by Lois Winston
"Even if I get to the mall without a hitch, who knows what wild goose chase he's concocted for me after I buy the Burberry bag? His ultimate plan could involve grabbing the money, then ridding himself of the only witness to his extortion." I thumbed my chest. "Me."
"We've covered all contingencies," said Batswin.
Instead of assuring me, her laid-back, monotone voice only increased my anxiety. "I have my kids to think of. If something goes wrong-
"Follow directions, and nothing will go wrong," said Robbins.
His gruff, irritable tone ratcheted my apprehension up beyond the stratosphere, but I had no choice other than to go along with the detectives' strategy. Refusing to help them catch Ricardo would add credence to their original theory-that I killed Marlys for the diamonds in order to pay off Ricardo-even if that theory had more holes in it than my kitchen colander. But that didn't seem to matter to Batswin and Robbins.
Dangerous as their scheme seemed, at least if it worked, I'd shake a two-thousand-pound gorilla off my back and have one less Karl-created debacle sucking me into the La Brea tar pit of debt. I zipped the canvas duffel and hoisted it onto my shoulder.
"I'm ready," I told Batswin and Robbins.
As the detectives followed me out of the conference room, an image of Karl floated across my mind. Had my darling, deceased husband ever given us a thought as he gambled away our security and his sons' futures?
And how many other Ricardos had he left in his wake, waiting to pounce on me?
Leaving Batswin and Robbins cooling their heels at the elevator, my anxieties and I headed back to my cubicle to retrieve my coat and purse. On the way, I bumped into Naomi and Erica. They both eyed the weighty bag dragging down my shoulder.
"Weekend getaway?" asked Naomi.
"I wish."
She returned her attention to the sheaf of papers in her hand, but Erica's brows knit together as she continued to stare at the duffel. "I swear I saw Detective Robbins carry that same bag into the conference room earlier. Why do you have it now? What's in it?"
Naomi shifted her attention back to the duffel. She and Erica followed me into my cubicle.
I worried the duffel strap as I wracked my brain for a plausible explanation. When I was seven years old, Mama had told me she knew when I lied because my face contorted into a smirk. I didn't believe her until years later when I discovered I had passed along that same defective Fib Gene to Alex. Nick had inherited Karl's Look-You -in-the- Eye -and-Lie-With- a- Straight- Face Gene.
Turning my back to Naomi and Erica, I placed the duffel on my chair and answered while slipping into my coat. "Just some of my supplies the police confiscated during the murder investigation. Since they don't need them for evidence, they released them back to me."
With the lie out of my mouth and the smirk hopefully gone from my face, I heaved the duffel back onto my shoulder, grabbed my purse, and turned back to them. "I have a meeting with a yarn manufacturer. See you both Monday."
Naomi and Erica filled the doorway, blocking my exit. Neither made any effort to step aside.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" asked Erica.
I glanced around the small space. I had my coat. My purse. I patted my pocket and heard my keys jingle. "I don't think so."
Erica pointed to the duffel. "Why are you taking your supplies with you?"
Think fast, Anastasia! "I ... uhm ... since I've been out of the office so much lately, I thought I'd get caught up on some work over the weekend."
Erica's face grew more puzzled. I glanced at Naomi. Her haute couture composure had slipped a notch. Turmoil swam behind her normally focused eyes.
Erica continued her questioning. "I don't understand. I thought you had a studio at home. Why do you need to lug supplies back and forth?"
Her questioning began to feel more like an interrogation than idle curiosity. Flippancy being the better part of cowardice, I chose to throw her bloodhound pursuit off the scent with a quip. "The dog ate them?"
Before she had a chance to ask another question, I nudged her to the side, scooted around her, and headed for the elevator.
IN THE END, NEITHER murder nor mayhem descended on me as I traveled the twenty miles to the mall. Not that my overactive imagination didn't conjure up one dreadful scenario after another the entire length of the drive. But as it turned out, my biggest dilemma involved the Hyundai's temperamental windshield defroster, not some behemoth SUV running me into a ditch.
