Jeanette started rambling on about how great we all were as employees, and what fine jobs we were doing under difficult circumstances, and how much she appreciated us all working together, blah, blah, blah. I was deep into my how-can-I-get-out-of-this thoughts when Ty walked into the room.
He looked a bit breathless and rushed, as if he were running late. But other than that, he looked impeccable, as always. And handsome. I hadn’t seen him since the fiasco in his mother’s driveway on Saturday. That day I’d wondered if Ty suspected me of Richard’s murder, if he was working with the police to prove it. I hadn’t learned anything to change my opinion.
Ty stood off to the side while Jeanette talked; then something caught his eye, so he walked to the door. A woman waited there. Blond, really nice looking, dressed in a suit that fit her perfectly, carrying a folder.
My heart jumped. It was the woman I’d seen him window-shopping with in Pasadena that night I’d gone out with Marcie. What was she doing here?
Jeanette kept talking but I watched the two of them. They spoke quietly for a few seconds, and then Blondie pulled a document from the folder. She flipped a page, pointed to something, and Ty studied it.
Oh my God. She works for Holt’s. For him. His secretary.
Marcie had said Blondie wasn’t Ty’s girlfriend—when will I learn to listen to her opinion?—and she was right. But instead of feeling better, I felt worse.
The two of them stood side by side, looking over the document. Not touching, but connected. Both understanding it, working together to solve a problem or handle some situation.
And suddenly, I wanted to be the one working on a problem, solving something, handling a situation. I didn’t want to be sitting here in this stupid meeting, watching Blondie in her great outfit, conferring quietly with Ty.
He nodded, finally, and glanced at her. She nodded too, then walked away.
“Sarah?” he called softly, and took a step toward her.
She stopped and turned back. I couldn’t see Ty’s face, but whatever he said made her smile.
I hate my life.
Sarah left, Jeanette finished her spiel, and Ty took over the meeting. He thanked her and echoed her words about what great employees we all were, before he finally got down to business.
“As you all know, this Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year,” he said. “And, due to tragic circumstances, we find ourselves short on personnel. Our annual surprise merchandise campaign kicks off and we have to be ready when we open the doors at five a.m. on Friday.”
A groan rumbled through the room.
Ty smiled, then said, “But in order to be ready, that means some of us will have to work on Thursday. Thanksgiving Day.”
An even bigger groan erupted. Employees rolled their eyes and shook their heads, and complained to everybody seated around them. Shannon turned and glared at me again.
“And to compensate for time away from your families on this very special day,” Ty said, “everyone who works will receive four times their usual hourly wage.”
The room got quiet.
Mom had been planning Thanksgiving for a couple of weeks now, and from what I’d overheard, our usual family holiday gathering was expected. Juanita and her daughters would spend two days preparing the feast; then some of my parents’ friends would come to eat, along with a few aunts and uncles, and my sister, of course, on break from UCLA.
This year Mom was serving Russian cuisine—who knew?—and while several cases of vodka would surely get everyone through the day much easier, blinis, smoked fish, and beef Stroganoff didn’t seem all that festive to me, no matter how fresh the noodles.
My sister would tell everyone about her classes—Mom would mention her 4.0 GPA—and then she’d talk about her last modeling assignment, then her next modeling assignment, and before the day was over we’d all end up in the den watching the webcast from my brother in the Middle East, looking very handsome in his flight suit and surrounded by all his friends, and Mom would ask questions; then Dad would remind her that everything my brother did over there was top secret. Then we’d all have dessert, which could have been the saving grace of the occasion, and while I don’t know what Russians have for dessert, I’m pretty sure it’s not pumpkin pie.
I raised my hand. “I’ll work.”
CHAPTER 14
“Things are absolutely frantic here today,” Mom declared as she let me in the front door of her house. She had a glass of white wine in her hand and wore a YSL blouse and pencil skirt.
I followed her through the silent house to the kitchen. Juanita and her two grown daughters were chopping, grating and mixing, and chatting quietly in Spanish. Pots were boiling on the stove. Something smelled funny.
Mom dropped into the chair at the little table across the room and gestured with her wineglass.
“Guests will arrive tomorrow at noon, and I have many, many things to handle before then,” Mom said. “It’s frantic here. Just frantic.”
In front of her on the table were three lists she was making. One list was for the gardener. The second was a list of things for Juanita to do, and the last was a list of things Juanita had to tell the staff to do. Beside these lay a copy of Vogue magazine Mom was flipping through.
My mom’s idea of frantic.
I hadn’t told her I wouldn’t be here for Thanksgiving dinner, even though I’d known for a few days now. I decided it was better to tell her in person.
“About tomorrow,” I said, and sat down across from her.
She tapped a photo in the magazine. “Have you seen what Michael Kors is doing this season?”
“I know it’s Thanksgiving, a family occasion,” I said. “But I won’t be here.”
Mom paused, a well-manicured fingernail pressed against the glossy page. “Do you realize what this means?”
