With her mind reeling over what needed to be done, she found the phone under her coat and paged a stockboy. Mark, a former football player at Elder and the biggest of the clerks, came almost immediately. He slid the dolly under one side of the stack and tilted the four boxes. Marissa followed him out to the barren display cases which had been replaced since the crow bar attack and slowly started transferring the cologne to the counter.
"Can I help?" Nicole came up behind her and made Marissa jump, fumbling the bottle.
"Why don't you take care of the customer over at the Givenchy display?" Marissa put her head down, not wanting to watch the girl's sales tactics.
She finished the display in record time, stacking pyramids of little boxes across the counter and putting the rest underneath in the display case. The lifesize cut-out of Steve Douglas went back out front, gashed head and all, with a small sign that announced the return of the cologne.
Marissa broke down the boxes and carried them back to the store room. She wished she had dressed more appropriately, surveying the wrinkles in her sky blue, silk blouse and the dirt smears on her skirt. She propped the boxes against one wall and slid into her chair.
Picking up the phone, she dialed security. Maybe this was going to be a good day even without any sleep. "Ellen, this is your favorite crime wave. The new shipment of Perchance came in this morning. I thought you might like to know so you can anticipate all the trouble it's going to cause."
"You certainly have been wickedly pessimistic lately, you know." Ellen's voice chuckled in the receiver.
"I have every reason to be. Murphy and the devil combined couldn't have thought up this much trouble."
"Not to worry, girl. The police have a firm grip on the matter. Bandarra seems to think that the case will break soon."
"My hero." Marissa twirled her pen and her eyes. She still wanted to look up the penalty for slugging a cop. "I have to go and persuade management to spend some money now. Talk to you later."
Marissa hung up the phone and walked past the young men's department. She searched for Sam Munson, but didn't see him. She hoped he wasn't with the police again. He had been at the luncheon, but wouldn't Adam or the rest of the guests have seen him put anything in Steve's food? She hadn't found a chance to get that close to the actor. He had been surrounded by star-struck store managers. She rode the escalator to the second floor lost in thought and walked back to the main offices.
Louise sat at her desk, typing. The smell of smoke was strong here, and Marissa wondered what her blouse had done to deserve all this abuse. "Is Zack in?"
Louise shook her head without stopping her fingers. "He's with Mr. Grayson. That West person is in Mr. Martin's office if you want to wait."
Marissa frowned, remembering the leers and pick-up lines. "Thanks, but no thanks. Will you just leave him a note that I got the new shipment of Perchance in? I want to talk to him about some publicity and advertising, as if we really need any more around here."
Louise stopped typing and scribbled a few words on a pink piece of paper. "Will do."
Marissa made her way downstairs again, humming as she passed two customers buying Steve's cologne, and walked to the back room. She set the cardboard boxes against her desk and carefully began to copy the box numbers onto the shipping documents. The police wouldn't be necessary if she kept a close eye on this cologne. 4892220, 4892230, 4892240. The key rec order number printed on each case went on to her list. An accurate record of all the cologne was in order.
As she wrote the numbers on the paper, Marissa stopped and held her breath. The numbers on the piece of paper in Steve's pocket had to be a case number of Perchance. It wasn't a phone number at all and certainly not a daycare center. Marissa pulled her purse out of the drawer and started rummaging for the copy of the number.
Not finding it, she dumped the contents of the bag onto the desk. She was positive that she had pushed the copies in here after she showed Anne. Marissa tried to think of the last time she had seen the paper. The harder she thought, the more elusive her memory became. Grabbing the phone book, she searched the childcare numbers until she found the one Anne had dialed from the apartment.
4896262. That was the number that had been found in Steve's pocket and here were eight cases of the cologne that just happened to coincide with that number. Marissa shook off the idea of random chance and wondered why the actor had the stock number of his own cologne in his jacket. He could get the stuff for free if he wanted or at least discounted. Why would he want Kantor's stock and go to all the trouble of stealing it? He couldn't have known that his own death would make this stuff a collector's item. Nobody would go that far for PR. Either Steve had wanted that case for a particular reason, or someone wanted it after his death for publicity.
