Eternally 21: A Mrs. Frugalicious Shopping Mystery

by Linda Joffe Hull

  If you aren’t brand loyal on a particular item, try store brands. They cost less.

  Use those store loyalty cards! If you do, you’ll not only save money, but stores share info with marketers who will pass along savings opportunities targeted specifically to your shopping habits.

  Pay less and shop more, Mrs. Frugalicious

  P.S. I’ll be putting these and more tips to the test on Triple Coupon Tuesday!

  I posted the blog, signed off with a promising yawn, and headed back upstairs to my side of the bed. I pulled the now cool sheets up, felt the back of my head conform to my pillow, and closed my eyes …

  How and where had the poison been administered?

  I turned on my side, closed my eyes, and tried to tune out Frank’s rhythmic snort-puh snoring pattern.

  How long before she collapsed had Laila been poisoned?

  What kind of poison was it?

  I must have passed out at some point after noting the red 4:59 a.m. on my digital clock, because I woke up with a dull headache and the same endless loop of questions running through my head. Luckily, Frank had already left for his standing morning date with the gym before I could tell him I’d picked up suits for him at the tailor.9 Since they needed to be dropped off at the station, I had an excuse to stop by the newsroom to get Griff’s name on the guest list for Frank’s show. I could also have a quick, unassuming, Frank-tells-me-you’re-working-on-a-story chat with the one person who might have an answer or two.

  “I still can’t believe I was driving by the mall, heard something on the police scanner, and ended up as the first reporter on scene!” Anastasia Chastain, with her even-prettier-in-person heart-shaped face, highlighted hair, and ultra-white teeth smiled like she was accepting her local Emmy.

  “What a lucky break!” I said, mostly in reference to my own good fortune at having avoided her at the mall before she spotted me amongst the mourners at the memorial.

  “And then Frank asked me to do that financial makeover segment for his show!” She practically squealed with delight. “It’s been such an incredible few days.”

  I felt certain Laila wouldn’t agree.

  “I just can’t wait to collaborate with Frank. He’s so savvy and smart. I’m going to learn so much!”

  “He’s looking forward to working with you, too,” I managed. The sleep deprivation/stress headache I’d woken up with and couldn’t quite shake was intensifying from a combination of Anastasia’s over-exuberance—particularly about my husband—and her overly liberal use of perfume. Sitting at her desk, not far from my assigned spot way back in my intern days, she also reminded me of an on-air version of my younger self. I’d had hopes of becoming a producer when my whirlwind romance with Frank resulted in marriage and my pregnancy with the boys. (Not quite in that order.) I wasn’t worried about Frank’s professional interest in her exactly, but considering I was sort of a younger version of his first wife, Anastasia made a curious sidekick choice.

  “Too bad you can’t get started until the police get a handle on that mall … ”

  The word murder stuck in my throat.

  “The poisoning?” she offered.

  “Frank mentioned that,” I said as casually as possible. “Do they know what kind yet?”

  “My source in the coroner’s office says they’re still waiting for a final report from toxicology.”

  “So they don’t know?”

  “Nothing’s official.” She lowered her voice. “But it looks like Ephedra.”

  “Ephedra?”

  “In the right dose, it can cause heart attacks and strokes.”

  My own heart began to thump. “That’s awful.”

  “Isn’t it?” Anastasia offered with the perky enthusiasm of a cub reporter working a big scoop. “I can’t wait to break it on today’s news!”

  I’d never paid much attention to the big bold EPHEDRA-FREE label along the bottom of my bottle of Bye Bye Fat, but clearly the manufacturer noted its lack for good reason:

  Ephedra is an extract of the plant Ephedra sinica. It is also known as Ma Huang. Sold as an appetite suppressant and energy-boosting agent, Ephedra was banned by the FDA in 2004 after numerous dangerous side effects were blamed on the amphetamine-like stimulant.

  Studies link Ephedra use with cardiovascular problems, including high blood pressure, palpitations, and heart attacks. In excess of 800 dangerous reactions have been reported—among them, heart attacks, strokes, seizures, and over 150 cases of sudden death.

