Eternally 21: A Mrs. Frugalicious Shopping Mystery (5 page)

He looked thoroughly confused.

“Nothing,” I said, not wanting to start anything in front of the boys. I was his personal assistant, meaning I’d made his last hair appointment, which didn’t include extra time for highlights he would never have asked for and we couldn’t afford.

“I’m not even sure I want to play this year,” FJ said, derailing my highlight inquiry anyway.

Frank raised an eyebrow. “What are you going to do?”

I gave him the silent
don’t say it
face. The word
theater
usually sent Frank on a mostly incoherent, mumbled ramble about
manly
activities like hunting and mountain climbing.

“Dunno,” FJ mumbled under his breath. “Not sure I even like football.”

“It’s your ticket to college. Your
choice
of colleges,” Frank quickly amended.

FJ sighed. “I know.”

“Okay,” Frank said. “Cuts are Friday. We need to get you on the field.”

“We were on varsity last year,” FJ said. “They’re not going to cut us.”

“But I’m going to miss my plane if we don’t leave.” Frank picked up the designer suitcase I’d found at TJ Maxx for an astonishing 80% off and patted his pockets. “Keys?”

“On the table,” the three of us said in unison to Frank, who could never seem to keep track of his car keys.

“Let’s go,” Trent said.

“What about the cat?” FJ asked.

“I’ll look for the cat,” I said.

“Promise?” FJ asked.

“I promise.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Frank gave me a goodbye kiss.

“Have a great trip,” I said. “Wish I were going with.”

“Next year,” he said. Just as soon as everything was back on track.

By that time, I’d be back to thin and re-sculpted enough to strut my stuff by the hotel pool in a bikini again. Which reminded me, the conference coordinator had handled all his travel arrangements. I had no idea where exactly he was going. “Did you leave your flight and hotel info?”

“I’m on a six o’clock flight and staying at a resort called the Shangri-La. I’ll call when I have a chance, but they have more detailed info at the station if there’s an emergency.”

“Like a missing cat,” FJ inserted.

“The cat will turn up.”

FJ nodded reluctantly and followed his brother to the car.

“Love ya,” Frank said.

“Love you, too.”

I also loved the peace and quiet that followed.

What I wasn’t so enamored with were the next forty-five minutes of bending, crouching, and otherwise straining my workout-stiff gluts and thighs to search every possible nook and cranny of our property for the independent Chili.

I did a final, “here, kitty, kitty” checking every closet and cabinet from the basement wine cellar to the his-and-hers sitting rooms off the master. In the process, I found a girlie magazine stuffed in the bottom drawer of Trent’s bathroom vanity, a pair of Nine West platforms Eloise
had
to have but didn’t take with her to school, and the spare gym bag Frank had been sure someone had taken from his car or gym locker.

Holding my nose in anticipation of the lingering odor from having been zipped for weeks, I opened the bag.

A business card slid out.

As I caught it, I noted it was from Anastasia Chastain, the new on-air reporter who’d joined Channel Three at about the time Frank misplaced the bag. I slipped it into a side zipper pouch and dumped the remaining contents down the laundry chute.

There was no cat blocking the way.

I headed back downstairs to my office. Chili would return the moment she grew bored of the prairie dog or bird that inspired her to venture past our fence line. As long as I allowed fifteen minutes to drive up and down the block on my way to get the boys from practice, I could honestly say I’d done everything I could short of making up missing cat posters.

I sat down, powered up my desktop, and reached into my purse for my blog post notes. Another business card, this one Griff’s, fluttered to the floor.

Hoping enough time had passed for him to have an update on Laila, I picked it up and dialed the number.

I was greeted by a message.

You’ve reached Griff Watson at South Highlands Valley Mall security. If you’ve reached me during working hours, I’ll return your call as soon as possible. If not, I’ll get back with you during my next shift.

Chances were he was still running around the mall calming down Laila’s friends and colleagues. Never mind the paperwork involved in such an incident. I left a quick,
just checking in, please call me back when you can
message
,
checked my personal email, and
logged onto the Mrs. Frugalicious blog.

