Black Thursday

by Linda Joffe Hull

  I’d promised Detective McClarkey I’d lay low, but even though last night’s revelations pointed away from Frank and the family and directly at Wendy Killian, I still wasn’t entirely sure I was any safer in my house than a Starbucks filled with people nursing their turkey and family hangovers with Monday morning venti espressos.

  Never mind I was there to meet the one person who not only had the method and the opportunity, but possibly the most solid motive for murder.

  Was Wendy Killian, publisher of Here’s the Deal, so angry about the threat CC posed to her business that she decided to get rid of her? Given CC was heckling Here’s the Deal and Mrs. Frugalicious—admittedly her biggest competitor—had she decided to kill two birds with one stone, as it were, and destroy both of us with a staged “accident” during my live Black Friday broadcast?

  I had to admit, it would be something of a brilliant plan.

  A plan that could easily evolve into a Plan B to frame me for wanting our heckler out of my business, if necessary.

  Had Wendy then quickly resorted to a Plan C after I told her Alan was suspicious about the accident and pretended Cathy Carter was an innocent victim and CC was still alive, well, and penning nasty comments and notes?

  The scenario brought me both relief and a newfound sense of horror.

  Not to mention fear.

  Did she want to meet to admit what she’d done, or was I about to be subjected to some sort of Plan D?

  I scanned the people in line and the tables around the store for a slim, murderous, dishwater blonde with her hair pulled back in a tight, no-nonsense ponytail.

  Ordering a skim latte, I located a table in full view of the front counter—a spot close enough so no one could miss my shouts for help, but far enough away from the next table that extraneous chatter wouldn’t drown out my conversation with Wendy.

  A conversation I planned to record.

  I no longer had my Eavesdropper, since the handy listening device became police evidence after my last run-in with a murderer. Thankfully, my trusty smartphone, which I had at the ready to dial 911, also had the ability to record.

  I picked up my drink, took my place at the table, and sat down to wait. Despite what was turning into chronic sleep deprivation, I was so keyed up, I was afraid to do much more than lick the foam and cinnamon from the top of my pumpkin spice latte.

  A few more minutes passed.

  At 8:11, I decided I’d give her four more minutes.

  At 8:14, just as I was deciding whether I should give Wendy another five minutes to square her shoulders and unburden her heavy soul, she sauntered in.

  Smiling.

  Maniacally?

  Her hair, always pulled back, hung loose around her shoulders. While I’d never thought of her as beautiful exactly, she walked in with a glow I’d never seen before.

  The crazy-eyed glow of a murderess?

  As she waved and signaled she was going up to the counter to get a beverage, I checked the phone in my jacket pocket on the bench beside me to make sure the mic was pointing at what would soon be her seat.

  “Wow, Maddie, you look fantastic,” she said, arriving at the table, coffee in hand.

  “I’m dressed for TV,” I said, not able to say she looked great too. Wendy, who was usually casual but always put together, was wearing a short, rumpled skirt and a slouchy, metallic, off-the-shoulder top. In fact, she looked a lot more up-since-last-night than Monday-morning confession.

  Then again, what did one wear to admit to killing someone?

  “Thank you so much for fitting me into your busy morning schedule.”

  “No problem,” I said, trying not to sound as nervous as I felt.

  If she did confess she’d been up all night consumed with guilt over whatever she’d done, and I got it on tape, then managed to call 911, what was I going to do about it while I waited for the authorities? Grab her by the wrist and hold on tight? Announce to the store there was a killer in our midst and to bolt the doors?

  What if she had a weapon, for God’s sake?

  “Sorry I’m a little late,” she said, definitely emitting the stale base notes of last night’s perfume as she sat down across from me. “My night kind of blended into morning, if you know what I mean …”

  Sweat broke out at my temples. “My whole weekend’s kind of been that way.”

  “I can’t imagine what a terrible shock it was to see Alan Bader led away in handcuffs yesterday.”

  “It definitely was,” I said, waiting for her to blurt something along the lines of, I spent the whole day battling between right and wrong but ultimately couldn’t live with myself so I called you, hoping it would make my difficult confession that much easier …

  She sighed. “I feel like such an awful person …”

  As I forced myself not to check and see if my phone was recording, she spotted something across the room.

  Suddenly, she was standing.

  “Sorry, but I’ve been waiting for the little girls’ room to open up since I walked in! Can you excuse me for a moment?”

  Before I could answer, she was scampering over to beat out anyone else who might have had the same idea.

  Or at least I hoped that was what she was doing.

  With the click of the bathroom door, I was on the phone with Griff just in case.

  “Where are you?” he asked, after my breathless hello.

  “At Starbucks—having coffee with the person I think might actually be Cathy Carter’s killer.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be laying low?”

  “I thought I was, but—”

  “But you decided to have coffee with … ?”