When I finally pulled into a parking spot in one of the covered garages, I loosened my death grip on the steering wheel. Although my nerves would never be the same, the first leg of this harebrained escapade had ended without physical trauma-blunt or otherwise-to my slightly overweight, middle-aged body.
Maybe my worries were groundless. Batswin and Robbins would nab Ricardo as planned, and I'd be home in time for another night of mac and cheese. I tried to convince both myself and my queasy stomach of that possibility as I entered the mall and headed for the Burberry store.
The main difference between the Short Hills Mall and the Upper East Side of New York is a roof. The same upscale, pricey boutiques and shops that line either side of Madison and Fifth Avenues occupy two polished marble floors under a skylight in Short Hills, New Jersey. Five of the finest department stores in the country act as anchors and add to the sophisticated ambiance.
Up until recently, I had enjoyed window-shopping at the mall on rainy weekends. Sometimes I even succumbed to an impulse splurge-if it was on sale. Now the sight of all these chi-chi shops only reminded me of my recent fall from Middle-classdom.
My glance darted around the concourse as I made my way toward Burberry. Hand-in-hand couples, women pushing baby carriages, and matrons laden with packages strolled or rushed from shop to shop. Here and there a single man loitered outside one of the stores.
A bored husband waiting for his wife?
An undercover cop?
Ricardo?
Afraid to know one way or the other, I avoided eye contact with all of them, clutched the duffel tighter, and picked up my pace.
Two other customers, both men, were in Burberry. One contemplated a rack of lined raincoats; the other fingered the fringe on a selection of scarves arranged on the counter in front of him. Salesmen hovered near each. As I made my way over to the display of totes, I felt all four men's eyes tracking my every move.
A woman wearing a cafe au lait Chanel suit, over which she had draped a signature Burberry scarf, stepped from the back room. She had pinned the scarf in place below her left shoulder with a gold initial pin. Opposite the pin, above her right breast, she wore a nameplate, identifying her as Nanette. From her perfectly coifed platinum pageboy down to her matching Burberry plaid pumps, Nanette looked more like a society matron than a salesclerk.
Her sad smile made me wonder if we belonged to the same Wronged Wives Club. Had her husband died and left her wallowing in debt? Or had he dumped her for a trophy wife? Nanette certainly didn't look like she'd spent her life in retail. More likely she now had to supplement her monthly Social Security check by working where she had once shopped.
Or maybe she was a damn good undercover cop.
"May I help you?" she asked.
"I'd like one of these totes," I said, pointing to the appropriate bag.
"Certainly." She left the tote in the display and headed back toward the stock room. As I waited, I glanced across the room. The two shoppers and their salesmen quickly averted their eyes. I hoped they were all cops and not Ricardo with a posse of henchmen.
A minute later Nanette returned with a box. "Anything else?"
Did I look like I was rolling in money? I shook my head. "No, that'll be all."
"Cash or charge?"
"Cash." I opened my purse, removed the envelope, and counted out the four one hundred dollar bills, one twenty, a five, and three singles.
"Would you like me to gift-wrap this for you?" she asked after I had paid for the tote and placed the receipt back
in the envelope.
"No, thank you."
Nanette placed the box in a shopping bag, thanked me for shopping at Burberry, then offered me the standard end-of-sale retail mantra, "Have a nice day."
The entire transaction had taken less than five minutes. The four men watched me leave, but none of them followed as I exited the store and headed across the concourse to the ladies' room.
The mall restroom suite looked more like those found in fivestar hotels. A large black and white marble lounge with mirrored walls and oversized black leather chairs branched out into a ladies' room at one end and a men's room at the other. Stalls in the ladies' room were the size of department store dressing rooms.
Three other adults occupied the lounge. One woman primped in front of the mirror at the far end of the room. Another sat in one of the chairs and nursed an infant, while a man, presumably her husband, tried to cajole an extremely fussy toddler.
