Shop Til You Drop Dead (A Hollis Brannigan Mystery)

by Dorothy Howell

  The memories threatened to overcome her. She looked away, gulped, and composed herself.

  “After she passed away, I had the unenviable chore of deciding what should be done with her possessions,” Mrs. Walker-Pierce said. “I began the process of going through her personal belongings only yesterday.”

  Something clicked for me then.

  “And that’s when you found the suitcase?” I asked.

  She nodded. “It was hidden behind a false wall deep inside her dressing suite.”

  “This isn’t about a missing dog, is it?” I said.

  Barbara Walker-Pierce pressed her lips together and shook her head.

  “No, it isn’t. And I apologize for bringing you out here under false pretenses,” she said.

  I guess I could have been annoyed, but instead I was intrigued.

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  She flipped open the suitcase. It was filled with cash, loose bills that seemed to have been carelessly tossed inside. Atop them lay a handgun.

  “Everything about this situation must be held in the strictest confidence,” she insisted. “You can’t tell a soul, not even anyone at your employer. You’re bound by law.”

  Priests, lawyers, and doctors were required to maintain confidentiality. But investigators at Fisher Joyce? I doubted it. Yet this certainly wasn’t the time to say so.

  “No one can know about this. Absolutely no one,” Mrs. Walker-Pierce told me. “I won’t have Aunt Edith’s good name ruined—or even called into question. I won’t tolerate any hint of a scandal. Her reputation in this city is golden, completely beyond reproach. As I mentioned earlier, a library is about to be named in her honor. I won’t let anything interfere with that.”

  “I understand your need to safeguard Mrs. Bagley’s name and reputation,” I agreed. “But, honestly, I don’t understand your concern. Finding cash and a handgun in her home isn’t a crime.”

  “I haven’t told you everything,” she said. “You see, I think Aunt Edith was murdered.”

  Chapter 3

  “See for yourself,” Mrs. Walker-Pierce said.

  She opened a set of double doors on the other side of the master bedroom and I followed her into a massive dressing suite. It was decorated in feminine shades of mauve and sage green, and smelled of the remnants of perfume spritzes, blushes, and powders.

  A circular tufted seat in pink velvet dominated the center of the room. Nearby was an old-fashioned vanity with a bench and a huge round mirror surrounded by bare light bulbs. Delicate perfume bottles and atomizers sat on the dressing table, alongside a silver brush and comb set, and hand mirror.

  I imagined Edith Bagley seated there applying her makeup, chatting while her maid styled her hair, then slipping into a fabulous ensemble for an evening on the town.

  On the other side of the dressing suite racks held gowns, coats, dresses, blouses, skirts and pants, most of them encased in clear plastic garment bags. Shelves displayed shoes for every imaginable occasion, as well as hats, handbags, scarves, and gloves. I spotted a cabinet with a lock, where I assumed Edith Bagley’s jewelry was kept.

  Triple, full-length mirrors stood at the rear of the suite where, no doubt, Edith had studied her appearance and decided whether her selections were appropriate for whatever event she was attending. A charity ball, perhaps, a polo match, or a fundraiser of some sort.

  As with everything else I’d seen in the home, this room and its furnishing seemed to have been frozen in place while time went on without them.

  “Here,” Mrs. Walker-Pierce said and, with some effort pushed aside dozens of garment bags containing evening gowns.

  She pointed to a tall, narrow panel in the wall that stood slightly ajar—a pocket door, I realized, that had been hidden behind the gowns.

  “I’d decided to start with Aunt Edith’s evening wear. She hadn’t worn these gowns in many, many years. I thought perhaps I’d have them appraised and auctioned for charity. Vintage clothing is quite the thing these days,” she said. “That’s when I spotted the door. It was open half an inch. The house had settled over time, I suppose, or the wood had shrunk. Perhaps an earthquake had jarred it.”

  Mrs. Walker-Pierce grasped the edge of the door and shoved it open. A naked bulb hung overhead. She pulled the cord.

