Shop Til You Drop Dead (A Hollis Brannigan Mystery)

by Dorothy Howell

  The foyer was empty, thankfully. I climbed the staircase to the second floor and paused, listening for Genevieve’s footsteps behind me. I heard nothing but the faint voices of the guests.

  The hallway was gloomy, as always; watery sunlight seeped through the balcony’s glass doors. At the end of the hallway the door to Edith’s bedroom stood open. I stopped. The door had been closed on all of my previous visits here.

  My heartrate picked up a little. Was Phil inside? Had he gotten past me somehow? Had I been right all along?

  No. I’d seen him tending to Drew as I’d walked into the house. Phil couldn’t have made it up here ahead of me.

  I really was wrong about him, about everything.

  Barbara had probably brought in a cleaning crew and one of them had left the door open. Or perhaps she’d gone ahead with the charity event she’d planned for Edith’s vintage gowns, and someone from the auction house had neglected to close it.

  I slipped inside the bedroom. Nothing had been disturbed; it looked just as I remembered.

  I crossed to Edith’s dressing suite. The gowns in their plastic cases were pushed aside. The pocket door to the secret room stood open. I stepped into the doorway.

  Lisa was inside.

  Chapter 26

  Dressed in her dark scrubs, and with the overhead light turned off, I could barely make her out in the tiny room.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  The words popped out of my mouth while I mentally struggled to understand what I was looking at, put it in some sort of context. It didn’t make sense. Lisa was in Edith’s secret room? Lisa?

  She stood beside the stack of Louis Vuitton luggage. One of the suitcases was open—the suitcase with the cash. She grabbed a handful of bills and stuffed them into the canvas tote looped over her arm.

  My heart slammed against my chest.

  I’d been right. Well, almost right. The scenario I’d put together—learning about the money, breaking into the house, killing Edith and then Allison—had been correct, only I’d suspected the wrong person.

  “It was you,” I said.

  She ignored me and crammed more cash into her tote. It was full; a few of the bills fluttered to the floor.

  “You murdered Edith,” I said.

  If she was surprised that I knew what she’d done it didn’t show in her expression.

  “I didn’t expect her to wake up and see me. I didn’t expect her to die,” she said.

  “You ran-down Allison.”

  “I couldn’t take the chance she wasn’t so drunk she could identify me.”

  I gestured at the suitcase. “All so you could get this money.”

  “You try working for barely more than minimum wage, putting up with cranky, grumpy old people, cleaning up after them, dealing with all their medical problems, and see what you’re willing to do to change it.”

  “I wouldn’t kill anyone.”

  “Well, I would. And I still will.”

  Lisa’s hand came out of the suitcase again, this time holding the gun Barbara had showed me the first day I was here. The big, badass Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum. She pointed it at me.

  Raw fear ripped through me. I didn’t know if the gun was loaded. I didn’t know if Lisa would actually shoot me. But above all, I didn’t want Lisa to escape.

  “That gun has been here for decades, just sitting in that suitcase, collecting dust,” I said. “It probably won’t work.”

  “Back up,” she told me, motioning with the gun.

  “It might explode in your hand,” I said.

  She moved forward. I realized then that Lisa was taller than me by a couple of inches. Her shoulders were wide and I could see her upper arm muscles moving against the sleeves of her scrubs.

  “You won’t get away,” I told her. “You’ll—”

  Lisa hurled the gun at my head. I threw my hands up to protect my face. She surged forward, ramming her shoulder into my chest. I flew backwards out of the doorway into the garment bags and onto the floor. The garment bags fell off the rack, burying me under them.

  I kicked and shoved, and got to my feet. Lisa was gone. I ran out of the bedroom and down the hallway. At the top of the staircase, I saw her at the front door struggling with the lock.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  Lisa glanced up at me.

  “Stop!”

