Black Thursday

by Linda Joffe Hull

  “That’s not surprising” I said, surprised I’d already become so accustomed to being on camera that, despite wearing a coat, scarf, and gloves for the clear, cool, but not frigid morning, I wasn’t perspiring in the least. “Small Business Saturday was actually started as a business promotion by American Express in 2010 to boost spending at locally owned retailers, many of whom dreaded the Black Friday shopping weekend, knowing they’d likely be overlooked in favor of big chain stores with larger marketing budgets and huge doorbuster specials.”

  “Sounds like an all-around win-win,” Anastasia said.

  “Especially since Small Business Saturday has become something of a national movement boosted by consumer interest in buying local and supporting small businesses,” I said. “With local establishments comprising nearly eighty percent of the total businesses here in Denver, the money we spend locally has an immediate impact on our community.”

  “With so many wonderful restaurants, bakeries, boutiques, and craft galleries, I can’t think of a more perfect location to boost our economy,” Anastasia said.

  “There are many terrific stores to support all over the city,” I said. “When I found out we were going to be taping today, I deferred to the Frugarmy and received a number of great ideas, which I’ve listed on my website.”

  “That’s MrsFrugalicious-dot-com, right?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Anastasia,” I said. “And I have to give credit for the idea of shopping on Main Street to Barbara M., who suggested we all band together and patronize the various businesses together in what’s become known as a cash mob. I’m hoping she’s here today so I can thank her personally.”

  The camera panned the crowd.

  No one stepped forward.

  “Barbara?” Anastasia asked again. “Are you here?”

  An awkward silence followed. It was only broken when my cell phone, ringer on and just in range of the mic attached to my collar, pinged.

  And pinged again.

  Luckily the clock almost simultaneously struck nine, the doors to storefronts began to open, and the Frugarmy dissolved as shoppers rushed into the various stores. Anastasia quickly signed off.

  “Gotta be sure and turn your phone every time from now on,” she said as soon as the camera light went off and the cameraman took off to tape the shoppers mob a nearby clothing store. “I mean, tomorrow.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, not wanting to add insult to injury by pulling my cell from my pocket but too itchy not to glance at the message, which just had to be from Alan.

  And it was.

  Can you come over to the store ASAP?

  “Do we have a plan for tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Just waiting for time confirmation on Cathy Carter’s memorial service at the North Suburban Community Church tomorrow morning,” she said, finally divulging what had to be that mysterious bit of information she didn’t get to share before the camera turned on. “We’re all going.”

  “All?”

  “You, me”—she paused to yawn again—“and the cameraman.”

  fourteen

  I wasn’t at all convinced that having Channel Three news tape us at Catherine Carter’s memorial service was (as Anastasia insisted) not only in acceptable taste, but the ideal way to let viewers know we cared about the deceased and her family.

  Then again, I wasn’t sure about much of anything as I left the Frugarmy on Main Street and raced over to Bargain Barn. Was Contrary Claire incognito amongst the cash mob? Was the email a hoax and she was, in fact, dead? Why hadn’t Barbara M., who’d suggested we all shop together in the first place, bothered to show up? Why did Alan want to see me ASAP?

  I didn’t have to wonder about the last question for very long since Alan was standing outside the entrance to the store as I pulled up.

  “Mind if we talk out here?” he asked, opening the door to my car and jumping in the passenger seat. “The walls have ears, if you know what I mean.”

  “Okay,” I said, but I wondered if he was okay as I pulled into a nearby parking space and killed the engine.

  He certainly didn’t look okay.

  Alan’s eyes were bloodshot, his hair unkempt, and his beard well past the five o’clock shadow stage. His wrinkled, semi-stained, Bargain Barn polo and khakis told me he hadn’t changed anytime recently. And, seeing as his woodsy, spicy, soapy smell had given way to a somewhat less pleasant undertone, I strongly suspected he hadn’t showered, either.

  “It took me all night …” he said, confirming my overriding suspicion that he hadn’t slept or been home at all. “But I figured it out.”

  “You’ve figured out what happened?”

  “I’ve devoted my career to being on top of everything there is to know about competitive business models, corporate strategy, sales techniques, and hostile takeovers.” He shook his head. “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine they’d go this far.”

  “They?” I asked.

  “I haven’t figured out how they pulled it off, and I don’t know which one of the big-box outfits is behind this,” he said. “But I will.”

  My head, already throbbing, began to spin. “You think one of the chain retailers—”

  “They haven’t been able to kill Bargain Barn, so they resorted to the next best thing.”

  “Killing a shopper in your store?”

  “In the middle of the Black Friday shopping crush,” he whispered as though someone in the parking lot could possibly hear through the closed windows of my car. “As brilliant as it is cold-blooded and evil, don’t you think?”

  All I could think was that the suggestion of a corporate “hit” or whatever it was he’d convinced himself had happened, fell somewhere on the spectrum between sleep-deprived delusion and stress-induced temporary insanity.