  The harsh light cast shadows over the space, a long, narrow room maybe twenty feet long and ten feet wide. A thick layer of dust lay on everything, disturbed in places by Mrs. Walker-Pierce’s previous visit.

  Five pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage—two large suitcases, a train case, and two hat-boxes—sat in the center of the room.

  “Do they have—” I began.

  “No,” she replied. “I checked. There’s no cash inside.”

  “You opened them?” I asked.

  “I searched thoroughly. Every pocket. I tugged at every seam thinking perhaps there was a hidden compartment, but I found nothing inside any of them,” she reported.

  “Guns?” I asked.

  “Only this.”

  Mrs. Walker-Pierce picked up a book lying on one of the suitcases and passed it to me. It was about the size of a hardcover novel, bound in hand-tooled red leather, carved with vines and rosebuds. The name “Edith Ingram” was in the lower right corner.

  “Her journal,” I realized.

  “Aunt Edith journaled religiously. Her volumes are on her bookshelves,” Mrs. Walker-Pierce said, gesturing through the wall toward the bedroom. “I’ve never seen this particular one.”

  She took the journal back from me, gazed at it for a moment then said, “It was written when she was quite young.”

  “You read it?” I asked.

  “My gracious, no,” she said and placed it once more atop the suitcase. “I glanced through it and saw the dates. Her first year at UCLA, and the year she studied abroad. Aunt Edith was an art major.”

  The room was warm and airless, and I didn’t see that anything more could to be gained by standing in there and taking the chance of sweating in my loaner Michael Kors business suit.

  I walked into the dressing area. Mrs. Walker-Pierce closed the pocket door, pushed the garment bags in front of it, and followed me into Edith Bagley’s bedroom.

  “I don’t understand this. I don’t understand any of it,” she said. “Why is the entire set of luggage hidden in that room when only one piece of it contained money?”

  “Her husband, or perhaps an astute maid, might have realized one piece was missing and asked questions,” I said. “She hid them all and probably bought another set secretly.”

  “But why would that amount of cash be inside a suitcase, in the first place?” Mrs. Walker-Pierce shook her head. “Where could it have come from?”

  A number of possibilities popped into my head—embezzled, stolen, or the proceeds from the sale of illegal drugs or black market art objects, maybe even a ransom demand.

  None of those things, however, seemed likely given what I knew about Edith Bagley.

  I walked to the bed and took a closer look at the bills inside the suitcase. They were mostly small dominations, and none had been printed in the past several decades.

  Edith Bagley could have been a very different person back then.

  “Fifty thousand dollars is a great deal of money to leave lying around,” Mrs. Walker-Pierce said.

  “You counted it?” I asked.

  “That’s how I discovered the gun. It was underneath the money,” she said, then frowned. “I think it’s loaded.”

  Thanks to my uncles, I knew cars. And I couldn’t have worked at Beau and Buster’s Used Car Emporium hunting down skips, calling on customers who wouldn’t pay, and locating cars that had to be repo’d without knowing about guns too.

  This was a Model 19 Smith & Wesson 357 Magnum with a black finish and walnut grips, a six-round revolver preferred by criminals for decades because the spent shell casings weren’t ejected, thereby leaving no DNA or fingerprint evidence behind at a crime scene. It was a big caliber, b
adass gun meant for killing things, easily available at gun shops, private shows, and in back alley deals.

  “Did you know about the hidden room prior to finding this?” I asked. “Did anyone know?”

  “Houses such as this were built during a very different era. Secret passageways and hidden rooms were the norm. Theft was always a concern, as were kidnappings,” Mrs. Walker-Pierce said. “But that was ages ago. I can’t imagine that anyone who’d worked for Aunt Edith in the past twenty years would have known about that secret room.”

  “What makes you think your aunt might have been murdered?” I asked. “Was there something suspicious about her death?”

