Pearls Gone Wild

by Diane Vallere

  “Did he see you?”

  I nodded. “I heard the crash and saw him. I yelled and he took off. He shoved Cat out of the way and ran out the front gate.”

  Dante set Logan down and balled up his fist, and then slammed it into the back of Cat’s brown leather club chair. Logan jumped down from the sofa and ran under the couch. I knew Dante was angry. I also knew he usually bottled stuff like that up and that the reaction I’d just seen would be his only one. Frankly, I was a little surprised he’d reacted that much.

  “I keep replaying things in my mind but the only thing I remember clearly is that the thief was just standing there staring at the jewelry case. When I yelled, he grabbed the jewelry and took off.”

  “Why don’t you know if it was a man or a woman?”

  “He—or she—was wearing baggy black clothes, a ski mask, and gloves.”

  “Could have been a burglary gone wrong. Could be the burglar snapped and killed George in some kind of trance. Your yell snapped him out of it.”

  I shook my head. “I could see that if it was a gunshot or a head wound but it takes a lot of effort to strangle somebody with a necklace and then drag their body behind a jewelry case. And the necklaces would only be strong enough if they were doubled over, so that requires a little more effort. This feels more deliberate.”

  “That does sound deliberate.”

  The door in the hall opened and Cat came out. Her lipstick was faded to a ring of faint burgundy around the outside of her mouth. Her red hair was pulled back into a high ponytail that had already come loose and was tipped slightly to the side.

  “Sam, can you pack up the brownies? I don’t really want to deal with them after,” she pointed behind her “that.”

  “Sure.” I carried the tray of brownies into the kitchen and found a plastic food container and a corresponding lid. I packed all but two away and opened the fridge. The shelves were overflowing with glass dishes filled with casseroles. I did a little rearranging and then tucked the vegetable brownies in the lunch meat drawer. The way things were going, I had a chance of hitting the recommended vegetable intake for one day and I wasn’t going to blow it.

  I rejoined Cat and Dante in the living room. He’d moved to the sofa next to her and had his hand on her back. “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “You need to take care of yourself,” he said. “We’ll take care of the store.”

  “We?” I asked.

  Dante looked at me. “Yes, we.” He stood up. “Cat’s going to the doctor and we’re going to the outlet to clean up the crime scene.”

  We took separate cars. Dante drove a black SUV filled with vacuum cleaners and miscellaneous boxes of rags and jugs of chemicals. I took my late Nineties black Honda del Sol, a hard-top convertible with ridiculously low mileage thanks to the fact that for the majority of the nine years I worked in New York, it sat in a parking garage. My car was considerably zippier than Dante’s SUV and I left him in my dust.

  The mall was hopping with holiday shoppers. I found a space at the perimeter of the lot and approached the building. Cat had given me the keys to Catnip, but I hadn’t forgotten that on two separate occasions criminals had gotten inside when the store was locked. I was curious about the condition the police had left the place, but not so foolish that I charged inside without Dante. I waited on the sidewalk for a couple of minutes until his black SUV pulled up to the curb.

  “Help me unload then I’ll park and we can go inside.” He climbed out and met me around the back.

  “What’d you do—rob a sanitation service?” I asked.

  “The PI I sometimes work for had me do crime scene cleanup,” he said. “Good way to get first access to a crime scene. Cops do their thing, but you never know what else you can find. Sometimes you can tell where the cops focused their attention. Wait too long and you learn nothing.”

  “There are people who make their living doing this.”

  “And they’re good. Too good when you’re looking for evidence or clues. That’s why it’s best to do it yourself.” He pulled two shiny vacuum cleaners out of the truck. One of them still had a tag on it.

  “These look brand new,” I said.

  “They are. Crime scenes can be messy. Depending on what’s at the scene, you won’t want to waste time trying to clean up a vacuum. Easier to toss them when you’re done.”

  I paused with one hand on the handle of the vacuum and a box of heavy black garbage bags under my arm. “How messy?”

  “You said George was strangled, right? So we’re lucky. It’s a black bag job. No hazardous waste.” He looked down at my feet. “You’re wearing pink lizard boots.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “They’re not practical.”

  “I didn’t know I was going to be cleaning a crime scene.”

  He pulled out his wallet and handed me a twenty. “Go to the camping store next door and buy a pair of sneakers.”

  “I can afford a new pair of sneakers,” I said (proudly). “Besides, I don’t think twenty dollars would cover it.”

  “Don’t get caught up in what they look like. Go cheap.”

  “I don’t wear cheap shoes.”

  “You’re going to throw them out too.”

  “That’s not how people are supposed to approach the purchase of new shoes.”

  Dante rolled his eyes. “I’ll unload into the store. Meet me back here.”

  I walked to the mall entrance and then continued on to the camping store. An announcement came over the loudspeaker reminding customers of the gift wrap stations throughout the mall. I asked a guy who looked like he’d been camping in the mountains for weeks before starting his shift for the location of the sneakers and was sent to the back corner. I found the clearance aisle facing the back wall and snatched a pair of marked down rubber rain boots.

  Twenty dollars. Sold.

