Handbags and Homicide

by Dorothy Howell

  I thought I would cry.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in Customer Service?” Craig barked.

  I turned and saw him watching me. For a moment, I was too overcome to speak.

  “Bags,” I finally managed to whisper. “Can I have the bags?”

  Craig looked annoyed. “How many do you want?”

  “All of them.”

  “Employees get two.” He huffed and glanced at his wristwatch. “We’re opening in three minutes. Come back on your break.”

  “No!” If he’d been closer, I might have grabbed for his throat. I calmed myself. “I mean, no, I’m afraid they’ll all be taken by then.”

  He waved me away like an annoying fly. “Stockroom’s full of them. Come back later.”

  Craig walked away.

  The stockroom? Of course. I could spend hours selecting bags at my leisure in the stockroom. No need to rush now.

  Since I had tons of time, I headed for the back of the store. Grace was in the customer service booth.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, and sounded as if she really meant it.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I told her, though I didn’t really mean it.

  “Don’t worry about it. We don’t do sales so we won’t get busy for a couple of hours,” Grace said.

  Perfect. I could slip away and into the stockroom.

  No one seemed to know that I’d quit yesterday. Lucky break for me. Not that I really wanted to work here. But, I figured, if I could stay here long enough to get the handbags I wanted, then it would be worth it. And I wasn’t worried about Craig’s decree of two purses only for employees. No way would Bella, Sandy, Colleen, or most of my other friends buy more than one bag. I’d simply give them cash and ask them to buy one for me. Dozens—for me!

  My stomach fluttered a little as I realized I could buy everyone I knew a gorgeous designer bag for Christmas. Wouldn’t that be great?

  Of course, I didn’t really have the money for that right now. And, while I’ve made a few bad moves financially, I’m not crazy enough to spend the last of my savings—my rent money—on handbags.

  But my new Golden State Bank and Trust credit card should arrive any day now. I could hold out here at Holt’s until then.

  I put my purse in my locker and grabbed my time card from the slot beside the time clock so I could get it cleared from yesterday and punch in this morning.

  Might as well get paid during my stockroom shopping extravaganza.

  I stopped at the customer service booth and Grace told me to have my time card initialed by a supervisor, so I headed down the hallway toward the offices. Just then, all hell broke loose behind me, as waves of customers surged through the aisles.

  Yikes!

  The door to Jeanette’s office was partially open, so I knocked quickly and stuck my head inside. She sat behind her desk wearing a suit the color of eggplant (which, with her shape, made her look sort of like an actual eggplant), shuffling papers. She looked up as I walked in.

  “Would you initial my time card so I can punch in?” I asked, holding it out.

  “What for?”

  Ty’s voice came from the corner of the room. And it wasn’t his Barry White voice. More like Darth Vader.

  He scowled at me and said, “You don’t work here anymore.”

  CHAPTER 18

  No. No, this could not be happening. Not now. Not when something good had finally happened in my crappy life.

  I was not leaving Holt’s. I was keeping this job—and my employee discount.

  So what could I do but turn to Ty quite calmly and say, “What are you talking about?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Yesterday. You resigned your position here.”

  I managed to look mildly puzzled. “You must have me mixed up with someone else.”

  Ty took a step closer, his gaze boring into me. “I remember distinctly—very distinctly. You quit.”

  I know he was remembering what happened in the parking lot. I could see a weird kind of fire in his eyes. I was remembering it too, and for some reason, it sort of fired me up too.

  But I couldn’t afford to lash out now. I shook my head and offered a tiny apologetic smile.

  “No, that wasn’t me,” I said.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Jeanette, still seated at her desk, bouncing her gaze between the two of us.

  “It was you,” Ty said, more forcefully now, as he came even closer.

  I couldn’t tell if he was mad, or upset, or hurt, or what. He probably deserved to be all of those things, after the way I’d screamed at him in the parking lot.

  But that was his problem. I had my own to deal with.

