Handbags and Homicide

by Dorothy Howell

  “I’ll be back later to check on you,” Evelyn promised.

  The department was a mess. Bras were falling off hangers, bikinis, thongs, and granny panties were all mixed together on the display tables, someone had strewn two dozen packs of panty hose on the floor.

  Oh well. That’s what I’m here for, I reminded myself. To work. Make extra money for Christmas. Buy that Gucci tote and the Louis Vuitton organizer. And do something about that concerning miscalculation in my checking account.

  I started straightening the panty hose, keeping my head down to avoid eye contact with customers, listening to babies cry and the mind-numbing music on the PA system. Every so often a voice would break in, paging one of the store supervisors to Customer Service, the telephone, or to a register.

  A momentary lapse caused me to glimpse a customer at the bra racks. I dropped to my knees behind the panty hose.

  “Excuse me?”

  Too late. She’d seen me.

  I duck-walked around the end of the display, but I wasn’t quick enough.

  “Excuse me!”

  She was twenty, maybe, wearing jeans and a low-cut T-shirt, and waving a bra at me.

  I got to my feet. “Can I help you?”

  I tried for my of-course-you-can smile but couldn’t quite pull it off.

  “This department is a mess! Totally! I can’t find anything!”

  “Would you like to complete a comment card?” I asked.

  “No!” She shook the bra at me again. “I want this bra! In beige!”

  I took it from her. Only a 32-B. How sad. I might have felt sorry for her if she wasn’t being such a bitch.

  I spent a few minutes looking at the style, then examining the tag.

  “We’re out of these,” I told her.

  She huffed loudly. “Could you at least go look?”

  “Sure.”

  I took the bra, left the department, walked down the aisle past a couple of customers—whom I avoided—and through the double doors to the stockroom.

  I loved the stockroom. It was absolutely huge. Towering shelves stuffed with crisp, new merchandise. A different section for each department. There were naked mannequins, signs, fixtures, and lots of racks and carts for moving merchandise. It was quiet back here too. The replenishment team worked early in the morning restocking all the merchandise in the store, and the truck team only showed up when there was merchandise to be unloaded. Almost no one came back here at night.

  Just inside the door was Domestics, a rainbow of bedspreads, towels, and sheets. And a comfy place to sit too.

  I pulled two king-size Laura Ashley bed-in-a-bag sets off the shelf, sat down, and stretched out my legs. Nice. I leaned back and closed my eyes, letting thoughts of that Louis Vuitton organizer fill my head. I would get it. I just had to figure out how.

  After a while I got up, put the bed sets on the shelf, and went back to the lingerie department. The customer was still there, still fuming.

  “We’re out,” I told her.

  “Fine!” She stomped away.

  I love this job.

  I went to the bra racks and, yes, they were a mess. Totally. I spent a few minutes straightening them, then headed for the stockroom. There were racks of bras back there. I’d seen delivery trucks at the loading dock every day I’d been there, bringing tons of merchandise for the Christmas shopping season.

  I wound my way through Domestics, past Housewares, and up the metal and concrete stairs to the second floor. A conveyor belt ran alongside the stairs for large items, along with an overhead conveyor for hanging items, and I was tempted to hop on and take the easy way up. But it was early in my employment with Holt’s. No reason to do all the fun stuff right away.

  The lighting was harsh and it was chilly as I wound my way through the shelves of merchandise to the far back corner of the stockroom where the intimate apparel was located.

  There was Richard, the assistant store manager. I’d heard him being paged on the store PA over and over tonight. No wonder he hadn’t answered.

  Richard was facedown on the floor. Dead.

  CHAPTER 2

  Yes, Richard was dead. I knew that because I never missed an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Follow the evidence, they said. And immediately I saw a huge pool of blood under his face and a big yucky-looking indentation in the side of his head.

  If I’d liked Richard in the least, I would probably have felt bad about that.

