Chasing Tinsel (Miranda Vaughn Mysteries) (3 page)

“Breanna, do you know what you’re doing?”
 

Her eyes were watering, leaving trails of purple eye makeup on her cheeks.
 

“Sure. I’ve done this before,” she said, blinking rapidly. She stood back from the mirror and looked at me, smiling. “See?”
 

The lashes clumped together, damp from her teary application attempts. It looked like two spiders were attacking her eyes.
 

“No. Breanna, no. I can’t let you wear those,” I said. “You’re going to cry all night and make yourself miserable.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine. My eyes just water a little at first.”
 

She blinked and one of the lashes was flushed off her face in the torrent of tears.
 

I shook my head and handed her a box of tissues and the eye makeup remover. “No, really, sweetie. Those are not for you.”
 

The problem was that they were cheap false eyelashes, probably held on with tile adhesive or something equally as irritating.
 

“But—”
 

I cut off Breanna’s protest with a stern look and pointed to the restrooms. “No.”
 

“Okay.”
 

I cleaned up the counter while Breanna was gone, then tidied up the displays again. They were already stocked, but it gave me a chance to stare out the window at the shoppers again. The families walking around with their kids, the groups of teenagers shopping for each other. The young couple mooning over engagement rings was back, eyeing the sparkling display in the jewelry store window again. The woman was dressed simply in a dark parka and jeans. The young man led his girlfriend to a bench where they sat, his arm around her shoulder, quietly talking to each other. Were they trying to figure out how to pay for their wedding rings? Maybe they worked in the mall, trying to make ends meet on their minimum wage retail income.
 

“Well, that’s just pathetic.”

I turned to find Sarah Girard, my best friend and coworker at the law office, standing between me and the cosmetics counter.
 

“What are you doing here? I thought you had a date.”
 

“I’m here to get my brother his annual Christmas gift card from the sporting goods store. Want to come along? Or are you not done wallowing in your lonely misery?”
 

“How could I be miserable with such supportive friends?” I asked.
 

She smiled. “Yeah, you are pretty damn lucky.”
 

I laughed, and she grinned.
 

“I can’t go,” I said. “I just took a break.”
 

She shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said. “Oh, hey. Guess who I just saw?”

My heart skipped a beat. Was it Jake? “Who?”
 

Sarah narrowed her eyes. “Your Aunt Marie. Who were you hoping I saw?”
 

I shook my head.
 

“A certain FBI agent, perhaps?”
 

“I just thought I saw him the other night. But I guess it wasn’t him.”
Or he ran like hell when he saw me
.
 

Sarah gave me a steady look, all joking gone from her pretty green eyes.
 

“Miranda, it’s been almost five months since you were in Belize with him.”
 

I nodded.
 

“And it’s been more than a month since you saw him up at Lake Tahoe.”
 

I nodded again. “I know what you’re going to say, Sarah. And I agree. I just need to let it go.”
 

She shook her head. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

“You weren’t?”
 

“I think you should call him.”
 

Of course Sarah would think that. She was the bravest, ballsiest person I’d ever met. Plus, there was no man on the planet who would turn her down.
 

I was in a different situation. Not shy, but not aggressive. Not ugly, but not Sarah. And then there was the fact that I’d kind of been rejected by Jake already and wasn’t anxious to experience that again.
 

“I appreciate your advice, but I’m going to ignore it.”
 

She nodded. “As usual,” she said, appearing to take no offense. “Well, I guess I’ll see you in the morning. Bring me a danish?”
 

“Of course,” I said. Living over Aunt Marie’s garage had a few perks—low rent, good neighbors, and my walk to work passed by the Sugar Plum Bakery. Sarah used every opportunity to take advantage of that last point.
 

“Don’t go getting into any trouble tonight,” Sarah said.
 

I was starting to regret telling her about the shoplifters. “Who me? What could possibly happen here?”
 

Sarah nodded toward the view out the window and squinted with mock suspicion. “I don’t know. Those elves look a little shady.”

They did look a little shady, and I would bet that they were only working here because it was part of their community service. On the other hand, Murph seemed to like them, and I didn’t need to go looking for trouble.
 

A steady stream of customers kept me distracted until my dinner break. I ignored the stack of credit card applications and instead pushed the mall’s holiday charitable promotion—a five-dollar gift card good for any store at the mall. Every evening the stores added the cards to the plastic cube in the Winter Wonderland area, where they would be stored until they were handed out to needy children and families. The clear container was only half-full, and I wanted to see the level climb before Christmas, so I made it my mission to sell at least one card to every customer. Customers could also drop in cash, and since the display was within arm’s reach of the line to Santa’s perch, a good number of parents had donated their spare change and dollar bills.
 

When I saw Murph rise from the throne, I signaled to Breanna that I’d be taking my dinner break and then joined him walking to the employee lounge.
 

“Murph, do you have plans for dinner?” I asked, matching my stride to his.

“Oh, I was just planning on taking a short break,” he said.
 

“Well, I have soup and there’s way more than I can eat. I thought maybe you’d join me,” I said.

He gave me a surprised look. “I guess I could do that.”
 

I found an extra bowl in the break room and warmed the posole in the microwave.
 

“My goodness, that smells wonderful. What is it?” Murph asked, as I set the bowl in front of him, the steam rising up and fogging his glasses.
 

“It’s posole, a Mexican soup made with hominy,” I said. I squeezed a wedge of lime over my bowl and added some cilantro while Murph watched me. He shrugged and followed suit, then tasted the soup hesitantly. And then with gusto.

“Hmmmm, Miranda, that is wonderful.”
 

I nodded and scooped up a spoonful. “The little taco stand upstairs in the food court makes it.”

