The answer came sooner than I could ever have anticipated.
I stepped out of the shower to Frank standing in the bathroom looking pastier than the evening he’d first uttered Ponzi scheme in relation to our decimated savings account. “You need to come downstairs.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Now.”
I was out of my towel, into a pair of sweats, across the bedroom, and out in the hall with my hair dripping onto the decorative railing before I could speak the words associated with the sick feeling rushing through me like electricity. “This isn’t about one of the boys. Oh God!”
Frank looked down onto Detective McClarkey and the two uniformed officers standing in my front hall. “Thank God the kids already left.”
“Shit!” I said under my breath.
“No shit!” Frank said under his.
The fibers of the Oriental runner seemed to flatten beneath my leaden feet as I forced myself down the stairs without daring to look back up at Frank, whose confusion and distress were somehow more palpable than my own.
“Mrs. Michaels,” Detective McClarkey said, in far too formal a tone.
“’Evening, officers,” I managed, despite the crushing sensation in my chest.
It couldn’t be a coincidence the police were at my house once again mere hours after I’d left the mall.
“Where were you this afternoon between three and five p.m.?”
“She was at the gym,” Frank said from the top of the stairs, where he still stood, all but frozen in position. “Having a massage. Right?”
“I was.”
Detective McClarkey narrowed his eyes. “For the entire two hours?”
I had a lot of back story I’d hoped to spare Frank until after his deal was signed on Monday, but there was nothing I could do about the cold, hard fact and fiction of it all at the moment. “From three until a little after four.”
“And after that?”
I suddenly felt like Rosemary in that old horror movie, being watched and groomed, not to give birth to the spawn of Satan, but to take the fall for the act Tara and Andy had committed with the blessing of their fellow mall employees.
“The mall,” I had no choice but admit.
Frank put his head in his hands.
The officers gave each other almost imperceptible nods.
“That would be the South Highlands Valley Mall?”
“Yes,” I finally said. “And I can explain why.”
“I wish you would,” Frank said.
“I got an urgent call on my cell saying I needed to come down there immediately.”
“From?” Detective McClarkey asked.
“Griff Watson from mall security,” I said. “Or so I thought.”
“But now you don’t think it was him that called?” Detective McClarkey asked.
“I absolutely did when he said we needed to talk urgently, that the conversation couldn’t take place over the phone, and that I needed to come to the mall and meet him at a bench near the north maintenance hall door on the second floor by Chico’s.”
“How do you know this security guy, and why would you need to be meeting with him in the first place?” Frank asked.
“He was there when Laila DeSimone collapsed,” I said, glossing over the shoplifting non-incident and the friendship we struck up in the security office. “And he agreed with me there’s a piece of the puzzle missing where finding her killer is concerned. He’s been helping to look into things,” I added for the benefit of the police, but not adding on my behalf, until I’m exonerated or while I’m temporarily at the top of the suspect list.
“Was there any reason he insisted on that location?” Detective McClarkey asked.
“I figured he was on duty and couldn’t leave the premises.”
“So you went?”
“Because he said things were ‘worse, bigger than he expected.’ And that my future depended on it.”
“Your future?” Frank repeated.
Under different circumstances, the question would have been the ideal entre to the long-overdue conversation we’d be having as soon as the police were done with whatever had brought them here.
My throat felt tight with the thought of what that was. Detective McClarkey knew I’d been at the mall, which meant someone had seen me there and reported it to him, making the reason why all the more troubling.
“And you say the phone call came from the mall?” Detective McClarkey asked.
“From the main number,” I said.
His scribbling grew more furious.
“Which I didn’t think much about at the time, although I should have since all the other calls I’ve gotten from Griff came from his cell.”
“And how many other calls have there been?” Frank asked.
Under, once again, different circumstances, and considering the secret I feared he’d been hiding, I might have reveled (but only for a second) in the confusion that crossed my husband’s face. “Enough that I should have been more suspicious of his unusually halting tone.”
“Meaning what?” Detective McClarkey asked.
“Griff never showed up.”
Detective McClarkey nodded as though agreeing about how gullible I’d been. “What time did you arrive at the mall?”
“I pulled into the parking lot at 4:16 p.m.”
“And you were there for how long?”
“I was back in my car, heading home at 4:55.”
“And you parked where?”
“B-7 section of the south lot, where I always park,” I said despite the seeming irrelevancy of the question. “So I don’t have to remember where my car is when I’m done shopping.”
“South lot,” he repeated. “And you went directly from your vehicle to meet the caller you assumed was Griff Watson.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Did you see or speak with anyone on the way?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Piggledy from Circus Circus were walking just behind me. I overheard them talking about how their monkey was missing, which I later assumed was why Griff was late.”
“But you didn’t acknowledge them?”
“No,” I said.
“Because?”
“The caller told me not to be seen by anyone who—”
“Who what?” Frank interjected.
I managed to avoid his gaze. “Might recognize me.”
“And you reached your meeting spot at what time?”
“4:19.”