  I decided I’d better let someone know about this so I retraced my steps to the stairs beside the conveyor belt and picked up the wall phone. I’d always wanted to make an announcement over the PA. But what should I say? I didn’t know the Holt’s numeric code for finding a dead body, and simply announcing “cleanup in the stockroom” didn’t seem quite right either.

  Then a little stab of concern zapped me.

  What if everyone thought I’d killed Richard? After all, I’d made a snide comment or two about him to other Holt’s employees, which he deserved, of course, but still. And here I was, alone in the stockroom with his dead body, no one else around, no one to vouch for me.

  Maybe I’d go get someone. Tell them we needed more bras in intimates. Get them to come up here and let them find Richard. Let them handle the police, the questions. Let them be the suspect.

  Sounded like a good plan.

  Hmm. Where was Rita?

  I headed down the steps. When I went through the double doors onto the sales floor I spotted Evelyn waiting in Intimates.

  “Where have you been?” she asked. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere—”

  “I found a dead body in the stockroom.”

  Evelyn froze. “You—what?”

  “It’s Richard. He’s in women’s lingerie.”

  Her mouth formed a little O. “He’s in women’s lingerie?”

  “Intimates,” I said, gesturing toward the double doors. “Upstairs.”

  “And he’s…”

  “Dead.”

  I guess it finally sank in because Evelyn flipped out.

  “Oh my God! Call 9-1-1! We’ve got to clear the store! Get these people out of here! Now, before—”

  “Shh!” I grabbed Evelyn’s flailing arms. “Keep your voice down. We need to keep this quiet.”

  “But—” Evelyn’s eyes got huge and her gaze darted up and down the aisle. “Craig…where’s Craig?”

  Leave it to Evelyn to worry about reporting to her supervisor, at a time like this.

  “We’ll find Craig,” I told her. “But we don’t want to start a panic and have customers stampeding over each other. It’s better to keep it between you and me for now.”

  Evelyn’s eyes focused on me. “Yes, yes, I suppose.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go phone the police. And try to stay calm.”

  We went to the suite of offices in the rear of the store. I’d never been back there before. Evelyn had a desk in a room shared by all the supervisors. Only the store manager got a private office. I found a phone book in the bottom drawer.

  “Just call 9-1-1,” she said, getting all wild-eyed again.

  “It’s not an emergency. Richard’s dead. He’s not going anywhere.”

  “But—”

  “Look,” I said, “do you really want police cars, fire trucks, and paramedics rolling up to the front of the store, lights flashing and sirens blaring?”

  “Well…I don’t know.”

  “Go find me the phone number for the store manager,” I told her. “We should call her too.”

  Evelyn dug through the desk drawer, seemingly thankful for something to do, while I made the call. I asked the officer who answered to kindly come to the rear of the store and we’d meet him there. Then I got the store manager’s phone number from Evelyn and broke the news to her. Next, I paged Todd, the on-duty Loss Prevention guy.

  Rita came into the office and Evelyn rushed to her.

  “Oh my God. It’s Richard. He’s dead,” she declared, then flung her arm t
oward me. “Haley found him—upstairs. She says he’s in lingerie.”

  Rita turned a cool gaze to me. “That’s sick.”

  The phone rang. It was Todd, the LP guy.

  “You need to come to the office,” I told him. “We have a…situation.”

  “I’m on break,” he said.

  I looked down at the receiver, then put it to my ear again. “Listen, Todd, something’s happened. You have to come to—”

  “Hello? I said I’m on break.”

  “Fine.”

  I slammed the phone down. The loss prevention division of Holt’s was separate from the store’s chain of command. They worked with store management, but didn’t answer to them.

  I turned to Evelyn. “How do I get hold of the LP supervisor?”

  She tapped her fingers frantically against her forehead. “Oh, uh, that number is here somewhere,” she said and started rifling through the desk drawers again.

  “We need to block the stockroom entrances,” I said, visions of CSI flashing in my head. There were two ways to get into the stockroom from inside the store, an entrance near the customer service booth and another near the intimates department.