Marissa smacked herself on the forehead and stood up. She strode past the cosmetics department, up the escalator and back to the offices.
"Louise, Mr. West still in Zack's office?"
The secretary nodded and picked up the telephone. Marissa opened the door to the store manager's office and went in. The publicist was stretched out on the brown leather sofa that filled one wall, his bare feet propped up on a pillow. Marissa walked over and kicked the edge of the couch.
"Wake up, West. We need to talk."
He opened his eyes one at a time, squinting. West pulled himself up to a sitting position. "What's this all about? Where's the fire?"
"We need to talk. I've figured out a few things. Like who took the cases of Perchance from the stockroom." Marissa perched on the far end of the sofa and watched the man as he tried to wake up. The back of his hair stood up in little curls.
"Will you slow down a minute so I can think?" He stood up and crossed the room to a small kitchenette, scratching himself as he walked. West turned on the tap and splashed water on his face. Grabbing a napkin from the counter, he wiped the water drops from his nose and came back to the couch. He sat closer to Marissa than he had been, and let his eyes follow the line of her legs.
"Are you ready to think yet, or would a slap across the face help you any?" Marissa found herself tugging at her skirt hem and inwardly cursed. Why should she feel uncomfortable just because this man was practically drooling over her? It was his problem, not hers.
"I'm fine. So what are these oh-so-important conclusions of yours that wouldn't wait for a poor publicist to get some sleep? I've been working my butt off to keep a wrap on his HIV status rumor. It's not easy."
"We just received a new shipment of Perchance this morning, and I wanted to know if you'd like any of it to put with your stash."
"Why would I want any of that stuff?" The man shifted his gaze from her legs to her face, watching her expressions and moves. Marissa noticed his gray eyes scanning her face. Was he wondering if she was a good poker player?
"When I received this shipment, I noticed a similarity between the piece of paper in Steve's pocket and the stock numbers of the new cases. I started wondering why Steve would be interested in cases of Perchance. He was provided with as much as he wanted, although why anyone would want that stuff is beyond me. Why would he want Kantor's supply?"
West laughed. "He wouldn't. It's that simple."
"Maybe he wouldn't, but you might. You're his business manager, and you're supposed to help with publicity. What would be bigger press than the theft of Steve's cologne by some love-sick fan? Perhaps now it might show up and be auctioned off." Marissa stood up and sat down in the chair opposite the man.
He held out his wrists and laughed. "You got me. It's the worst logic I think I've ever heard, but damned if your conclusions aren't on the money."
Marissa's mouth fell open. "You mean that you're confessing?" This was too easy. Why did the police complain about their jobs?
"Confessing?" West dropped his arms across his lap. "Let's just call this a conversation, babe. No need to involve your boyfriend, the cop."
"Not a problem." Marissa felt the color rise in her face. Why should a mention of Gav
in affect her like this? She tried to put him out of her thoughts. "I'm only interested in the cologne."
"Whatever you say, your sex life is none of my business, but we don't need to tell the police, okay?"
Marissa nodded and leaned forward with a anxious glance to the door. A shadow passed across the partially open frame and continued. She didn't want an interruption yet, not when she was this close.
"I took the cases of cologne. It hadn't been selling all that well during our publicity tour —we practically bombed in St. Louis. I was hoping that some good PR might boost sales. You don't have to tell me this stuff stinks, but Steve wanted a cologne. He was an egotistical SOB. So after lunch when Steve was busy ringing up a sale with one of your clerks, I had the limo pull around. The driver helped me load the boxes into the trunk. Most everyone was still at lunch. The other salespeople were busy out front."
Marissa wrinkled her brow as she looked at the man. Was he telling the truth? "So why did Steve have that case number in his pocket? You make it sound like he didn't know anything about the theft."