  I raced down the steps as the lock turned. Lisa was halfway out the door as I crossed the foyer. I reached for her arm but missed, and caught the tote bag instead. She yanked on the bag. I yanked harder. It slid off of her arm. The cash flew out of the bag in a giant arc, tumbling and fluttering through the air.

  We both stared in stunned disbelief.

  “No!” Lisa screamed.

  Commotion in the hallway caused us both to look back. Dan and Mitch ran toward us.

  “Stop! LAPD!” Mitch commanded.

  Lisa ran out the door. Mitch pushed past me. I tried to follow but arms circled me from behind and pulled me off of my feet. Then just as quickly, I was standing again and Dan was in front of me.

  “You stay here.”

  “No! I—”

  “Stay here.” He leaned down, his face in mine, his expression intense. “You stay here. Where it’s safe.”

  He gave me one last hard look then ran out the door.

  I stood there, stunned, my heart racing. I started to shake.

  “What in the world?” I heard someone say.

  Genevieve and Sadie crept into the foyer, taking in the money that covered the floor, the door standing open, and me as I collapsed onto the bottom step of the staircase.

  “What’s going on here?” Genevieve said, shaking her head. “Where did all of this come from?”

  “Upstairs,” I said, panting. “It was inside the secret room.”

  Genevieve’s eyes widened. “Secret room?”

  “Oh, my Lord.” Sadie moaned the words.

  “There’s a secret room in this house?” Genevieve asked, both confused and bewildered.

  “Inside Edith’s bedroom,” I said.

  “I can’t believe it,” Sadie said, shaking her head. “It was still there, after all these years.”

  “You knew about it?” I asked, getting to my feet. “You knew the money was hidden inside Edith’s secret room?”

  “Of course,” Sadie said. “I’m the one who put it there.”

  ***

  Sadie suggested sitting on the balcony, Edith’s favorite spot. Below, on the rear lawn, workers were hauling away the chairs. All of the guests had gone home. Barbara was downstairs attending to the day’s final duties.

  Genevieve had wanted to gather the cash and make the foyer presentable again, but I’d told her we should leave it undisturbed for the police. She’d left for a moment, and come back with Barbara, who’d eyed the money littering the foyer as I explained the situation. She thanked me for solving Edith’s murder and for doing it discreetly, and assured me she’d call upon Fisher Joyce if similar situations presented themselves in the future; I didn’t tell her I wouldn’t likely be around in the future to be called upon.

  Dan had texted asking if I was okay, and had reported that Lisa had been apprehended. She’d admitted nothing, but the cops had determined she lived near the elderly woman whose car had been used to run down Allison, so it seemed likely Lisa knew the vehicle could be easily accessed and had taken it.

  I hadn’t heard from Mitch.

  I followed Sadie and Genevieve onto the balcony.

  “Are you sure you’re up to this?” I asked.

  Sadie drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I am.”

  I took a seat near the railing. Genevieve and Sadie sat together on the cushioned bench. All of us avoided Edith’s chair.

  “Are you sure, Mama?” Genevieve touched her hand.

  Sadie gave her daughter a loving smile. “I need to know. I need to know everything.”

  I explained briefly about Barbara’s suspicion and how I’d been brought i
n to determine what had really happened to Edith. They both took the news hard.

  Something Lisa had said when we were in the secret room made me think she hadn’t come there with the intention of killing Edith. I shared that with them but it didn’t seem to matter.

  The likelihood that Lisa had run-down Allison was something I chose not to share with them. The news they’d already heard was difficult enough to handle.

  “I don’t understand,” Genevieve said. “What’s this got to do with all of that money? Where did it come from? Why was it hidden in Miss Edith’s room?”

  “Your mother should explain it.” I glanced at Sadie.

  Sadie drew a breath, seeming to draw on some inner reserve of strength.

  “Are you up to it?” I asked.

  “It’s time,” she said. “The truth can’t hurt anyone now. Not anymore.”

