CHAPTER 1

Ask any lawyer and she'll tell you that you need three things to commit a crime: motive, means and opportunity.

Most of the time, these things come together in the heat of one moment of passionate des-peration or anger. Sometimes, criminals will spend years just planning their crimes, biding their time until the pieces of their plan slowly and methodically come into synch.

For me, however, it was totally spontaneous, yet not a crime of passion. I didn't get lost in emotion, yet I made no plans and I never stayed up late hatching plots; I had no clue that I was go-ing to commit a crime until suddenly, it became almost inevitable.

The place my college called home was a small town in upstate New York with a population of 11,000 permanent residents. There were a couple of supermarkets, a thriving Main Street of shops and offices, a couple of diners and restaurants, some beautiful old houses built from kits in the late 1800s which would be regarded as near-mansions if they were built today; there were a couple of graveyards, some state-erected historical markers, as well as two classic white clapboard churches, one with a bell that was cast at the same foundry as the Liberty Bell. But if you asked any lifetime resident of Myrmidon about the most significant fact in the town's history, they'd be sure to tell you that it was when the Erie Canal was originally supposed to go through here, but bypassed us by fifteen miles, an event which should have forever relegated us to insignificant status.

That Myrmidon is not insignificant is because, at the time the Canal was heading straight for us, Ezra Corngate, a very rich man, decided to endow a great university in the soon-to-be-important town in which he'd grown up. He never married and so he ensured that the vast fortune he'd amassed during his celibacy-fueled quest for some alternate immortality went to this univer-sity in its entirety and in perpetuity.

Corngate University grew over the years into a powerhouse of education, attracting to its ivy-covered campus Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners by the dozens. The quality of its world-renowned faculty allowed the University to restrict its student rolls to the best and the brightest young men and women in the country, myself included in that elite. Each August, 35,000 new and returning students descended on Myrmidon and overnight it went from being a sleepy backwater town into a bustling center of education and youthful high spirits.

It also went from being a place with full employment to a place with thousands of new bodies looking for jobs. Of course the inevitable mall that was built on the hill helped things, since it both employed many students and sucked their money right back in. And, I am exaggerating about the number of job-seekers a little, since nearly two-thirds of the students there were silver-spoon babies -- possibly very intelligent, but certainly endowed by their creator with the right parents -- who'd never held a job and had no intention of discovering how the other half (or third) lives. Nonetheless, even finding jobs for 10,000 students is quite a feat in such a small place.

I wasn't one of the leisure class; in fact, I was attending college only because my grandfather had accidentally bought one-hundred shares of some unexpectedly high-performing stock for each of his grandchildren when we were born, and presented his surprise to my two cousins and myself -- in a trust fund, of course -- when we reached our sixteenth birthdays. The fund specified that it was to be for tuition, room and board only, so that if we wanted any other fun or luxury, we'd have to get jobs.

That wasn't a big deal for me -- I'd been earning my way ever since I'd first gotten my working papers back in junior high. My parents, on the verge of their eventual divorce, had said to me at the time, "Rachel, if you want to go to college, you'd better get a job and start saving because divorce is expensive, and we can't see any way we'll be able to pay for you."

That was before Grandpa had broken his news to us about our inheritance, so I'd worked in bookstores and video stores and diners, delivered paper routes and babysat and mowed lawns -- basically, anything that came up at anytime and anyplace. The best jobs though, were the super-markets, since they were mostly unionized, mostly well-paid, and -- talk about flexible schedules: you can't get much more flexible than "Open 24 Hours"! I was totally thrilled when I landed a cashier position in my sophomore year of high school and even though I still grabbed hours at other jobs, I held onto the supermarket practically until the day I was ready to leave for college.

It was a little disappointing to discover that the supermarkets in Myrmi were not 24-hour joints and that the workers weren't unionized and that the pay wasn't that great; but as disappointed as I was, that's how excited the owners of the Myrmi Market were to find someone who not only knew her way around a supermarket cash register, but was also willing to work nights, weekends and to try and fit her college schedule around their needs.

Mr. Walters, the owner of the store and one of the members of the Town Council, personally welcomed me to the team. He was a really nice man in his late fifties, very warm and genuine. He told me very proudly that his great-great-grandfather had started this store back in 1848, right be-fore the town's near-collision with the canal, and that with each generation of Walters' ownership, it had grown and prospered and become a regular part of the life of both the town and the University.

The store was located in the part of Myrmi known as Collegetown, due to its proximity to Corngate's enormous campus. It was a very nice area with steep hills, broad tree-lined boulevards, shops of every type and beautiful old apartments in broad-porched buildings. The people who lived in the grand houses on the main streets were mostly University professors and employees, the students having been gentrified to some slightly less-attractive housing on the side streets.

Despite the Myrmi Market's status as an independent store, it was as large and as modern as any of the big chains' stores, fully outfitted with laser scanners, talking shopping carts, a big eat-in deli which served everything from sushi to sandwiches, a very well-respected bakery which was of-ten called on to cater dessert to the fanciest affairs on the campus. There was a cheese department which qualified as a multi-cultural education, as well as an incredible selection of beer, magazines, newspapers, health and beauty aids and ethnic specialty foods.

Mr. Walters knew well how much his store was dependent on the University, as both a source of income and a source of labor, and his store had earned a reputation over the years as being a great place for a student to work. Rather than have to deal with the problems of finding a full staff to work during such popular days off as the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Christmas, New Year's Day and winter recess, Mr. Walters had made a yearly tradition of closing the store on those days and paying all the students who had been scheduled to work.

