Handbags and Homicide

by Dorothy Howell

  The outfit screamed sophisticated and successful. Which meant she probably had a college degree and a good job somewhere. Which also probably meant she wasn’t working at some crappy retail store for seven bucks an hour, wasn’t being hounded by her bank for overdrawing her checking account. She probably wasn’t considering selling stuff on eBay to pay her rent.

  “She’s not very tall,” Marcie offered.

  True. Her mother definitely wasn’t a beauty queen.

  “She doesn’t have pageant legs,” Marcie said. “You have pageant legs.”

  I do have great legs.

  “Maybe they’re just, you know, friends,” she said. “They could be friends—oh.”

  Blondie walked to the display window at the next store and Ty obediently followed. Now my heart really plummeted and I couldn’t catch it.

  They were window-shopping.

  I watched for another minute as she pointed at the dress in the window and he stood next to her, listening, looking at her, then at the dress, nodding, hanging on to her every word.

  There are only two times in any relationship when couples window-shop. One is after they’re married ten years and they’ve already talked about everything there is to talk about, and looking in shop windows helps pass the time. The other is in the first two months of dating when men will indulge their girlfriends’ passion for clothes and shop with them because they’re getting sex.

  Oh God. Ty and Blondie were having sex.

  I sighed and my shoulders slumped. I looked at Marcie.

  “She’s not his girlfriend,” she declared. “Trust me, she is not his girlfriend.”

  Marcie is usually right about people, but still…

  “And he did ask if you were dating anyone,” Marcie reminded me. “Why would he do that if he didn’t want to ask you out?”

  “He probably just wanted to see if I was available to work more hours at Holt’s,” I said, feeling like a complete idiot because I let myself get so caught up in thoughts of Ty. Jeez, my life is so screwed up now.

  “Does your mom know him?” Marcie asked.

  “My mom?” I asked.

  “The Cameron family has been in California for generations and so has your mom’s family. Old money usually knows old money,” Marcie explained.

  “How do you know how long Ty’s family has been here?” I asked.

  “There’s a plaque outside every Holt’s store.”

  They probably covered that in orientation.

  “You should ask your mom,” Marcie advised.

  No way in hell was I going to ask Mom about Ty’s family. All I needed right now was for her to get a whiff of a possible boyfriend for me, and she’d be off and running, following the scent of a grand wedding.

  I turned back to the restaurant. “I need cheesecake.”

  “What about your new, healthier lifestyle?”

  “And a beer.”

  “But, Haley—”

  I gave her my death stare and she backed off. That was the great thing about having a best friend. You could always count on her to be supportive, no matter how many slices of cheesecake you ordered.

  My name was announced over the intercom, so we went inside to our table. Luckily it wasn’t near the front window so I didn’t have to look outside and see Ty and Blondie again.

  Oh well, it didn’t matter about Ty, I told myself. In a couple more days I’d have my job back at Pike Warner, and Ty, window-shopping Blondie, and Holt’s would be but a bad memory.

  “Want to go shopping tomorrow?” I asked Marcie.

  “Aren’t you helping your mom?”

  Damn. I’d forgotten all about that, whatever it was. Some fund-raiser for sick people, she’d said.

  “How about Sunday?” Marcie asked.

  “Let me check my work schedule,” I said.

  “You’re thinking about Ty,” Marcie said.

  How does she know these things?

  “She’s not his girlfriend,” Marcie said. “I don’t care what you say, he wouldn’t have asked if you were dating anyone unless he wanted to date you himself. I mean, what other reason would he have?”

  I thought about it for a moment but couldn’t come up with any reasonable explanation. The whole thing didn’t sit right with me, yet I couldn’t say why.

  Maybe something else was going on. Something I didn’t know about.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Holt’s chain had stores throughout California, as I recalled from orientation, before I drifted off, and right now I was headed toward the location in Northridge, a suburb of north Los Angeles. There was a great mall there where I shopped sometimes, but that’s not why I was fighting the Saturday morning traffic out on the 118 freeway.