  I held my time card out to Jeanette. “Would you sign this so I can get to work?”

  Jeanette stole a quick glance at Ty, uncertain of what to do. She was the store manager, but he was the owner. Finally, she reached for my time card, but Ty plucked it out of the air between us with such a look of smug satisfaction that I wanted to slug him. Or kiss him. Maybe both.

  We were locked in some sort of primal stare-down. Two warriors battling for dominance. Ty’s chest had puffed out and his shoulders were squared, his jaw had gone rigid.

  God, that’s such a hot look on men.

  Ty held on to my time card—the path to the one good thing that had happened to me lately. But if he thought I was going to beg for it, he was sadly mistaken. There’s only so far I’ll go, even for designer handbags at cost.

  Still, I’d said awful things to him yesterday in the parking lot. Some of them, he actually deserved. Most, he didn’t.

  “Oh, now I remember. I did leave a little early yesterday,” I said, as if the recollection had just come to me. I looked at Jeanette. “I left to celebrate my promotion. I’m head of QA now, specializing in Laura Ashley bed-in-a-bag sets.”

  Jeanette’s eyes widened. She knew, of course, that no such position existed at Holt’s, but she didn’t dare say anything.

  “If you’ll excuse me.” Jeanette popped out of her chair and scuttled out the door.

  I turned to Ty. His gaze still pierced mine but his lips were pressed together, and I could see he was trying hard not to smile.

  I’m cute that way.

  “So you do want to keep working here?” he asked.

  I suppose I could have lied, plastered on a big of-course-you-can smile, and gone on and on about how much I wanted to be part of the Holt’s “family,” but I couldn’t do it. And, after the things I’d said in the parking lot yesterday, Ty wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

  “Look,” I said, “my life is kind of complicated right now. Believe it or not, this job is the best thing I’ve got going, which is really sad, but there it is.”

  He just stared at me for another few seconds, then pulled an ink pen from the inside pocket of his jacket. He didn’t take his eyes off me as he clicked it, and held up my time card, poised to scrawl his initials in the margin.

  Maybe he was expecting me to say something else. I didn’t know. But I was done.

  I guess he saw that in my face because he initialed my time card and handed it back to me. I took it, but he didn’t let go. We held it between us for a few seconds, connected in a weird way, and the heat seemed to leave the room. I headed for the door.

  “My grandmother liked you,” Ty said.

  I looked back. Something entirely different was in his expression now. I wasn’t sure what it was. I’d like to think he’d said it just to keep me from leaving, but that didn’t seem realistic.

  Still, if he could attempt to be civil, I could too. Really, how could I walk away without a word after he’d mentioned his grandmother?

  “Sorry about what I said in front of her,” I said. I’d apologized to Ada yesterday, but figured Ty deserved the same.

  “She said you had spirit.”

  “Even after I said ‘screw you’?”

  Ty grinned. “That’s what she liked best about you.”

  Okay, well, at least I
hadn’t insulted her.

  Ty shifted, as if he were about to say something important, but the door flew open and Rita planted herself in the doorway, hands on her hips.

  “What are you doing back here?” she demanded. “You’re supposed to be in the customer service booth. Grace is by herself. You need to get over there.”

  “Get out of the way and I’ll go,” I told her.

  Rita glared at me, then stepped back. I left the office.

  From a hot, private moment with the store owner, to being reprimanded by the biggest bitch in the place.

  My life sucks.

  Just as Rita claimed when she’d rousted me out of Jeanette’s office, Grace was by herself in the customer service booth. But what Rita didn’t mention was that there were no customers there either.

  “We’ll be busy in a few hours,” Grace said, as she straightened the counter. “Customers will think they got the wrong price, or didn’t get their discount, or something, and they’ll come here for us to do price adjustments.”