There were fifteen inquiries since morning.

Five were from bargain shoppers and ran the gamut from
looking for cheap lift tickets
to
need a deal on carpeting, help!
Two messages were in response to a recent blog about filing coupons by expiration date. Six were from impatient shoppers looking for the teen shopping tips. There was even an ad rate inquiry from an outfit called Designer Duds for Dimes.

All of them would have to wait until I responded to the very last message, an interview request from a magazine I’d never heard of with a subject line of
Who is Mrs. Frugalicious?

I declined the offer to let the readers at
Here’s the Deal
magazine “learn about the woman behind the hot savers website everyone is talking about” on the grounds that Mrs. Frugalicious needed to remain anonymous to keep the bargain playing field level.
I didn’t allow myself to think of what I might have said were my life circumstances a bit different.

Instead I set about responding to the remaining questions and comments. As I sent rate information to what I hoped would soon be my newest advertiser, I tried to figure out how I could deliver the blog I promised. Considering how many gifts I’d picked up for practically nothing, my odyssey at Eternally 21 qualified as a multiple Frugasm. No way I could direct my readers to go into the store, be wrongly accused of shoplifting, and reap an extra 10% off for the inconvenience, though. I also couldn’t take the make lemons out of lemonade angle, not without risking the connection between Mrs. Finance and Mrs. Frugalicious. Given that Laila left the transaction in an ambulance, writing much of anything about the experience would be in very poor taste.

I sat in front of the computer until I settled on listing the spreadsheet I’d made of stores and their advertised specials along with a few key websites.
7
Entitled,
Frugal Yule Cool? Shop for Your Junior During Back to School
, I hoped Karen B. and any other readers anticipating a lean holiday season might find a Frugasm or two of their own.

And, since I couldn’t, share their pleasure with the group.

I finished, pressed upload, and headed downstairs, hopefully to catch up on a rerun of
CSI
,
Law & Order,
or whatever was on cable before I had to go get the boys from practice. Applebee must have had the same idea, because I found her curled up on the sectional, purring away. With a long, luxurious
ahhhh
, I plopped into the leather La-Z-Boy, which had all but contoured into the shape of Frank, pushed the recline lever, watched my aching feet rise before me, and reached for the nearby clicker.

At which point I heard what sounded like a muffled meow.

Followed by what definitely sounded like a meow.

I reached over to the center of the sectional to pet Applebee. She purred even more loudly, but not enough to cover what was clearly mewling. As I tried to figure out where the sound was coming from, Applebee moved involuntarily.

Something was rolling beneath her.

Forcing myself out of the comfort of the recliner, I picked up Applebee, set her on the floor, removed the cushions, and watched the movement under the fabric.

Chili.

Why she’d chosen to be utterly silent both times I’d come through this room was anyone’s guess, but at least she’d finally made herself known. She’d somehow gotten herself stuck inside the guts of the couch.

I heaved up the bottom of the leather sectional and leaned the backrest against the windowsill. To my dismay, a substantial hole had been clawed into the under fabric.

The muffled meows that followed sounded so pitiful that I couldn’t stay angry. I almost felt guilty for running to the kitchen to grab a flashlight from the utility drawer. But, if the cat couldn’t find her way back out from a different angle, I had to be able to see her so I could reach in and help. I turned the flashlight on, aimed it inside the hole, and was about to see what sort of tangled mess Chili had gotten herself into when the phone rang.

“Call from Eternally 21,” squawked the caller ID alert. “Call from Eternally 21.”

My flashlight reflected against my damask curtains as I abandoned my rescue mission and lunged for the handset. “Hello?”

“Maddie Michaels, please.”

“Tara?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’m so glad you called!”

“Um,” she said. “You left your driver’s license here.”

“Oh.” My knees, having braced for some information about Laila, softened. I eased my way back down beside the couch and directed the flashlight beam into the hole. “Can I stop in tomorrow and pick it up?”

“Uh … ” Tara said.

A pair of yellow eyes reflected back at me.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

“Because of Laila?”