  She explained to Genevieve what had happened during Edith’s first year of college, when she was supposedly studying abroad.

  Genevieve gasped and pressed her fingers against her lips. “I had no idea.”

  “Drew kept going to that place, the place they sent her to, asking if he could see Edith. The women in charge wouldn’t allow it, but he kept returning. Edith’s father had paid them a lot of money to keep him away, but, well, I guess they finally saw how much he loved her because finally they gave in.”

  “They let Drew see Edith?” I asked.

  “A few times.”

  My heart was already heavy with sadness, so I had to force myself to ask, “What happened to the baby?”

  “They let Drew’s parents adopt him,” Sadie said. “They kept it secret from Edith’s mother and father, of course.”

  Some of the heaviness lifted. “So Edith didn’t really lose her child?”

  “If only that were so,” Sadie said, with a mournful shake of her head. “Drew’s parents agreed to adopt the boy, but only if Edith agreed never to contact him. They were afraid of Edith’s father. He was a powerful man and they were just normal folks. But that was their grandbaby and they wanted him in their lives.”

  “So there her baby was, right there in Pasadena, being raised by Drew’s parents, and she couldn’t have a thing to do with him?” Genevieve said.

  “All she could do was drive by, hope she might see him outside,” I realized. “But at least the baby was raised by his family.”

  Sadie paused, her strength seeming to wane beneath the burden of the past.

  “I wish I could say this story had a happy ending. It should have. Or at least as happy as it could without a real mama for that baby,” she said. “That boy turned out bad. Rebellious. Defiant. Not the normal growing up, teenage problems. He was stealing. Breaking into places. Making trouble every way you could imagine. The police got involved, more than once.”

  “His crimes escalated,” I realized. “That’s where the cash and the handgun came from.”

  “It was night. Late. Drew came around to the back door, begging to see Edith. He hadn’t been here in years. I knew something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. I could see it in his eyes. And I knew he wouldn’t have come here, risked Conrad seeing him, risked causing trouble for Edith, if it wasn’t something big.”

  “Did Edith talk to him?” I asked.

  “Right there outside the kitchen door,” she said, nodding toward the lawn below us. “That boy—well, he wasn’t a boy, by then he was a man in the eyes of the law—had finally done the worst. He’d robbed a bank. The police came to the house. They had him dead to rights. While his grandpa talked to the detectives in the living room, he told Drew what he’d done and showed him the cash he’d gotten and the gun he’d used. Drew grabbed the evidence and ran straight to Edith. He begged her to help so their son wouldn’t be arrested, and of course she did.”

  We were all quiet for a moment. The image of a desperate father and mother attempting to save their son played in my mind. From their expressions, I knew Sadie and Genevieve were thinking the same.

  “It was my idea to hide those things in the secret room,” Sadie said. “Drew was afraid Mr. Conrad would find out and Miss Edith would have to explain, but she convinced him it would be all right. I took the money and the gun upstairs that very minute and zipped them inside a suitcase.”

  “You put the whole luggage set in there so nobody would realize one piece was missing.” I’d guessed that’s what had happened when Barbara had showed me everything the first day I was here.

  Sadie nodded. “Miss Edith got herself another identical set the next time Mr. Conrad went out of town on business.”

  “Mama, I can’t believe you did all of this,” Genevieve said.

  Sadie patted her daughter’s hand. “It had to be done.”

  “What happened to him after that?” I asked.

  “You’d think that boy would have learned his lesson, after that close call. But no. He was right back at it. Finally, he got sent to prison,” Sadie said. “He never came out.”

  All I could think was that this whole thing had been a waste. If only Edith’s parents had let her marry Drew, everybody’s life would have turned out differently and probably for the better.

  “Miss Edith intended to get rid of the money and that gun, I’m sure, though I don’t know how she planned to do it. We never spoke of it again,” Sadie said. “Time went on. I guess Miss Edith didn’t like remembering what had happened, all the heartache, the upset. I suspect after so many years, she just forgot about what was hidden in there. Or maybe she thought it better to leave the past in the past.”