  Having Googled the word Ephedra on my smartphone, I sat in my car scanning websites committed to the dangers of what was once considered to be a highly effective diet and energy supplement. One sentence said it all:

  The supplement has been linked to multiple cases of young, health—

  conscious adults falling ill and/or even dying after taking it.

  I switched over to text messaging and keyed in a sentence to my guru of all things diet and exercise:

  YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS.

  Chelsea responded in less than a second:

  YOU’VE FINALLY GIVEN UP CHOCOLATE? ;)

  VERY FUNNY. WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT EPHEDRA?

  OMG! THAT IT’S BAD AND BANNED.

  HOW MIGHT SOMEONE GET IT THOUGH?

  DON’T EVER TOUCH THE STUFF!!!

  NOT ME.

  PHEW! WHY DO YOU ASK?

  LAILA DESIMONE.

  SHE TOOK EPHEDRA?

  MORE LIKE SOMEONE KILLED HER WITH IT.

  WHA??????

  POLICE HAVE RULED HER DEATH A HOMICIDE.

  AS IN SHE WAS MURDERED?

  TOLD YOU SOMETHING WAS UP.

  NO WAY!!

  AWFUL, HUH?

  MORE LIKE AWFUL WHEN AN EATING DISORDER = SUICIDE.

  YOU THINK SHE DID IT TO HERSELF?????

  BULIMICS TEND TO ABUSE WEIGHT LOSS SUPPLEMENTS.

  LIKE EPHEDRA?

  PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING THEY CAN GET THEIR HANDS ON TO LOSE OR MAINTAIN WEIGHT.

  INTERESTING.

  INTERESTING THE POLICE COULD POSSIBLY THINK IT WAS MURDER.

  Chelsea was right. Why would anyone try to murder someone with something as imprecise as a banned diet supplement?

  I veered into the lot of the South Metro PD.

  Other than calling to report a stolen bicycle, I’d never had occasion to talk to the police, much less stop by the station, particularly not in any kind of Crime Stoppers capacity. But before the authorities spent precious time and taxpayer dollars investigating a homicide, I needed to fill them in on the possibility that this was a crime Laila had perpetrated upon herself.

  I stepped into the hot, overcrowded lobby, took in a vaguely stale, paper-tinged breath of local justice at work and walked up to the uniformed policewoman at the front desk. “Detective McClarkey, please.”

  “Your name?”

  “Maddie Michaels,” I said, in my best, yes, I’m the wife of Frank Michaels but I’m not making a big deal of it, voice.

  “And what is this is in regards to?”

  “The Laila DeSimone … ” I hesitated to use the word investigation. “The young woman who passed away at the South Highlands Valley Mall on Thursday.”

  “Have a seat,” she said, picking up the phone.

  I settled into the middle of the row of gray plastic chairs between a haggard older man who looked like he’d be equally comfortable behind bars and a woman who I could only assume was there to bail out one of her fellow working girls. Careful to not brush against either of them, I pulled out my phone and checked my Frugalicious email.

  Amongst the various sale and coupon alerts were three messages. The first was a new potential advertiser called SaveAway Travel. The second was from Designer Duds for Dimes, who had signed and attached a one-year advertising contract. I was reading the third, a request from a reader who asked where I was planning to shop so readers might meet up with me to learn from the “pro,” when the air in the room seemed to change.

  The wood partition separ
ating the reception from the processing areas of the station swung open, and Detective McClarkey swaggered into the room.

  “Maddie Michaels!” he said with a warmth I suspected he reserved for select visitors. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but—”

  “Not at all.” He waved me back.

  I followed him past the requisite metal desks, stopping at the coffeepot where I waved off a foam cup of what every crime drama I’d ever watched told me would be a bitter and undrinkable brew. We passed his glassed-in office and stepped into a real live interrogation room complete with imitation wood grain table, banged-up chairs, and a two-way mirror.

  Had he not left the door open, I might have felt slightly like a perp as we sat across from each other. As I hung my handbag on the back of the chair, Detective McClarkey grabbed a notepad and one of those small pencils from the end of the table and reached into his shirt pocket for a mini tape recorder.