“Uh-huh,” emerged through the phone as a squeak, not unlike the sounds I was hearing from inside the sectional.

“How is she doing?”

“She’s at the hospital.”

“Oh my God!” I said, spotting five tiny kittens tucked into the stuffing beside my cat.

“That’s what I keep saying.” Tara began to sob. “I just can’t believe she …”

My heart began to pound. “She what?”

“Is gone.”

“What?” I asked, sure the sight of newborn baby kittens beside my supposedly spayed cat had affected what I’d heard. “What do you mean
gone
?”

“She—” Tara faltered. “Laila died at the hospital.”

Six

I was at the
mall, still in a state of utter disbelief, even before the doors opened at ten a.m. the next day. By five after, I stood in front of the dark, locked Eternally 21 reading the handwritten note hanging from the glass:

Due to unfortunate and unforeseen
circumstances, our store is currently closed.
We apologize for any inconvenience
and plan to reopen as soon as possible.

I couldn’t say what hit me hardest, reconfirming the horrible news or the note’s last line:

Please call or stop by one of our
other Denver area locations or visit
us online at eternally21.com.

Had I listened to my instincts and done exactly that, I wouldn’t be at the mall, fighting back tears for a woman I barely knew. I wouldn’t be headed back to the security office to find out when Eternally 21 was opening so I could get my driver’s license back. Excitement over the presumably immaculate birth of kittens would have kept me from nodding off to sleep, but I wouldn’t have been up all night afterwards fretting over how a young, vibrant woman—unpleasant though she might have been—had dropped dead right in front of me.

“She choked?”

“So I’m told.” A younger, slighter, redheaded, and far less square-jawed replacement for Griff thumbed the brim of his Mountie cap. “In the arms of my fellow security officer.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “She was definitely breathing when she left with the paramedics.”

His eyes widened. “You were there?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I was in the store when it happened.”

He looked that much younger and ganglier as he stood at the mall cop version of attention. “You must be Mrs. Finance, then.”

“I am.” I forced a smile and extended a hand. “Maddie Michaels.”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

Where did I start? “I guess I should have realized you might know who I was.”

“I don’t think there’s much of anyone around here who hasn’t heard of you. I mean, after yesterday and all.”

I could only pray the buzz surrounding the Finance/Michaels name had a Good Samaritan spin around the South Highlands Valley Mall. “I suppose not.”

“I can’t believe she had you hauled down here, and then—”

“And then. Yeah.” I said.

“We’re all really rattled. Especially Griff.”

“I can’t imagine.” I was as rattled as I’d been maybe ever, and I hardly knew the woman. “He’s got to be taking this particularly hard.”

“He took today off.” The security guard shook his head. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to have someone drop dead in your arms.”

Nor could I. I’d watched Griff check her airway and, although unconscious, I saw her breath fogging the oxygen mask once the paramedics arrived. “I don’t know where you heard that, but she was very much alive when she left on the stretcher.”

“She must have stopped breathing for good on the way to the hospital or something,” he said. “But, I’m not surprised to hear she choked, given how much she had to eat.”

“Did Griff say that?”

“I heard it from the food court manager.”

“Nina Marino?”

“They are—were—best friends,” he said. “So I figure she’d know best.”

“What did she say, exactly?”

“She said you can only go so long without breathing if they don’t get out whatever you’re choking on.”

“That’s true.” Griff had to know what had really happened. “Maybe you have a number where I can reach Griff?”

The mall cop, dwarfed by the same desk Griff had commanded the day before, reached inside and handed me another copy of the business card I already had.

“I’ve been calling that number and it rings through to a recording where Griff says he’ll return any messages when he’s back on shift.”

“It’s a mall-issued cell phone.” He shrugged. “We can only return work-related calls while on duty.”

“Thanks.” I sighed. “Is there any chance you might know when Eternally 21 might open up today?”

“From what I hear, it’s probably not going to.”

“I’m hoping you might have some information on when Eternally 21 might reopen,” I said to the receptionist in the executive offices of the mall. “I left my ID there yesterday and—”

“How are you doing, dear?” The receptionist offered a kind smile that creased her already crepe-y skin.

