Murder at the Mall: (A Madeline Shore Cozy Curvy Mystery)

by Lynn Cooper

  Murder at the Mall

  (A Madeline Shore Cozy Curvy Mystery)

  Lynn Cooper

  Copyright © 2017 Lynn Cooper

  All rights reserved.

  Chapter One

  I HURRY ACROSS THE brand spanking new East End Mall toward Missy’s Buxom Boutique. My eagerness is two-fold. First, I want to get in early on the 40%-off grand-opening-day deals all the stores are featuring. Second, I’ve got a warm CinnaCluster in my handbag I’m dying to sink my teeth into. If I grab a few choice outfits and duck into the privacy of a locked dressing room, I’ll be able to eat it without Luisa catching me. We are again competing in our little contest to see who can go the longest without indulging in anything sweet (I hold the current record at five hours, seventeen minutes).

  I told her it wasn’t fair for her to impose the latest round of the contest on me today, but she insisted. Luisa knows how much I’ve been looking forward to having the ultimate in cinnamon buns. It’s one the town of Slocomb has not offered until this mall came into being. She thinks my newest temptation is just the edge she needs to bust six hours wide open.

  In my defense, I have recently lost four pounds. Yes, I know it’s counterproductive to reward oneself for weight loss with a high-calorie, sugary treat. But, this indulgence is about more than personal achievement. I’m celebrating Slocomb’s new mega-mall. The town council is convinced it will be the thing that finally puts our little town on the map. Mayor Kwan, along with Bluff and Tug, our councilmen, have put in countless hours to make all this happen. They schmoozed, cajoled, wined and dined investors for two years solid so we could have the Foot Lockers and Aeropostales every American deserves.

  Savoring this CinnaCluster is just one small way in which I can honor their effort.

  Forty-five minutes ago, I was afraid the grand opening might not happen today. A huge power outage knocked everything out. By the time the enthusiastic throng of shoppers saw the lights flicker back on inside, they had discount blood in their eyes. Security guards—there must have been six or eight where I came in at the south entrance—took their lives into their hands as they opened the doors. A herd of frenzied shoppers stampeded into East End Mall like it was a Wal-Mart on Black Friday morning.

  As I angle toward Missy’s, I see Luisa standing four stores up on the right in front of Zale’s window. I know she’s salivating over the biggest diamond on display. Just like I’m imagining that first gooey bite, she is visualizing the multi-faceted, sparkly gem being placed on her finger by the man of her dreams—Glen Drummond.

  I know it’s silly for me to sneak around like this. Luisa never gives me a hard time when I slip up. Her complete acceptance is one of the many reasons she is my best friend. The truth is, I tend to project my insecurities onto others. I imagine them silently criticizing my weight when really it’s the sound of my own self-condemning voice I hear ringing in my ears. Well, that along with my mom’s snarky, high-pitched, whining criticisms.

  But right now, no matter what she or anyone else thinks about my bountiful figure, I’m killing this purple polka-dot dress. The deeply-seated confidence about my outfit, combined with the heavenly waft of warm, sweet dough rising from my handbag, puts even more starch in my step as I dodge a power-walker and enter Missy’s.

  Barely breaking stride, I snatch up a bright-yellow sundress, a shimmery, sleeveless blouse and a pair of bell bottom jeans all while scanning the store for a saleslady. Out of my peripheral vision, I see her standing near the cash register, tapping her long, apple-red, lacquered fingernails on the counter. She’s a voluptuous, dark-haired beauty—a plus-size sister working it in a clingy black Halston skirt, white blouse and stilettos. Smiling my approval of her outfit, I shout, “Can you take off an additional ten percent and turn that forty into fifty?”

  “For our first customer, let’s make it fifteen,” she calls back. “Dressing rooms are on your twelve, honey, so—” She snaps her fingers. “I just realized—the doors are still locked. I’ll bring the key.”

