Connections: Whodunit
Everyone loses things. Right? So why was I in such a tizzy when my purse, containing a wallet and the usual appurtenances, disappeared last week? My husband said I was probably reading too much into it, taking it as a sign of aging. But no, I insisted, the whole episode was getting to me for some other reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on at first.
It was Wednesday, deadline day at The Star, and I had been editing right up to the last minute, when I left my laptop and junk where they were and ran out to buy children’s Tylenol, yogurt, and ice cream for one of my grandchildren. She had had a baby tooth pulled that afternoon, and my daughter wasn’t about to leave her alone. I was rushed, squeezing the errand into a short half-hour between finishing work and getting ready to pick my husband up from the Hampton Jitney.
I knew I hadn’t left the bag when I delivered the things for my granddaughter, because I was absolutely, 100-percent sure that I had picked it up from a counter in my daughter’s kitchen. I made short work of going back to the office to gather my things, but at some point between parking my car in the Star driveway — leaving it unlocked as I have always done, a small-town habit that I quite consciously refuse to give up — and then racing inside to scoop up my laptop and papers, and then driving home (a trip of about 30 seconds, quite literally), the purse vanished from the face of the Earth.
Back home, I carried in two heavy shopping bags and went about my business until it came time to meet the Jitney. At that point, I realized I didn’t have my purse. Hurrying around the house, I was totally unable to locate it, and drove off to meet the bus with fingers crossed that I would not be caught driving without my license in my possession.
The next morning we searched the house, high and low, and we searched The Star. I searched on the ground around where I had been parked. My daughter searched her house, too, for good measure. The mystery deepened. I began to doubt my recall and phoned White’s and Waldbaum’s on the chance I it had been left there while collecting the Tylenol and ice cream. No, not there, either.
Having to cancel my credit cards didn’t seem like such a burden, although I was concerned about what hassle would be involved in obtaining a new copy of my license. I didn’t dare drive myself to police headquarters to make a report, so I enlisted my husband to take me there. The police officer couldn’t have been nicer, but by this time I was an anxious mess: Having exhausted what seemed like all the possibilities for this having been simply a case of innocent, absentminded, misplacing of a handbag, I had begun to consider the more unpleasant “what if?” scenarios.
What if it had fallen on the ground outside my own front door and someone passing by had made off with it? What if I had left it on the passenger seat when the car was parked outside the office and someone had reached in and plucked it out? These are the questions people who lock their car doors in their own driveways ask themselves routinely, but I refuse to live like that, assuming crime is to be expected.
Imagine my relief when I returned from police headquarters to learn that a Star employee had popped into the office with the purse a few minutes before. He had spotted it on the ground near a Dumpster that was wedged in the driveway to collect the debris from some building repairs. Whodunnit? I did. How had I — and the rest of the Star staff — managed to drive and walk repeatedly past the Dumpster without seeing it? Who cares? Everything was safe inside it, including my cards and money.
Despite my feeling a certain embarrassment, this was definitely a case of all’s well that ends well. And I had an insight: What had had me so upset wasn’t the thought that only old people lose their handbags — clearly, that’s not the case (and I should know, as I’ve been losing them all my life!) — but the thought that perhaps it had been stolen so close to home. No, I thought, East Hampton hasn’t changed that much.