person fill the space.

Mrs. Leung filled it.

“The lock wasn’t broken,” she said quietly. “But it wasn’t locked either. Not properly. I’ve been meaning to replace it for months. The mechanism is old. You can jiggle it open with a thin piece of metal if you know what you’re doing.”

Simone’s heart beat faster.

“Anyone could do it?”

“Anyone with a paperclip and five minutes of practice.”

“Did you tell the police?”

Mrs. Leung laughed. It was not a happy sound.

“The police don’t care about a stolen recipe book. They have murders to solve.”

“Did you tell Mr. Harrinarine?”

Mrs. Leung stopped laughing.

“Why would I tell him?”

“Because his wife’s ring was stolen the same day.”

Mrs. Leung was quiet for a moment. She set down the tray of sweetbread. She walked to the back of the stall and adjusted something on a shelf that didn’t need adjusting. Simone waited.

When Mrs. Leung came back, her face was different.

“You think it’s the same person.”

“I think someone figured out how to open locks,” Simone said carefully. “And I think they might come back.”

Mrs. Leung looked at her lockbox. Then she looked at the Harrinarine stall, still closed, still empty.

“Mr. Harrinarine knows about the locks,” she said finally. “I told him last month. The same conversation I just had with you. He said he’d replace his. I don’t think he did.”

Simone filed this away.

“Why would he not replace it?” she asked. “If he knew?”

Mrs. Leung looked at her for a long moment.

“Some people,” she said, “don’t lock things they’re not ready to keep.”

Simone didn’t know what to do with that sentence. She wrote it in her head anyway.

“Thank you, Mrs. Leung.”

She turned to leave.

“Girl.”

Simone looked back.

“The young man in the blue cap,” Mrs. Leung said. “He wasn’t the only one asking questions.”

Simone went still.

“There was a woman too,” Mrs. Leung said. “Older. Maybe fifty. She asked about the Harrinarines. About their family. About who had keys to their stall.”

“What did she look like?”

“Ordinary,” Mrs. Leung said. “The kind of ordinary you don’t remember.”

“What did she sound like? Where was she from?”

Mrs. Leung frowned. “That was the strange thing. She sounded like she was from here. But the way she said Harrinarine — she said it slowly. Like she was practising. Like the name was new in her mouth.”

Simone felt the back of her neck go cold.

“Did she buy anything?”

“No. She didn’t even pretend to look at the sweetbread. She just asked her questions and left. People who don’t want anything from a vendor don’t usually stay to talk.”

“How long was she here?”

“Three minutes. Four. Long enough.”

“And after she left — did you see her again?”

“No. But I saw the blue cap boy. Twenty minutes later. He came past my stall walking slow. Looking. I thought he was a thief at first. But thieves don’t look that scared.”

“Scared of what?”

Mrs. Leung shook her head. “I don’t know, girl. I sell sweetbread. I am not a detective.”

She picked up the tray of sweetbread again. Her hands were steady but Simone noticed she had not yet put a single piece on display.

“Be careful,” Mrs. Leung said. “Whatever this is. It’s not a small thing.”

Simone found Anya and Reyah at the roti stand.

She told them everything.

“A woman,” Anya said, writing.

“Ordinary. Forgettable. Asking about keys.”

“And practising the name,” Anya added, underlining it. “Practising the name. That’s the part that matters.”

“So there are two people,” Reyah said. “The young man in the blue cap and an older woman.”

“Or they’re working together,” Simone said.

“Or they’re the same person,” Anya said. “The woman could have been wearing a disguise.”

Reyah stared at her. “This isn’t a movie, Anya.”

“People wear disguises in real life too.”

“Not in Port of Spain.”

“People wear wigs in Port of Spain every day. Carnival is in February, not June, but that doesn’t mean —”

“We’re getting off track,” Simone said.

They stopped.

“We need to find the young man,” Anya said. “He’s the only real lead we have. Mrs. Leung said he looked scared. People who are scared talk more than people who are calm.”

“How do we find someone we’ve never seen?” Reyah asked.

“We describe him to everyone we meet,” Simone said. “Someone saw him. Someone knows him. Markets are small places. People talk.”

“People talk to each other,” Reyah said. “Not to children.”

“People talk to Reyah,” Anya said.

Reyah looked at her.

“You ask questions like you’re just curious,” Anya said. “Simone said it yesterday. It’s true. People tell you things they wouldn’t tell adults. They tell you things they wouldn’t even tell themselves.”

Reyah thought about this.

“So I just… walk around and talk to people?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Until we find him.”

Reyah looked at the market. At the hundreds of people moving between the stalls. At the heat rising off the asphalt. At the woman selling sno-cones with condensed milk. At the boy with a tray of doubles balanced on his shoulder. At the old man who came every Monday to sell parrots in homemade cages and never sold a single parrot but came back the next Monday anyway.

“Fine,” she said. “But someone owes me a sno-cone.”

“Done,” Anya said.

“With condensed milk.”

“Done.”

“And tamarind.”

Anya looked at her. “That’s two snocones.”

“Two cases. Two snocones.”

Anya wrote it in the green notebook, under the questions list, in small careful letters.

Owed to Reyah: two sno-cones (condensed milk; tamarind).

She underlined it.

“Go,” she said.

Reyah went.