Eternally 21: A Mrs. Frugalicious Shopping Mystery

by Linda Joffe Hull

  Without another word, they sprung Higgledy from his cage, gave him a treat as incentive to “put that sneaking to good use and get Maddie the heck out of here,” and the next thing I knew, the two of us were out the back and running through the service corridors of the South Highlands Valley Mall.

  I followed the monkey in, around, over, and through an obstacle course of hand trucks, wooden palates, and boxes, all the while marveling at his simian sense for avoiding sales clerks and errant shoppers looking for restrooms.

  The only thing he couldn’t possibly subvert were the texts Griff suddenly started sending to my cell phone.

  PLEASE STOP!

  NEED TO TALK!

  COULD BE LIFE OR DEATH!!!

  Which was exactly what I was afraid of when a door creaked open down the adjoining hallway.

  “Maddie?” Griff’s voice echoed down the corridor.

  Higgledy slipped behind a shipping crate.

  I sucked in and somehow squeezed in beside him.

  Neither of us moved as Griff’s footfalls grew closer and stopped. “If you’re here, please make yourself known.” He took a few steps and then sounded as though he turned in the opposite direction. “We have to talk!”

  I didn’t allow myself to breathe much less consider coming out until I not only heard the sound of his retreat and the click of the door, but Higgledy did a chin up, peered over the top of the crate down the hallway, and, deeming the coast clear, hopped back down to the ground.

  Aided by a surge of adrenaline, I squeezed out and managed to lope alongside the little monkey down and around multiple corridors, through fire doors, and up and down back stairwells until we finally emerged halfway down a hallway with an exit stairwell.

  I turned toward the exit, but before I could take a step, I heard the telltale click of an industrial door.

  Higgledy emitted a low hoot and rushed us into a nearby storage closet, where we waited. We were in pitch darkness but for a strip of light seeping in along the doorway, listening to footsteps, the squawk of a walkie-talkie, and Griff leaving what sounded like a message, likely to me:

  “I know my way around the back hallways of this place better than that monkey.”

  The monkey in question seemed to be silently feeling his way along the wall behind us.

  “If you’d stop or at least call me back …”

  I pulled out my phone for light and watched Higgledy pop open a small door on the back wall.

  He climbed inside.

  I sunk to my knees and found myself looking into a tunnel that was roughed out but never fitted for what seemed to be ductwork.

  Higgledy took a few steps and turned back toward me.

  “I can’t,” I whispered, noting that while the passageway was the ideal size for a monkey, I wasn’t at all sure I would be able to handle the claustrophobia.

  I sneezed.

  Or the dust.

  “Maddie?” Footsteps echoed down the outside hallway at what sounded like a run.

  The next thing I knew I was not only in a tunnel I was five pounds shy of becoming stuck inside, but I had already scamper-crawled beyond the scope of Griff’s flashlight beam.

  Griff, who couldn’t possibly fit inside the tunnel door.

  “I need to tell you something important … ” echoed toward me.

  Since I was dependent on my cell phone to see where I was going anyway, I responded with a text:

  WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME YOU USED TO DATE LAILA?

  Then, I crawled onward.

  Finally, after what felt like the distance of a football field, I rounded a corner and saw Higgledy, framed in glorious fluorescent light and stepping out of the tunnel.

  I followed him, emerging into what turned out to be the south end refuse room, where, beside the chutes marked TRASH, RECYCLING, and BOXES, respectively, was the most inviting exit sign I’d ever seen.

  I dusted off and was about to pick up Higgledy to embrace him in the most sincere thank you hug of all times when footsteps clanged on the metal staircase behind the exit door.

  “There’s no way out!” Griff’s voice came from some distance away but neared with every word. “A guard is posted at the end of the south hallway.”

  Higgledy, who was already opening the door to the trash chute hooted to differ.

  “How can we … ?” I whispered, weighing the merits of his proposed high dive into a giant metal box full of oozing, reeking, overheated trash against meeting up with an enraged, possibly murderous Griff in the bowels of the mall.