  We could see the line of customers now. It snaked from the registers up front, down the aisle, and halfway across the back of the store. Mostly women shoppers, only a few men. I spotted some mother-daughter teams, struggling to hold all their purchases, inching ahead slowly in the line, smiling and laughing, making plans for where they’d shop next, where they’d go for lunch. It seemed like fun.

  “You want to look up those stock numbers?” Grace asked, nodding toward the mound of merchandise on the back counter.

  I didn’t see any reason to knock myself out working. All the action was on the sales floor and at the registers. Nobody was paying attention to us.

  Then Grace bobbed her brows upward to the security cameras overhead, hidden behind smoky panels in the ceiling. The customer service booth had several, one for each of the three cash drawers we had, plus others that covered the entrance to the cash office. The store hadn’t hired a new loss prevention team yet, that I knew of, so management was taking turns in the security room monitoring everything.

  I forgot, sometimes, that the cameras were all over the store, recording everything that went on, and since I didn’t want any trouble from store supervisors—at least, not until I got my purses at cost—I figured I’d better stay busy.

  I grabbed a blouse from the top of the clothes heap, but before I looked up its stock number I decided to check out the info on the handbags that had been downloaded overnight.

  Wow. My heart fluttered slightly as I scrolled through dozens of handbags, all the latest styles from the most desirable designers. I couldn’t wait to get into the stockroom and see them all in person. Touch them. Run my fingers over the leather. Feel the fabric. I could try them on, one at a time, or a dozen at once. Maybe I would put them all in a big pile and lie in them—

  No, wait. That’s how I’d gotten into trouble with the Laura Ashley bed-in-a-bag sets.

  “I need you up front,” Rita announced, her voice blaring in my ear.

  I froze. No. I couldn’t cashier. Not today. Not with this frantic crowd of holiday shoppers. Besides, if I was working at a register, how was I going to slip away into the stockroom to look at the purses?

  “I’m really busy here,” I told her. “Swamped.”

  “Move it,” Rita said, then walked away, expecting me to follow.

  I hesitated, but since I didn’t want to get fired at this very moment, I went with her.

  The front of the store was controlled chaos. Instead of a line for each register, one lane had been roped off, and Evelyn stood at the head of it directing customers to the next available cashier. Things were moving pretty smoothly, considering.

  “Take over for Evelyn,” Rita told me.

  Okay, this might be kind of cool.

  “Do I get a whistle?” I asked Rita.

  “No.”

  “A bullhorn?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Just get to work.”

  Evelyn, in a dither, twisted her fingers together and bobbed up and down on her toes, trying to see which cashier was ready for another customer. She seemed relieved to see me.

  “You have to keep the line moving,” Evelyn said in a low voice.

  “Got it.”

  She passed me her clipboard. “And see if they’ll complete one of these surveys.”

  I had no intention of doing that.

  “No problem,” I said.

  “Be sure to ask everyone if they’d like to open a charge account,” Evelyn said.

  No way in hell was I doing that either.

  “I’ll handle everything,” I told her, and she left.

  I felt like a traffic cop, or something, motioning customers forward, putting up my hand to stop them, directing them to an available register. I had to hand it to the cashiers, they were hustling pretty good. Baggers would have helped, of course. More carts would have been nice too. Some people were having a hard time holding on to everything they’d selected.

  From what I saw, customers were buying just about everything in the store. Clothes, shoes, toys, housewares. Lots of people had selected the red and white holiday table linens I’d stocked yesterday. It was kind of cool, seeing them go through the line.

  Then it occurred to me that the one thing I wasn’t seeing much of was the designer handbags. What was wrong with these people? True, they couldn’t get them at cost like employees could, but Holt’s was offering them at a great discount. I’d seen a copy of the sale ad earlier in the customer service booth, and the bags were featured on the front page. Why weren’t they selling?

  Then it came to me. I should work in handbags. Oh my God, what a fabulous idea. I was perfect for that position. I had to find Craig.

  When Rita finally walked by a few minutes later, I flagged her down.

