Fanny Packs and Foul Play (A Haley Randolph Mystery) (9 page)

Anyway, if I didn’t find a handbag I
loved—and soon—I was going to break down and buy the Louis Vuitton
tote.

When Marcie and I got to the handbag
department at Macy’s we did our usual search, scoping out the
purses in the display cases. We made one lap, then looked at each
other and sighed. No words were necessary. This trip had been a
total bust.

“Don’t you have to get to work?” Marcie
asked, glancing at her cell phone.

As if today hadn’t been yucky enough, I still
had to face several hours at Holt’s this afternoon.

Oh, crap.

* * *

The generations-old tradition at Holt’s
Department Store nixed displaying Christmas decorations until after
Thanksgiving—one of the very few retail establishments that
celebrated Christmas during the actual Christmas season. Nothing
went up until Black Friday.

I didn’t know if our customers appreciated
the store’s we’re-Christmas-purists attitude but they sure as heck
seemed to like the Thanksgiving Stuff-It sale, I realized as I
squeezed through the crowded aisles heading for the employee
breakroom to clock-in.

The corporate marketing department had come
up with the idea of giving customers a free shopping tote and
granting them a twenty percent discount on everything they could
stuff into it from our seasonal section. The shelves were filled
with canned and boxed foods—gravy, vegetables and, of course,
stuffing—and some decorator items.

Thankfully, none of the employees working in
that department had been required to dress up in turkey
costumes.

When I reached the breakroom, several
employees were already lined up and ready to clock-in, while others
who’d come in earlier in the day were seated at the tables eating.
I stowed my handbag and got in line. Bella came in and went
straight to the refrigerator.

“Is it your lunch break?” I called.

“I’m checking on my food,” she told me, as
she grabbed her lunch sack from the refrigerator. “Nobody better
try to take my string cheese again—or anything else. I’m keeping
watch.”

This seemed like overkill to me, but I didn’t
say anything. I’d seen Bella angry a few times. No way was I
commenting.

I glanced at the schedule hanging by the time
clock as I punched in my employee code and pressed my finger to the
scanner, and saw that I was assigned to the housewares department.
I’d worked there before, and while I didn’t love it, I knew that my
assignment for the night could have been worse.

Things can always be worse at Holt’s.

When I left the breakroom I spotted Sandy
straightening T-shirts on a display table in the women’s
department. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to delay the actual
start of my shift, I walked over.

“I think Bella’s losing it,” I said, and
glanced toward the breakroom.

Sandy nodded. “She’s been checking on her
lunch over and over, all day.”

“It is really crappy to steal somebody’s
food,” I said, and picked up a T-shirt so it would look like I was
working. I wasn’t, of course.

“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Sandy
asked.

Not this again.

“My mom is having people over,” I said.

“Moms always decide what everybody is doing
for the holidays,” Sandy said, folding another shirt. “My mom said
my boyfriend could have dinner with us, but he won’t.”

“Why not?” I asked, and managed to keep the
okay-that’s-crappy tone out of my voice.

“He doesn’t want to meet my family,” Sandy
explained.

I hate that guy. Sandy deserves somebody so
much better.

I drew a breath, forcing myself not to get
upset and said, “That must have hurt your feelings.”

“Well, yeah, kind of,” Sandy said, then gave
me a bright smile. “But he’s really nice to me most of the
time.”

Good grief.

“There’s no roll-over plan in relationships,”
I told her.

Sandy looked lost.

“Just because he’s nice to you most of the
time,” I said, “it doesn’t make up for him being crappy to you at
other times.”

She still looked lost.

I gave up.

The aisles were crowded as I snaked my way
toward the housewares department, which was also jammed with
shoppers. Wading in and straightening stock—while avoiding eye
contact with customers—seemed like more than I could manage at the
moment. Besides, I had important personal business to attend to
and, really, why shouldn’t I take care of it on company time?