I entered the ladies' room and glanced around. Three women, all of them chatting about the sale at Bloomingdale's, washed their hands at the sink. Seven women stood in line, waiting for stalls to free up. I took my place behind them. One-by-one toilets flushed, women exited stalls, and I crept forward.
Eventually I secured the stall Ricardo had indicated, locked the door, and settled my bags on the pull-down baby-changing table. I had yet to hear from Ricardo. Before transferring the money from the duffel to the tote, I checked my phone to make sure the battery hadn't died. The indicator showed I had plenty of juice left.
The ladies' room felt like a sauna. Warm air blasted down from a vent in the ceiling. I removed my stadium coat and draped it over the hook on the door.
In the stall directly across the aisle, a woman cajoled a recalcitrant child to go potty. To my right, another woman multi-tasked. While doing her business, she gossiped on her cell phone in a voice loud enough to be heard in the parking garage. As I withdrew bound stacks of hundred dollar bills from the duffel and placed them in the tote, I learned more than I cared to about someone named Eileen, her bladder, her intestines, and her philandering husband.
Eventually, both my neighbors left and others took their place, but Ricardo still hadn't called. I pushed up the sleeves of my sweater, swiped the perspiration from my forehead, and fanned myself with the folded shopping bag.
More women came, flushed, and left. I glanced at my watch. Nearly an hour had passed since I first entered the ladies' room. How long was I supposed to wait?
After another ten minutes I grabbed my packages and coat and headed for the sink to splash cold water on my face, neck, and arms. Then I walked out to the lounge.
Another woman, dressed in a pink and purple running suit and white Reeboks, exited the ladies' room behind me. She scanned the room before taking up a position several feet away from me.
The couple with the baby and toddler were gone, but the primper remained in front of the mirror, a good indication that she was the designated lounge cop. She wore a pair of black jeans, a gray Columbia University sweatshirt, and a pair of black Nikes. For someone who had spent the last hour in front of a mirror, her face was decidedly devoid of make-up, and her hair was pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail. Definitely a cop.
I watched her watch me as I deposited my bags and coat on one of the overstuffed chairs and settled into the one beside it. Uncertainty played across her face. I had revised the script, and I suppose she wasn't sure how to proceed. Too bad. Unless Ricardo was a fly on the wall, he wouldn't know the difference. Besides, I couldn't deliver his money if I fell victim to an overdose of blast furnace heat.
The primping policewoman took a seat as far away from me as possible but positioned herself in such a way that she had a bird'seye view of me, along with everyone who entered and exited the lounge. She and the purple-clad woman exchanged glances.
I pulled out my cell phone and stared at the blank display. Ring, dammit! But will as I might, the frigging phone failed to comply.
More people came and went. Some sat for a few minutes before leaving. They made phone calls or rearranged shopping bags of purchases or just rested from having shopped until they dropped. Others headed straight for the ladies' or men's rooms, then hurried back out into the mall. Several times the two shoppers from Burberry walked through the lounge to the men's room, then left as quickly as they'd come.
I continued to check my watch and the display on my phone. The minutes crept by in slow motion. By eight-fifteen I'd had enough. I waited until only the purple-clad woman and the primper remained in the lounge, then announced, "He's jerking me around."
They stared impassively at me.
"You can drop the surveillance mode," I told them. "We know why we're all here."
"You shouldn't be speaking to us," said the primper, glancing around as if she expected Ricardo to materialize from behind one of the potted plants.
I rose. "I'm not spending all night here. It's obvious he's not going to call, and even if he does, my cell phone travels with me."
"You can't leave," said the other woman.
"Watch me." I shoved my arms into my coat sleeves and picked up my purse, the empty duffel, and the money-laden Burberry tote, but I hesitated. I'd already sustained two break-ins at home. The last thing I wanted was fifty thousand dollars of police money sitting in my house all weekend.