  Mrs. Walker-Pierce shook her head. “Everything seemed quite normal, if you will. Aunt Edith’s health was relatively good. She experienced a few medical problems, an issue with her heart earlier this year, arthritis, some forgetfulness—all routine, for her age. But the body will hold up for only so long. Her night nurse found her one morning in bed and thought she was sleeping then realized she’d passed. No one was surprised, really. The doctor said her heart had simply given out. It made perfect sense.”

  “Was there an autopsy?” I asked.

  “There was no need for one,” Mrs. Walker-Pierce said. “Nothing about her death seemed suspicious at the time.”

  “So why do you think she was murdered?” I asked.

  “Two things,” she said. “In the week prior to her death, a neighbor reported seeing a strange car parked nearby.”

  I guessed that in Hancock Park a strange vehicle could have been something cheaper than a Cadillac.

  “Also, the home security company detected an alarm at one of the windows at the rear of the house,” she went on.

  “They came out and investigated?” I asked.

  “They did.”

  “Were you here?” I asked. “Did you speak with their technician?”

  “I wasn’t aware there was a problem. Aunt Edith handled the situation herself,” she told me. “I only learned of it after her passing as I was tending to her business affairs and found their invoice.”

  “And their report?”

  “It was nothing. A false alarm. Something about how the sensors age and don’t make proper contact when it’s windy.” Mrs. Walker-Pierce uttered a disgusted grunt. “And of course, they wanted to sell Aunt Edith a new, upgraded system.”

  “Had your aunt had a problem with a false alarm before?” I asked.

  “Not that I’m aware of. Genevieve, Aunt Edith’s housekeeper, never mentioned it.” Mrs. Walker-Pierce paused for a moment then said, “I think now that someone had attempted to break into the house. Surely you see why I’m concerned.”

  “I do,” I agreed.

  A strange car spotted in the neighborhood and a possible attempted break-in at the house, both in the week prior to Edith’s death. Add to that the discovery of a ton of cash and a handgun hidden in her bedroom. Who wouldn’t be suspicious?

  “I engaged the services of a security firm to guard the house, at my attorney’s recommendation,” Mrs. Walker-Pierce said. “They patrol the street and grounds, day and night. Word of a passing in this neighborhood might attract undue attention.”

  “Did you call the police?” I asked.

  “Certainly not,” she told me, and looked horrified at the mere thought.

  “Whoever brought that money and gun into the house and hid them here was obviously attempting to involve Aunt Edith in some sort of criminal activity that she absolutely would not have been a party to. This is why the entire episode must be kept secret. It could ruin her reputation, and I will not allow that to happen.”

  I wasn’t completely onboard with her assumption of how the cash and pistol ended up hidden in a secret room, but decided to go along with it for now.

  “Do you have any idea who might have done that?” I asked. “Or any idea of who might have wanted to harm your aunt?”

  Mrs. Walker-Pierce didn’t hesitate, didn’t even bother to pause and think about it.

  “I have no idea whatsoever,” she told me.

  We were quiet for a minute, both of us looking at the cash and the handgun.

  “May I ask for your preliminary thoughts?” she asked.

  My preliminary thought was—what on earth had I gotten myself into?

  I wasn’t qualified to investigate a murder, but how could I tell Mrs. Walker-Pierce that I was really a personal shopper without her knowing that Fisher Joyce hadn’t thought enough of her missing dog case to send a real investigator? Andy might get fired—which most everyone at the company would thank me for, no doubt—but I’d get fired too, and I’d be lucky if I got to shop for even the likes of Zella Mason again. The company’s reputation would take a major hit. They would probably get sued. Edith Bagley would become fodder for late night talk shows, tabloids, and tattler websites. Barbara Walker-Pierce would be humiliated.

  All because of me.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  I squared my shoulders and pushed up my chin.

  “You’ve certainly given me a great deal to consider and work with,” I told her, in what I hoped was a confident voice. “I’ll start my investigation immediately.”

  “No one else at Fisher Joyce must know. I don’t want to take a chance on any information leaking,” she insisted. “I want you—only you—involved in this.”

  “That suits me fine,” I said, which was more true than Mrs. Walker-Pierce could possibly have known.