  This was the store where Richard used to work.

  At lunch the other day, Ty mentioned that Richard transferred from Northridge where, under his guidance as assistant store manager, the store had been a top profit maker for the chain. I couldn’t help but wonder why, if Richard had been such an asset to the store, he’d transferred. So I decided to find out. Plus, it occupied my Saturday morning and kept me from wondering what my mom had in store for me this afternoon with her latest adventure in entrepreneurial la-la land.

  I parked outside Holt’s and went inside. The store was pretty crowded, which was a little surprising, since the biggest shopping day in the universe was this Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Even more surprising was seeing that all eight of the registers were open—wow, what a concept—and manned with a cashier and a bagger. And absolutely every one of them wore an of-course-you-can smile. Real smiles. Not those fake ones at our store, where it looks like the Retail Outlet of the Living Dead.

  I needed to talk to someone who’d worked here for a while and I knew just where to find her: the women’s clothing department. That section, for some reason, is seldom busy on the weekends. I guess women who need bigger sizes prefer to shop during the week when it’s less crowded. But there’s always a salesclerk working back there and, sure enough, I found exactly who I was looking for.

  Deb, according to her name badge, had a typical over-forty short haircut, and was decked out for the fall season in a denim vest with pumpkins on the pockets and a long-sleeve orange knit top. I flipped through a rack of skirts trying to decide how to start a conversation, when she threw me completely by coming over and asking if I needed any help. How weird is that?

  “I need an outfit for my mom,” I said, which was a total lie, of course, since my mom wouldn’t even look at the sign if she drove past a Holt’s, much less go inside.

  “Christmas shopping early?” Deb asked with a smile. “Smart. Things will get crazy, starting on Friday.”

  I smiled back, which, oddly enough, was easy.

  “I’m an after-Thanksgiving-sale virgin,” I said. “I work in the Holt’s store in Santa Clarita.”

  “No kidding,” Deb declared, as if I’d just announced that I was her long-lost sister. Then she frowned. “Oh dear. I heard about what happened with…Richard.”

  “Yeah,” I said and managed to look sad. “It was really bad.”

  Deb leaned closer. I knew what was coming.

  “I heard that he was found in the stockroom wearing black fishnets and a garter belt,” she whispered.

  “Isn’t it just awful?” I whispered back.

  “I had no idea,” Deb mused, then seemed to think she’d left something out. “Richard used to work here, you know.”

  “Really?” I asked and, wow, I sounded completely convincing. “I’ll bet everyone here was glad when he transferred out.”

  Deb pondered this for a moment, then said, “He wasn’t well liked, that’s for sure.”

  I hate it when people make you drag things out of them—especially when I’m trying to make it look like I’m not doing just that.

  “Oh?” I asked, raising my brows.

  Again, Deb leaned closer, as if her info was hush-hush.

  “Richard is—was—a bit of a troublemaker,�
�� she said, as if she’d just told me how NASA had staged the moon landing. “He came in here and cut back work schedules, did away with employee incentive programs, cut expenses to the bone. He fired people left and right. Why, we nearly lost our store manager. Richard made him look like an incompetent old fool.”

  “Then they sent him to our store,” I said, “and he did the same thing all over again.”

  “Only I guess somebody in your store didn’t like it very much,” Deb said.

  Wow. I guess not.

  At most every company or business there was some self-appointed asshole who ratted people out, rolled over supervisors, and deliberately shook things up just so they would look important. Did Richard consider himself the Holt’s hired gun? That would explain the screwed-up work schedules he came up with, and the lack of cashiers even during busy times.

  Maybe it explained something else. Like who killed him.

  “Oh, look at us and all this talk of murder,” Deb said. She waved her hands as if to erase our words from the air. “You needed a skirt for your mom, right?”

  “I’m going to look around a bit,” I said, easing away.

