Slay Bells and Satchels (Haley Randolph Mystery Series)

by Dorothy Howell

  I’ve really got to get a handle on my life.

  I clocked-in, stowed my tote—after I erased my name from the whiteboard, of course—and went to the elf dressing room down the hall. Mostly Holt’s employees were inside. The only actresses present were Alyssa and Nikki. My spirits dipped a little. None of the other actresses had come back.

  Everyone seemed to be in a good mood, talking and laughing, taking turns getting into their costumes behind the privacy curtain. Others applied makeup and styled their hair in front of the mirrors.

  “Hi, Haley,” Alyssa said. “How’s it going?”

  “I’m still not loving the costume,” I said, grabbing it off the rack. “Can’t you get any of your actress friends to come back to work?”

  “Not likely.” She leaned toward the mirror and applied bright red lipstick. “Not with that homicide detective outside the store.”

  I caught her gaze in the mirror.

  “You mean Detective Shuman?” I asked.

  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that Alyssa remembered Shuman from the day of McKenna’s murder and recognized him this morning. First of all, Shuman was kind of hot. Second, Alyssa had probably never dealt much with a homicide detective. Both were good reasons for Shuman to stick in her head.

  “Does he have any idea who killed McKenna?” Alyssa asked.

  Immediately, I felt like I was a homicide detective myself—which was way cool, of course—and reluctant to divulge info about the investigation.

  “He’s following a number of leads,” I said.

  “Did he talk to Jasmine Grady?” she asked, turning to me. “She was majorly mad when McKenna ditched her owing back-rent.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “He really needs to talk to Trent,” Alyssa said. “Tell that detective to talk to Trent. Trent Daniels. He was totally in love with her, and she treated him like garbage.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that,” I said.

  I went behind the privacy curtain and changed into the elf costume. When I came out, most of the girls were gone. Alyssa was still in front of the mirror.

  “Listen, Haley,” she said. “Maybe I should talk to that detective myself, tell him everything about McKenna. She was a real bitch to just about everybody.”

  Alyssa seemed concerned about finding McKenna’s killer. But I guess that was normal since she really needed to work and was probably a little afraid that some psycho elf murderer was on the loose in the store and she might be the next victim.

  Still, like with Jasmine, I couldn’t be sure whether she was genuinely concerned or if something else was going on. Who knew with actresses?

  “I heard that McKenna had just gotten a role in a sitcom,” I said. “Did you know that?”

  “Everybody knew it.” Alyssa turned back to the mirror. “McKenna made sure of it.”

  “How did that happen?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” Alyssa said.

  “She never said?” I asked. “Wasn’t she blabbing about it to everyone?”

  “Well, she didn’t tell me,” Alyssa said. “I’d better get out there.”

  She grabbed her handbag off the floor to store in her assigned locker in the break room, and my heart did a totally unexpected oh-wow flutter. Alyssa had a Louis Vuitton satchel. It was gorgeous. I definitely needed to add that to my Christmas wish list.

  Jeez, how could Alyssa—a struggling actress—afford such a mega expensive bag? I wondered if maybe her mom was tempting her with pricey handbags to try and convince her to give up on acting and come home, as Jasmine’s mother was doing.

  Alyssa slung the satchel over her shoulder and disappeared out the door.

  My spirits dipped. False alarm.

  Alyssa’s satchel was a knock-off—and not even a good one. The handles were wrong, which was always a dead giveaway, plus the classic LVT print had been mixed with their checkerboard pattern in a way that screamed I-can’t-afford-a-genuine-bag-so-I-bought-this-thing.

  I’ve got an eye for counterfeit handbags. Marcie and I had been buying knock-off designer bags from the Garment District and giving purse parties for a long time now, so I could spot a fake from a mile away.

  By the time I’d put on my elf makeup and Santa hat, I was the last one to leave the dressing room. The store was open now and I could hear the usual commotion from shoppers on the sales floor along with strains of “Winter Wonderland” on the PA.