I began to choke up.

She patted my hand, turned, and began to peck at her keyboard. “I have a main number, which won’t do us much good. The only other number I have is a cell number, but it’s for … ”

“Laila?” I whispered.

Her blue-gray perm bobbed with the shake of her head. “So tragic.”

“Terrible.”

“Tell me about it. They’re saying Laila passed in the emergency room while the doctors were trying to save her.”

“I heard something about choking,” I said. “But she was breathing on her own when the paramedics took her.”

The receptionist set her mouth in a grim line and lowered her voice. “She didn’t choke.”

“What did happen?”

“These young women … ” She glanced through the open door of the office behind her as if to make sure the desk—on which a placard reading
Dan Mitchell, Mall Manager
—was indeed empty. “They all give away the milk, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” I said, having said almost the same thing to my stepdaughter Eloise with fingers crossed that the message had gotten through. “But how—?”

“When the man has his fill and moves on, the sorrow is sometimes just too much to bear.”

“Meaning what?”

“She collapsed with grief and then died from a broken heart.”

“A broken heart?”

“So young and pretty.” Her voice cracked. “But so dead.”

I was on my way to Gadgeteria to see Andy, where I should have gone for answers in the first place, when Shoshanna, dressed in a lime green miniskirt and matching headband, came running out of Whimsies. “Ma’am? Sorry. You were there when Laila was taken away in the ambulance?”

I nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“Suicide.” Her blond hair bobbed back and forth with the emphatic shake of her head. “Lord, give me strength.”

“Tara probably told someone Laila was heartbroken over her boyfriend dumping her, it traveled through the various gossip gauntlets, and you’re hearing what came out.” Andy Oliver said, pulling his cell phone from his pocket.

As he began to text Tara to ask about my ID, the pins and needles of impending tears tickled my nose once again. “This whole situation is so surreal.”

Andy seemed to shrug. “She did it to herself, though.”

“How’s that?”

“I think her stomach exploded or something.”

“Stomachs don’t explode,” I said.

“That or whatever it is that happens when you eat like that all the time.” He straightened a shelf filled with travel alarm clocks. “Tara’s understandably freaked and everything, but this whole Laila collapsing and dying from a broken heart thing? Come on. I mean, the woman was as much a man-eater as she was a—”

His text alert buzzed.

While he read the message, I eyed a comfy looking pair of memory foam flip-flops with an uncomfortable price tag.

“Tara says someone’s supposed to be there in about half an hour.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Would you ask her if she’s heard anything new about Laila?”

He tapped in a message.

Almost as soon as he was done, his phone beeped. “Nope. Nothing yet.”

“It’s just impossible to believe someone so young could just drop dead.”

“She wasn’t all that young.” Andy Oliver shook his head. “I couldn’t believe it when Tara told me she made that crack about your age. Everyone knows she’s a lot closer to Eternally 31 than Eternally 21.”

Phil at the pizza place said the rumor around the food court was Laila ate something bad. Jaynie at the French fry counter figured something was bound to happen given the sheer quantity Laila apparently consumed. Amber, from Heaven’s Bakery, heard she choked and then had a heart attack.

Maybe Laila was closer to thirty-one than twenty-one and had the appetite of a sumo wrestler, but everything I’d heard so far about her death added up to nothing more than a game of telephone through the mall. She couldn’t have choked. She hadn’t died from a broken heart. Suicide didn’t ring true. Andy’s theory about her stomach blowing up was just weird. Weirder was that no one had even mentioned my theory of drugs or alcohol.

Someone at Eternally 21
had
to know what happened. After I killed a half-hour at the food court, I’d go back up there, get my ID and some answers, then leave the mall never to return. Not until after all the current employees who knew me by name moved on to greener retail pastures elsewhere, anyway.

Carrying my tray with both hands, I made my way over to an open two-top in front of the Ben & Jerry’s at the edge of the food court. I put the tray down with care, sat, placed my napkin in my lap, and scooted up to the table as though it were covered in white linen instead of forest green melamine.