“Were you there for the duration of your visit to the mall?”
“I did go into Bath & Body Works for a few minutes because Hailey Rosenberg from Eternally 21 was headed in my direction,” I said. “But then I went right back to the bench.”
“Where you remained until … ?”
“Until I was sure Griff wasn’t coming.”
“Which was when?”
“I saw a different security guard approaching at 4:43, who I assumed was coming over to tell me Griff had been delayed. Instead, she told me he was not only not on the schedule, but out of town.”
Detective McClarkey scratched his head. “Hmm.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So I was called to come down to the mall by someone familiar with the details of the case for what were supposed to be urgent reasons, and then no one showed.”
The uniformed officers gave each other the same sideways glance they’d shared earlier.
“I have to believe something was supposed to happen, I’m just not sure what it was, or why it didn’t.”
“Interesting question,” Detective McClarkey said.
“I thought you’d think so,” I said, preparing to outline my Andy and Tara as ringleaders of a possibly mall-wide conspiracy theory.
“I believe I have the answer,” the detective said first.
“Which is?”
“Tara Hu was hit by a car at approximately 4:24 p.m. in the parking lot while she was walking with Andy Oliver to her car at the end of her shift.”
“Wha
t?”
“Witnesses say the car came around a corner at a high speed. Andy tried to push Tara out of harm’s way and was clipped himself before the driver continued on.”
“Oh my God,” I said.
“No one was able to get a glimpse of the driver because of tinted windows and the direction of the sun, but witnesses ID’d the car as a white Lexus SUV.”
A white Lexus SUV?
“Mrs. Michaels, what kind of car do you drive?”
TWENTY-SIX
FRANK INSISTED HE TOSS a jacket over my shoulders to hide the handcuffs in case any, or likely all, of our neighbors happened to be glancing out of their windows as I was led out of the house toward the waiting police cruiser.
Detective McClarkey insisted I was under arrest for suspected hit-and-run with the assurance my charges would be upped to murder if Tara, who was currently in a coma at South Metro Hospital, didn’t wake up. There were additional charges to be faced if Andy’s injuries turned out to be more substantial than the bruises, broken ribs, and concussion he’d sustained.
Before I allowed myself to think about what was coming next, I closed my eyes and prayed for both of them. Tara, my former co-primary suspect and co-ringleader of a conspiracy that couldn’t possibly exist, and Andy, who would never have sanctioned that they both be run down with my car just to put the last nail in my proverbial guilt coffin.
Griff was right all along. Those two being behind this made no sense at all.
“I’m innocent,” I said for the umpteenth time. I couldn’t say the same for my car, which was being impounded due to the suspicious scratches and dents on the front bumper. “The security guard will vouch that I was where I said I was.”
“Even if she does, you still had time to drive to the north parking lot, hit Tara and Andy, re-park, and zoom back to the bench by Chico’s by 4:43.”
“But I didn’t,” I said. “There have to be security cameras in the mall that prove where I was?”
“I’m sure that will factor into the case. So will your vehicle.”
Good thing I hadn’t had anything to eat or I’d have thrown up. “Frank, someone had to have taken your keys when you thought you lost them at the studio and used them—”
“Don’t say another word until you get a lawyer,” Frank said as Detective McClarkey placed a hand on the back of my still shower-damp head and guided me into the back of the police car.
The last thing I heard before the car door slammed shut was Frank wondering out loud, “How can this be happening?”
I wondered the same thing as I, Maddie Michaels, AKA Mrs. Frank Michaels, AKA Mrs. Frugalicious, was hauled off to jail.
I was booked, fingerprinted, searched, and tossed into a jail cell complete with rough hewn, less than fresh blankets and stained, ticking-striped vinyl mattresses. For company, I had three dubious cell
mates—one of whom was passed out, and two whose occupations were abundantly clear given the ratio of short skirt to sky-high heels.
They eyed me up and down.
“Rough night already, huh?” one of them asked.
“You could say that.”
“Ours hardly even got started,” her buddy said. “Whatcha in for?”
“Hit and run, for starters,” I said. “But basically, you name it.”
“I told ya she had crazy hair and a crazier look in her eye,” the first one said.
They scooted closer to each other and farther away from me.
If only I could be away from myself instead of both figuratively and literally trapped, trying not to imagine what it was going to be like looking at bars for the rest of my life. How would Frank’s career survive? How would the kids fare with a mother rotting in jail until some blessed organization for the falsely convicted or documentary filmmaker finally got my conviction overturned? Would I still have a few good years left?
I could only pray seventy was the new forty by the time I was released.
I’d been counting down the minutes until Monday when the tests would come back clean on the chocolates and the Bye Bye Fat. Until the moment Detective McClarkey would have to admit he was looking at the wrong person and turn his attentions to the only logical suspects: Andy Oliver and Tara Hu.
Tara and Andy, who were now both in the hospital.