  This is how the world should work every day. Me going behind closed doors, like you do, to eat a gigantic cinnamon bun. Then treating myself to a new outfit. After all, it’s the least I can do to get my town’s newest foray into the future off on the right foot. When I’ve completed my civic duty, I’ll head home to do the thing I love most in this world—create pretty, crafty things on my hot-pink sewing machine.

  As soon as I pass through the curtain dividing the dressing rooms from the rest of the store, I drape the clothes across a plush barrel chair in the corner and delve into my handbag. My fingers tremble with anticipation as I unwrap the CinnaCluster and inhale it as if it’s oxygen. The moment the sweet glaze hits my electrified taste buds, I close my eyes and have the most intense mouth-gasm of my life. This perfect pastry is even more decadently delicious than the one I had in Virginia a year ago.

  No lie, if East End Mall had not included a CinnaCluster store within its walls, I would not have darkened its doors. I mean it. It would have been a deal breaker.

  When I open my eyes, I notice something curious. Peeking out beneath the fourth and last dressing room door to the right is a pair of beige trouser legs on top of black shoe heels.

  To my chagrin, I’m not the store’s first customer. I inwardly groan, lamenting the fact I’ll now probably lose that extra fifteen percent off.

  However, upon closer inspection, I can see the legs are not moving. Even stranger than that, the heels seem to be levitating about six inches off the carpet.

  My CinnaCluster turns to tasteless cardboard on my tongue and sticks in my throat. I swallow hard. My stomach knots with that sickening here-we-go-again déjà vu. Suddenly losing my appetite, I stuff the uneaten portion of my pastry back down inside my handbag. Moving in front of the last door, I expel a slow, controlled breath to calm myself. The lovely, fun-filled, carefree day I envisioned a few scant seconds ago has now taken a dark, disturbing turn. Three disjointed thoughts flash through my mind:

  Soon, some people are going to be terribly sad.

  Mayor Kwan is going to have a hissy fit.

  I hope I left Bear enough food and water.

  I suck in another soul-steadying breath as the curtains part. “Here we go,” the saleslady says brightly. She hurries toward me with her eyes cast downward, sifting through a big ring of keys. There’s an Ace bandage on her right wrist that she’s obviously trying to hide with several fashionable, bangle bracelets. “Ah, this is the one we need.” When she sees heels hanging beneath the door, she pulls up short and frowns.

  “You wouldn’t have a handkerchief, would you?” I ask.

  Blinking, she reaches into her skirt pocket and pulls out a sheaf of tissues.

  “Perfect,” I say, taking a couple. Covering the knob with them, I try to open it. “Locked, just as you said. The key, please?”

  When she hands it to me, I secure it between the tissues, being careful not to let the weight of the ring tear it.

  “Shouldn’t we call the police?” she asks nervously.

  Yeah, we probably should. Sound advice. Smart thing to do. Back away. Don’t touch anything else. On top of this intelligent saleslady’s reservations about what we’re doing, there’s that little voice in my head saying the very same thing.

  No, not my mother’s voice. This is mine.

  But, immediately alerting the police and letting them take the investigative lead didn’t make a whole lot of difference the last time this happened to me.

  Or the time before that.

  It’s like this: some people cannot look away from car wrecks. Some people pull at hangn
ails even though they know it’s going to hurt like all get-out when they yank it too far into the quick. Some people never flinch at horror movies, keeping their eyes riveted on the screen.

  Me? I cannot not open a door. Literally or figuratively. I have to know what’s on the other side. The anticipation of what’s there is greater than the fear of what might be there. In the horror flick, I’m the dolt who absolutely has to open the door with the chain saw being revved behind it.

  It’s like the CinnaCluster. I know it’s loaded with things that are unhealthy for me. Too many empty calories. Heart-clogging saturated fat. Diabetes-causing sugar. But I eat that sucker anyway.

  Of course, while I don’t eat every sweet roll I see, I do open every door.

  Hey, I never said it was a perfect analogy.

  Does this door-opening compulsion get me in trouble? Yep. If what has happened in the past is any indication of what will happen in the future—and it is—I’m going to be too busy in the coming days to do much crafting. The plushy rabbits with carrot noses and raccoons wearing spectacles will have to wait.