  “And no police,” she said.

  “Of course,” I said because I really had no idea how I would involve the police anyway.

  “Thank you, Ms. Brannigan,” she said. “You’ve taken quite a load off of my mind.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” I said.

  “This entire affair is preposterous,” she said. “My aunt would never involve herself with something secretive, something that may have gotten her killed. I’m absolutely sure about that.”

  I was absolutely sure about one thing also—Edith Bagley was, indeed, that secretive and that devious because the cash and handgun had been hidden in her secret room for decades, which meant she’d always known about them.

  And maybe, just maybe, they’d gotten her killed.

  Chapter 4

  Okay, so about the night I decided not to return to KCK with Brittany and Toby. The night I spent with Bob Seger.

  Bob Seger. The singer. The one who transformed Tom Cruise into a cultural icon when he danced in his underwear to “Old Time Rock and Roll” in the movie Risky Business. That guy.

  Bob Seger transformed me, too—but not into an icon, cultural or otherwise.

  Still, it was a really cool transformation.

  “Hollywood Nights” did it for me. The day that Toby showed up at our apartment all the way from Kansas City to beg Brittany to come back home with him, she and I were scheduled to work as extras that afternoon. We desperately needed money—and I wasn’t all that happy about hanging out at our apartment with Toby there—so I went to the shoot at the Sunset Gower Studios on Gower Street without Brittany, where I was herded in with the other dozens of extras to wait for a production assistant to tell us when we were needed for the scene they were shooting.

  Filming a movie is slow. I mean, really slow. I didn’t know for sure, but I figured the only thing that could be any slower was if we’d all been in the screenwriter’s office and watched him write it. So to fill the dead time, most of the extras played games on their phone, texted friends, and listened to music.

  That’s when Bob Seger changed my life. I was standing there on Gower Street thinking about going back to KCK the next day with Brittany and Toby, looking up at the Hollywood sign and listening to music on my phone when “Hollywood Nights” began to play. Bob Seger sang about a guy who’d come from the Mid-West, and after spending all night looking down at the lights of L.A. he wondered if he could ever go home. I felt like that guy in the song. I’d seen the bright lights of the big city—and not just
any big city, but Los Angeles—and after hours of staring at the Hollywood sign and listening to that cool song, I knew I could never go home again.

  “Hollis Brannigan? Hollis Brannigan? Hollis Brannigan?”

  I was seated at the conference table at Fisher Joyce and thrust into a Ferris Bueller moment—and out of the really good memory of my night with Bob Seger—by Fern Lundquist, the office manager.

  Fern took her responsibilities very seriously. She was in her fifties, prim and proper, and to some degree made us all regret our decision to work there.

  “Hollis Brannigan?” she intoned once more.

  First of all, I didn’t really know how she could expect anyone to pay attention to her with the gorgeous view of Los Angeles beckoning through the huge windows of the conference room on the sixth floor of our building on Wilshire Boulevard.

  Second of all, there were only eleven people seated at the conference room table—including her—and why she insisted on calling roll, I didn’t know.

  “I’m right here, Fern,” I said.

  She looked at me over her half-glasses, as if to make sure I was indeed Hollis Brannigan and not someone who’d sneaked into her meeting to gain inside info on the firm’s untidy breakrooms, the lack of conservation of office supplies, and the unauthorized use of the copy machines, three recurring themes in Fern’s weekly meeting.

  “All present and accounted for,” she declared, as if the rest of us couldn’t glance around the table and see for ourselves that all of the employees of the hospitality department were here, along with Louise Thornton, our immediate supervisor.

  Apparently, the company couldn’t have enough layers of managers on whom to bestow quarterly bonuses and company cars.

  Fern hit a button on her laptop and said, “Let’s get to today’s issues.”

  A PowerPoint slide appeared on the screen behind her and I heard a couple of people moan, including myself.

  Fern launched into her familiar refrain and I turned my attention to a much more pressing matter—Barbara Walker-Pierce and the possible murder of her aunt, Edith Bagley.