“I’ve never tried posole before. Thank you, dear,” he said.
 

“My pleasure. I can never eat a full serving,” I said. That was a lie. I’d slurped down the huge serving of spicy soup on my own on many occasions, but he didn’t need to know that.
 

“Reminds me a little of my grandmother’s Italian wedding soup,” he said, leaning back in the chair, a satisfied smile on his face. “Not so much with the flavors, just the warm homemade feeling you get from a good soup. It tastes… authentic, you know?”
 

I nodded. “I know what you mean. Though with a name like Murphy, how is that your grandmother made an authentic Italian wedding soup?”
 

He laughed. “My mother was Italian. My father was Irish, hence the name. But my maternal grandmother grew up in Italy. And that recipe came from her family, passed down to each generation.”
 

“That sounds like a great family tradition,” I said.
 

“Well, I don’t know that my daughter ever learned to cook, so it might die out with me,” he said, a sad smile flitting across his face. “But the girl could bake a good cookie. She used to bake these almond cookies that my mother taught her to make, and whew, I don’t think I’ve ever had a better cookie.”
 

“Where does your daughter live?” I asked.
 

Murph rose from his chair, picking up our two empty bowls and taking them to the sink. The way he’d stood so quickly, without looking at me, made me think he didn’t want to talk about his family, and I regretted pushing him.

“Oh, she’s back on the East Coast. Haven’t seen her in a while,” Murph said, running some water into the bowls. “I’ll wash the dishes. That’s only fair, since you made dinner. That was always the rule in our house. My wife would make dinner, and I would clean the kitchen for her after.”
 

He pushed up the sleeves of his red velvet jacket and washed the two bowls and the spoons. I busied myself with the napkins and the styrofoam container the soup came in and wondered how to ask about his wife.
 

“Your wife must be happy with that arrangement,” I said.
 

He smiled at me, a genuine expression this time with no sadness. “She was. She passed fifteen years ago, but she was happy, right up to the day she went home,” he said.
 

“I’m very sorry for your loss.”
 

“Thank you. I’m grateful that we had thirty years together,” he said. “Three kids, nine grandchildren, and many happy memories.”
 

“Are you going to see your family for the holidays?” I asked, feeling like I was prying into his private affairs but too curious to stop myself.
 

Murph shook his head, and his bright blue eyes no longer looked merry. “No, I can’t go home this year.”
 

“Oh, I’m sorry.”
 

He turned and smiled. “Well, it would be nice to see the kids and the grandkids, but there are a lot of people who have it worse off than me.”
 

“That’s a good attitude,” I said, hoping it would rub off on me.
 

Murph checked his watch and then gave me a warm smile. “Thank you for the dinner, Miranda.”
 

“You’re welcome, Murph. Thanks for joining me. I hate eating down here alone.”
 

He held the door open for me, and we started back toward the elevator.
 

“You’re a good kid,” he said. “How about you? Are you married? Got a boyfriend?”

“Uh, no. Neither one.”
 

He raised an eyebrow. “Girlfriend?”
 

“No, no romantic prospects whatsoever.”
 

Murph laughed. “I find that hard to believe. But you’re young. Got plenty of time to find the one.”
 

The thought of Murph and his wife dogged me through the rest of the evening as I watched families parade by the display window. I thought about spending thirty years with one person, how the loss must be so devastating.
 

The young man who had been looking at rings with his girlfriend sauntered past the window and paused to watch the people milling in the jewelry store, but he didn’t go in. Mrs. Ferris, a cheerful woman who looked like Mrs. Claus all year long, assisted a well-dressed man at the counter, but she waved at the young man to come into the store. He shook his head and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He walked by slowly, glancing back to the store every once in a while. In forty-five years, would he be like Murph, with that warm twinkle in his eye when he talked about how broke he was when he and his wife decided to get married?
 

“Excuse me, can you help me?”
 

I turned to find a small boy with wide brown eyes, holding a holiday box set of cheap perfume. His long-sleeved t-shirt was worn, but I could clearly see the name of the elementary school across it, along with the familiar mascot.

“Hey, I went to Marshall Elementary. Go Eagles!”
 

He smiled and thrust the shiny red box at me.
 

“I have twelve dollars. I think that’s enough.”
 

“Let me check,” I said.
 

He followed me back to the register and handed me the worn coupon for twenty-percent off. It had expired two months earlier. My heart broke.
 

“Well, uh,” I started to break the bad news, but just couldn’t do it. His anxious eyes scanned my face.
 

“The tag says it’s fourteen dollars and ninety-nine cents. That’s close to fifteen dollars, so if you round it up, then move the decimal and double that.” His eyes squinted as he did the calculation in his head. “Twenty percent is three dollars. So I think it’s twelve dollars.”
 

“You’re good at math,” I said. I could appreciate a fellow mathlete, being inclined that way myself. Unfortunately, it looked like Marshall Elementary hadn’t taught sales tax yet. Even if the coupon worked, he’d still be short.
 

“Can I get it? It’s for my mom. It’s for Christmas.”
 

I smiled at his enthusiasm. “I’m sure she’ll love it.”
 

I tapped in the code for my employee discount and rang up his sale with the thirty-percent discount.
 

“Well, you’re in luck. There’s an extra sale today. This will be eleven dollars and twenty-eight cents,” I said.
 

His face lit up. “I have enough?”
 

“Yes, you do. Would you like to buy this?”
 

He nodded, and I finished the purchase, gave him his seventy-two cents in change, and gently wrapped the gift in white tissue before placing it in a store shopping bag. It wasn’t quite a fancy gift bag, but I pulled a little tissue out of the top to make it look a little dressier.
 

I handed it over and wished him a happy holiday, and he ran out the door with a wide smile on his face.