Pearls Gone Wild

by Diane Vallere

  She looked relieved. “So my merchandise was returned? That’s a little bit of good news, isn’t it? When all of this is done I have a chance to make up the sales, at least.” Her brows pulled together and she looked confused. “But where did you put the jewelry? Lela didn’t say anything about it when I came in.”

  “Lela wasn’t here. Shana was. But I don’t know if she knows because I only told Detective Madden. He said—he thinks—he made it sound like I could have put the jewelry in the ceiling to make you look innocent. He thinks there was no smash and grab the night we found George and that this merchandise showing up was just a way to corroborate that story to make you look like a victim.”

  “But I wouldn’t do that!”

  “I know. Everybody who knows you knows you wouldn’t do that. There’s only one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Detective Madden doesn’t know you.”

  An EMT pushed a lumpy white gurney out of the store, and the officer asked Cat if she thought she could make a positive ID. I squeezed her hand in an attempt to give her strength and stood close to her while they pulled the sheet back.

  Despite the tourniquet of shiny black pearls knotted tightly around his throat, there was no doubt that we were looking at Officer Aguilar. I looked away from his glassy eyes and focused on his nametag, still clipped to his security guard uniform.

  Cat stared at his face for a few seconds, and then her small hands balled up into fists. She turned to Detective Madden. “You think I did this? Really? I’m a small, pregnant woman. How would I strangle him and get him into my office without anybody seeing? How would I strangle someone who knows me and then get his body behind a jewelry case? Can’t you reenact the crime and see that it’s impossible?” The blanket dropped from Cat’s shoulders a second time. “Follow me,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

  She went into her store and headed to the jewelry counters. Madden followed her and I followed Madden. When she reached the aisle between the jewelry department and the shoe department, she turned to face him. “You’re about George’s size.” She reached up for his throat, but her pregnant belly kept her from being able to reach his neck. “How exactly would this work? Oh, wait—I lassoed him, right?” She yanked a necklace from a top of counter fixture and held it taut between her hands. “How did I do it? Like this?” She stood on her tiptoes and pressed the pearls into his throat.

  Detective Madden’s eyes widened. He put his hands on her wrists and lowered them away from him. Two uniformed officers came over and stood on either side of her. Madden looked at them and shook his head slightly.

  “Cat,” I said in a low voice. “Give me the pearls.”

  As if coming out of a temporary fog, her expression changed from anger to fear. She looked at the pearls in her hands and at the faces of the officers around her. She dropped the necklace to the floor. Customers collected by the mall entrance watching the show.

  “Nothing to see here, folks,” I said. Madden and I shared a long look. “Detective, is there someplace we can talk?”

  One of the uniformed officers led Cat to a nearby ottoman. Madden picked up a briefcase and pulled out a clipboard. He read something on it and then looked up. “You’d like to add something to your statement?” he asked.

  “Last night I saw Mr. Aguilar come out of the mall and loiter outside of Catnip after hours.”

  “That’s his job,” he said.

  “That’s what I thought, too, but he acted funny. He looked around the door to Catnip and in the bushes next to the employee entrance. Eventually he sat on the park bench and Shana Brice—Cat’s assistant manager—came out of the store and threw something away. Aguilar took it.”

  “Do you know what it was?”

  “If I knew what it was, I wouldn’t be so cryptic. It was dark and I was cold.”

  “What were you doing in the parking lot after hours, Ms. Kidd?”

  I blushed, remembering exactly what Nick and I had been doing. “I forgot where I parked my car,” I lied. “Detective, I know you know that Cat and her husband argued at the party the night of his murder. That’s all it was—an argument. Their life was about to change significantly and he was looking forward to that. He bought her a mother of pearl baby rattle and a strand of the most gorgeous pearls you’ve ever seen and he hid them in the house so she wouldn’t know. She had no reason to want him dead, but somebody else did.”