  I spotted Jeanette standing in the hallway. Yikes! How many more fashion fiascos should I be expected to endure for minimum wage?

  Today she had on a dress—white, with a black collar and, for no conceivable reason, a yellow ruffle at the hem.

  She looked like an over-stuffed Christmas goose.

  I expected Jeanette to give me the evil eye for being tardy, but she was busy talking to someone.

  He was a big guy, well over six feet tall, maybe mid-twenties with dark hair that had needed a trim at least a month ago. He wore jeans and a faded, slightly stretched-out T-shirt with “Brooks & Dunn” and steer horns printed on the front. Somehow, he looked familiar.

  I stopped at the customer service booth. My friend Grace was on duty. We’d worked in the booth together lots of times and shared the same ideas on customer service—none of which would be found in the official Holt’s handbook.

  Grace was about my age and attended college—which, for some reason, she actually liked—and always did the coolest things with her hair. Not long ago she’d dyed it Martian green. Topped today with a Santa hat, the look put a whole new spin on Christmas.

  Two customers waited in line but Grace ignored them—see why we get along so well?—and brought me one of the charity donation booklets that management insisted had to be stored there.

  “We’re not doing so great in the contest,” Grace said. “The other stores are killing us. Looks like we’ll end up with lumps of coal in our stockings.”

  “It’s not my fault,” I insisted.

  “Yeah, Haley, it kinda is,” she said, and turned to wait on a customer.

  Jeanette walked by with the guy she’d been talking to in the hallway. They exchanged a few more words, and he left. Jeanette spotted me. Her already sour expression worsened until she looked like the remains of a fruit basket two weeks after Christmas.

  “We’re far, far behind all the other stores in this contest, Haley. We have a lot of ground to make up,” she said. “We desperately need those actresses back in the store to talk with our customers about charitable donations.”

  “Can’t you just hire new actresses?” I asked.

  “Word has gotten out about the murder,” Jeanette said, and narrowed her eyes at me. “No one will work here.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

  “The two actresses have far out-performed our own employees,” she said. “You and the other girls who are filling in as elves are going to have to push much, much harder for donations, if we’re to have any chance of a respectable showing in this contest.”

  I thought of a comeback but didn’t say it aloud because I needed to keep this job.

  Sleeping with the store owner will only get me so far.

  “Are you following our customer service guidelines and asking every customer to donate to our children’s charity drive?” Jeanette asked.

  “See for yourself,” I said, and held out the booklet Grace had just handed me. “I had to come back for a new booklet.”

  Jeanette glared at me like she didn’t believe me, or something. I thought it best to change the subject.

  “Who was that guy you were just talking to?” I asked, my mind spinning, trying to recall where I’d seen him. “Did he used to work here?”

  “He’s Trent Daniels, the boyfriend of that girl who was murdered,” Jeanette said. “The one you found in the stockroom.”

  Jeez, was absolutely everybody ticked off at me for finding McKenna’s body? Wasn’t wearing this elf costume punishment enough?

  I hate
my life.

  “He’s completely devastated,” Jeanette went on, like that was my fault, too. “He wanted to know if he could see the stockroom where her body was found.”

  My brain cells finally locked onto the reason Trent looked familiar to me. I’d seen him in one of the photos in Jasmine’s apartment. He was standing in the background looking on as McKenna danced.

  “I had to refuse his request, of course,” Jeanette said, just as if I was interested. “Can you imagine the—the trauma that might have resulted?”

  Trauma was code for lawsuit , of course.

  “I have to get to work,” I said to Jeanette, and walked away.

  I was, of course, in no hurry to do any actual work. I wanted to catch Trent Daniels and talk to him about McKenna.

  This morning when I’d spoken with Detective Shuman he’d been all about the money McKenna would earn from her role in the sitcom. Even though I knew more was going on with her personal life, I figured Shuman had a point.

  Nobody I’d spoken to so far had any info on how McKenna had gotten the role. It seemed kind of weird to me that she hadn’t told everyone. But I figured she’d told her boyfriend—and hopefully, he’d actually listened.