  “Wendy Killian,” I whispered even though she was well out of hearing range. “She’s the publisher of Here’s the Deal magazine. She has the perfect motive because the boys discovered that CC was heckling her online even more than she was Mrs. Frugalicious. She was at Bargain Barn on Thursday night, supposedly in the back of the store right before the pallet was pushed. I’m here with her because she asked to meet with me and I’d agreed before I found out CC was pestering her too. You may want to send someone down here. I think she’s going to—”

  “Enjoy your coffee, Miss Marple. Cathy’s killer is already in custody where he—”

  “Confess!” I interrupted. “I was about to say I really think she’s about to confess!”

  “Not to murder,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “They were able to clean up the tape enough to determine a few things.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning we know the perp was dark-haired, of medium height and build, and wearing what looked to be a black polo.”

  Wendy was about five-seven, but neither dark-haired nor of medium build. She’d also been wearing a floral blouse at Bargain Barn. “So, not Wendy?”

  “Not unless she had an accomplice that was both male and Alan Bader.”

  I took a breath akin to, but not exactly of, relief. “So it was Alan?”

  “That’s the general consensus.”

  “Does Alan know you’ve enhanced the tape?”

  “Yup,” he said.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “Apparently his lawyer’s doing most of the talking now.”

  “I can’t believe this,” I said, feeling more than a little foolish. “Not only was I taken in by him, he actually had me believing I needed to be looking everywhere but at him.”

  “The smarter they are, the more convincing they can be, I’m afraid.”

  “I still feel like such a dummy.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. This Wendy Killian sounds like she might have made an otherwise logical suspect.”

  Little did he know how illogical my suspicions had really been. “I suppose.”

  There w
as rustling noise on his end of the line.

  “Can you hang on for a second,” he said then seemed to move the phone away from his mouth. “Be there in a second, Lare,” he said in a muffled whisper. “I promise.”

  Lare, as in L’Raine?

  “Sorry about that,” he said, returning to our call.

  As I took a breath to steel myself against how sorry he was going to be once I forced myself to fill him on my concerns about his Lare, the bathroom door swung open.

  “Griff, can I call you back a little later?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  I tossed the phone back into my jacket just as Wendy, giddy and smiling, made her way back to the table.

  “Phew! I didn’t mean to jump up mid-sentence, but it was kind of an emergency.”

  “I understand,” I said, infinitely relieved that I wasn’t sitting across the table from a murderer.

  She slid back down into her chair. “Where were we?”

  “I think you were saying something about feeling badly,” I said, a lot less worried but somehow all the more curious as to why we were meeting.

  “Awful. As in I’m an awful person.” She shook her head. “All I could think about after I heard Alan was arrested was what was going to happen to the six-month advertising campaign we’d almost finalized in Here’s the Deal.”

  “Advertising campaign …” I repeated.

  She took a long, slow sip of coffee. “I wish I were a bigger person, but I feel badly that it might not happen now.”

  “That doesn’t make you a bad person,” I said. “I’m in the same boat, actually.”

  “I figured you might be,” she said.

  Was that what she’d assumed my quick question was about?

  “Bargain Barn is my biggest advertiser and our contract expires next month. With Alan in jail, there’s no knowing what’s going to happen to either of our accounts.”

  “Isn’t this just crazy?” she asked.

  “Completely.”

  “I guess we should just be relieved he’s off the streets,” she said.

  “Definitely,” I said.

  As we both took long, slow sips of coffee, I had to wonder why she felt we needed to meet in person to talk about our up-in-the-air advertising with Bargain Barn.

  “I can’t honestly say I’m surprised he killed her, though,” she finally said.

  “What?” I sat up straighter in my chair.

  “I mean, I know it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead and everything, but she was heckling you and she was certainly heckling me enough to think about wanting her to go away.” Wendy shook her head. “She must have been heckling Alan, too.”

  “How did you know she was heckling me?” I asked. “Or that Cathy Carter was CC?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said.

  My cell began to ring in my jacket pocket.

  “Do you need to get that?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “Not important.”

  “Here’s what is …” She smiled that crazy-eyed smile that had me sure she was guilty of something. “Craig.”

  “Craig?”

  She nodded.

  “As in, Frank’s brother Craig?”

  Her smile grew bigger.

  “He told you CC was heckling me?”

  “No, I knew that from your website,” she said. “But he told me Cathy Carter was CC.”

  “How did he know?” I asked.

  “Frank told him,” she said.

  Besides me, the boys were the only ones who should have had an idea that Cathy and CC could be one in the same, and I’d sworn them to both to secrecy, claiming it could hinder the full police investigation.

  “And I think Anastasia Chastain had told him,” she said.

  “Anastasia?” Anastasia had told Frank, who told Craig, who told Wendy? “But—”

  “Craig and I are seeing each other.”

  My brother-in-law—an enthusiastic chubby chaser, whom I was certain had been wining, dining, and generally trying to lure curvy L’Raine away from Griff Watson—was really seeing sinewy, formerly severe Wendy Killian?