I cut down another aisle and slipped through
the double doors into the stockroom. It was quiet, except for the
dreadful music the store always played which was thankfully
interrupted from time to time by an announcement over the public
address system. I made my way between the giant shelving units,
past the mannequin farm, the janitor’s closet, and the receiving
dock, and bounded up the big concrete stairs to the second
floor.

This part of the stockroom wasn’t just quiet,
it was creepy quiet. The shelving units reached the ceiling and
were crammed with small, light-weight items. All of the store’s
clothing hung from tall racks, each item still wrapped in plastic.
There were rows and rows of lingerie and shapewear.

I didn’t like coming up here—long story—but
it was the perfect spot for me to take care of some personal
business since almost nobody came up here at this time of the
day.

At the top of the staircase I turned left and
found a secluded spot in the back corner between the shelving
units. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and called Jack. He
answered right away.

“Have you talked to Patrick yet?” I
asked.

“This morning,” Jack said.

He sounded tense. I heard nothing in the
background so I had no idea where he was or what he was doing, but
I was pretty sure he wasn’t hiding out in the stockroom during a
crappy part-time job like I was.

I saw no need to mention it.

“He said nothing unusual had been going on in
the past several weeks,” Jack said. “No unusual phone calls, no
strangers showing up at the house or the office, no threats. No
problems with anything. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Did you ask him about Erika?” I asked.

“He said it was over between them.”

“Did you believe him?”

Jack was quiet for a few seconds then said,
“Yes.”

I figured Jack and I were wondering the same
thing—would Patrick admit to trying to rekindle a relationship with
Erika? Doubtful, when it could be construed as a motive for
murder.

“I think maybe Veronica was being
blackmailed,” I said.

The notion had been on my mind since Brandie
had let slip the dirty little family secret about Veronica’s
mother. She’d come right out and said that everybody had agreed to
keep it quiet, fearing Patrick and his old-money family might be
embarrassed enough to bring a halt to their ride on the Pammy Candy
gravy train. If that happened, Veronica had more to lose than
anyone, making her an ideal blackmail victim.

“Talk to me, Haley,” Jack said.

His voice dropped a little—not quite to Barry
White frequency, but close.

It was so hot.

“Andrea told me Veronica had been more
stressed lately, even with everything that was going on with
renovating the house, her family coming out, the candy business,
the holidays,” I said, then told him about Veronica’s mom.

Everyone I’d talk to about Veronica and
Patrick claimed that they were hopelessly, deeply in love. Yet I
couldn’t help but wonder if Veronica questioned just how far
Patrick’s love would stretch once the hugely embarrassing family
secret was made public. The hoity-toity friends of the Spencer-Taft
family wouldn’t likely give it an oh-well and move on.

“It’s possible somebody found out her mom is
in prison and was blackmailing her,” I said.

“I’m on it,” Jack told me and ended the
call.

I slid my cell phone into my pocket—I know
it’s not possible but it actually felt warmer after talking to
Jack—and headed for the stairs, then stopped when I heard
footsteps. I peeked around the end of the shelving unit and spotted
someone walking toward the other end of the stockroom.

It was one of the newly hired sales clerks, I
realized, and it took me a few seconds to remember that her name
was Gerri.

What the heck was she doing up here? All the
seasonal employees shadowed the clerks who ran the registers,
bagging merchandise to speed up the check-out lines. I couldn’t
think of a reason for her to be up here—one that had something to
do with actual work.

Then I remembered how she’d jumped up to do
Rita’s bidding when the greeting cards had gotten trashed. Maybe
Gerri really was a kiss-ass trying to get more hours or stay on
past Christmas, as Sandy had suggested. Both were real
possibilities.

Still, something about it bothered me and I
wondered why, exactly, she’d come up here.

Immediately, I shifted into stealth-mode.

I tiptoed down the shelving unit, then cut
across the aisles and dropped to my knees watching as Gerri made
her way to the lingerie section. She flipped through the panties
hanging on the rack, then looked back over her shoulder, pulled two
pairs off of their hangers, and stuffed them into her pocket.