  “Let me know if you need any help,” Deb said, with a big of-course-you-can smile.

  “Thanks,” I said, and left the department.

  I got in my car and glanced at my watch as I headed toward the freeway. Yikes. It was late. I’d taken longer talking to Deb than I’d meant to. I’d have to hurry to get to my mom’s on time.

  Jeanette Avery, the store manager, came to mind as I drove. She must have known what Richard was up to. She hadn’t looked very happy and I’d figured it was because of Richard’s murder, but now it seemed as if there could have been more to it than that.

  Had Richard been spying on her, trying to come up with something that would show the corporate office that she was mismanaging the store? Richard was, after all, an assistant manager. He wanted to be manager. I wouldn’t put it past him to try and get promoted by creating an opening himself.

  Jeanette probably feared for her job. She was in her fifties, approaching retirement, and finding another high-paying, store-manager position somewhere else might be tough.

  Was that reason enough to murder Richard?

  I thought back to the night of the murder. Jeanette hadn’t been in the store. I’d called her myself from the office while Evelyn was in the throes of a meltdown.

  Or, at least, Jeanette wasn’t in the store when I discovered Richard’s body. I don’t know how long he’d been dead before I found him. Hours, maybe? If so, Jeanette could have been in the store, killed Richard, then gone home.

  And who was to say she was at home when I called? I couldn’t remember what number I’d dialed, of course, so maybe it was a cell phone. For all I know she could have been outside in the parking lot, waiting for Richard’s body to be discovered. Or, more likely, in the company of someone who could provide her with an alibi.

  There was only one way to find out. I was going to have to go through the records in the office and see what number I’d called that night.

  I got to my mom’s house just as two men I didn’t know were getting into a delivery van, and Mom was getting into her Mercedes. She paused long enough to hand me a folder, then pulled away, leaving me to follow in my own car. As I drove behind the van, I tried to figure out what sort of business she’d ventured into this time.

  The first name on the sign was EDIBLE, which made everyone think of edible panties—or was that just me?—but Mom had followed it up with ELEGANCE, so the whole thing was sort of confusing. Luckily, there was a picture: slices of fruit cut into the shape of flowers and arranged in pots.

  I give it two months.

  My spirits picked up when I followed the van through a gated driveway in Brentwood, a fabulously rich neighborhood north of Sunset. Guess those sick people, whoever they were, would feel better after today.

  The house was a sleek contemporary, with carefully manicured grounds. Really good looking guys in gold valet vests waved cars toward the front of the house. I followed the catering van toward the rear where a security guard checked IDs and consulted the list on his clipboard before waving us through.

  Jeez, whose event is this?

  The event coordinator, Charla something-or-other (I couldn’t read Mom’s handwriting), met the van and we went through the usual first-meeting ritual of her telling me how great my mom was, how wonderful her fruit bouquets were, and assuring me that she knew how proud I was to have a mother like her.

  Then we got down to business. I’d done this sort of thing for Mom before, so I knew the drill. Charla counted the fruit bouquets—some were dipped in chocolate and really looked yummy—checked them over to make sure they were up to the standards of whoever was throwing this fund-raiser, then directed the staff to take them into the house. We signed and exchanged forms. It was then that I saw Mom was donating the bouquets.

  So much for turning a profit in the new business.

  “You’re coming in, aren’t you?” Charla asked, as if she couldn’t imagine why I wouldn’t.

  I’d dressed for the day in a black skirt and cowl neck sweater—I avoided fall colors so I wouldn’t look like part of the decorations—and carried my Notorious bag, of course. Everyone in my mom’s circle would expect a designer handbag and know about the Notorious.

  “I’ll stay for a while,” I said, as if I had tons of other places in Brentwood to go today.

  But, despite my arrival at the rear of the house with the other service personnel, I wasn’t going to enter the house through the kitchen. I took the walkway around, past the gorgeous gardens to the front where a crowd of people, all women, gathered after valets whisked off with their Bentleys, Mercedeses, Beemers, and Porsches. I recognized quite a few of them as my mom’s friends.

