Black Thursday

  “That awful new wife he’s finally getting rid of.”

  “But you don’t think he had anything to do with getting rid of the first one?”

  “I was starting to worry that I had no choice but rethink everything I believed about him and his values.” He led me back into to the restroom area, stopped at the employee breakroom, and opened the door. “Thankfully, I don’t have to.”

  A very tall, husky, African-American man of about twenty stood beside a bank of lockers.

  “This is Eli. Eli, this is Maddie Michaels, better known as Mrs. Frugalicious.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said, extending his hand and offering a meaty handshake.

  “Eli is in college here in town, but his family lives in Chicago.”

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “I’m telling you this because we require all of our employees to be on the clock during the Black Friday weekend,” Joe said. “All except for Eli.”

  “Mr. Bader knows I’m putting myself through college and don’t get the chance to see my family very often. He gave me the whole weekend off to be with them.”

  “That was very generous,” I said, my mind wandering to Eloise, who’d gone back to school without responding to my text message.

  Because she had nothing to say, or nothing she was willing to say?

  “Today was my first day back on the schedule.” Eli clicked open a locker marked with his name. “I found this inside.”

  A black polo shirt lay rumpled in the corner.

  “For liability reasons, employees can’t leave anything in their lockers when they clock out,” Joe added. “In fact, they even provide their own padlocks, which they take back and forth with them.”

  “So you couldn’t have accidentally left it inside your locker?”

  “I own two work shirts. The one I’m wearing and the one in my laundry basket at home.”

  “Cathy Carter’s murderer was wearing that shirt,” Joe said. “He climbed down from the upper shelves, came in here, pulled it off, and threw it in the locker.”

  My pulse began to race. “You’re sure of that because … ?”

  “For one thing, I’m a size 2XL,” said Eli, who had to be six-five and at least 300 pounds “That polo is a medium and says Smith on the label.”

  “Have you talked to this Smith person?” I asked. “Maybe he accidentally tossed it in the wrong locker.”

  “Charlie Smith quit two weeks ago,” Eli said.

  “Was he disgruntled or anything like that?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” Joe said. “He moved to Colorado Springs and got into management at a store down there thanks to Mr. Bader’s referral.”

  “Did he have dark hair?”

  “Smithy’s a ginger.” Joe crossed his arms over his chest. “And Cathy Carter’s killer may have been wearing a Bargain Barn shirt, but he wasn’t an employee.”

  That low feeling of dread I thought I had at bay began to rise again like flood waters. “How do you know?”

  “Follow me.”

  The next thing I knew we were standing in Alan’s office.

  Joe turned on a monitor and dimmed the lights.

  “You found more video?” I asked, expecting to see someone scrambling up into the rafters from some remote spot in the store.

  “The police took everything they thought was important,” Joe said as a pair of vending machines and a up-close view of the first row or two of the employee lockers filled the screen.

  “But no one thought anything about the breakroom camera since it’s really only there to keep employees from tampering with the snack machine.”

  Joe pressed play and we watched as what seemed to be a disembodied arm open Eli’s locker, toss a black polo inside, shut the door, and disappear.

  “This was recorded exactly one minute and fifty-four seconds after the pallet fell, when no one was on break because every other Bargain Barn team member was required to be on the sales floor.”

  “But you can’t see a body,” I said. “Much less a face.”

  “No, but you can tell that the person who threw the shirt is using his right hand because you can also see the left.” He played the tape again, stopped at the three-second mark and pointed at the lower part of the screen. “Right here.”

  “Which proves what?” I asked.

  “Mr. Bader can’t be the killer.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He wears a gold medical alert bracelet on his right wrist.”

  Whoever threw the shirt into the locker was wearing what seemed to be a clear surgical or food service glove, but there was no sign of Alan Bader’s heavy gold jewelry.

  “He could have taken it off,” I said. “Right?”

  “Wrong,” Joe said. “It’s so valuable, he actually had that bracelet soldered on his wrist so it won’t ever fall off.”

  “Oh,” I said, my resident butterflies taking wing and beginning to flutter frantically throughout my body.

  “Exactly.”

  “And you’ve called the police to let them know?”

  “Right before I called Mr. Bader,” Joe said, nodding. “They’re supposed to be sending someone out, but I got the distinct feeling they weren’t in any particular hurry to examine a shirt in an employee locker.”

  I, however, was suddenly frantic for answers.

  If Alan was innocent and Joe was right that all store employees were out on the sales floor, didn’t that once again narrow my suspect list down to two dark-haired men of medium height and build that still weren’t accounted for at the time the pallet was pushed?

  Namely, Frank and Craig.

  Frank was the most likely suspect, except that he was helping with the rescue effort within a couple of minutes of the pallet falling. Wouldn’t he have been held with the rest of the people in the back of the store if he’d climbed down and tossed the shirt into the locker?

  And then there was Frank’s likely accomplice—his brother Craig.