  When I click the key in the brand spanking new knob, it turns easily. But opening this door feels heavy with doom like we’re looking into Pandora’s Box instead of a ladies’ dressing room. That’s because a dead man is hanging by his jacket collar on the shiny brass clothes hook.

  My heart sinks. It’s Bluff Burrows, one of the two town councilmen who was so instrumental in getting the new mall built in Slocomb.

  The poor saleslady staggers back in horror. She turns a ghastly shade of green, and I am terrified she’s going to barf all over my purse. I won’t say I’m totally cool about the corpse, but when it comes to stumbling on stiffs, this ain’t my first rodeo.

  It takes her a moment to get hold of herself. “Oh, my God!” she says, covering her mouth. “Why would somebody kill him?”

  Shaking my head, I lean as close as I can without touching him. Bluff Burrows—real name, Stafford Burrows—is a slight man, five-six or so and maybe a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet. He’s wearing light-beige khakis, a long-sleeve, powder-blue shirt beneath his navy blazer and black wingtips with black, nylon socks.

  There are no cuts or bruises on his clean-shaven face or balding head with wispy, gray-brown hair. No blood showing on his clothes.

  The only possible evidence of a struggle I see is a red welt around his neck and a missing pearl button torn off at his throat. The fabric is frayed and the thread is unraveled. In the half-dozen or so times I have encountered him before now, he’s never once worn a tie. But, he’s always buttoned his dress shirts all the way to the top.

  I glance around the small stall. It has a bench on the back wall. The mirror on the left wall has been newly cracked. How do I know? There’s no sign of delamination. In laymen’s terms, no air bubbles are visible along the edges of the broken glass.

  And Luisa said binge-watching episodes of This Old Glass was a waste of time.

  Of course, even if I hadn’t spent hours watching the educational channel while knitting hats for the homeless, it stands to reason new dressing rooms in a new mall would be furnished with new mirrors. Ones that had not been previously broken.

  On the right wall is a faint, black smear shaped like a beginning single quotation mark. Leaning close, I take a whiff of it. Just as I did in the other two cases, I quietly lock my observations in the secure vault between my ears.

  I turn back to Bluff for a final look. On his bluing lips is a familiar, crusty, white glaze. I lean close and sniff.

  “Gaah, you’re not going to kiss him, are you?”

  I manage a weak smile. “I’ve already had my sugar quota for today.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means it’s time to call the cops.” I pull my cell phone out of my handbag. “Some states allow stores to have security cameras in their dressing rooms.”

  Distracted, the saleslady continues to stare at the body. She fidgets with her hands, twisting the wedding rings on her finger as if she’s trying to screw them down tighter.

  I clear my throat. “Ma’am?”

  “Oh, sorry,” she says. “No, we don’t have security cameras in here. Just out on the sales floor.”

  “I see. But, it would have been nice to have one just so we could know who did this.”

  I have the Slocomb Police Department on speed dial. A bored female voice answers, “Police station, how may I help you?”

  Reluctantly, I say, “Trish, it’s Madeline Shore. I’m at Missy’s Buxom Boutique in the new mall.”

  There is silence for a moment. Trish sighs. “I’ll let Detective Worthy know. Hang tight. They’ll all be there in a few minutes.”

  I really don’t register much after she says, “Detective Worthy.” My heart palpates, and my mind races. “Okay. Thanks.”

  The saleslady stares at me. “Why didn’t you tell them there’s been a murder?”

  “No need,” I say, dropping my phone into the handbag beside the partially-eaten cinnamon bun. “They already know.”

  Chapter Two

  THE ONLY THING IN my life I enjoy as much as creating brightly-colored, beautiful, intricately-designed crafts is watching 27-year-old Detective Zeke Worthy move. At six feet tall, his athletic body eases through space and time with the grace and strength of a powerful panther. And, gosh, does he ever look good in that gray suit! The breathtaking way it molds to his broad shoulders makes me feel plumb faint. When his crisp, white shirt stretches across his muscular chest, it’s all I can do to fight off a full-blown swoon.