  “Craig?” I asked again, this time more incredulously.

  Her cheeks blushed crimson. “We met on Thursday night and have been all but inseparable ever since.”

  “So that’s what you wanted to tell me?”

  “I know we’re competitors and everything, but we’re also friends.” She patted my hand. “With all the turmoil you’ve had over the last few months in your relationship, I thought I should get your blessing to pursue mine.”

  “My blessing?”

  “I haven’t felt this way about anyone since I got divorced,” she said. “Maybe even ever.”

  My head was spinning.

  I’d come to coffee sure Wendy was going to confess to murder, not to have an awkward but otherwise innocuous conversation between two friends who were now involved with brothers.

  “So you say you’ve been seeing each other all weekend?”

  “Friday night we had cocktails and talked for hours,” she said wistfully. “Saturday night it was dinner and dancing. Then, last night—”

  “That’s fantastic,” I said before she gave what was threatening to be way too much information.

  “Better than fantastic.”

  True though it seemed to be, I was having a hard time believing that Craig, who I’d never seen look at a woman any less than twenty pounds heavier than athletic Wendy, had fallen as hard for her as she had for him.

  “That dark curly hair and those blue eyes … I can’t believe I didn’t spot him while I was in the TV line.”

  “You didn’t?” I asked, lamely addressing the question I’d originally thought I’d come to ask.

  “We met right after the pallet fell. He came out of the men’s room and asked me what was going on. I told him everything I knew, and …” She paused. “Maddie, I really think he’s The One.”

  With that, her cell rang.

  She grinned like a lovesick teenager, turning the phone so I could see his name in the display. “I just can’t believe it took someone dying for my life to come alive like this.”

  _____

  With a quick hug and the legitimate excuse that I needed to get home to prepare for Channel Three to arrive, I left Wendy to flirt and coo with my brother-in-law.

  I got into the car, put my nearly full coffee into the cup holder, and plugged my phone (which had a five-minute recording limit and the sense to shut off long before I’d been smart enough to realize I wasn’t going to be hearing anything of note) back into the charger. It was then I noticed that the call, which had come in during Wendy’s confession, was from an unfamiliar number.

  I turned on the engine and listened to the message:

  Maddie,

  This is Joe, the acting store manager here at Bargain Barn. I just got off the phone with Mr. Bader down at the jail. His voice cracked. And, um, he insisted I call to fill you in on a few things.

  First off, he told me to tell you that he’d have to be a complete fool to have given the police surveillance video of himself climbing down from the upper shelves.

  Second, the video showed the person from behind so they couldn’t positively ID the face.

  Third, that face was not Alan’s and he asked me to reiterate that he didn’t kill anybody.

  Ever.

  Joe paused to take a breath, and exhale.

  Listen, he continued. I just want you to know I wouldn’t have delivered this message if I didn’t believe Mr. Bader was absolutely, positively innocent. I’ve worked at Bargain Barn for over ten years and the man is top shelf.

  Pardon the analogy.

  The main reason I’m calling is that we’ve discovered some new evidence down at the store.
When I called Alan to fill him in, he insisted I have you come down to Bargain Barn and take a look before the police get here.

  At this point, you’re the only one he trusts …

  twenty-seven

  I had no idea whether my trip to Bargain Barn was really a mission of mercy, or if I was falling for Alan Bader’s nonsense yet again, but seeing as it was 8:30 and I needed to be home by 9:30 so I was camera ready by 10:00, I had a less than an hour to find out.

  Before I did, I texted Griff back with one question:

  How did they ID Alan’s face?

  I wiled away the seconds that felt like hours, thankful my unfounded suspicions hadn’t ruined Griff’s relationship. Craig and Wendy seemed almost as unlikely as Griff and L’Raine, but, as my father-in-law would certainly say, love is blind.

  Wasn’t privy to that info, so not sure finally popped up as a return message. Will find out and get back.

  With his equivocal response, I backed out of my space. My coffee was sloshing out of the lid and into my cup holder as he followed up with another text I couldn’t return while driving.

  Why?

  _____

  “Thank you for agreeing to come.”

  Joe, the former assistant and now acting store manager, greeted me at Bargain Barn’s Customer Service desk. He not only looked like he’d aged ten years since Thursday night, but like he’d grown a permanent furrow between his sandy brows.

  “I only have a few minutes,” I said, a convenient truth in case this was some kind of weird ploy or trap. “Anastasia Chastain and the Channel Three news cameras are expecting me at my house to film a Cyber Monday segment in less than an hour.”

  “This won’t take long,” he said. “And you’ve been great on TV all weekend, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” I said, following him inside. We started toward the back of the store.

  “As I said, I’ve worked with Mr. Bader for almost ten years and he’s never been anything but generous and honest,” Joe said, cutting through the hardware aisle.

  “Were you working here when his wife died?” I asked.

  “I started just after,” he said. “He put up a tough front, but the man was grieving until he met The Floozy.”

  “The Floozy?”