"First, it wasn't a theft. You're implying that there was a crime. This was no crime. My contract says I'm entitled to four cases of that stuff every three months though what I'm supposed to do with that much cologne I'll never know. So I'm only taking six months of my contract. It's not stealing."
"Is there any provision about where your supply comes from?"
"Nope, but if you think Steve was involved in that, you didn't know him very well. It was just like him to be screwing some girl while I was attending to business. He thought everything should be handed to him on a silver platter. He would never stoop to help in his own publicity. He'd consider it beneath him, but not beneath me."
"How could you have let him touch that girl when you knew he was HIV-positive? He could have infected her."
"Look, babe. I didn't own him. He wasn't my pet. He was an adult, and I tried on more than one occasion to make him stop, but it didn't work. He was a perpetual teenager with the same set of hormones. Did you ever try to make someone do something that he didn't want to do? It ain't easy. I needed the job, so I gave up trying." He casually brushed lint off his pants.
Marissa thought of her unhappy marriage and nodded. She'd tried to make Dan into a loving husband, but her best efforts had failed. Nagging, being more loving, cooking, romantic nights out had all come up to the same thing. Dan was Dan, and she had also given up trying.
"It would have been easier to make the rain fall sideways or make snow warm. So I didn't make his value judgments. I just took care of the travel arrangements and the tour publicity. I had to do business with him, but I didn't have to be his friend, so I kept out of his personal life."
"So where did Steve get that stock number from?"
West shrugged. Marissa wondered if those were his shoulders or pads. "He probably thought it was someone's phone number and picked it up. Women were always leaving him presents like phone numbers and underwear. He wouldn't think twice about getting a phone number shoved at him."
"So where are the cases now?"
He grinned. "On their way back to Hollywood, where I intend to sell them at auction and bring in some money. After all, I just lost my biggest client, and I can't milk his sterling reputation forever. The very cases of cologne from the store where Steve died."
Ray's words penetrated Marissa's thoughts and tripped a memory. She sat quietly for a minute until the thought came back to her. "You pretended to be Zack and called the maintenance team to clean up the conference room. You wanted to drag this whole thing out as much as possible so you can keep on making money off Steve's name."
"Boyfriend or no boyfriend, You missed your calling. That's absolutely right, and this time you didn't go the wrong way around the block to get there." West shrugged. He jumped to his feet and started walking around the office, gesturing as he spoke. "I have absolutely no interest in solving this murder. I told Grayson that, and I'll tell you the same thing. Probably some jealous husband killed Steve or a spurned woman, but there's no mystery or excitement in the truth. But the unsolved crime, the perpetual riddle — lives on forever. It would be great to have a couple of true crime books written about Steve. I could have one ghosted about my final days with Steve, call it 'The Scent of Murder' or something like that. Maybe Oliver Stone could do a conspiracy movie on it. The whole store was in on the murder. You forget all the pilots whose bodies were found, but you remember Amelia Earhart. Most people can't name the current head of any union, but everyone's heard of Hoffa. The air of mystery makes them immortal." He pointed his finger at Marissa to make the point.
"Justice, thy name is Raymond West." Marissa leaned back away from his hand. "The thought of hearing about Steve Douglas until the day I die is reason enough for me to help the police."
"Very funny. If there were any justice, I wouldn't be sitting around this one-horse town waiting for the police to figure out that I didn't kill my meal ticket. Steve wasn't my friend or even someone I really liked. He was a business associate. I'm sure that you wouldn't really care if your sales clerks were murdered."
Marissa gave a silent prayer that nothing else would happen in cosmetics. "If you didn't care about Steve, why did you leave an anonymous tip with the police about Sam Munson?"
"Who says I did?"
"Someone called from the same phone you did and left a message like you did. Someone told the police that Sam and Steve went to high school together." Marissa explained the story in a few sentences while watching him closely. He seemed to be uninterested, yawning as she spoke. Not even her legs kept him attentive at this point.