  I carried them to the checkout station. The mountain man waved me to his register. Up close, his look was more Hipster Hunter than authentic. A buffalo plaid shirt was buttoned up to his chin and half tucked in. The fray on his jeans appeared carefully placed, not achieved through wear and tear. Elmer Fudd couture, I thought.

  I looked around the store. “Have you seen any mall security officers? I need to talk to them.” I asked.

  Hipster Hunter scanned my items. “Why? Don’t tell me you forgot where you parked your car. How do people forget where they parked their cars?”

  “No, it’s about what happened at the mall last night. Were you working? Did you see or hear anything?”

  Hipster stopped scanning barcodes and studied me. He shook his head. “My night off. I heard about it this morning. Wild.”

  I yessed and no’d my way through the transaction, turning down add-on items in order to get out of there faster. I knew the task ahead of Dante and me would be both time consuming and unpleasant, but I couldn’t help wonder if we’d find something amongst the cleared crime scene that would help us shed light on who had murdered George.

  9

  SATURDAY MID-MORNING

  After I paid, I changed from my pink lizard boots into the rain boots. I walked back to Catnip through the warmth of the interior. The gate was down, making the store appear out of business at a time when the rest of the mall was thriving. An empty glass and chrome fixture sat outside the gate. It was a display case just like the one that had been smashed last night: rectangular with glass on the top, front, and sides. Chrome trim. Blond wood trim around the base and on the lockable drawers on the back. The drawers were unlocked and a set of keys were inside in a clear plastic bag, taped to the base with masking tape. More masking tape was wound around the outside of the case several times, and CATNIP had been written on the tape in sloppy handwriting. I left the mall and doubled back to the outside entrance and knocked. Dante opened the door.

  “All set?” Dante asked.

  “I guess. The new jewelry fixture is on the other side of the gate.”

  “First we clean. Take this,” he
said. He rolled a large Hepa-Vac toward me. “Concentrate on getting up what’s left of the broken glass. The police got most of it but the jewelry counter is right across the aisle from her shoe department. Cat won’t want to take any chances on somebody accidentally stepping on glass with a bare foot.”

  “The police vacuumed? That was considerate.”

  “Trace evidence. That’s the easiest way to make sure they don’t leave a clue behind.”

  My heart sank. “We’re not going to find anything that they didn’t, are we?”

  “Is that why you’re here? You thought you were going to find something they missed?”

  “I’m here for Cat.”

  “But if you happened to pick up a clue that the police left behind, you’d be okay with that.”

  “Well, duh.”

  “Forget that. Police are only that dumb on TV. Our job is to get the store looking like Cat wants the store to look. So first, we go over everything again to make sure it’s clean and safe. Then I’ll replace the broken fixture so you can merchandise it. What the police did do was leave behind coffee cups. Throw them out. Pretend this is your store and you have to get it ready for business.”

  “Got it.” I dragged the Hepa-VAC with me to the area where the case had been smashed, stashed my boots next to the shopping bags, and got started.

  I needn’t have worried about time spent with Dante. He went one direction and I went the other. As suspected, the store was littered with used white disposable cups. I found an empty roll of trash bags in a drawer behind the register and searched the store for cups like I was a kid at an Easter Egg Hunt. Once I was sure I’d disposed of them all, I knotted the bag and set it by the front gate next to the rest of the store trash.

  After coffee cup duty I moved on to vacuuming. I worked by the store entrance. The gate between the entrance and the mall was in place, keeping our activities out of view from customers. I could hear the sounds of holiday shopping through the gate: snippets of conversation, the rhythm of footsteps passing by, and the occasional melody from the soundtrack that had been playing since the week before Thanksgiving. The news about George had been released and I was glad we were behind the metal gate. Knowing how people rubbernecked at accidents along the side of the road, I could only imagine what they were whispering about the murder that had taken place inside of Catnip.

  A couple of hours in, I took a break in the stockroom and brewed a pot of coffee. Clean plates for employee use had been stacked on a shelf next to the cups. I moved them to a more secure area, poured two mugs of coffee, and went back to the store. Dante rested against the wrap stand inside the jewelry cases. I handed him a mug.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “Police left the store better than I expected. We’re lucky the gate keeps us hidden from the rest of the mall. This would take twice as long if we had spectators.” He took a pull on his coffee. “What are your theories?”

  “About what?”

  “About what happened here.”

  “What makes you think I have theories?”

  “You always have theories.”

  “Okay fine, I have theories. Do you want to take five and bounce them around?”

  Dante raised his eyebrow slightly but didn’t answer. I took it as a yes.

  “Cat doesn’t usually carry expensive jewelry. The merchandise that was stolen, that was an experiment. And not just any experiment. The merchandise came from George’s company, Kenner & Winn. In the ten years that Cat and George were together, it was the first time she placed an order with him from any of the vendors he represented. She said he told her another account canceled the order, so he could sell it to her cheap—he actually convinced her to take the merchandise.”

  “So there’s a connection to his employer and to another retail account.”

  “Yes. His employers would have known the merchandise was in Cat’s store, at least, I assume there’d be a paper trail through invoices. Maybe the other retail account, too. It helps explain the theft, but not the murder.”