  I looked back at the tunnel.

  “The other end of the tunnel is barricaded,” Griff’s voice now boomed.

  Higgledy popped open the door marked BOXES instead.

  On the one hand, there was no way I, Maddie Michaels, AKA Mrs. Frank Finance Michaels, AKA Mrs. Frugalicious, had any business escaping from anything or anyone into a mall trash chute.

  Both doors clicked ominously.

  On the other, boxes would be softer, less disgusting, and potentially less fatal than my other options.

  The exit door clanged open.

  “Maddie,” Griff rushed in. “You’ve got things all wrong, I—”

  I jumped. Tumbling and clanging against the metal chute, I told myself I’d land in a bin filled with soft cardboard.

  I landed and my bottom, right arm, knee, and ear begged to differ. On the plus side, I wasn’t dead and the stars didn’t last nearly as long they could have.

  As soon as I got my bearings in what turned out to be a not particularly cushy half-filled bin, I checked to make sure I wasn’t missing any body parts or otherwise bleeding beyond the scrapes I already had from crawling through the tunnel or expected to earn diving down a trash chute.

  I was preparing to stand when I heard something squeal.

  Before I could jump, hop, or otherwise bolt over the edge of the dumpster, the same something rustled at my feet.

  I stifled a scream as a furry, caramel-hued creature appeared beside my ankle.

  A guinea pig.

  Cuddles.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as I scooped him up and somehow hoisted the two of us up and out of the box bin with one arm. As we landed just below a sign pointing to the B section of the south lot, I realized that for the first time in years—and the one time I really needed to know where my car was—I’d parked not in B-7 but on the other side of the mall.

  With the blue flashing light of an approaching mall security vehicle, I ran across the lot, ducked behind a Hummer in the outside row, and reached for my phone.

  My sweatpant pockets were both empty.

  I looked back toward the loading dock and watched the security vehicle park in front of the bins.

  For a few miserable seconds, I couldn’t figure out what to do but pet Cuddles and try not to drown him in what was sure to be a flood of tears.

  Instead, I looked up.

  Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the answer just across the parking lot.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I BOLTED THROUGH THE doors of Xtreme Fitness. “Please,” I panted. “I need your phone!”

  Judging by the horrified expression on the face of the girl working the front desk, she assumed I was both homeless and insane. “Ummm …”

  Given I was wearing two-day-old, sweaty, now filthy sweats, a ratty wig, and holding a guinea pig, I couldn’t exactly blame her. “I know how I look, but I’m—”

  “Hang on.” She turned toward the free weights area where she waved over a young Arnold Schwarzenegger type, presumably to escort me off the premises. “Can you wait over by the door for a second ?”

  “I’m afraid this is something of an emerg—”

  The man-mountain materialized beside his co-worker. “Can I help you ma’am?”

  “I’m a member here,” I said through ragged breaths. “My card is in my purse, which is in my car, which is over at the mall, and I’ve lost my cell. Could I please use your phone? My name is—”

 
“Maddie?” Chelsea, a vision of athletic beauty and dead-on timing, appeared from behind the first row of Stairmasters.

  “Thank God you’re here!” I glanced out the front windows to be sure Griff hadn’t followed me. “I just escaped—”

  “Escaped?” Chelsea’s face drained of color.

  “I’m being framed.” I swallowed back an impending flood of tears. “I’m being chased. I need to call the police and—”

  The guinea pig squealed.

  “I need to get Cuddles back to Pet Pals where he belongs.”

  “Cuddles?”

  “He was in the dumpster I had to dive in to—”

  “You dove into a dumpster?”

  “At the mall. To get away. Thank goodness for Higgledy, the Piggledy’s monkey, who encouraged me to—”

  “Oh, boy.” She grabbed a tuft of my mangled wig, got a glimpse of the horrific state of my real hair underneath, and let go. “Things are clearly worse than you look.”