  “They figured the accident would not only scare shoppers away, causing receipts to go down on the most crucial night of the year, but simultaneously put a taint on the store forever.” His voice cracked. “Not to mention making us uninsurable.”

  “But Alan, I—”

  “You,” he said, not pausing long enough for me to contribute my two cents. “If it weren’t for you, they’d have already succeeded.”

  “Me?”

  He managed a weak smile. “Because of you, your Frugarmy, and all the TV coverage, we still had the best Black Friday receipts we’ve ever had.”

  And Frank, I didn’t say, even though he was the one who really deserved the thanks. I would have panicked had he not talked me off the ledge late Thursday night.

  “It wasn’t until the next morning, when the store went dead and stayed dead, that I figured out what had to have happened. I mean, who wants to spend their Thanksgiving shopping in a store hexed by tragedy?”

  “Alan, I’m sure shoppers will be back in droves once the commotion dies down.”

  “By that time Bargain Barn will be so devalued and broke from paying out on lawsuits that whoever is behind this will have bought me out for pennies on the dollar.”

  “Have you spoken to the police about all of this?”

  “They’ve already tied things up with a neat bow and don’t want to hear about it.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pretended to blow his nose while he surreptitiously dabbed tears from the corners of his eyes. “So I really can’t until I have some firm evidence.”

  “Which I may have,” I said, thinking of CC’s latest message.

  He looked up.

  “I got an email.”

  “What kind of email?”

  “Here’s the thing …” I took a deep breath of the stale car air. “There’s this person who’s constantly making critical comments about everything on my website.”

  “You mean that CC person?”

  “You know who she is?”

  “I saw her comment about not coming to Bargain B
arn on Thursday night.”

  “I was hoping you hadn’t,” I said.

  “I was a little bugged until I noticed that she seemed to have something to say about almost everything you’ve posted lately.”

  “She’s definitely been a nuisance, but I honestly didn’t think all that much about her either. Not until I heard the victim’s name.”

  “Cathy Carter,” he said.

  “Kind of coincidental they share the same initials, don’t you think?”

  “Very,” he said.

  “Unfortunately, the police don’t seem to agree.”

  Alan’s eyes widened. “You’ve already spoken with them?”

  I sighed and recounted my interview with Detective McClarkey, his suggestion that opening the investigation might well cast suspicion directly on me, and my decision to tell Alan about the email I’d received yesterday afternoon before approaching them again.

  “And you say this email was signed CC?”

  I nodded.

  “And what exactly did it say?”

  I took a deep breath. “All’s well that ends well.”

  I waited for Alan to process everything I’d said and start asking the questions I’d been asking myself since yesterday afternoon:

  So you think CC actually is Cathy Carter and someone got mad enough to kill her, or she’s a homicidal maniac who happened to target a woman with her same initials?

  And a few I hadn’t thought of yet:

  This doesn’t exactly jibe with my theory, but I have to say it’s a relief to think Big Box Brother isn’t out to get me.

  “There’s only one possible conclusion,” Alan finally said after what felt like an interminable silence.

  “Which is?”

  “They must have been tracking my every move these past months, knew I was doing an advertising push on your website, and set me up.”

  I was now sure that lack of sleep and stress had sent Alan off the rails. “By having CC heckle me?”

  “Or at least figuring out who she was and somehow enticing her to go to the store so they could—”

  My cell, sitting face up on the console between us, began to ring.

  We both looked down as Frank Cell appeared in the display.

  “I’ll get that later,” I said, without picking up the phone or allowing myself to wonder what he wanted.

  What I wanted.

  Alan now looked as perplexed as he did wild-eyed. “I have to say I was kind of surprised to see him and his whole family the other night.”

  “It was something of a surprise to me too,” I said.

  “Aren’t you two in the middle of a divorce?”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding. “But it’s complicated.”

  “Got it,” he said, almost as dismissively as Detective McClarkey had.

  “I wish I did,” I said, in reference not only to my marital situation, but to Alan’s seemingly reality-challenged theory of corporate espionage, greed, and murder. “In any case—”

  My text alert pinged.

  I looked down, dreading a repeat of last night’s text from Frank.

  Luckily, it was Anastasia:

  Carter memorial service confirmed for tomorrow at ten am.

  Alan, who had once again reflexively looked down when I did, simply nodded.

  “You already knew about the service?”

  “The husband was in no condition to plan anything,” Alan said. “And considering his wife was killed by corporate scumbags bent on destroying my business, I felt like I had no choice but make the arrangements for the Carters.”

  “You arranged the memorial service?”

  “It seemed like the right thing to do,” he said reaching for his handkerchief again.

  “Alan, that was exceptionally kind of you,” I said, touching his shoulder and thinking about my own culpability. After all, Cathy Carter, whoever she was, would still be alive if I hadn’t recommended she shop at Bargain Barn Thursday night.

  “I couldn’t possibly have put together my own wife’s funeral.” His voice cracked. “I barely made it through that day.”