  “Do you mind?” he asked setting it between us.

  I smiled at how oddly familiar my first real visit to the police was simply by virtue of television. “Of course not.”

  He clicked on the device. “I’m speaking with Maddie Michaels, correct?”

  “Correct,” I confirmed.

  “And what is it that brings you in today?”

  “Laila DeSimone.” I took a deep empowering breath. The best thing to do was lay out what I knew from beginning to end, since he’d undoubtedly have questions. “I know when we talked on Friday at Eternally 21, you said the circumstances surrounding her demise seemed pretty routine.”

  “They did,” he said.

  “Then I saw on the news that an autopsy had been conducted, but that the results were inconclusive.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Which made sense since I was told Laila had suffered from a stroke, which is quite rare for a woman so young.”

  Detective McClarkey merely nodded.

  “But then, I heard the case was being investigated as a homicide.”

  He raised a bushy eyebrow. “We haven’t released that information yet.”

  “I heard it from the newsroom,” I said by way of explanation.

  “Gotcha.” He jotted something on his notepad.

  “In any case, when I heard she’d been poisoned, I was awake all night thinking about who could of done something so horrible to her. I mean, it was no secret Laila wasn’t exactly popular around the mall.”

  “That’s one thing everyone seems to agree on.” Detective McClarkey’s crew cut didn’t move as he shook his head. “I understand you may have even had an incident of some kind with her?”

  Stopping by the police station was the smartest thing I could have done. I’d get the inevitable questions he had for me, a primary witness, out of the way without an unseemly knock on my door. Really, I was expediting Frank’s ability to get our family back on financial track. “I went into her store on Thursday morning to pick out some gifts. She saw me consulting a list in my purse and accused me of shoplifting.”

  “Must have been embarrassing—especially considering your husband is a financial reporter.”

  “At first, but Griff Watson, the head of mall security, told me it happened a lot with Laila and let me go. Then I ran into the assistant manager, Tara Hu, at the food court. She was really apologetic about the whole situation. So was her boyfriend, Andy Oliver, for that matter.”

  “Was this before or after your trays collided?”

  “You heard about that, too?”

  “It’s quite a gossip mill around that mall.”

  “I’ll say,” I said. “I learned that Tara didn’t much like Laila, that Andy hated Laila, and that they were getting Laila’s lunch because she didn’t get her own food—all in one harried conversation.”

  The scritch-scratch of pencil on paper filled the room. “Sounds like the whole situation was a lot more than you bargained for when you went shopping Friday morning.”

  “It was, but if Tara and I hadn’t crashed trays, we wouldn’t have cleared the air, Tara wouldn’t have invited me back up to the store, and I wouldn’t have been back at Eternally 21 when Laila collapsed to learn all the information I came in to give you today.”

  He smiled. “How long would you say you were in the store before Ms. DeSimone collapsed?”

  “Ten minutes maybe.”

  “And who else was in the store when you got there?”

  “Not counting Laila, who was supposed to be on her post-lunch break? Tara, Hailey the salesgirl, Griff the mall officer, and a couple random shoppers. Oh, and Laila’s friend Shoshanna from Whimsies was leaving when I arrived.”

  “And did you see or hear anything unusual?”

  “Not until Laila got a call and began to have words with a gentleman who I was told was her boyfriend.”

  “Named?”

  “Richard. I don’t know his last name, but he’s the regional manager of Eternally 21. He seemed to be trying to break things off with her.”

  He jotted another note.

  “He’s married,” I said.

  “They always are,” Detective McClarkey said. “Was he in the store that day?”

  “Not while I was there.”

  “And you say Tara and Andy were together in the food court getting her lunch?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you happen to notice what they purchased for her to eat?”

  “Burger, fries, pizza, baked goods, a burrito—you name it, she was having it for lunch. That’s the main thing I wanted to tell you. It was a known fact that Laila was bulimic.”

  “Interesting.”

  “So it isn’t a stretch to believe she was also taking something to curb her appetite and keep her weight under control.” I paused. “Something like Ephedra.”