  I can’t believe I didn’t spot him while I was in the TV line. Wendy’s words rattled in my head. He came out of the men’s room and asked me what was going on …

  Craig said he was in the TV line when the pallet fell. But seeing as we were let into the store first, shouldn’t he have been up at the very front? Mr. Piggledy came back to the middle of the Frugarmy line with a voucher of some sort. Why hadn’t Craig gotten his TV when he met up with us, nearly a half-hour later?

  Maybe because he hadn’t been in that particular line at all, but had instead gone to some predetermined site somewhere in the store, climbed up, pushed the pallet, and scrambled back to be caught from behind on a grainy, older surveillance camera?

  Craig, who’d thrown the black shirt into a random locker then run into Wendy on his way out of the employee locker room and taken up with her thinking it would give him an alibi?

  “You said the police took all the important surveillance tape,” I said to Joe. “Would that include footage taken of anyone going in or out of the restroom area?”

  “The camera in that area records right outside the entrances to the bathrooms themselves, but it doesn’t cover the length of the hallway.”

  “Were there cameras on the various lines throughout the store?”

  “Depends on the line.”

  “What about the flat-screen TVs?”

  “The surveillance is mainly in the parts of the store with easy-to-steal items. In the big-ticket areas, there’s really no need because no one can really march out of the store with a television under their jacket.”

  “Makes sense, I suppose.”

  “But that particular line started near Sporting and Camping and eventually wove past Automotive,” Joe continued. “So it’s possible there were some images captured on the Zone C and maybe even the Zone D cameras.”

&
nbsp; “Which the police have?”

  “Not sure,” he said turning to the computer, presumably to take a look. “What are you looking for?”

  Before I could figure out a way to tell him I needed to confirm the whereabouts of my own brother-in-law in such a way that he wouldn’t suspect I was suspicious of not only him, but my entire extended family including my husband, the store intercom beeped.

  “This is Joe,” he said, pressing the speaker button.

  “This is Courtney at Customer Service. Detectives Reed and McClarkey are here to see you.”

  “Be right there,” he said.

  As the furrow between his brows seemed to ease, I could feel a huge one forming between mine. There was no way my presence at Bargain Barn could ever be considered laying low.

  “Will you join me?” he asked.

  “Under normal circumstances, I definitely would,” I lied. “But Anastasia’s going to be at my house any second and I really do need to rush home or I’ll never make it on time.”

  “Of course,” he said, leading the way out of Alan’s office. “I’ll walk you out.”

  “I’m pretty sure I parked right near the employee entrance,” I said. “Mind if I head out that way, instead?”

  “No problem,” Joe said, cracking open the door to the executive offices. “But—”

  “But those two detectives have pretty big egos. For Alan’s sake, it’s probably best if you don’t mention I was here before they were,” I said, checking to make sure the detectives weren’t looking in our direction so I could slip away down a side aisle and out the employee doors. “Or, better yet, not at all.”

  twenty-eight

  I slumped down in the driver’s seat of my parked car.

  Laying low—as it were.

  Very low.

  It was 9:07 and I had just enough time to get home, freshen up, and be ready when Anastasia and crew arrived—except that I couldn’t get myself to put the key into the ignition.

  Not with the utterly distressing scenario coming together in my head:

  There was now no question in my mind about the onslaught of Michaels family members appearing for Thanksgiving. There was never a delayed cruise, no unexpected layover in Denver.

  Frank’s family had come for a purpose.

  While I still believed that purpose was to support their brother/uncle/son clean up the terrible mess he’d made of his marriage and his life, the murkiness of the plan seemed to be growing clearer and clearer.

  Frank, who didn’t want a divorce in the first place, had to have been monitoring my budding business and website from the moment he learned I was Mrs. Frugalicious. He knew about CC and was aware of my concerns about her potentially negative impact on my happy, growing Frugarmy. A nagging issue he filed away for future reference until he found out I was going to live-blog at Bargain Barn and seized the opportunity to get rid of the scourge known as Contrary Claire.

  First, he’d mobilized his suddenly sweet, solicitous family to help implement his solution, then looped in Anastasia, for what I had to believe was a preplanned, on-camera shopping expedition complete with Black Friday incident.

  While I couldn’t be sure how he’d known CC was Cathy Carter, everything else seemed to line up like dominoes:

  1. Frank’s family, including Craig, volunteered to come along with me to shop on camera.

  2. Anastasia met us there to document the big night for Channel Three, complete with a cameraman and a big scoop gleam in her eyes.

  3. Everyone in the Michaels clan disappeared moments before the pallet was pushed off the upper shelf, but reappeared on camera almost immediately afterward to help with the rescue effort.

  4. All but Craig, who’d already created an excuse to be in the back of the store by claiming he was headed to the flat-screen TV line. Craig had been assigned the dirty work of pushing the pallet.

  5. A task he’d accomplished, as planned.

  Or had he?

  Had they really intended to kill her, or just scare her off ?

  And why?