Okay, at this point a number of things might come to mind: it’s a family holiday and my brother is in the Middle East; two of her children will be absent; relatives and family friends will miss seeing me; it just won’t be the same without me there.
But my mom said, “This will completely throw off my dinner table seating.”
She launched into crisis-management mode. I waited while she added more items to all three of her lists—even the gardener’s, for some reason—and had Juanita refill her wineglass.
“So, why won’t you be here?” Mom asked, finally.
“I’m feeding the homeless.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Where?”
“Bel Air,” I said.
She thought about it for a moment, and I knew she was imagining how this story would play tomorrow when her guests arrived and asked where I was.
“Oh. Well, all right.” She turned back to her magazine. “That reminds me. Do you know Ty Cameron?”
I jumped, but Mom was looking at an Oscar de la Renta evening wear photo spread and didn’t notice. I’d never gotten around to telling Mom that I’d taken a part-time job at Holt’s, so I didn’t know how she’d linked us.
“Maxine Davis was at the fund-raiser on Saturday,” Mom said.
None of this connected but I knew to wait. It would come.
“Honestly, you wouldn’t believe what that woman had on,” Mom said, flipping the page.
Patience…patience…patience….
“She pointed him out to me—good gracious, he’s a handsome thing—and mentioned that she saw him talking with you.” Mom looked up at me. “Do you know him?”
Lying to someone straight to their face, especially someone you care about, isn’t easy. Luckily, I’ve had years of practice. Not to be mean. It’s more instinct. Self-preservation.
Mom had asked the question easily enough, but I knew her too well to fall for her casual, innocent tone. She sensed a possible relationship on the horizon.
I frowned, as if I were thinking hard, then shook my head. “No, the name isn’t familiar.”
“Maxine is positive she saw you talking to him,” Mom insisted. Now I could
see that her thoughts had raced on. She was mentally picturing our engagement party.
I deepened my frown, as if I were thinking really hard this time, then said, “Oh, I know. It was probably that guy I talked to out back.”
“Oh, so you did meet him.” Mom’s exquisitely arched brows drew upward and I knew she was picking my wedding colors.
“Doesn’t he already have a girlfriend?” I asked, thinking of Sarah, the blonde I’d seen him window-shopping with that night in Pasadena, then again at the store. I was pretty sure of my instincts when I’d seen them discussing business—and, of course, Marcie is always right about these things—but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get a confirmation.
“Not according to Maxine,” Mom said with the conviction that only comes from talking smack with the biggest gossip in your social group. “So, what were you two chatting about?”
She tried to sound casual, but behind those innocent eyes of hers, I could tell she was deciding on my veil and headpiece.
“He’d noticed your fruit bouquets. Said they were fabulous,” I told her.
“Really?”
I saw my imaginary walk down the aisle vanish from my mom’s mind.
“He thought they were the hit of the day,” I added.
“Well, how nice.” Mom smiled and went back to flipping pages again.
“Okay, so I’ve got to go,” I said, getting up.
“Did you bring the paperwork for the fruit bouquets at the fund-raiser?” Mom asked. “The accountant, what’s-his-name, is having a hissy fit for all sorts of records.”
I had it in my car but I wasn’t going to risk coming into the house for a second time today.
“I’ll bring it over next time,” I promised.
Mom didn’t seem to hear me. She was studying a Lord & Taylor ad.
“Maybe I’ll ask around,” she said.
I knew what she meant but I didn’t want to give her any encouragement.
“Maxine might not be completely up to date,” Mom mused. She gazed off across the kitchen, but I’m sure she wasn’t noticing how hard Juanita and her daughters were working. She was thinking about Ty and any possible girlfriend he might have.
“I’ll let you know,” Mom promised, turning back to her magazine.
I wanted to wave her off, tell her not to, but decided it was better to let it go.
“Okay, Mom, bye.”
She flipped to the next page, and I left.
When I got to my apartment I turned the TV to the Food Network. It had become my porn channel, thanks to my new healthier lifestyle. I salivated through a half hour of Italian cooking, then actually started to drool when that woman who starts every recipe with a stick of butter came on.
That’s when it hit me: I needed to modify my new lifestyle.
No sense in knocking myself out with an improved diet and increased exercise, I decided. I could cut back—just a little—and still achieve outstanding results. Tackling both was too big a first step. I should pick just one.
Exercise, of course. It made perfect sense. I walked all the time at Holt’s, which increased my heart rate and boosted my metabolism, so if I added a couple of days at the gym, that should be more than enough. And I could incorporate better eating later.
Relieved, I scrounged in the back of my cupboard for my emergency bag of Oreos, and sat down on the couch.
My list of murder suspects still lay on the coffee table where I’d left it several days ago. I picked it up.
The only two names on the list were Sophia Garcia, whom Richard had threatened to fire for supposedly abusing the company discount—which I still found incomprehensible—and Glenna Webb, Richard’s lover—which I still found repulsive. I had no new info on either of these suspects, but I had more names to add to the list.
First, the neighbor whom Richard was having yet another fling with. I hadn’t pictured Richard as such a stud that women would be clamoring for bedroom time with him, but I hadn’t imagined you could die of being an asshole either; Richard had proved me wrong on both counts.