West stood up and crossed to the door. "I'm going to leave now while you're still batting six-sixty. I didn't know where Steve went to school nor did I really care. I believe your story because it sounds like the kind of thing that Steve would do, but it's the first time I've heard it."
As Ray grabbed the knob, the door swung open, and Zack barged into the room. "I'm in no mood to talk. If you want to continue this chat, go to the conference room. That's what it's there for," Zack said as he sat down at his desk and turned around in the oversized leather chair.
Marissa found herself alone in the hall and wondering what to do with all this new-found information.
Chapter 16
The next morning, Marissa found an extra eight cases of Perchance in the stockroom with a bright red bow perched between the top two cases. A large smiley face decorated the side of one of the cardboard boxes. Marissa allowed her own face to break into a grin as she took out a pen and added the case numbers to her documents. She slipped the papers in a folder and locked them in her filing cabinet.
Marissa looked in the desk drawers again for the missing copies of the papers from Steve's pockets. Opening several folders, she found a finger-painting from Joshua's daycare and a note to herself about an appointment with a sales rep. No letter and no number.
She frowned as she stood up. The case number, 4896262, was not among the cartons in the stockroom. That must have been the case that was used for promotions and the original display. A small piece of paper stuck out from between the boxes and Marissa pulled it out and opened it.
The handwritten note read, "Thanks for not telling anyone about my stunt. HINT, HINT. Police don't understand the rules of publicity like we do." There was no signature. Marissa stuffed the note into her pocket and walked out to the cosmetic counters. A lone picketer walked along the aisle in front of Steve Douglas' photo, carrying a placard. His banner read, "Sex sells you to hell."
Nicole stood at the counter, leaning heavily against the glass and watching the passing customers. "Hi, Miss Scott. What's up?"
"Did you see when the shipment of Perchance came in? I wasn't expecting this second batch. And when did we get the protesters again? Have they said anything?" Marissa pushed the clerk's elbows from the case; Nicole wasn't likely to clean the glass after smudging it.
Nicole shook her head. "It was here at ten. Those pe
ople got here shortly after that. It was almost like they knew we had the stuff. You don't really think that God talks to them, do you?"
Marissa narrowed her eyes so that only a slit of green showed. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if they thought She did. We have several people in this store who like all the publicity they can get. Have they tried to stop customers from buying or threatened anyone?"
"Hardly. The way this stuff is selling, we're going to need eight more cases. I've had to restock the display case twice since I've been in, and I'm just exhausted." Nicole brushed some imaginary sweat from her brow. How hot could someone get leaning against the counter?
"You'll get over it. I have to meet with Zack for a bit if anyone needs me." Marissa walked off to the escalators before the girl could answer.
Marissa took the moving steps two at a time and headed back to the offices. She could hardly wait to tell Zack that she had recovered the stolen cologne. The look on his face would be almost as good as the one on Bandarra's. Marissa smiled as she tried to picture the police detective, red and sputtering. Maybe there was some justice in the world. Barely slowing down in the office suite, she waved at Louise and walked down the hall.
Marissa raised a hand to knock and stopped her knuckles inches from the door. She heard voices in the office, one female and crying. The door was open a crack, and Marissa leaned back against the wall to listen, wondering if eavesdropping was an innate talent or an acquired skill. She tried to look as if she was studying the Monet reprint on the wall opposite the office. Just like Zack to choose a copy instead of an original, although the framed print was much nicer than the stupid motivational posters found in the department heads' offices.
"Crying isn't going to do you any good. It isn't going to do either of us any good. I could be dying right now. Do you realize that? Do you? My body could be wasting away as we speak." Marissa recognized Zack's voice, but it was louder than normal and high-pitched. She wondered if years of moving too fast had taken their toll. His voice sounded as if it might crack, and so did he.
Love Stinks Page 11