  It was more than a few hours before we were able to leave, not because the police wanted us to stay but because Cat was in no shape to walk. While we sat back, observing the activities around us with nothing other than our own thoughts to serve as distraction, Cat brought up something that had been niggling at the back of my mind.

  “Should we tell them about the camera?” she asked. “They’re going to find it sooner or later.”

  I’d been thinking about that camera. Now more than ever I regretted asking Dante to take it away. If it had still been in place, we’d have pictures of who did this.

  A numbing feeling started in my torso and then radiated outward through my arms and legs. The tablet was at my house. I’d only gone through a portion of the pictures on it. Now, I wondered at the coincidence of the pearls in the ceiling and the body in her office. They had to be connected.

  Cat looked at me, eyes wide. “Why did your face just lose all color?” she asked.

  I lowered my voice to just above a whisper. “We need to get to my place and look at those pictures.”

  I drove to Cat’s house. She packed an overnight bag while I cleaned Logan’s temporary litterbox and packed him in his carrier. Minutes later, we were en route to my house. Cat was in unchartered territory, and while being in her house might have provided certain comforts, I suspected the reminder of her life with George around every corner would be worse than coming with me.

  Plus the shock that goes with finding a body—and realizing that somehow you’re now mixed up in a murder investigation—is not always easy to process. That it happened in her store—not once, but twice—made the crimes more personal.

  I parked in the driveway. As soon as we were inside the living room I let Logan out of his carrier and he took off. We tossed our coats on top of the sofa and went into the kitchen. “Want anything? Food? Drink?”

  “Vodka,” Cat said.

  “No, seriously.”

  “I’m being serious. I want vodka. But since I can’t have vodka, I’ll take a glass of cold water. Just serve it in a martini glass so I can pretend okay?”

  “One water in a martini glass coming up.” I dug out the glasses and filled them from a pitcher I kept in the fridge. “The computer is upstairs.”

  “Let’s go.” Apparently just the illusion of a martini gave her enough courage to face the details behind the dead body in her store.

  She headed up the stairs and slowed as she reached the landing. “Which way?” she asked.

  “Turn left.”

  The last time Cat had been in my spare bedroom I’d been using it as a walk-in closet. Racks of off-season clothes had taken up the majority of the space around the small desk that held my PC and printer. In the days between employment opportunities I’d been forced to assess my wardrobe for value and had even sold off a few choice items in order to make my mortgage payment, a process that had pained me greatly. Nobody would treasure those late-Nineties satin cargo pants the way I did.

  Since then I’d packed up the garments and stored them in the closet, safe from moths and Logan (he had a thing for cashmere). The desk had expanded thanks to a plank of wood from Lowe’s and a couple of wooden sawhorses and was in an L-configuration. I’d upgraded to a twenty-two inch monitor (it was better for shopping on eBay) and an assortment of colorful Sharpies separated into clear vases from the Dollar Store.

  The tablet computer that Dante had dropped off sat next to my printer. A thin cord connected the two. I jiggled the mouse to wake up the computer and clicked through the images as they appeared on the s
creen.

  “You don’t really think we have a picture of what happened, do you?” Cat asked.

  “I don’t know. Do we even know what happened? You told Detective Madden that you found Aguilar in your office. How did he get there? Did anybody see him go in? Why was he in there? Has mall security ever gone into your office before? It looks suspicious. Especially after I found the pearls in the ceiling. Did Madden check Aguilar’s footprint? Could he have been involved in George’s murder? Everything about it points to the fact that he wasn’t there because you invited him in.”

  “That’s a lot of questions,” Cat said.

  “Remember how I told you he was hanging around your store after dark? And that Shana threw something away and he took it out of the trash? That’s weird, right? I mean, now that he was found dead in your office.”

  She lost more coloring. “I’m going to be sick,” she said. She ran to the hall bathroom and threw up. The faucet turned on and off. When she returned, she apologized.

  “For what? This kind of thing bothers you. That’s good. That means you’re normal.”