I started my employment there as a freshman, and since I had no great need or desire to go back to my broken home for the summer, I continued working right through the hot, slow months, taking a couple of classes to bring me a little closer to the early graduation I was considering. I was a hard worker and extremely reliable and when fall came around, bringing with it a new crop of stu-dents, I was already considered an old-timer.

Mr. Walters seemed to like me in a fatherly sort of way, often inviting me into his office for a cup of coffee and some inquiries about my schoolwork when I arrived early each morning to open the store. He seemed glad to find an audience as attentive as I was for his stories about his career and his family and the politics of his hometown. And when the position of front-end supervisor opened up that fall, he didn't hesitate for a moment before promoting me over some less-ambitious people who'd been there longer. There was a little resentment at first, but it quickly died down when everyone realized that I deserved the job -- and that it required an enormous amount of effort!

And, boy did it! Although the new position paid more, it also demanded so much more of my time and energy that I found it was almost impossible to work the job and keep up with my studies while living in a room with three other girls -- none of whom had ever had a job. Unfortu-nately, the trust fund was only going to give me as much for room and board as the University would charge me, so if I wanted an apartment, I'd have to pick up a few more hours at the store and also find another working-girl type of roommate.

Neither proved to be too difficult. Joellen, a red-headed English major who worked at the store with me, practically burst my eardrum with her delighted squeal when I asked her if she knew anyone who was looking to get a place with a roommate in C-town. "Oh, my god!" she said. "How about ME! I can't stand living in the dorms any more. I am so sick of listening to all the 'problems' of all those silly little rich girls just here to find a husband. All they ever want to do is go out or go shopping and all I ever want to do is find a few minutes to go over my notes before I've got to get my ass to work!"

We found a place pretty quickly: a small two-bedroom a couple of blocks from the store which didn't have too much to recommend it except for a porch which was so big it was almost a whole extra room. Nonetheless, we quickly moved our pitifully small collections of furniture and clothing into our new bedrooms and made the place feel like somewhat of a home.

As far as the financial concerns went, even though I was a supervisor, I was still only work-ing twenty-eight hours per week, so picking up another twelve hours wouldn't be too hard, espe-cially not when Luanne in the bakery heard that I was looking for a couple of shifts. Knowing my rep as an excellent employee, she told me she'd love to have me, and even though I confessed to knowing nothing about baking, she told me she'd teach me.

So, that fall quickly settled into a comfortable, yet demanding routine. Each morning, I'd get up at three-thirty, skipping a shower and getting dressed in the darkness, in order to meet Luanne at the store by four. The next two hours would speed by in a frenzy of cleaning and prepping and baking; the donuts and pastries and bagels were first priority, followed closely in importance by the muffins, breads, pies and whatever other surprising delicacies Luanne had planned.

At six-thirty, I'd head home for a well-deserved shower, breakfast with Joellen and a couple of hours of solid study-time before I had to head to my ten o'clock class. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, it would be work from four until eleven, and on Saturday I had a shift from seven in the morning until two in the afternoon. That left me with total freedom on Sunday and the whole af-ternoon and evening on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I doubt many people would have chosen this schedule, but by the middle of the semester, I'd become so used to it that it just seemed natural.

The only problem with the schedule was its irregularity: there weren't any set times of day when my body would be able to schedule a meal. One day, I'd be free at lunch-time and the next day I'd barely have a chance to munch on some candy or a bag of chips as I ran from home to work to class. Pretty soon, I'd totally lost touch with the concept of three square meals a day, finding myself eating "a little something" five or ten times throughout my routine.

It was easiest in the morning when I was in the bakery; Luanne encouraged me to taste eve-rything. She was a master baker, having graduated with honors from Corngate's internationally fa-mous School of Hotel and Restaurant Management. She was endlessly inventive, finding no greater joy than when her old professor -- now the director of the school's on-campus four-star hotel and restaurant -- would ask her to create some masterwork for a conference to be held in the University Ballroom, attended by scholars, diplomats and society-folk from around the globe. She never failed to wow them and was always asked to come out from the kitchens and take a bow.

She told me that she used to dread making an appearance in front of the impeccably dressed and groomed glitterati. She was no taller than five-foot three and weighed well over two-hundred and fifty pounds, with long, sparkling blonde hair and a beautiful, sunny face that forced a smile from anyone who encountered her.

She said she'd always felt ridiculous on display, certain that she looked like a beachball with legs, until one day when the Princess of Wales sought her out in the kitchen at the end of the night and told her how beautiful she was and how talented and how she would never be able to think of pastry again without thinking of Luanne's face and how she embodied her conception of the ideal baker. "I've never met anyone who seemed so suited to their career, and who seemed to express all the joy and art of their field in both their personality and their physical being," the Princess told her.

"That changed me," Luanne told me. "To hear something like that from someone like her, with no reason... That one little encounter left me so uplifted that I haven't touched the ground since." She'd stopped thinking of herself through other's eyes: as a fat little girl who sought solace in food and was so lacking in self-control that she even chose to be around food for her career. Instead, she began to think of herself as the artist she was; in her mind, she confessed, she even began to think of herself as a sort of "Spirit of Baking." She blushed and laughed when she told me this, swearing me to never repeat any of it.

I swore and then she said, "And the most amazing thing about this whole change was that the rest of the world seemed to notice, too! I guess my new confidence really showed, because -- I'd spent the first three years in school without ever having a date, and then all of a sudden, my phone was ringing off the hook and I was actually turning guys down!" By the time she'd graduated, she'd met her husband-to-be, tying the knot that summer and settling into work at the Market while he finished his advanced degree in Architecture.

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