  He and I met a month ago, shortly after the second time I discovered a dead body. I tried to dig up some details about him at that time, but nobody in the department seemed to know very much except for Sheriff Rice. And he wasn’t sharing. Aside from Zeke being gorgeous—yes, we’re on a first-name basis in my mind—all I really know about the detective is he came to Slocomb from somewhere up north, and he may or may not be with us for a while.

  Being all sexy and let’s-get-down-to-business, Zeke loosens his skinny, black tie. I love it when he does that. His well-defined thigh muscles pone when he squats beside Graham Perkins, the town’s seventy-two year old medical examiner. After doing a cursory examination of Bluff while he was still suspended on the hook, Perkins has a couple of uniforms lift and lay the councilman down on a sheet.

  As soon as they do, about eight inches below the clothes hook I notice a second faint, black smear. Walking over, I put my nose close and take a whiff. It has the same, rubber smell as the mark on the right wall.

  “Miss Shore,” Zeke says, “could you please refrain from sniffing things so we can get on with this?”

  “Sorry.”

  While they carefully position the body on its back, Graham squints at me through his thick, black-rimmed glasses and taps the side of his huge hearing aid. It’s no use, but he tries to cover it with his mostly-white hair via a lopsided comb-over. Having seen him in action before, I am accustomed to his preferred style of fashion. Just like the other two times, he’s wearing a short-sleeve, checked shirt, baggy brown trousers and Hushpuppies. Since he got a late start as a medical examiner—he sold insurance for seven years after college—he still has eight months to go before he can receive the full benefits of his pension.

  The department keeps him around out of loyalty. It’s certainly not because he’s going to show up on CSI: Slocomb anytime soon.

  Oh, yes, I’m afraid the septuagenarian also has a crush on me.

  “What have we got, Perk?” the detective asks.

  “He hasn’t been dead long. I’d say within the last half hour. He’s got a golf ball-sized lump on the back of his head. There is a ligature mark around his neck. His right-hand index and ring fingernails have been ripped into the quick.”

  “Defensive wounds. So, he fought back against his killer?”

  “What killer? Bluff died of natural causes.”

  Even though I knew he was going to say that, it still
makes my head spin. A victim could be holding his own severed head in his hands, have a knife sticking in his chest and bullet holes riddling his back, and Graham would determine the cause of death to be natural causes.

  What’s frustrating is, everybody except me seems to be okay with it.

  “Are you kidding me right now?” I ask, incredulously. “What’s ‘natural’ about him having a lump on his head?”

  Graham smiles benignly. “Nobody took a dump on a bed, Madeline. He wasn’t killed somewhere else and dragged here if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  Detective Worthy glares at me. “I’ll get to you momentarily, Miss Shore. In the meantime, how about you let me handle this investigation, hmm? Perk, what about the lump on his head?”

  Graham rolls his eyes at us as if we’re both complete idiots. Rising awkwardly, he steps over to the open door. “It’s a dressing room, people. Bluff is standing here, trying on a pair of slacks, and his zipper gets stuck. He catches his fingernails in it, jerks too hard and rips them halfway off. He then loses his balance and hits his head on the clothes hook. It doesn’t kill him, but it shocks him a little, making him jump. That’s when his jacket catches on the hook. He naturally thinks someone is holding him from behind which causes him to panic and have a heart attack. He’s already had two cardiac episodes in the last year. This one does him in.” He sniffs smugly. “Open and shut.”

  Wincing, I momentarily shut my eyes against the blinding pain of an ice cream headache, sans the joy of actually eating ice cream. “Except there were no slacks for him to try on in this ladie’s dressing room. No fingernail fragments in his zipper, and no blood or hair on the magic hook that somehow lifted Bluff six inches off his feet.”

  Giving me a condescending wink, he takes off his glasses and cleans the lenses with the tail of his shirt. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. I’m sure Detective Worthy will connect the dots.”

  “Dots?” I ask, unable to keep the utter disbelief and irritability from my voice. “Graham, those are gaping gaps. What about the white stuff on his lips?”