Gerri hurried back through the stockroom and
skipped down the staircase. I waited until her footsteps faded,
then followed her down. As I went through the stockroom doors, I
spotted her going into the breakroom. I figured her shift had ended
and she was clocking-out so I headed for the store entrance.

I walked slowly—not so slow as to entice
customers to ask for help, of course—and reached the door in time
to see Gerri go outside. I watched as she crossed the parking lot,
got into a white Chevy and drove off.

Oh my God. She stole those panties.

“Are you ready
to party?” Mindy exclaimed when I walked into L.A. Affairs.

I was determined to stay in
don’t-be-a-crab-ass mode, even though it was Monday morning.

This wasn’t helping.

“You bet,” I forced myself to say, and kept
walking.

Of course, trying to stay upbeat and positive
would have been a heck of a lot easier if I didn’t have so many
major problems on my mind, one of which was what I’d witnessed at
Holt’s yesterday.

Gerri had stolen merchandise from the store.
Granted, it was only two pairs of panties and the company was worth
billions, but stealing was stealing. Should I rat her out to the
store manager? Or should I let it go?

I wasn’t great at letting things go.

Something else troublesome had happened, too.
When my shift ended I’d headed home, and while stopped at the
traffic light on the corner I’d spotted Gerri’s car in the Wal-Mart
parking lot. I only noticed it because it was parked close to the
street near a couple of RVs.

Why was she shopping at Wal-Mart when she had
an employee discount at Holt’s? Of course, Wal-Mart carried lots of
things that Holt’s didn’t so maybe it was no big deal. But I
couldn’t help wondering if Gerri was inside shoplifting bras to go
with the panties she’d taken from Holt’s.

As I walked passed the cube farm and turned
down the hallway toward my office, I decided it was too much to
contemplate for so early on a Monday morning. I needed coffee to
give my day a boost.

I slipped into my office to drop off my
handbag and—oh my God. A man was sitting in front of my desk and—oh
my God, it was Liam.

He shot to his feet.

Oh wow. He looked great. Today he had on a
charcoal gray suit, and a shirt and tie in pale shades of blue. And
those green eyes of his. Oh my God.

“What do you call two hundred lawyers at the
bottom of the San Francisco Bay?” Liam asked. “A good start.”

He smiled.

I smiled—and I giggled. I couldn’t help
it.

“I hope you don’t mind me dropping by,” Liam
said.

I resisted the urge to keep smiling and
giggling, and pulled myself together—not easy with no coffee yet
today.

“I wanted to let you know the lawsuit is
settled,” he said. “I thought you might be worried.”

“I wasn’t worried,” I said.

“Oh. Well, good. I wouldn’t want you to
worry,” he said.

“That’s why you came here?” I asked. “That’s
kind of lame.”

“I know,” he said, then grinned. “But it was
the best excuse I could come up with on a Monday morning.”

“Monday’s are tough,” I agreed.

We looked at each other for a few minutes,
then he walked past me to the door. Wow, he smelled great.

“I’ll find a better excuse for tomorrow,” he
told me, then left.

I stood frozen in place for a few seconds,
then leaned out my office door. Liam stood at the end of the
hallway, waiting, looking my way.

What nerve. He thought I would come out of my
office to catch a last glimpse of him.

I had—but that’s not the point.

Liam smiled—it was kind of a cocky smile, but
I guess I deserved it—then waved and walked away.

Oh my God. Now I desperately needed a giant
infusion of sugar, chocolate, and caffeine. I headed for the
breakroom.

* * *

I’d barely calmed down from seeing Liam—the
coffee and two chocolate doughnuts helped—when my cell phone rang.
I saw Andrea’s name on the caller ID screen and answered right
away.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, as I rose from
my desk chair and walked to the window.

“Well, yes, it’s just that …” Andrea paused,
then said, “Something been bothering me and I don’t know what to do
about it.”

I waited.