  “You have no idea.”

  She relieved me of Cuddles and handed him to the front counter girl. “Can you take care of getting this little critter back to his owner, and I’ll take care of Mrs. Michaels?”

  The girl agreed with an unenthusiastic nod.

  “We need to call the police!” I said.

  “We will.” Seemingly undeterred by my sweaty, dirty, bewigged, less than sparkling self, Chelsea slipped an arm around my waist. “But let’s get you cleaned up and calmed down first.”

  “I don’t know if he saw me get away or not.” I leaned into her as she led me across the gym. “He could still be following.”

  “Who could be following?”

  “Griff.”

  “Griff?” Chelsea looked as astonished as I’d been. “As in Griff Watson?”

  “It had to have been him all along,” I said, my breath still ragged. “And I think I’m next on his list.”

  “Not gonna happen,” she said. The next thing I knew, I’d been whisked across the gym, down the hallway, and was headed into a room marked Personal Training.

  Chelsea pointed to a decked-out Pilates contraption. “Sit on the Cadillac.”

  While I crossed the room and sat as instructed on what looked like an orthopedic traction rig, she flipped the Open sign to In Session, filled a cup with water from the corner cooler, and joined me.

  “Drink,” she said.

  I drained the cup.

  “Restorative breaths,” she said.

  I inhaled and exhaled until my blood pressure started to normal—

  ize.

  “Now,” she said. “Last I saw you, you were headed into what was supposed to be a peaceful, centering massage.”

  “If only.” I took another deep breath and launched into the whole sordid tale of how things had degenerated from there. I started with Griff’s impersonation call and included my first mall visit, Tara and Andy’s hit and run, the evening in jail and subsequent release courtesy of Anastasia, and the reappearance of Griff, which necessitated my return into and chase out of the mall.

  “Let me get this straight,” Chelsea said when I finally finished. “Someone pretending to be Griff, but who may actually have been Griff, told you to meet him at the mall, only he never showed up. But the police did and arrested you for the hit and run of Tara and Andy, which by all counts happened with your car?”

  The scenario stretched the bounds of believability to begin with, but sounded that much more questionable coming from someone else’s mouth.

  “Meaning he somehow got a hold of your keys?”

  “He was alone in Frank’s dressing room at the TV station when I got there.”

  “Interesting,” she said. “And you got sprung from jail by Anastasia, who isn’t sleeping with Frank but is almost engaged to the acting police chief?”

  I nodded.

  “Then Griff, as himself, told you the Piggledys were mixed up in all this, so you ran back down to the mall and discovered the Piggledys and their monkey were innocent, but Griff wasn’t?”

  “I know it sounds—”

  “Insane.” Chelsea seemed almost to smile. “Absolutely insane.”

  I put my head in my hands. “If only I’d known he used to date Laila …”

  “All that really matters is you know now and you’re here, safe and sound,” Chelsea said with such conviction and enveloping me in a bear hug so tight, I almost believed her.

  Until my wig shifted sideways into her face.

  She sneezed.

  Not just any sneeze, but the most commanding, masculine honk I’d ever heard emerge from a woman.

  Which sounded weirdly familiar.

  She did it again.

  More hauckchoo than achoo, I recognized it as the same sneeze I’d heard outside of Frank’s dressing room at the TV studio.

  Meaning she, and not Frank or anyone else, was out in the hallway while I was talking to Griff. He hadn’t seen her, or anyone else, out there, but what of the rustling I’d heard a few minutes later? Had she been around the corner, listening in on everything I told Griff?

  Why hadn’t she made herself known? Why had she made such a show of appearing a few minutes later?

  “Bless you,” I finally said.

  “Thank you.” Chelsea let go of me and began to rustle with a tangled pair of grips dangling from a crossbar above us.

  “You know,” I said, finding myself scooting an inch or so away from her. “Everything points to Griff as Laila’s killer.”

  “Sure seems that way,” Chelsea said.