  “Rita, get another area manager and you two stand at the doors,” I said. “Don’t let anyone in. The police are on their way.”

  She glared at me for a minute with even more disdain than usual.

  “I don’t believe what you said about Richard,” she told me, then huffed out of the office.

  Evelyn came up with the phone number for the loss prevention supervisor and I called it. Voice mail came on so all I could do was leave a message.

  At that point, I couldn’t think of anything else to do except wait for the police and Los Angeles County’s version of Gil Grissom and the gang to show up. I turned to Evelyn. She was straightening up one of the desks; I guess she wanted things to look tidy when the detectives showed up.

  “Let’s go open the doors to the loading dock,” I said to her.

  I figured Rita would have stationed herself at the customer service booth entrance to the stockroom, so I went the other way to the double doors near Intimates. Craig Matthews stood guard, alerted to the situation by Rita, I guessed. Craig was Evelyn’s supervisor, the area manager for ILA, Intimates, Lounge-wear, and Accessories.

  Craig was nearing his fifties, and everything about him was pretty much average. He looked confused, troubled, and I wondered what Rita had told him when she’d asked him to serve guard duty at the stockroom doors.

  “Craig, isn’t it just awful?” Evelyn declared, twisting her fingers together. “I mean, for Haley to find Richard…like that.”

  Craig looked at me. “It’s true?” he asked, his bushy brows drawn together.

  Jeez, like I wouldn’t know a dead body when I saw one?

  “Yeah, it’s true,” I said. “We’re going to let the police in.”

  “Evelyn, you stay here,” Craig told her, and pushed into the stockroom ahead of me.

  I heard the sirens when we wound our way to the loading dock, and was a little annoyed. I’d distinctly told the guy on the phone not to blast their sirens. Why don’t people do as instructed?

  The two big roll-up doors were the only way into the stockroom, other than through the store, and luckily Craig knew how to open them. He hit a couple of switches. A light over the door flashed yellow and a loud beeping noise sounded, like one of those big trucks when it backed up. The doors rolled open, making all sorts of racket.

  Outside, I saw a black-and-white police car and an ambulance approach, their red and blue lights flashing in the darkness. A plain Crown Victoria followed. Uniforms swarmed inside and Craig directed them to the stairs that led up to the second floor of the stockroom. Two men in suits ambled in. They introduced themselves as Detectives Shuman and Madison.

  Shuman was the younger of the two, kind of handsome in a discount-outlet sort of way. Madison had thinning gray hair and a round belly that made him look like he was about seven months along.

  “Who found the body?” Detective Madison asked.

  “She did,” Craig said, gesturing to me.

  Shuman pulled a notepad from his jacket pocket, asked my name, and wrote it down.

  “Did you hear anything?” Detective Madison asked.

  “Like what?”

  He looked at me like I was dumber than dirt.

  “Footsteps? Breathing? Another person nearby? The murderer, maybe?”

  The murderer might have been up there when I found Richard?

  Oh, crap.

  What if he’d seen me? Wanted to silence me? What if he’d attacked me? In Holt’s?

  No way was I dying in a midrange retail store. I’d have dragged myself to an Abercrombie & Fitch—somehow.

  “Ma’am?” Detective Madison asked, making the word sound more like “dumb-ass.”

  Both detectives were staring at me now. So was Craig.

  “I didn’t hear anything. Or see anything,” I told them.

  “We’ll talk to you later,” Madison said, looking disgusted.

  The two detectives headed up the staircase, Craig walking in front, explaining the layout of the second-floor stockroom where Richard’s body lay.

  I stood there watching them go, feeling a little miffed, for some reason. I didn’t really want to go upstairs and see Richard’s body again, but I mean, jeez, I was the one who found him.

  I left the stockroom through the double doors and saw that a uniformed officer had taken up guard duty in place of Evelyn. A few customers took note of him as they went past, pointing and bending their heads together to whisper.