  He looked slightly alarmed. “You’ve heard about the Ephedra, too?”

  “As an unconfirmed report.” I nodded. “Yes.”

  “That information is supposed to be classified,” he said, “but Ms. DeSimone had a stomach full of food and very pure, very potent, black-market Ephedra.”

  “My trainer told me it’s common for bulimics to seek out and often abuse any weight loss products they can get their hands on.”

  “So,” he said, looking up from his pad of paper, “based on the information you’ve attained, you think Laila poisoned herself?”

  “I think there’s a very good chance she may have accidentally overdosed.”

  “Pretty good deduction,” Detective McClarkey said. “We did find a variety of laxatives in her personal effects at work as well as her home.”

  I relaxed into my chair. It felt good to not only fulfill my civic obligation but get complimented in the process. “What about diet supplements?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Nothing?”

  “Assuming she did get a hold of Ephedra, it would appear that she ingested all of it at once and left no traces of having had any in the first place.”

  “Bulimics do eat to excess—”

  “Which is what I think her killer wanted us to believe.”

  There was a beat of silence as I absorbed that statement. “So you don’t think she took it herself?”

  “By all accounts, she was far from suicidal.”

  “She sure didn’t seem to be,” I said.

  “I think someone knew she had an eating disorder and made sure she got her just desserts,” Officer McClarkey said.

  “Literally.”

  “Someone who also knew it would look something like a heart attack.”

  “Or a stroke?”

  “Or a stroke.”

  “But … that profile fits half the people who work at the mall.”

  “We’ve got quite a list to work through.” He sighed. “I mean, look at you.”

  “Me?”

  “You don’t even work at the mall, but you know she’s bulimic, had access to her in the hours before she dropped, and had an altercation
with her.”

  “You’re not saying …”

  “I’m saying we’re awaiting additional toxicology tests and a report or three from CSI to narrow down exactly how and where the poison was administered. Until then, everyone’s a suspect.”

  The cell phone at his hip began to chirp the Hawaii 5-0 theme song.

  “I’m going to need to take this,” Detective McClarkey said.

  “But I—”

  “Please don’t hesitate to stop by with any other theories you think might be of interest.” He stood, led me toward the door, and offered both his card and that wink of his. “In the meantime, don’t go fleeing the country.”

  9. Tailors often advertise introductory specials in coupon mailers. You can save money and find a great tailor in your neighborhood by taking advantage, but be sure to ask for a price list before presenting your coupon so you know what the regular prices really are.

  ELEVEN

  MY HEAD WAS BUZZING as I left the police station. I couldn’t bounce any of what I’d just heard off Frank. I couldn’t call any of my friends without explaining far more than I’d let any of them in on in months. I didn’t want to admit to Chelsea that I’d run to the police and blabbed her theory as my own only to get shot down.

  In the meantime, don’t go fleeing the country.

  And be halfway accused of having murdered Laila myself.

  While I didn’t appreciate the implication in what I now knew to be Detective McClarkey’s signature sign-off, I did realize he was trying to make the point that so many people had a motive to want Laila gone, it was hard to know where to start. After all, Laila had practically died in front of me, and I technically did have access to her that morning.

  But I wasn’t the only one.

  I picked up my phone and was scrolling to find Griff’s number before I’d even figured out what to say to the poor guy. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but … remember when I said I found it odd that everyone was mourning Laila like she was their best friend when so many of them hated her?

  I got his voicemail.

  Unable to leave Griff such a bad news message, I settled for please call me as soon as you can in as calm a tone as I could muster and hung up.

  I dropped the phone back in my purse, pulled out the keys, and clipped on my seat belt. Detective McClarkey may have been making light of my proximity to the crime, but I certainly knew who and what I saw. I also heard way more than I should have, both before and in the days following Laila’s demise. For Laila’s bittersweet sake and my family’s financial future, didn’t I have the obligation to do something with that knowledge? If this mall murder story was solved quickly, Anastasia would have more time to perfect the financial makeover segment for Frank’s show, which would hopefully land him the syndication spot.