  “I need a break,” I told her.

  “It’s not time for your break.”

  “It’s an emergency,” I insisted, which was ridiculous since I was an adult and shouldn’t have to beg for a bathroom break.

  She huffed. “Oh, all right. But hurry.”

  Yeah, I’ll do that.

  I headed for the back of the store, then cut across to the accessories department. Three customers were there. Evelyn was behind the counter, showing a Chanel tote. No sign of Craig.

  The biggest shopping day of the year, a department full of hot, expensive purses, and Craig wasn’t there? Jeez, what was up with that?

  I hurried to the offices in the back of the store, but didn’t find him there. That left the stockroom. The entire store was stocked to the brim, so I couldn’t imagine he’d have a reason to be there, but I spotted him moving the luggage around.

  “Hey, Craig,” I called.

  He jumped and whipped around. I’d startled him, or maybe he was still sort of punchy about being in the stockroom.

  “What are you doing back here?” he demanded.

  “Looking for you,” I said.

  Okay, we’d gotten off to a bad start, but I was pumped, ready to impress him with my almost infinite knowledge of designer handbags.

  Now he looked suspicious, or maybe worried. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “Listen, Craig, I want to work in Accessories selling the new line of purses. I know absolutely everything there is to know about those handbags.”

  He frowned. “Yeah?”

  “First of all, Louis Vuitton. Oh my God, they’re the best,” I said. “The company started out in the nineteenth century making traveling trunks. So did Prada and Gucci. Fendi sold leather goods and furs. Then gradually, over the decades, lots of handbags came along. Chanel is fantastic. Dior, Ferragamo, Hermes. Judith Leiber makes the glitziest evening bags on the planet. And—”

  “Hold on,” Craig said, waving his arms for me to slow down. “How do you know about these purses?”

  “I own dozens,” I declared. “They’re my passion. My life’s blood. The very fiber of my being.”

  Okay, I knew I was laying it on really thick, but I
wanted to work in his department.

  He studied me for a minute, then asked, “You own real ones? Not fakes or counterfeits? Not knockoffs?”

  “No, of course not,” I told him. I waved my hand around the stockroom. “Bring out a handbag. Any handbag. Just hold it up and I can tell you who made it, the style, the color of the lining, how many interior pockets and zippers. Believe me, Craig, you won’t find anybody in this store—or most anywhere else—who knows designer handbags the way I do.”

  Craig didn’t say anything, just stood there beside the luggage staring at me as if he couldn’t believe what he just heard. I guess I impressed him pretty good.

  “I’ll take a look at the schedule,” he said.

  Yes!

  “Thanks, Craig,” I said, and headed out of the stockroom.

  “Haley?” he called. “Go ahead and pick out all the handbags you want. I’ll give them all to you at cost. But get them today, before they get picked over.”

  I guess Craig hadn’t noticed that the handbags weren’t exactly jumping off the shelves, but that was okay. All the best purses would be available for me.

  “Cool,” I said.

  “But keep this between you and me,” he said. “I don’t want to have to do this for everybody.”

  “Thanks.”

  I left the stockroom.

  That Craig. What a great guy.

  Under normal circumstances, getting off work at 1:00 p.m. would seem early. But not if you’ve been on the job since 5:00 a.m.

  The Holt’s parking lot was full as I left the store. It was still packed inside too. The crowds hadn’t let up since we’d opened. The only difference was that now most everyone was tired and cranky.

  But not me. I was happy, thrilled beyond belief as I was struggling toward my car with three huge shopping bags, full of purses. Designer purses. Gorgeous, designer purses. Purchased at cost—cost!

  Yeah, yeah, I know I said I’d wait until I got that Golden State Bank and Trust credit card, but I couldn’t hold out. Not after Craig had made me that great offer. All the purses I wanted—only management got that opportunity. I couldn’t let it slip past. What if somebody found out he’d offered me that deal and put a stop to it? What if he changed his mind?