  “But you can talk about it. You can look at crime scenes and ask questions and suspect people. Why can’t I be more like you?”

  “Cat, I’m not eight months pregnant.” Hearing Cat talk about wanting to be like me cast my whole life in a different light. “I am suspicious by nature,” I said. “You know what else? I eat junk food and make decisions other people think are bad. That’s who I am. That’s not you. I need you to be the person you are: strong, reliable. Practical. Cautious.”

  “But you get things done.”

  “I won’t let you risk your life because you think you’re doing what I would have done.”

  “But we have an agreement.”

  “That’s not how Life works. You be you and I’ll be me. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said. I could have sworn a shroud of relief settled in over her shoulders.

  “Look carefully at these photos. Tell me if anything looks out of place,” I said. The first few images showed Cat entering her office, sitting, working. Business as usual with no big surprises. It was the next series that caught my attention, and apparently hers as well.

  We stared at pictures that documented an affair. They grew increasingly intimate, starting with two people entering the office and ending the series with a photo that showed that the woman wore very little under her chinchilla coat. Although knowing her spending habits, I guessed her lingerie cost more than outfits modest people wore in public.

  Cat’s eyes widened and she put her hand to her mouth in surprise. “Are they going to…?”

  “I’m pretty sure they are,” I said. “And judging from your expression you’re as surprised as I am to see that Jim Insendo was using your office to have an affair with Lela Sexton.”

  25

  MONDAY NIGHT, 9:00

  I selected the incriminating photos and clicked print. The power button blinked orange and an error message on the screen indicated that the cyan toner was out of ink. I dug a backup cartridge out of a bin and replaced it. The printer recalibrated and then chugged out the photos.

  Cat grabbed the stack as they printed and handed them to me. I tapped them on the corner of the desk to line up the edges, and then we moved to the kitchen. Cat bent over and breathed into a paper bag. I called Eddie at Tradava.

  “Cat’s in trouble. Big trouble. She needs our help.”

  “Roger that,” Eddie said. “I’ll be there as soon as the store closes.”

  Cat pulled a bag of Fritos out of a very large tote bag, dropped the bag onto the sofa, and tore the bag open.

  “Are you sure you want to eat like that?” I asked.

  “I can’t drink. I can’t sleep. I can’t take Valium or Xanax or Ambien. I spent the morning planning a memorial service for the husband who left me and I can’t see my feet.” She put a handful of Fritos into her mouth and crunched. “Besides, you would.”

  “Cat, sit down.”

  She clutched the bag like Linus with his blanket. I sat next to her. “You’ve just been through a traumatic situation. There’s no doubt of that. I know exactly how you’re feeling. I’ve been there. You barely knew me at the time, but I did exactly what you’re doing now.”

  “What exactly am I doing now?”

  “You’re trying to hide from the situation. You’re hoping it will go away. Don’t you remember when I came into your store for the first time and was on a bender of a shopping spree? I wanted to distract myself. Just like you’re trying to do now. You don’t want to think about it so you’re trying to do whatever you can to pretend you didn’t discover a dead body in your store. Not just one, but two.”

  I had to say it, to point out the facts, while I had her attention. When I spoke the last words she reached into the bag of Fritos.

  “Cat, here’s the deal. Sooner or later you’re going to have to do something. It doesn’t matter what. You can close the store for the holidays. You can list it for sale. You can sell the house and move. It’s your life. You deserve to know what happened, but you don’t deserve to be a spectator on the sidelines waiting for someone else to wrap up the details.”

  She didn’t let go of the bag but she didn’t pull out more corn chips either. A minute passed. It felt like an hour.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “We make some coffee—leaded for me and unleaded for you—and go over the photos. Start a timeline of everything that happened. Figure out where we have questions and how we can get answers. Come up with a plan.”

  Another minute passed. She ate another handful of Fritos. Apparently my little talk hadn’t done a bit of good. But then she placed the bag on the table in front of her and looked me straight in the eyes. “Do you have any green vegetables?”

