Clocks and Robbers Read Online Free PDF Page B

her arms folded. The women got so mad they stormed out.”
    “Ha!” said Sylvester. “Your sister is
so
tough.”
    “She might be tough,” said Rosie, “but that didn’t help her last night.”
    “Oh no,” said Viola. “What happened?”
    “According to Grace, it had been a really busy evening. She was working at the cash register. One young woman came up, smiled, and plopped a bunch of merchandise on the counter. Before Grace could ring her up, the store manager, Tori, tapped her shoulder and pulled her aside. Out of earshot of anyone else, Tori mentioned that she’d heard that this woman was trouble. She’d recentlybeen caught in some other local stores trying to steal stuff. Tori told Grace to be careful. My sister was feeling pretty confident, so she agreed and returned to the register.
    “The shopper was nothing but pleasant. As Grace chatted with her, she kept her eyes peeled, in case the woman tried to slip something into her pocket. By the time Grace had placed every item into a shopping bag, she was certain that whatever this woman had been accused of must have been a mistake. The woman seemed completely ordinary.
    “Grace gave her the total. It was almost five hundred dollars. The woman handed over her credit card. Grace ran it through the machine without a problem. The woman signed the receipt, and Grace compared her signature to the one on the back of the credit card. They matched perfectly, and Grace was certain everything was fine. She wanted to keep the long line moving. So she returned the card to the woman, handed over the shopping bag, and waved good-bye.”
    “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” said Woodrow.
    Rosie nodded. “About an hour later, Tori called Grace into the office at the back of the store. Tori was angry. ‘I told you to watch that customer closely,’ she said. ‘And you let her steal almost five hundred dollars worth of merchandise from us.’
    “My sister couldn’t believe it. She insisted she’d done everything right. She saw the woman pay for everything with a credit card. So how did the woman manage to steal the merchandise?”
     
    “‘You saw the woman use
a
credit card,’ said Tori. ‘It just happened to be a
stolen
credit card.’
    “Grace got really frustrated. ‘But I checked the signature,’ she answered. ‘It matched the name on the card.’
    “Tori sighed. ‘If you checked the woman’s signature against the name on the card, you should have noticed a problem immediately,’ she said.”
    “What was the problem?” asked Woodrow.
    The group was quiet for a few minutes. “Maybe the signature was a really silly name,” said Sylvester. “Like Minnie Mouse or something like that.”
    Rosie shook her head. “It was a real name belonging to a real person. But what kind of name should have instantly clued my sister in that she was being scammed by this woman?”
     
    Viola gasped. “Was it a man’s name on the card?”
    “Yes,” said Rosie. “The card belonged to a man named John Whiting. The woman had stolen Mr. Whiting’s wallet that afternoon and had been on a shopping spree ever since, hoping people wouldn’t look too closely at the first name on the card. Mr. Whiting alerted the authorities as soon as he realized his card was missing. My sister just happened to be one of the unlucky ones who got taken in by the woman’s charm.”
    “Ugh,” said Sylvester. “That makes me so angry!”
    “I have a question,” said Woodrow. “Grace said the signature matched the one on the card. How is that possible?”
    “Maybe she practiced copying his handwriting before using it,” Sylvester suggested.
    “Wouldn’t that have taken a lot of work?” said Viola. “Probably more than just a few minutes … and it sounds like she didn’t have a lot of time.”
    “That’s a really good question, Woodrow,” said Rosie. “How did the woman manage to forge Mr. Whiting’s handwriting on the credit slips so perfectly?”
     
    “She must not