  “Your wife … ?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling the utter hollowness of the only words I could think of to say. “I had no idea.”

  “It’s been almost ten years,” he said as though it was both forever ago and yesterday.

  I was trying to figure out how to politely inquire about what happened when Alan spotted a pair of shoppers who’d stopped outside the store and began to compare something on their smartphones.

  “Damn it,” he said, “they look like secret shoppers.”

  “Secret shoppers?” I asked.

  “Sent by whoever’s behind all this,” he whispered, opening the car door and sliding out. “Let’s talk later.”

  fifteen

  My plan had been to pass along my information to Alan, let him go to the police with it, and, as Detective McClarkey advised, not look for any more trouble. Instead, I sat in my car watching Alan size up what looked like garden-variety shoppers before slinking past and disappearing through the employee entrance to the store.

  Clearly, lack of sleep and stress were working against Alan’s mental equilibrium. It was awfully far-fetched to believe a corporation would be so desperate to put a single-location family-owned business, even one as established and prominent as Bargain Barn, out of business that they would “accidentally” kill off a shopper. But, as I thumbed through my emails, stopping at the message from CC, I was glad to have a place to start, theory-wise.

  On the unlikely assumption that a mystery corporation had been tracking Bargain Barn’s moves, they would likely know about his advertising push on my blog. The problem was, this shady entity (whoever they were) would have to have been aware of CC’s negative posts, managed to locate her right after she trash-talked Bargain Barn, and then somehow convinced her to go out and shop there just so they could kill her off.

  Somehow, it didn’t quite add up.

  If—and it seemed awfully iffy—CC was some sort of plant in the first place, it was theoretically possible that Alan and Bargain Barn were being set up to fail. Albeit in one of the oddest, twistiest ways imaginable.

  I still couldn’t quite get my head around the details, but one way or another, I felt even more sure that whatever happened wasn’t just an unfortunate, untimely accident.

  While I figured I’d leave the investigating of murderous corporations to my new partner in solving a crime no one else believed had been committed, I did have an email address that, in the hands of someone with some actual technical savvy, could very well be key to everything.

  I picked up my cell and texted FJ:

  Is there any way to locate who or where an email came from?

  My return message pinged almost immediately.

  Meaning you heard from CC?

  I dug up an old email, I wrote, not wanting to worry him with the real details. I was hoping you might be able to track where it came from.

  It’s not like I’m a computer CSI guy, came back. But I can try.

  Thanks, I wrote, forwarding the cc@coupclip.com address and wondering how long the process might take.

  But not till we get back home.

  Where are you? I asked.

  Some people are coming to see the house again.

  There’s another showing?

  Dad says to listen to the voicemail he just left you.

  I exited my text messages, went to voicemail, and listened to the message I’d planned to leave unplayed, at least for a while:

  Maddie, the realtor just saw you on TV and figured this was a good time to have another showing on the house. We need to make ourselves scarce, so I’m taking the gang to lunch and a movie or something. I’ll have everyone back before I
have to go into work this afternoon. They’re all planning to go to that wedding at the mall except Eloise, who says she wants to go but needs a car right after to meet up with some friends. I told her that since you’d need to take two cars anyway, we’d figure it out with her.

  _____

  Since my first priority—heading home for some long overdue rest—wasn’t exactly an option for a while, I settled for the next best thing: a mind- and body-rejuvenating trip to the gym.

  Despite a recent workout-related near-death encounter, I somehow managed to maintain a commitment to semi-regular exercise. It didn’t hurt that Xtreme Fitness had given me a free 28 membership for my “troubles,” including a lifetime gold membership at Xtreme Challenge, their upscale sister facility.

  The new gym not only offered state-of-the-art equipment and exercise classes, but upgraded members received spa treatments at 25% off 29 and a locker, complete with nameplate, to store their workout clothing.

  I pulled into the parking lot and went inside.

  “Welcome, Mrs. Michaels,” the young woman at the front counter said as she scanned my gold-rimmed card. “I’ve been watching you on TV! I can’t believe that lady died at Bargain Barn. So awful!”

  “I’m hoping a little exercise will give me some relief from the stress of it all.”

  “I’ll bet you could also use the complimentary fifteen-minute Thanksgiving detox chair massage we’re offering today after your workout.”

  While the gesture was nice, I usually passed on their special promotions—primarily because of the awkwardness near the end where the masseuse or aesthetician tried to up-sell the service for another fifteen or thirty minutes (at the regular rate), chargeable directly to your house account.

  On the other hand, if someone had told me my safe, cushy, seemingly blissful life as the well-heeled wife of Channel Three’s respected Frank Finance Michaels was not only going to come apart at the seams, but that the career I’d developed while trying to keep things together would put me in the midst of not one but two suspicious deaths …

  “What do you have open?” I asked, figuring I’d still have time to shower, get home, and hopefully catch a quick nap before Higgledy the monkey’s evening nuptials.