  “Who do you suspect for the murder?”

  “You know how I am. I suspect everybody.”

  He smiled. “What else?”

  “Someone on her staff could have been involved. It would be easy enough for one of them to make a copy of the key to get in after hours. And George—I can’t help wondering about the timing of their fight. I agree with Cat—he was a rat for leaving her while she’s eight months pregnant with his baby—but it had to take courage for him to speak up at all. He does what might have been the hardest thing of his life and then gets killed hours later. The timing seems suspicious. Did you know him? I mean, he was married to your sister. Did you see any of this coming?”

  “I knew him, but not well. Holidays, mostly, and there was drinking involved. Seemed nice enough and got along with the family. He made my sister happy, but I know she wished he was around more. What about you?”

  “I never knew George because he was always traveling. Cat said he’d only been with the jewelry company for a couple of months. I thought maybe he changed companies so he wouldn’t have to travel as much.”

  “You said George was at the party. Notice anything strange?” He leaned forward on the jewelry case. I stood opposite him on the outside. If the store had been open, it would look like he was trying to sell me something.

  “At one point Cat and George spoke. It looked like things were going to be civil, but then Cat grabbed a drink and tossed it in his face.” I closed my eyes for a moment to recall the scene. “Later, before we left, I saw him talking to a woman in a yellow strapless dress with red accessories.” I opened my eyes. “I notice stuff like that.”

  “What does it mean to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do. You noticed her for a reason and I’m guessing it’s not because you’re a fan of the ketchup and mustard color palette.”

  I thought back to the first time I’d seen her. “She and I were in the bathroom at the same time. She dropped something. I picked it up and handed it to her and she threw it into the trash. Later, George was off to the side talking to her. My first thought was that the real reason George left Cat was that he was having an affair with her, but their body language didn’t fit.”

  “Why did you two come here after the party?”

  “One of Cat’s employees quit after her shift was over and Cat was afraid she didn’t lock up properly. I wanted to get her out of the party without seeing George talking to the woman in yellow. We came here and interrupted the theft in progress. Right after the crash I yelled and scared the robber-burglar-person. He practically knocked Cat over when he ran out of the store.”

  He stood up straight and balled his fists. “She could have been hurt.”

  “I know. What I don’t know is if the burglar knew she was pregnant. The lights were out and she had her coat on. If it was somebody who knew her, then they would have known she was. If it was random or someone hired to do it, they would have only thought that she was in the way of their exit.”

  “Either way it’s assault.”

  We were interrupted by the sound of someone rapping on the outside of the metal gate by the mall entrance. I followed Dante to the front of the store. Pieces of mail had been pushed under the gate and spread out in a display of light blue, pink, and white envelopes. The rapping started again, followed by a voice.

  “Mall security. Anybody in there? You gotta get this case out of the way.”

  Dante stepped over the envelopes on the floor. “Hold on. I’ll open the gate.”

  I handed him the keys. He tried a few until one fit into the box. He flipped the handle to the left and the gate chugged and retracted. When it was halfway up, he turned the handle to the right. The gate stopped.

  The mall was filled with customers. A few stopped what they were doing to watch us. Two women in matching pink knit hats with pompoms on top stood by a sign that advertised free gift wrap with purchases over a hundred dol
lars. One of them said, “Is that the store?” The other said yes. Dante’d been right. If we’d had spectators while we were putting the store back together, it would have taken a lot longer.

  Fortunately for us, the fixture was on castors. Dante ducked under the gate and pushed it into the store. The weight of the fixture caused it to sway to the left. I stood backward on the opposite side and guided it so it stayed on the marble path. Once we were inside, Dante grabbed the bottom of the metal gate and pulled down. It didn’t budge.

  “You two get that fixture in place. I’ll watch the entrance,” the security officer said.

  “Let’s go.” We maneuvered the fixture down the aisle and past a table loaded with cashmere sweaters. It took a little effort to move it once it was on the carpet, but with one of us at either end, we were able to slowly nudge it into place. Dante left me to merchandise. About half a minute later, I heard the gate chug back into place.

  For the rest of the afternoon, I worked on a new display in the jewelry department. Like most retailers, Cat kept her back stock locked in drawers behind the fixtures. What people often didn’t realize was that vendors shipped merchandise in unglamorous plastic bags and sent velvet boxes and cleaning cloths separately. I unlocked and relocked four different drawers before I found the bags of pearl jewelry. The items were sorted by color in large freezer bags, and individual pieces were in smaller bags within.

  I unpacked several thirty-six inch strands of dull black pearls, and then matching bracelets, earrings, and rings. Another drawer search netted me display props: a mauve flocked velvet neck stand to show off a three-strand Jackie Kennedy-styled necklace, a slightly inclined rectangular platform on which to arrange the long strand of pearls, and a couple of matching four inch square pillows that I hooked the bracelets around. Earrings went on earring stands and rings on ring holders. When I finished fitting everything into the display, I moved to the front to see if my angles were all straight. That was the first of seven attempts before I felt I’d achieved ninety-degree perfection.