  Half an hour later, Eddie arrived. He held two pizza boxes in one hand and a cardboard four pack of Birch Beer in the other. Wedged under his arm was an oversized Post-It board, and his cargo pants fought his belt thanks to the assortment of Sharpies bursting from the pockets. He pushed past us with a few unintelligible grumbles.

  “Hello to you too,” I said.

  “No time for hello.” He handed me the pizza boxes (green peppers and basil for Cat, extra cheese for Eddie and me, pepperoni on half to peel off and give to Logan for putting up with us) and took a bottle of Birch Beer out of the cardboard container. He then shoved the remaining three bottles at me. “Fridge.” While I refrigerated the soda bottles, he opened up the Post-It pad, tore off a large sheet, and stuck it to my wall. He pulled a Sharpie out of the pocket of his hoodie and wrote, “Suspects,” across the top. He repeated the process two more times, writing, “Motive,” and “Means.” He pulled a bottle opener from his other pocket, popped the top off the birch beer, and swigged from the bottle. When he finished, he pointed at the wall. “Do your thing.”

  “My thing?” I said. “I don’t have a thing.”

  Cat grabbed the crinkled brown paper bag and started breathing into it again. I pointed to the living room. “We need to talk.”

  Once we were on the other side of the wall, I turned to him. “‘My thing’?” I said, using finger quotes. “In case you haven’t noticed, this is no dream. This is really happening!”

  “That’s from Rosemary’s Baby, isn’t it?” Eddie asked. “You better not let Cat hear you quote that movie.”

  “I already did,” Cat called out from the kitchen.

  I put my hand on Eddie’s arm and led him to the other side of the Christmas tree. I plugged in the electric train that ran around the perimeter of the tree stand and dropped my voice to just above a whisper. “I’m going to talk fast to get you caught up. Don’t interrupt me.”

  “Go.”

  “Cat’s husband didn’t leave her. He left her but then she found a present from him that indicates that he didn’t plan to leave her so now we think he pretended to leave to protect her.”

  “Not abandoned—check.”

  “But nobody
else knows that because right after we discovered the present, I went to Catnip and found the stolen jewelry in the ceiling of Cat’s office.”

  “Stolen jewelry found—check.”

  “I called the detective to tell him what I knew, but he doesn’t know about George not leaving Cat so he not only still thinks she has motive, but now he thinks I hid the jewelry in her ceiling to make it look like somebody else is involved.”

  “Falsifying evidence—check.”

  “No! I didn’t falsify anything! But he thinks I did because he doesn’t know about the baby rattle in the fireplace.”

  “Baby rattle in the fireplace.” He paused. “Dude, you officially stumped my decoder ring.”

  “That’s the present George hid in the fireplace. A baby rattle and a poem. And a pearl necklace for Cat that cost more than my car. But now the security officer who I think maybe helped steal the jewelry in the ceiling is dead and Detective Madden doesn’t want to hear about baby rattles and roses being red. Maybe there’s a conspiracy at the mall. Or there’s a lunatic Santa on the loose. Or maybe one of the other boutique owners are offing the competition?”

  “Slow down, Bugsy,” Eddie said. He held up his hands like claws and put them on either side of my head. “You need to take all that and sort it out. Because somewhere between the baby rattles and the roses and the pearls and the whatever else you have in there is the answer.”

  It didn’t take long for us to turn the kitchen into a makeshift war room. I was starting to wonder if it made sense to set up an actual crime lab in the house. Not that I was terribly upset about covering up the blue floral wallpaper, but the giant tear-off sheets of notes that now surrounded the room gave it a decidedly graffitied look. Stephen Sprouse meets Martha Stewart.

  Cat went to the restroom. We’d finished the pizza, so I refilled Eddie’s and my coffee and emptied a fresh bag of pretzels into a bowl.

  Eddie bit into a pretzel. “She’s doing better than I expected,” he said.