I proffered the Burberry bag to the cop in the purple running suit. "You can give Batswin and Robbins back their money. I don't want to be responsible for it." "
I don't think that's a good idea," she said, refusing to accept the tote.
"I think it's an excellent idea."
"What if the perp comes to your home for it?" asked the primper.
"I'll tell him I brought it to the bank for safekeeping when he didn't call as planned."
"The banks are already closed for the night," said the purpleclad cop.
I dropped back into the chair and pulled out my phone and Batswin's business card. "I'm calling Batswin"
"Don't. I'll call for instructions." The primper pulled out a cell phone of her own and punched in a number. After apprising the person at the other end of the situation, she hung up and turned to me. "Take the money home with you, Mrs. Pollack. We'll have someone follow you and keep an eye on your house."
I didn't like the sound of that, but with both cops refusing to accept the money, I had no other choice. Leaving fifty thousand dollars sitting in a mall lounge wasn't a viable option.
I adjusted my purse, the tote, and the empty duffel over my shoulders. Clutching them tightly against my body, I turned to exit the lounge. The two women cops showed no signs of tagging along. "Aren't you going to escort me to my car?"
"Someone else will keep an eye on you," said the primper. "We don't want to tip our hand in case the perp is lurking somewhere in the mall."
In other words, my safety took a back seat to their completing a successful sting. Anger emanating from every pore of my body, I yanked open the lounge door and headed for the parking garage.
Several times I had the feeling someone was following me. I hoped it was one of the cops. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed no one paying any attention to me. I quickened my pace anyway.
Once in the garage, I heard footsteps behind me. Heavy footsteps. This time, instead of taking a look, I broke into a sprint for the last twenty yards.
After several shaky attempts, I managed to unlock the car. I threw the bags onto the passenger seat, slipped behind the wheel, and locked the door before starting the engine.
Taking the circular exit ramp as fast as I could without plowing into a concrete pylon, I peeled out of the mall and made the normally twenty-five-minute trip back to Westfield in under fifteen. If Ricardo or the police were following me, they were sure taking their bloody sweet time about it.
I arrived home to a dark house. Totally dark. Not a single light casting a warm glow from any window. Every hair on my body jumped to attention. Even though the heater in the Hyundai refused to exhale anythi
ng above a piddling lukewarm whisper of heat, perspiration trickled down my cleavage-challenged chest.
As I parked the car, I tried to convince myself we'd had a power outage, but the well-lit homes of my neighbors belied that theory. Unless the main circuit breaker had tripped, and no one knew how to reset it. I held onto that glimmer of hope even though the logical half of my brain told me my resourceful kids knew how to reset the circuit breakers, and even if they had forgotten, they would have gone next door for help.
Grabbing the flashlight I kept in the glove compartment, I quietly eased out of the car, locked my purse and the fifty thousand dollars inside, and crept toward the back door. Along the way, I arced the light across the side of the house to check the basement windows. All appeared still boarded. At the back door I turned the knob and found it locked.
I decided to check the windows on the other side of the house before entering. Fifty-year-old azalea and rhododendron bushes, planted by the original owners, flanked the east side of the rancher. In order to check the windows, I had to squeeze between the dense shrubbery and the house.
By the time I had inspected both basement windows and fought my way out of the prickly bushes, I was covered with a wintry mix of icy twigs and dead leaves. I considered it a small price to pay for the satisfaction of knowing no one had broken through my make-shift Home Depot security system. But if someone hadn't broken in, why was the house dark? I headed for the front door to find out.
As I rounded the house, a blaze of searchlights blinded me. Someone yelled, "Police. Freeze! Hands above your head!"
"WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU guys a few minutes ago?" I yelled at them.
"Mrs. Pollack?"
I recognized Fogarty's voice. "Mind dousing the glare, Fogarty? You're blinding me."
"Kill the spot, Harley."
I blinked into the darkness and waited for my eyes to adjust.
"What were you doing prowling around your own house?" he asked, advancing toward me.
I told him.
"So you decided to play detective?"
