A Secondhand Murder (2 page)

“
It's not our fault,” I said.

“
We didn't do it.” Madeleine shook her head.

“
Maybe, but where the two of you are, there's bound to be trouble.”

She was, of course, referring to the incident at the spring rodeo. Somehow, Madeleine's curiosity about the bulls had led us to the pens where someone—I'd bet my share of the store on it being Madeleine—fell onto a lever or something. The gate swung open and about ten bulls stampeded through the rodeo arena and the fairgrounds, knocking over concession stands, leaping onto the merry-go-round and running off into the scrub until the cowboys were able to round them up.

For a tiny person—only five two—Madeleine was very clumsy, except on the dance floor where she moved like a ballerina. Off the dance floor she moved like a tiny elephant on speed. Although my appearance was unusual for these parts—six feet without my strappy stilettos and spiky blonde hair, or maybe it was just unusual in general—I wasn't clumsy or accident prone. I was Madeleine's friend and so Frida lumped the two of us together.

“
Mrs. Sanders was just shopping. That's all.” I felt I should defend Madeleine's reputation.

“
That was awfully courageous of her.” Frida's voice snapped with sarcasm.

“
Now that's mean,” said Madeleine.

“
Sorry, gals. Cop humor, but this is no laughing matter.”

Madeleine and I nodded our heads in solemn unison.

“
The back door near the dressing room, is it always locked?” Frida gestured toward the doorway.

“
Locked from the outside, but anyone inside can turn the deadbolt and get out,” I said.

Frida's gaze travelled the shop. “Snazzy duds.” Her eyes rested briefly on the cluster of customers. “Snazzy customers.”

Sure they were. They had once been West Palm's wealthiest. Until they invested their money with Bernie Madoff and lost it. These days, society matrons were able to hide their newfound poverty and make a little money by consigning their clothes with us.

“
Take a look around. Is anyone who was in the shop earlier now missing?”

Madeleine and I surveyed our customers.

“
There were so many women in the store today, it's difficult to say who's left already. We're cash only, so there's no record of who bought what.”

“
Well, the two of you better put your heads together and think back. I want a list of everyone you can remember being in here.”

Madeleine grimaced. “We don't know everyone by name.”

“
Work on it. You do know the name of the victim, right?”

Madeleine gave a weak smile. “Oh, sure. She is, I mean, she was Mrs. Valerie Sanders, probably the most respected socialite from West Palm. She brought in a lot of nice things.”

“
But the knife …” I wanted to cooperate, but, when I pictured the body, the lump in my throat returned and I had to swallow it to talk. “It was taken from there.” I nodded my head toward the display counter where the knife holder still sat.

“
Knife?” Mavis had maneuvered herself away from the other customers and was standing near the dressing room hallway. “Someone was stabbed?” Her voice echoed throughout the store, occasioning looks of horror and murmurs of concern. One woman sighed and fainted into the arms of a police officer. Another pushed several customers out of her way and ran for the door.

“
This is not good,” Frida said, as she waded into the fray to reestablish order.

“
Poor Mrs. Sanders.” Madeleine reached into her pocket and extracted a tissue.

“
Poor us. We're done for.” I shook my head.

“
Eve!” Madeleine might be a klutz, but she had manners and enough emotional sensitivity not to be crass. Graceful as a Lipizzaner but socially a stumblebum, I handled my horror at finding the body by envisioning the going-out-of-business sale we'd have to run after losing our clientele to murder.

I
was wrong about the sensibilities of the women shopping in our store. The next morning a line of ten or so stood in front of the place waiting for us to open. Once they got inside, they fought each other for the dressing room where “it” had happened. When Frida arrived to ask us more questions, everyone got on their cells to tell their friends about the newest “in” place in town.

By the end of the day, our inventory was down. Even those items tagged as our most recent acquisitions sold well. Our policy was to reduce the prices of anything left on the racks for over a month by ten or fifteen percent.

“
If this keeps up,” said Madeleine, “we won't have anything to sell by the end of the week.”

Word of what happened here might not have reached the coast yet,” I said. “When it does, if today is any indication, we'll soon have the West Palm society ladies in here drowning us in their worn tennis whites, golf togs and cocktail dresses.” I leaned back against the counter for a breather. I hadn't taken a break since the doors opened and the crowd poured in.

“
Is this one of
her
dresses by any chance?” came a voice from behind me.

“
Her?” Madeleine looked puzzled.

“
You know, the woman who … yesterday?” The customer nodded her head toward the dressing rooms.

At a loss for words, Madeleine looked to me for help.

“
We keep our donors' names and the items they give us private.”

“
Oh, you can tell me. I won't say a thing.” The woman, wearing a pants suit printed with fuchsia flamingos running through emerald green ponds, leaned over the counter as if she expected me to reveal the secret of the dress' former owner only to her.

Madeleine pulled on my sleeve and whispered, “Tell her the dress belonged to Mrs. Sanders. What can it hurt?”

“
Madeleine Boudreau, shame on you. A deal is a deal, and we vowed to keep our donors' identities secret.” I turned back to the woman, who appeared to be on the verge of salivating on the dress in her eagerness to know its provenance. “I can't tell you.”

“
Well, I never.” She flung the dress on the counter and strode toward the front door.

“
Lost that sale, didn't you?” A man's voice. A man! In a women's consignment boutique? I grabbed the counter for support and looked up into a pair of azure eyes. Up. Get it? He was taller than me. That wasn't his only virtue. He had brown hair, sun-streaked and worn long. It curled over his shirt collar. I tried to catch a whiff of his aftershave. None. Just the clean smell of Dial soap coupled with a strong whiff of sexiness.