  And I was relieved to see that I’d dressed appropriately. You never knew with these functions. The spring ones were the worst, where most of the women showed up in flowered dresses and big hats.

  Most everyone was dressed conservatively—maybe the sick people would be here, after all—yet in expensive clothing. And everyone had a terrific handbag, mostly clutches from Ferragamo, Fendi, Prada, and—oh my gosh, there’s a Notorious bag. In red leather. Just like mine.

  Wow, I hadn’t expected to see another Notorious here—oh, and look, there’s another one. Two Notorious—three, counting mine—at the same fund raiser. Jeez, what were the chances?

  Then I spotted yet another Notorious handbag, and this one was on the arm of the woman I’d run into the day I’d had lunch with Ty. The woman who asked—

  Oh my God. Am I at Drew Barrymore’s house?

  Wow, how cool! I’m at Drew’s house with all her close friends, and I have a red leather Notorious bag just like they do.

  The woman spotted me, smiled broadly, and waved. I waved back.

  How great is this?

  I pictured all of us inside, me with all of Drew’s closest friends. I’d be drawn into the Notorious circle too, and we’d all compare our bags and say how marvelous they are, and then Drew would walk in and—

  Oh, crap.

  Drew would walk in, take one look at me, and ask, “Who are you?” Then everybody would turn and stare. They’d all back away a little, distancing themselves from me. Then someone else would call to my mom, and say, “Isn’t that your daughter?” And then Mom would turn and look at me…like that.

  Okay, I’m out of here.

  I spun around and dashed—hopefully, I merely looked as if I were walking purposefully—toward the rear of the house. From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Charla waving at me, but thanks to my extensive customer service experience at Holt’s, I ignored her with ease.

  The rear parking area was congested. Vans were still pulling in, inching past vehicles that were trying to leave. My car was squeezed in between a florist van and some dumb-ass who’d parked crooked. All sorts of people milled around. Damn. This was the one time I wished I had one of t
hose gas-guzzling SUVs. Even though you could only drive them from gas station to gas station, I could have used one of them right now to jump the curb and cut through the lawn and get out of here.

  I dug in my bag for my keys as I walked, and when I glanced up I saw that a man was standing at the front of my car. He was—

  Oh no. It can’t be. It just can’t—

  “Hi, Haley,” Ty called.

  What the hell is he doing here?

  “Are you following me?” I demanded.

  “No,” he said, looking a bit stunned and confused. He nodded toward the house. “I’m here for the fund-raiser.”

  Okay, that made me look stupid.

  “Is that so?” I shot back, hoping if I sounded a little annoyed it might explain the embarrassing redness I felt on my cheeks. “You’re the only man here.”

  “My mother hosts the event every year.”

  Good grief. I’m at Ty’s mother’s house.

  “I’m running the auction,” he said, and gave a rueful grin. “The day’s big finale.”

  And his mom has him as part of the program, not schlepping food with the servants.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, and started rooting in my bag for my keys again. Damn. This bag is a bottomless pit. Why can’t they make a slot just for keys?

  “You’re here with your mom’s new business?” he asked, and walked closer.

  He looked relieved that what I’d told him that day at lunch was true, and that I wasn’t some nutcase lunatic he’d had the misfortune of employing for seven bucks an hour.

  I don’t usually tell people who my mom is, especially if there’s a chance they already know her and are aware that she’s a former beauty queen. There’s always the mental comparison. I can see it in their eyes. The shape of my face, then Mom’s face. My hair, then Mom’s hair. My nose, lips, chin, eyes, then Mom’s. And, inevitably, they see that I don’t quite measure up, that the goddess of stunning genes gave way at a crucial moment in my development so that I ended up merely pretty, and I get that look of disappointment and regret…just the way Mom looks at me.