  “It was a very well-kept secret,” I said. “Until Drew began talking about it.”

  “He hadn’t been at the retirement home long before he saw Miss Edith come to visit. It stirred him up,” Sadie said. “All he could remember was the past, so that’s what he talked about. I told him not to, but his mind was too far gone. I figured no one would believe his stories, but I guess Lisa did.”

  We sat there for several more minutes, then Genevieve rose.

  “I’d better get back downstairs, get things finished up,” she said.

  “It wouldn’t do for Miss Barbara to come looking for us,” Sadie said, and got to her feet.

  I let them walk ahead of me into the hallway, then hung back and watched as they chatted, their heads close together. At the top of the staircase, Genevieve took her mother’s arm and steadied her as they walked down.

  My heart ached a little watching them.

  I went into Edith’s bedroom. In the dressing suite, all of her beautiful gowns were still piled on the floor where I’d fought my way from under them. The pocket door was open. Inside, the suitcase was empty; a few bills were scattered across the floor.

  I didn’t like leaving Edith’s possessions in disarray, but with Lisa in custody, a crime scene investigation unit would come here and collect evidence. Strangers going though Edith’s things didn’t sit well with me, but there was no choice in the matter.

  In her bedroom, I took her journal from my tote and slid it in with the others on the bottom shelf of her bookcase. Her whole life was contained in those volumes.

  Who would read them? Was there anyone left who would understand and appreciate what she’d been through? She’d worked for years to help others but she hadn’t been able to help the one person who’d needed her the most: her son.

  I left the room and closed the door behind me.

  Chapter 27

  I still wore the suit Moss had given me this morning, and I was driving the BMW the valet had brought around for me, but I wasn’t ready to return them to Fisher Joyce. I was in no hurry to go there. I went home instead.

  Krystal answered when I knocked on her door, surprised to see me.

  “You’re off work early today?” she asked.

  “I need to pick up Gizmo.”

  Her expression clouded. “Look, Hollis, I’m sorry I can’t keep her any more. It’s just too upsetting for Barney.”

  Both dogs approached the door, th
eir ears up, sniffing. Gizmo wagged her tail when she saw me.

  I scooped her up. “No worries.”

  Krystal’s expression morphed into a frown. “What are you going to do with her?”

  “What I should have done in the first place,” I said.

  Krystal handed me Gizmo’s leash. I clipped it on her collar then went to my apartment and put her doggie bed, her other belongings, and the food I’d bought for her, into a shopping bag.

  “You’re going for a ride,” I said.

  She looked up at me with big eyes and barked.

  I loaded everything into the car and put Gizmo on the passenger seat beside me. She pranced in place and whined.

  “You’ll be okay,” I said. “I promise.”

  I couldn’t keep her. My heart hurt a bit, thinking about what I was about to do, but I knew it was the best option for her.

  The drive took longer than it should have. I went the speed limit, stopped at all the yellow lights, prolonging the last minutes I’d have with Gizmo. By the time I turned onto Lincoln Avenue, she’d curled up in my lap. She roused when I pulled into the driveway.

  “Okay, look,” I said. “You need to make a good first impression here. Understand?”

  She looked up at me and blinked.

  “It’s going to be an adjustment, but it’s going to be great,” I explained.

  Gizmo yipped and wagged her tail.

  “Let’s go.”

  She jumped out of the car and waited patiently while I grabbed her things from the back, then walked up the sidewalk tugging at her leash, her ears up, tail high, sniffing furiously.

  I rang the bell. Minutes dragged by. I rang it again. Finally, it opened.

  Carlotta Cain eyed me from behind the half opened door. She had on a different caftan today, and was still loaded down with jewelry.

  “Did you bring back my dress?” she demanded, then shook her head in disgust. “You young girls today. Honestly, I don’t—”