I leaned forward farther and would have fallen onto the floor, but a bronze arm handed me a business card. I took it.

“
You're a private dick?” I asked, feeling my cheeks heat up at the word. “Um, PI,” I amended. Alex Montgomery, the card read. Investigations.

As he extended his hand to shake mine, the polo rider on his turquoise knit shirt galloped ahead several paces, propelled by well-developed pecs.

“
You are the proprietor of this establishment. Right?”

“
Along with my partner here.” I motioned to Madeleine, who moved closer to the counter to stand next to him.

She looked up into his eyes, blinked once and sighed. “Madeleine Boudreau.” She stuck out her hand and hit the earring display rack on the counter, knocking it to the floor. As she bent to pick up the jewelry, PI Montgomery stooped to help her, and I could see trouble coming. I rushed around the counter and tried to push him out of the way. I was right to do so, for Madeleine's rear end hit our display mannequin, which wobbled precariously on its one plastic leg (we'd picked up the model at a rummage sale for a buck—the other leg had been lost somewhere). As it plunged toward the floor, the long necklace Ms. Plastic was wearing flew over the PI's head, the mannequin flipped around and Mr. Hottie found himself pinned to its silk-clad chest by a rope of ersatz pearls.

“
Don't move or you'll strangle yourself. Madeleine, get up off that floor and ring up Mrs. Nile's sale. I'll take care of Mr. Montgomery.”
Oh, how I want to take care of Mr. Montgomery.

Mrs. Nile must have had the same thought. She appeared to have lost interest in the shorts set she had brought to the counter and was eyeing Mr. Montgomery (or Alex, as I wanted to think of him now) with the hunger of an alligator in a drought looking for a new breeding hole.

I prevailed, probably because of my height. Also because I can be very commanding if I want to, and I wanted to at this moment. I pushed Mrs. Nile—I tried to push gently—toward Madeleine. “She'll ring you up.” I turned back to my PI guy.

“
Alex, uh, I mean, PI Montgomery, please remain calm. I'll get you free in a moment.” Actually he looked both calm and amused. A sense of humor. Good. I like that in my men.

I extracted him from the pearls while he righted the mannequin. I envied her the momentary closeness with my private eye. For once I wished I could emulate Madeleine's awkwardness. I yearned to stumble straight into those strong arms.

“
I think you were about to introduce yourself.” He cocked one eyebrow.

“
Not really. You're the investigator, so I assume you already know my name. Right?”

He laughed. “Eve Appel, right? Like in Genesis.” So that flash of humor hadn't been a momentary fluke.

“
What can I do for you? You're not here to buy your wife, girlfriend, life partner, date or significant other of either sex a gift, are you?” I covered all the bases.

“
No. Actually I'd like to talk to both of you about what happened here yesterday.”

“
How is that your concern?”

Madeleine shoved me to one side. “Someone hired you to investigate the murder?” Eagerness to cooperate in any way possible was written all over her face, as was the desire to cook him dinner, ply him with wine and undress him in front of her fireplace. I shot her a look that said, “I saw him first, and I didn't try to strangle him.”

“
No. Actually, I was investigating Mrs. Sanders. Maybe the two of you can shed some light on her situation. She brought her clothes here for consignment. Isn't that odd for a woman who had millions?”

I shoved Madeleine to one side and pushed her behind me. “Are you suggesting this place isn't a business the elite would frequent? Why not?” I placed my hands on my hips.

“
Well, you do sell secondhand merchandise.”

“
Classy, previously owned, high-end items.” Madeleine offered her usual sales pitch and poked her head around me.

PI Montgomery took a step backward. “Okay, okay, I get it. I'm not passing judgment on the quality of your inventory. Just wondering why someone who could afford everything new and haute couture would drive sixty miles through rural Florida to buy her dinner dance gowns when she could have her chauffeur take her to City Place.”

“
We don't ask our customers why they shop here,” I said. “We're just happy they do.”

“
Pleased they bring their clothes here for us to sell, too,” Madeleine added, breaking into one of her high wattage smiles.

“
The current economic downtown has been a leveling factor for the wealthy. We took advantage of that to open this place. I can't see how interrogating us about Mrs. Sanders' reasons for doing business here helps your client, whoever he or she is.” I wasn't sure why I wanted this guy to understand our business philosophy, but I did.

As much as I didn't want to chase this hunk off, I wasn't too happy with his questions about our customers. Some of them were eavesdropping and, apparently dismayed at the direction the conversation was taking, had hung their items back on the racks and were sidling toward the door. I knew that several of them had driven over from West Palm and didn't want it revealed that they did their shopping in a cowboy town in rural Florida.

“
Yeah, but why come here when there are dozens of high-end consignment shops on the coast?”

I knew the reason why, but I'd be hung by my acrylic nails from the nearest Sabal palm before I blabbed these matrons' rationale in the middle of my shop.

I grabbed the PI by the arm and steered him toward the office. Madeleine followed so close in his tracks she seemed to be Velcroed to his leg. I turned on her.

“
Get back out there and smooth some ruffled feathers. You're better at that than I am.”

“
But I want to—”

“
No, you don't. You want to sell dresses, shirts, pants and jewelry. You fall into things. I get in trouble because of my mouth. That's the way it is, and we might as well play to our strengths.” I dragged Mr. Montgomery into the office and slammed the door behind us. He was smiling.

“
You're really something.” His smile went from friendly to seductive. “How about we have dinner tonight?”

“
Yes. I mean, no. At least not until you get something straight. Women shop here because they don't want their friends knowing their income has taken a plunge and that they can no longer afford the finer stores. They don't want to chance running into their society friends in a consignment store on the coast because they know their friends are in the same boat.” I paused to catch my breath.