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her nose as she flipped through her notes again.
    “Oh, there was one thing,” I said,
remembering the potential evidence I’d noticed earlier. “Did you see the cup
and paper sleeve near the gazebo?” I asked. “The ones from Uncommon Grounds?”
    Dina nodded. “Bagged and tagged,”
she said. “And, of course, I plan to ask Bitsy Sanger if she was here this
afternoon.”
    “Yeah, sure,” I agreed. “But maybe
someone wrote the wrong date on the cup. It could’ve actually been from
yesterday.”
    Dina shook her head. “Doubtful,”
she said. “Connie assured me that her maintenance guy had been working
diligently for the past three days to keep the garden walkways and flower beds
free of litter and debris. They had a class come through from the grade school
on Monday for a field trip. Apparently, those little guys left quite a mess in
their wake.”
    I didn’t see any value in
discussing the messiness of small children, so I made another suggestion. “Then
maybe it was someone else named Bitsy.”
    Dina nodded solemnly and made a
note. “I suppose it could be. I knew an Elizabeth in college; her family called
her Bitsy. It’s a common enough nickname.”
    “And if that’s the case,” I said,
“you’d need to consider interviewing all of the women by that name here in
town.”
    “That’s a pretty big group,” Dina
said. “Although I’ve got to ID the victim before I do anything else.”
    “You didn’t find a wallet?”
    She shook her head. “His pockets
were empty,” Dina answered. “With the exception of this tag.” She pulled a
translucent evidence bag from her pocket. “It looks like some sort of code or
acronym.”
    “May I?”
    She gave me the bag and I held it
up for inspection. The item inside was a square of white paper with bright red
string looped through a hole in one end. The code that Dina had referred to was
a series of letters, numbers and symbols. On one side, printed in black ink,
the cipher read: AN914$80<$65 . On the other, someone had used a green
marker to write a similar notation: PW1215/70 . As a frequent shopper at
Becca Hancock’s vintage clothing store near the center of town, I instantly
recognized the tag and code.
    “This is from Timeless Gold,” I
said.
    Dina raised her eyebrows. “The
thrift store?”
    “Not thrift,” I said. “Vintage.
There’s a big difference, and Becca knows her stuff. She handpicks everything
for the shop. I’ve found some amazing goodies there since I moved back from
Chicago.”
    “Such as?”
    “A classic Chanel jacket,” I said.
“It cost a pretty penny, but in Chicago it would’ve been three or four times as
much.”
    Dina held out her hand and I gave
her the evidence envelope. Then she studied the small paper tag. “So, if this
is from Becca’s store…” She paused, glancing over at me. “Then maybe our John
Doe was a customer.”
    “Maybe,” I said. “It’s possible he
bought the tuxedo from Becca. I remember seeing two or three in the men’s
section there a few weeks ago.”
    She held up the tag. “So? What do
these letters and numbers mean?”
    I quickly explained Becca’s code.
The initials and numbers in black referred to the employee who had priced the
garment and the date it was added to the store’s inventory. The first dollar
amount was the price when the item went on the rack. The less-than symbol and
figure indicated the lowest possible amount in case someone tried to negotiate
on the item. The entry in green ink documented the employee who sold the item
as well as the date and amount.
    “I don’t follow,” said Dina. “Do
you mean that people can bargain with Becca and try to pay less than she’s
asking for something?”
    I nodded. “It’s not uncommon.
Especially with some vintage clothing stores. Becca knows what things are
worth. And she knows what she needs to sell them for in order to make a
profit.”
    Dina flashed a tired smile. “Thanks
for filling me in, Katie. I’ll stop by