  “There are a few things that kind of bother me, though.”

  “Hmm?” she asked, putting her arm back around my shoulder.

  “Griff had to have lured me to the mall with that phony phone call, but why he would try to frame me by running down two of his best friends?”

  “Interesting question,” Chelsea said.

  “Especially if he already knew I was the primary suspect in Laila’s murder?”

  Chelsea knitted her perfectly plucked brows. “Maybe because you were nosing around so much you were sure to figure out the real killer?”

  Somehow, I was less flattered by her faith in my detective skills and more unsettled by the way she stressed the word nosing.

  “Or, maybe to make sure you went down no matter what,” she added.

  Her words hung in the air between us, as did a big question about the car key situation. If Frank did find them later that day in his couch cushions, was it reasonable to believe Griff lifted them, was able to have a computerized Lexus key copied (and at what expense), then get the original back into his dressing room the same day?

  Griff had definitely enticed me back to the mall with his cryptic message about the Piggledys and didn’t return my calls for reasons unknown, but was it possible he really was chasing me not to catch me, but to catch up with me?

  What might he have told me I’d gotten all wrong before I jumped?

  I knew he’d say he wasn’t the murderer and both of us knew the Piggledys were innocent too. Which left … Who?

  “I think we should probably call the police and let them handle it from here,” I said.

  Chelsea grabbed me by the wrist. “All in good time.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I think the real question is what are you doing?” Without letting go, she reached down, plucked a handful of resistance bands from a bin beneath the bench, and tossed them over a crossbar behind me.

  “Me?” I tried to shake loose.

  She stood, grabbed my other arm and, with strength even more manly than her sneeze, pulled both of my hands behind my back. “You’re the one who poisoned Laila, mowed down Andy and Tara, and came running over here like a wild-eyed bag lady trying to convince everyone you were being chased by Dudley Do-Right.”

  “What? You know I didn’t do anything to anyone.”

  “All I know is I’m your poor sweet trainer who tried to help you in your moment of extreme psychic breakdown.”


  “So you’re tying me up to call the police?”

  She looped the band around my wrists and cinched me to the Pilates machine. “They already had their chance.” Her voice was now hard and cold.

  “Oh God,” I said. “It was you all along.”

  “Bingo!”

  “You’re not going to—”

  “Kill you?” She giggled. “I don’t think Griff or anyone from the front desk could possibly dispute the story of how your good, trusting trainer and friend unwittingly took the crazed, filthy, wig-wearing, guinea pig–holding, lunatic wife of Frank Michaels into the back to get her calmed down, and had to defend herself when she attacked in yet another one of her murderous fits.”

  “Help!” I screamed.

  “Don’t bother. The walls are triple insulated and it’s club policy not to disrupt private sessions. Besides, I’ll just stuff a gym sock in your mouth.”

  I tried to pull free.

  “Again, I wouldn’t bother. No way you’re strong enough to snap one of those bands.” She reached for my leg. “Even with a trainer of my caliber.”

  “You can’t possibly believe you’re going to get away with this.”

  “I don’t think there’s any way I won’t.”

  I was kicking with my left leg as she strung up my right to an adjustable pull-up bar when I spotted the tiny pinprick of light coming from just under my waistband.

  The Eavesdropper.

  Even after the chase through the mall and my tussle with Chelsea, it was still somehow fastened inside my sweats.

  And taping.

  “Smart not to fight,” Chelsea said. “It’s just a waste of your last precious minutes.”

  The mere idea of leaving Frank a bereaved widower and my boys without a mother was too unbearable to even consider, but given I was incapacitated, the one thing I could possibly do was clear my name from beyond the grave with a taped confession for the coroner to find with my mangled corpse.

  “Why?” I asked as she grabbed my other leg and wrapped my ankle in flexible rubber that might as well have been steel.

  “For one thing, what am I supposed to do when I’ve spent the last two weeks trying everything I can think of to get rid of you, then lo and behold, you come barreling in here just asking for it?”