Before I took a bite, I reached into my purse and took two Bye Bye Fat capsules from the pill case I’d replenished that morning. While it was beyond far-fetched (as well as defeating the point) to expect that BBF’s supposed superthermogenic properties could make a pepperoni pizza, French fries, and cookies the caloric equivalent of a carrot, it certainly couldn’t hurt. I sprinkled my food and visualized the oversized capsules wearing capes, chasing the evil fat globules through my system, and neutralizing them before they could join the party on my outer thighs.

I bit into my first fry.

My cell phone began to ring.

I reached into my purse fully expecting a psychic junk food intervention from trainer Chelsea, but for once her radar must have been jammed.

Frank mobile
popped up on the screen.

I thought about letting the call go and ringing him back when I was away from the background noise of the mall, with ID in hand and resolution about Laila. I might have, but we hadn’t talked since he’d landed in Florida. Instead, I chewed, swallowed, and attempted a relaxed, easy, “Hello.”

“Hi, hon.” His voice was as vacation breezy as the light wind in the background.

“Hey,” I said. “Sounds like you’re outside.”

“The only place I seem to have a signal is here by the pool.”

If only I’d gone along with, I’d be on the lounge chair beside him, sipping a margarita. “Sounds rough.”

“Actually, things are going very smoothly.”

I sat up straighter. “As in?”

“Meeting,” he said, his voice suddenly cutting in and out. “Afternoon … network VP.”

“I’m only hearing every third word,” I said.

“Lots potential,” he said, or else it was, “solve everything.”

Either way, if Frank were to land a nationally syndicated show, the salary increase would resolve our monthly cash crunch. While it would take time to recover completely, his self-esteem would shoot back up with the viewers from all over the country looking to him for the sound advice that made him so popular locally. The strain of the last six months would soon fade into a new, improved, normal. “Can you move to a different location? I’m really having trouble hearing you.”

“Gotta run,” he said in response and then began to break up again. “Call … later.”

And he was gone.

Frustrated by the connection but buoyed by potentially good news, I tossed the phone back into my bag. When I looked up, Nina Marino had appeared from behind the doorway beside the Orange Julius in her regulation South Highlands Valley Mall pantsuit.

I raised a hand. “Ms. Marino!”

Nina stopped and looked to figure out who had called her name.

“Nina,” I said again, waving when she turned in my direction.

A glint of recognition crossed her face, and she started toward my table.

“Hi,” I said, as she arrived. “We met yesterday, after my tray collided with—”

“Tara Hu,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Someone said you were at Eternally 21 when Laila—”

“I was,” I said. “I heard you were close friends.”

“We were,” she said, inflection heavy on the
were.

“Have you heard anything about what exactly happened to Laila?”

Tears welled in her eyes. “Not really.”

“I heard something about her choking from the security guard, who said he’d heard that from you.”

“I said she
probably
choked.” She looked away toward Big Buster’s BBQ on the other side of the hall as if trying to compose herself. “It made the most sense, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Bad habits.” Her voice was heavy with grief. “She had more than a few of them.”

“Where eating was concerned?”

“For starters.”

“Meaning what?”

“Nina?” The walkie-talkie on her waist squawked. “I need you up here ASAP. Out.”

“On my way. Out,” she said to the male voice on the other end. “Gotta run.”

And, like my broken conversation with my husband, she was over and out before I could quite get the full story.

At least the lights inside Eternally 21 were back on.

The front doors, however, remained locked.

I knocked on the glass. A lump formed in my throat when a female police officer appeared from behind a rack of clothing. She pointed to the handwritten sign in front of me and spoke through the glass. “The store’s closed.”

“I left my driver’s license here yesterday,” I said. “I was told by the assistant manager I could get it.”

“Just a second.”

I watched her head toward the back of the store and pause beside the police tape now running from the register area to the back storeroom door.

A few minutes later, a man with a square jaw, graying crew cut, and a swagger that screamed detective appeared from the door to the backroom behind the tape. He acknowledged something the female officer said, looked at me, and followed her to the front.