Also, the neighbor’s husband. Both of them had motive for revenge, even if I didn’t know the specifics. I could assume that Detective Shuman and his soon-to-be-retired partner Detective Madison had come up with something substantial, since they considered one of this husband and wife team a suspect. Yet those same detectives had put me on their suspect list, so did their suspicions about these two have any merit?
I looked at the list of suspects and, with some reluctance, added Jeanette Avery’s name. She had reason to want Richard out of her store. Jeanette was privy to store gossip and surely knew what sort of employee Richard was, that he’d nearly succeeded in getting the manager of the Northridge store fired. She probably figured he’d transferred to her store, gunning for her position.
Shuman had told me that Richard had been dead for about an hour before I found the body. I had to find out where I’d reached Jeanette when I’d phoned her that night, before I’d know if she was a viable suspect.
Then I got a little chill. That night, Detective Madison had asked if I’d seen or heard anyone in the stockroom. I’d blown off his question, but now that I thought about it a little more, it wasn’t so unreasonable. The stockroom was huge, two stories, with gigantic shelving units that reached the ceiling, a janitor’s closet, a forest of mannequins, plus that huge machine near the loading dock that wrapped merchandise awaiting the returns truck.
Maybe the murderer had actually been in the stockroom, hiding. Maybe I’d seen him—or her—come or go through the entrance by the intimates department.
Oh my God. Had Richard’s killer been right in front of me—and I hadn’t seen him?
Grace deserved a medal. An award, a plaque, a historical marker, a new car. Something. Not only did she know and understand each of the zillion tasks required of a customer service booth employee; she also had to train me.
The girl who usually worked here supposedly had food poisoning, but I thought she was off shopping, or something. I hoped she got back here soon so I could go back to the sales floor; straightening socks didn’t seem so bad right now.
I’d been at this for a few days now and I was still as overwhelmed as when I started. And no matter how many times I screwed up, Grace never got upset or short with me, just explained things one more time, and told me to try again.
I was never going to get out of this place.
The customer service booth was at the back of the store near the public restrooms, the customer convenience phones, the bridal registry, the offices and training room, and the employee break room. The counters were high, the ceiling was low, and we were locked in here behind a door with a keypad. Grace said it was to discourage would-be robbers from jumping the counter to get to the cash office and safe, located behind a partition at the rear of the booth, but I was convinced it was to keep us employees from escaping.
“Can I help you?” I asked, facing the woman at the head of the long line awaiting service.
It was Wednesday night. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving. Why weren’t these people at home cooking?
“Do you have layaway?” the woman asked, dumping an armload of men’s briefs on the counter.
“No.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “You should have layaway. Customers need layaway.”
People think that because you work in the customer service booth, you know everything and are responsible for everything.
“That’s our policy, ma’am,” I said, and made “ma’am” sound like “bitch” with almost no effort at all. I’d been practicing.
“I want to speak to your supervisor,” the woman announced.
“Sure. Grace?”
She was working at the computer at the back of the booth, looking up stock numbers, something I was destined to spend hours on. She walked over.
Grace was barely five feet tall—I towered over her—petite, with short blond hair she could roll out of bed with, not touch, and still everyone would think a
stylist on Rodeo Drive had spent hours on it.
“This woman thinks we should have layaway,” I told her.
The woman made some sort of noise.
“You know, we get requests for that all the time,” Grace said, with the most charming of-course-you-can smile I’d seen in the entire store. She pulled a customer comment card from under the counter. “Would you fill this out?”
“Darn right I will.” The woman snapped it out of Grace’s hand, gave me a withering look, and moved down the counter to write, taking her briefs with her.
“Can I help you?” I asked the next person in line.
“I’d like to return this,” the woman said, handing me a blouse.
“Do you have a receipt?” I’d said that about a million times, today alone.
“No. Sorry. I lost it,” she said, with an apologetic smile. “But I paid twenty-five dollars for it.”
“I’ll have to look it up,” I said.
This part of the job wasn’t so bad. Grace had trained me on the inventory computer and it was kind of cool to scroll through the thousands of items and see everything Holt’s stocked. I spent a lot of hours looking up merchandise returned with no tag or receipt, searching for the description and the manufacturer, then seeing the original price and the clearance price, how many were in stock here and in other Holt’s locations, and how many had been returned to the manufacturer as defective or unsaleable. It was a quick way to get an overview of what customers bought. I wondered if anybody ever brought the corporate buyers into the store, showed them the god-awful clothes on the clearance racks, and asked what the hell they’d been thinking.
I found the info on the customer’s blouse. She wasn’t going to like it.
“It’s been marked down for clearance,” I told her. “The price now is six dollars.”
“Six dollars?” she exclaimed. “I just bought that blouse.”
“In June,” I told her, and nodded toward the inventory computer. “We stocked these in June and clearanced them in August. It’s November.”
“But I paid twenty-five dollars for it,” she said.
Handbags and Homicide Page 13