  Evelyn rushed up to me from the bra racks. “What’s going on back there?”

  She still looked rattled and I wondered why she just didn’t go home.

  “The detectives are upstairs,” I told her, wondering suddenly why I didn’t go home. If finding a dead body wasn’t a good reason to leave work, what was?

  “This whole thing is just so…sordid,” Evelyn declared, pursing her lips distastefully.

  “I’m not feeling so good. I think I’ll go home.”

  That snapped her out of her stupor. “Oh, well, aren’t you scheduled to work until closing?”

  I guess the look I gave her—which was certainly not my of-course-you-can smile—jarred her.

  “I could go ask Craig if you can take a break,” she offered and waved at the stockroom doors.

  “I’m taking a break, Evelyn,” I told her. “If Craig has a problem with that, tell him to come see me.”

  “Well…” Evelyn twisted her fingers together.

  “Besides, the police will want to talk to me. You don’t want that happening out here on the sales floor, do you?”

  More finger twisting. “Well…”

  I doubted the detectives would be interested in hearing me say yet another time that I didn’t know anything, but you never knew. Besides, if I stayed in the break room instead of going home, I’d still be on the clock.

  Evelyn drew in a big breath. “Yes, yes, you’re right. Probably. You should go to the break room…for a while. I’m—I’m sure—pretty sure—Craig will be all right with that.”

  “Whatever,” I said and walked away.

  At the customer service booth I saw that another uniformed policeman stood guard by the stockroom door, and that Rita was huddled in the back of the booth whispering furiously with the two girls who worked there. Rita threw me a look as I walked into the break room.

  No one was there, which suited me okay since the whole thing with Richard’s death had begun to irk me, for some reason. I decided I needed a boost. I eyed the vending machines.

  If you couldn’t indulge yourself after finding a dead body at your crappy second job, when could you? I got a ten from my purse, fed it into the machine, and started pushing buttons.

  About thirty minutes later as I sat at the break room table catching up on my celeb news in People magazine and snacking on the array of chocolates I’d gotten fr
om the vending machines, the door swung open and a man walked in. I’d never seen him before so I knew he wasn’t store management, and from the look of him I doubted he was a cop.

  Tall, light brown hair, thirtyish, dressed in jeans and an emerald-green polo shirt. Kind of handsome.

  “Haley Randolph?” he asked, extending his hand. “I’m Ty Cameron.”

  I shook his hand and a jab of heat shot up my arm. Or maybe it was the three packages of M&M’s, the Snickers bar, and the two Reese’s Cups I’d just finished off.

  “I came as soon as I got word,” Ty said, nodding in the direction of the stockroom.

  Now I knew who he was. The loss prevention phone number I’d called was just voice mail. This had to be the guy in charge.

  “It’s about damn time,” I told him. Jeez, how much chocolate had I eaten? Even I could hear how wound up I was.

  He studied me for a moment, then said, “I apologize.”

  “I called that idiot Todd, the LP guy on duty, but he wouldn’t come help. He was on break. You ought to fire his sorry ass,” I told him.

  “Okay.”

  The break room door swung open and in walked Craig and the two detectives. Introductions were made and the men conversed quietly on the other side of the room, as if I weren’t there flipping through People. Ty was doing a lot of murmuring so I figured the cops were chewing him a new one over the store’s lax security.

  Finally Detective Madison turned to me, the other men fanning out around him, all staring down at me.

  “So, let me get this straight,” he said, sounding really annoyed. “You were alone when you found the body and no one else was around.”

  “It’s pretty complicated but I think you’ve got it right,” I told him.

  I need to lay off the sugar.

  He didn’t seem troubled by my testy attitude. Guess he was used to it.

  “You were working near the stockroom doors, right?” Detective Madison asked. “Back there in the women’s underwear section? Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you didn’t see anybody go into the stockroom?”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said. Unless, of course, someone had gone in while I was crouched behind the panty hose display hiding from that bra customer.