My mall-wide conspiracy theory that everyone was helping the two of them cover up Laila’s murder couldn’t have seemed more absurd. Andy would never, ever have arranged a stunt so elaborate as stealing my car to mow down his girlfriend just to frame me. Again.
But, someone had tried to frame me.
The same someone who had poisoned Laila had set me up to take the fall for it, and then, just to make sure the case was watertight, plugged all the holes in the circumstantial evidence with a plan far more elaborate than anything they could script on TV. Whoever it was knew Tara’s Saturday routine and knew Griff would be out of town. Then he or she impersonated Griff well enough to get me to come flying down to the mall and keep me there long enough to take my car from my parking spot, drive to the other lot, get up to the top level, and around the corner in time to clip Tara and Andy. Not to mention re-park the car before I realized I’d been duped. So they also knew where I always parked and had access to my car keys.
Whoever it was seemed brilliant enough to succeed at getting me locked away forever.
The question was who?
And why?
The bigger question was, could I do anything about it?
I didn’t bother to look up like the rest of the inmates did when the main door clinked open and a new offender was led toward the holding cell area across the way.
“Can you put her in here and move the murderer over there?” one of the hookers asked. “This chick is creeping me out.”
“I told you, I’m innocent,” I mumbled.
“Right,” the hookers said in unison.
“Keep it down ladies,” our jailer said.
“We should probably find out if the new one’s worse than what we got anyway,” the second hooker said.
“At least she doesn’t have that weird look in her eye.”
“Or the jacked-up hair.”
“Whatcha in here for, hon?”
“Shoplifting,” the woman said.
Shoplifting? I looked up and into the face of a woman who fit my general description—early forties, medium height, sporting a blondish chin-length bob, dressed in designer jeans and ballet flats—but was a good ten pounds (but not more, considering I hadn’t eaten all weekend) thinner. The very woman I’d stood beside in Bath & Body Works at the exact moment the police claimed I was in my car trying to mow down Tara for accusing me of the crime I now knew neither of us committed.
The Shoplifter.
She smiled. “But I didn’t do it.”
The hookers enjoyed a hearty guffaw.
“How about I be traded over there to her cell?” I asked.
“Good by us,” Hooker Number One said. “I’m kinda scared of both of them.”
“Right.” The jailer shook her head and escorted the Shoplifter to the empty cell across the way, then in what felt like the first stroke of luck I’d had in days, turned to me. “You want in over there, too?”
“Please,” I said.
After an encouraging clink and clank of cell doors and allowing a few minutes for the Shoplifter to arrange herself into an approximation of comfortable, I launched into the first of what I hoped would be no more jailhouse confessions. “I’m in a little trouble,” I whispered. “Actually a lot of trouble, but the thing is, I’m totally innocent and I really need your help.”
“I’ll only be here a few minutes,” the Shoplifter said with a serene smile. “My husband’s arranging to get me out now.”
“Great,” I said, wondering what my husband was doing. “But were you by any chance at the South Highlands Valley Mall today?”
“I’m there almost every day,” she said through a perma-smile that had me starting to question her sanity.
>
“Today?”
“For a few minutes,” she said.
“Were you in Bath & Body Works?”
“They have a scent called Warm Vanilla Sugar I adore. In fact, sometimes I just stand there by the candles and sniff,” she said.
“I’m a fan of Caribbean Escape myself.” The thought of it had my perfume headache coming back with a tropical vengeance. “Didn’t I see you in there today?”
Her eyes grew wide. “No.”
“I could have sworn we were standing right next to each other by the antibacterial soaps.”
“Wasn’t me,” she said, the smile having given way to something more akin to panic.
“I looked different because I wearing jeans and a baseball cap but—”
“Nope,” she said.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Because you look exactly like the woman I saw in there, and if it was you—”
“Couldn’t be me. I don’t steal.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” I said, realizing the security officer I’d met up with had to have been on her way to detain the Shoplifter, whose name I still didn’t know. “I really need your help. The police believe I was involved in an incident in the parking garage, but I was in Bath & Body Works at the time. I just need someone who recognized me there so I can prove I wasn’t doing anything wrong somewhere else.”
“I hear you there. Nothing worse than being falsely accused.”
The woman was definitely a wacko, but at least we’d connected enough for her to look me over with what I hoped was recognition.
She stared at me for what felt like hours, shut her eyes, and then opened them again. “Nope,” she finally said. “Never seen you before in my life.”
I sat upright for the rest of the evening without moving, talking, or allowing myself, even for a moment, to play armchair detective or detective gone rogue.
I must have dozed eventually, because I awoke with a start to the rattle of the keys in the cell door. “Michaels?”
“Me?”
“You’re Maddie Michaels, right?”
Everything creaked as I rose to my feet. “Yes.”
“Come with me.”
The jangle of her keys in the lock rattled my brain as I tried to prepare for the cold reality of handcuffs, leg shackles, and a trip to the county jail in one of those terrifying vans with the tiny barred windows at the top to await sentencing. “Is my lawyer here?”
Eternally 21: A Mrs. Frugalicious Shopping Mystery Page 22