  I found it hard to believe Frank would intentionally kill anyone. It was even harder to believe that Anastasia, whose fiancé was in law enforcement, would knowingly conspire to harm anyone—even for guaranteed huge ratings. I also didn’t believe Frank was trying to sabotage Mrs. Frugalicious or frame me, as Alan had postulated. However, given my husband’s enormous ego, the embarrassing blow it had suffered these last few months, and the fact that he’d called his whole family in to talk me into staying with him, I had to think the whole idea had been to stage a scare so Frank could come riding in on his horse (or leased black Mercedes, as it were) to redeem himself in both my eyes and those of his formerly adoring public.

  In light of this theory, Frank’s on-camera appearances throughout the evening at Bargain Barn seemed entirely intentional:

  Assisting in the rescue effort.

  Comforting his estranged wife, Mrs. Frugalicious, his family, and shocked shoppers in the aftermath of Cathy Carter’s death.

  Mounting a brave and valiant campaign to save the store from closing with the help of his family.

  In retrospect, there was nothing that had simply just happened—not the producers suddenly wanting to run a weekend’s worth of Mrs. Frugalicious bargain hunting segments, not Joyce’s suggestion of a grocery-shopping expedition, not Anastasia’s appearance to film a Friday segment there. And hadn’t the mysterious Frugarmy member who’d suggested we all band together for Small Business Saturday been named Barbara M.?

  As in Barb Michaels, who only used her given name for official purposes?

  Frank had to have masterminded this entire scenario. And while he might not have intended for Cathy to die, her death was a problem that might not have been a problem at all had Alan Bader and I left well enough alone.

  Upsetting as the unexpected deadly turn of events must have been, they had still worked to Frank’s advantage, allowing him to show up when I needed comforting after CC left a note on my car or just before Alan was seemingly about to abduct me.

  My guts churned as I sat waiting for Detectives McClarkey and Reed to emerge from the store, weighing whether I should come clean with my suspicions or simply call Griff and have him verify that Craig had never gone to TV line—that he’d somehow found a spot out of the camera or anyone else’s watchful eye just before the store opened, climbed into the upper shelves, and waited for the right moment to push the pallet off the shelf.

  All at the behest of my ex-ex, soon-to-be-ex-again-husband, Frank.

  Who’d been aided and abetted by his mother, sister, father, and possibly even his daughter—my stepdaughter, Eloise.

  I couldn’t very well put the key in the ignition and head home to the murderous Michaels clan and complicit Anastasia Chastain and pretend nothing was wrong. Maybe I was decent in an interview format, but I was no actress.

  I also couldn’t drag the entire Michaels family through the mud once again on a hunch, even a strong one, until I knew for sure they were behind Cathy’s death—intentionally or otherwise.

  I sat, unable to move, until the sound of a delivery truck door rolling closed gave me an a idea of one thing I could do in the hopes of finding out.

  Mr. Piggledy had returned to Mrs. Piggledy and the Frugarmy right before the accident with a voucher for a 42-inch flat-screen TV he was having delivered—meaning he’d been one of the first twenty people in the TV line.

  I dialed his number.

  And was greeted by voicemail.

  With the beep, I left a concise but pointed message:

  Hi Mr. Piggledy, it’s Maddie Michaels. I’m hoping you might remember seeing a man with dark curly hair and blue eyes who looked a lot like my husband at the front of the TV line before the pallet fell on Thursday night? I know it was chaotic, especially for you, that evening, but anything yo
u can recall would be of great help. Can you please let me know as soon as you get this? It could be really important.

  Oh, and my best to Mrs. Piggledy, I added. I’m thankful her injuries weren’t much worse.

  Which gave me another idea …

  twenty-nine

  “I’m on my way,” I said, talking into my hands-free device as I headed north on I-25, way north of home. “Almost.”

  “What do you mean by almost?” Anastasia asked.

  “I’ll meet you at the house, but if I’m a few minutes late, the boys can kick things off for me.”

  “As in, your boys?”

  “They did all the research for what I’m planning to discuss this morning, anyway.”

  “Which is?”

  “The top Cyber Monday deals for people under twenty-five,” I said. “And how to get them at the very best prices.”

  “Hmmm,” she said. “Very interesting.”

  “I thought so,” I said.

  “And more than a little surprising,” she said. “Here I thought Frank was the one with all the big ideas in your family …”

  _____

  “I need you to go into my office and log on to my computer,” I said to FJ, trying not to read any more than I had to into what Anastasia meant by Frank’s big ideas.

  “Okay …” FJ said.

  I exited the highway and headed west. “My password is—”

  “Frugaliciousbargain1,” he said. “Already logged on.”

  I made a mental note to change my password to something completely random next time. “There should be a Word file called Cyber Monday Talking Points on my desktop.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Please print it out.”

  “Done,” he said, over the whir of the printer in the background.

  “I should be home in time to go on the air,” I said, pulling into an older, tree-lined neighborhood. “But if I’m running a little late—”

  “I should give this to Anastasia?”

  “Or you and Trent use it for reference.”

  “Us?” he asked incredulously.

  “You wanted to be on TV today, right?”