  By the time I made it to the front of the store, there was no sign of Trent. I dashed to the door and spotted him pulling away in a Honda Civic.

  No way was I running outside to flag him down wearing this elf costume.

  “Hi, Haley,” Sandy called.

  I saw her standing by the fake fireplace while customers filled out the entry forms for the contest. I walked over.

  “I’m glad you’re still speaking to me,” I said.

  “You’re my friend,” Sandy told me. “Even if you did ruin our chances of winning those great prizes in the contest.”

  Oh my God, now even one of my closest Holt’s BFFs was blaming me.

  At this point, there was nothing to do but tell an all-out, shame-on-me-but-I’m-desperate lie.

  “I think the police are closing in on the killer, and that means the actresses will come back,” I said. “McKenna’s boyfriend was just here talking to Jeanette.”

  “Really?” Sandy’s face lit up.

  “I’m pretty sure he told her the good news,” I said. “He just walked past. Did you see him? The guy in the jeans and the Brooks & Dunn T-shirt.”

  Sandy’s smile faded and she looked a little confused.

  “That was McKenna’s boyfriend?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

  I got a weird feeling.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Why?”

  “He was in the store the other day. I remember because I saw his tat,” Sandy said and touched the back of her neck. “It’s a big gold star.”

  I hadn’t noticed a tattoo on Trent, but Sandy’s boyfriend was an ink artist so she paid attention to that sort of thing.

  “He had on a Santa suit,” Sandy said. “It was the first day of the sale. The morning McKenna was murdered.”

  Chapter 8

  Now I had two absolutely-for-sure suspects, and one kind-of suspect.

  I went to the Shoe Department stockroom, ignoring customers with ease, and closed the door behind me. I needed time to think about my suspects which, since the murder had happened in Holt’s, technically meant that I was working.

  Jasmine was my first suspect. I didn’t want her to be guilty because I liked her. She was trying really hard to live her dream, and had a lot working against her.

  But I couldn’t shake the fact that she’d avoided my questions about why she hadn’t showed up to work at Holt’s the day of McKenna’s murder, if she was really so desperate for money. Likewise, she hadn’t told me whether or not she’d actually come to the store that morning.

  It seemed like Jasmine had a good reason to want to keep McKenna alive in the hope of finally getting her back-rent. But maybe McKenna had told her she’d never pay her, even after those big fat sitcom paychecks finally rolled in. From what I’d heard about McKenna, she was moving ahead with her life and not looking back.

  Trent Daniels also made a good suspect. Yeah, he really loved McKenna, according to everybody who’d talked to him—including Detective Shuman. But if he’d found out she was just using him for a free place to stay and thought she’d dump him as soon as she started collecting her twenty-thousand-dollar paychecks, maybe he’d gotten angry. Maybe he’d snapped—Shuman had said there was something weird about the guy. Plus, according to Sandy, Trent was in the store at the time of McKenna’s murder, disguised in a Santa costume. Showing up this morning, acting all broken-hearted in front of Jeanette, asking to see the stockroom might have been a way to throw suspicion off of himself.

  I’d seen the back door to the stockroom open that morning. Jasmine or Trent could have slipped in, murdered McKenna, then left totally unnoticed.

  Alyssa ranked kind of in the middle on my personal rate-a-murder-suspect scale. She’d talked trash about McKenna every chance she got, and seemed way interested in Detective Shuman’s investigation—almost too interested. These were sort of lame reasons to consider her a full-on suspect, so I put her in my mental kind-of suspect category.

  Of course, a motive would be nice.

  I paced around the stockroom, thinking hard, trying to come up with something—jeez, I could really use a Snickers bar right now. A chocolate-coated brain boost couldn’t hurt.

  There had to be some reason McKenna had been murdered. Who would want her dead?

  Yeah, she’d skipped out on rent, used a guy who probably loved her for a free place to crash, and alienated everybody around her by bragging about her sitcom role. This made her a crappy person, and an even crappier friend and girlfriend. While some people probably wished McKenna were dead, I didn’t see where any of this would cause someone to actually murder her.

  I kept coming back to the rent McKenna owed Jasmine. Maybe Shuman was right. Maybe this whole thing was all about money.

  I knew just who to ask.

  I left the stockroom and successfully avoided two customers—one of which actually yelled for me, which was way rude, if you ask me—and circled the store until I spotted Nikki in ILA—retail speak for the Intimates, Lingerie and Accessories Department. I ducked down behind a rack of demi-cup, wireless push-up bras while she talked to a customer, then strolled over.

  “Hi, Nikki,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  “Cool,” she said, and held out her charity donation booklet. “Look. I’ve gotten like ten donations this morning already. I just walked up to the customers and asked for a donation, and they all wanted to contribute.”

  Wow, how weird was that?

  “They all loved that ‘ho-ho-Holt’s-for-the-holidays’ line,” she said.

  Crap. That stupid marketing phrase. I still wasn’t saying it—no matter how many donations I might get.

  “I was thinking about what a tough break it was for McKenna,” I said, “getting the big role, then getting killed.”

  Yeah, I know, I’d hit her with a hard topic without any sort of transition, something I’m sure all the top-rated detectives frowned on. But considering that Nikki was actually talking to customers, I couldn’t take a chance that we’d be interrupted.

  “Wow, yeah,” Nikki said. “Like maybe they’ll make a movie out of it, or something.”

  “How did she get the role?” I asked.

  Nikki shrugged. “I don’t know. She never said. I just saw it on her Facebook page one day. Getting the role was a super-big deal. She didn’t even have an agent or anything.”

  “How could she get a part like that without an agent?” I asked.

  Nikki thought for a minute. “Maybe she won a contest.”

  Now I was really confused.

  “Production companies hold contests for roles?” I asked.

  “Sometimes agents, casting directors, and producers will hold a contest on Twitter. It’s sort of like their way of giving back to the industry and helping actors who are struggling,” Nikki said. “
You know, they tweet that the fiftieth—or whatever—person who tweets back will get a meeting, one-on-one, where they can ask questions and get personal advice. It’s way cool. Alyssa won a meeting with a producer once.”

  I could imagine how fabulous face-time with a Hollywood insider would be to an aspiring actor.

  “So did Alyssa get offered a great role or something?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. I just heard about it from somebody else,” Nikki said. Her usual perky smile faded a little. “Alyssa’s been around for a long time, you know, trying to break in. She’s older than she looks. She’s like twenty-five already, or something. You know, she’s really getting up there.”

  Nikki thought twenty-five was old? I’ll be twenty five in a few months. Yikes!

  Nikki leaned in a little. “I think Alyssa is getting kind of desperate. Last year she shaved her head for a role.”

  “She shaved her head?” I might have shouted that.

  “Yep,” Nikki said. “And they only paid her a thousand dollars.”

  “One lousy thousand dollars?” I’m sure I yelled that.

  Oh my God. I couldn’t believe somebody would actually do that. I would never be that desperate—not even for a Breathless satchel. That’s how I feel about my hair.

  “So, I don’t know, maybe McKenna won a contest and whoever she met with got her the role,” Nikki said. Her gaze wandered off, then came back to me. “There’re some customers by the panties. Do you want to ask them about the charity donation?”

  “The what?”

  Nikki held out her booklet. “The charity donation for children.”

  I was way too traumatized by that whole head-shaving thing to wait on customers. I walked away, forcing the image from my mind.

  I could really use a mocha frappuccino right now to steady my nerves.

  Trent Daniels popped into my head. Of my two yeah-they-really-could-have-done-it suspects, and my one I’m-suspicious-but-don’t-have-any-actual-reason-to-be suspect, Trent was the only one I hadn’t spoken with yet. Shuman had told me he’d talked with him already and had picked up some weirdness but not a he-did-it vibe, but I didn’t know whether Shuman had brought up McKenna’s big sitcom break.