An Uplifting Murder (39 page)

“Josie!” he called. “Come out. You can’t get away.”

Josie slammed the lock shut. I’ve trapped myself in the restroom, she thought. I’m going to die like Frankie.

Cody beat on the stall door with his nightstick. Slam! Slam!

Dents appeared in the thin metal. Josie frantically searched her purse.

Pack of mints. Lipstick. Hairbrush. She threw them on the tile.

Slam! Pound! One hinge tore away from the wall.

“Cody!” Josie cried. “Stop! What if someone comes in?”

“I’m pursuing a shoplifter,” Cody said.

Keep him talking, she thought while she searched her purse. Grocery list. Coupons. Compact.

“Cody, it’s not your fault,” Josie said. “Frankie threatened your son. Any parent would understand.”

“She said my son was no hero,” he said.

Slam! Cody had dropped the nightstick. Now he used the metal trash can as a battering ram.

“My boy, Tyler, came into the emergency room, drunk and out of his head with pain. I was there when he babbled about his friend Randy. I had to hold him down. ‘I shouldn’t have let him drive,’ he kept saying. Sometimes Tyler thought he was talking to Randy. He shouted, ‘No, Randy! Don’t go so fast! You don’t have a license. Please, say something!’

“Then my son started crying. He knew Randy was dead. Tyler had tried to save Randy from the burning car, but it was too late.”

Slam! The trash can smashed the stall door again. The second hinge held. Josie put her weight against the door to brace it.

“Frankie heard him crying and screaming, the miserable bitch. My poor boy still has nightmares. He quit drinking. He was trying to get his life together again when the phone calls started. I picked up the extension and heard a woman ask Tyler, ‘How are you, hero? Better? How’s your friend? He’ll never get better, will he?’

“I knew it was Frankie. I said I’d go to the police if she didn’t stop. She laughed. I offered to sell the house and give her the money. She said, ‘I’m not asking for money. Go to the police. Do you really want them to know what happened? What about your insurance company? Randy’s parents will sue your socks off. Or should I say your panty hose?’ ”

Slam! The trash can hit the door again. Josie felt the jolt through her whole body. The hinge still held.

“She kept calling Tyler. She wouldn’t stop. He was falling apart. He was drinking again. I begged her to stop and she laughed. When she made those remarks about my boy in the bra shop, I couldn’t take any more. I had to save Tyler. If it meant the end of my life, so be it.

“I followed Frankie to Deep Designer Discounts. She saw me. I was afraid she’d complain to store security, so I bought that scarf for my wife. Frankie didn’t notice me until she was out in the mall again. She said she’d tell the truth about my son. I said I’d kill her.

“She said, ‘Try it. I’m going into the one place you can’t follow me.’ She flounced into the women’s restroom. I put on that scarf and looked like a lumpy old lady. I followed her inside.”

The silence was deafening. Josie was so caught up in Cody’s story, she’d stopped searching through her purse. Now her fingers felt a plastic rectangle. Her cell phone.

Slam! Cody smashed the stall door again. The final hinge was coming loose. Josie started to speed-dial 911, then realized by the time help arrived, she’d be dead. She braced herself against the dented door and kept searching for the pepper spray.

“Frankie didn’t have time to bolt the stall door. I pushed my way in and killed her.”

Slam! Josie felt that one through her teeth. The last hinge popped. Josie’s fingers found the pepper spray in her purse as Cody ripped away the stall door.

His hair was wild. His eyes were infinitely sad. “You understand, don’t you? You’d do the same thing.”

“Yes,” Josie said. She sprayed him right in his eyes.

Cody howled like a wounded dog and clawed his face.

Chapter 42

Josie was stashed in the Sale Away manager’s office, wrapped in a blanket. Five hours after Cody had attacked her, she still couldn’t leave the store, and neither could Ted. When the police arrived after the 911 call, they’d immediately separated Ted and Josie. She was allowed to sit in a lopsided chair in a nearby office. Ted had been banished to the stockroom.

Ted had been the real first responder. He’d waited in his car for an uneasy twenty-three minutes. Then he couldn’t take it any longer. When he didn’t see Josie coming out the front door, he ran into the building and questioned the entrance guard.

“You looking for the cute little lady?” the guard asked. “She went to the security office, best I know. Haven’t seen her on my TV monitor here, shopping in the store.”

Ted raced down the plumbing-supplies aisle and glanced in Cody’s office. He saw the destruction: the hook torn out of the wall, the coats on the floor, the wrecked chair in the doorway. He didn’t need to follow the trail of tossed purse contents to find Josie. He could hear screams and metallic clangs coming from the women’s restroom.

Ted slammed into the restroom just as Cody ripped off the stall door and Josie sprayed her attacker in the face.

She’d speed-dialed Officer Doris Ann Norris, while Ted called 911.

When the first carload of police officers arrived at Sale Away, the entrance guard sent them straight down the plumbing-supplies aisle. Cody was rolling around on the restroom floor, rubbing his eyes and screaming, “I’m blind! I’m blind!” The bent, battered stall door was propped against the wall. Ted was holding Josie as if he’d saved a Ming vase from tumbling off a shelf. Josie shivered and shook so badly that her teeth chattered.

That’s when Officer Doris Ann Norris had arrived. Cody had recovered enough to say that Josie was a shoplifter who’d stashed “something valuable in her coat. I was trying to arrest her.”

“What was she stealing?” Officer Norris asked.

“I don’t know. But it was valuable.”

“Where is it?”

“She hid it,” Cody said. “I don’t know where. I can’t help find it. I can’t see.”

Officer Norris didn’t find any shoplifted item and neither did anyone else. The guard who had been at the entrance said he never saw Josie come out of the back area. “She just went straight inside the security office,” he said.

Josie wondered if his open country-boy face counted for him or against him.

Officer Norris could see one thing clearly: The destruction in Cody’s office and the women’s restroom far outweighed the cost of anything Josie might have stolen.

The police called the paramedics. Cody’s injuries were serious and the paramedics said he’d made them worse by rubbing his eyes. They strapped his hands to the stretcher to keep him from doing more damage and rushed Cody to the emergency room at Holy Redeemer. A uniformed officer went with him.

A second ambulance arrived for Josie. A paramedic with a shaved head said her uncontrollable shaking was probably shock. He thought Josie’s shoulder was bruised, not broken. He recommended that she see a doctor at the hospital.

Josie, who had bare-bones health insurance with a sickening co-pay, settled for an ice pack and a musty blanket from the Sale Away shelves. A cup of bitter sugared coffee helped control her shivering. Josie’s shoulder worked well enough that she could sign the papers refusing medical attention.

She told Officer Norris a different story than Cody: She said the head of Sale Away security had attacked her when she accused him of killing Frankie Angela Martin. Josie said Cody had used a head scarf as a disguise at the mall. He was the “woman” on the grainy video who followed Frankie into the Plaza Venetia restroom. He had a good reason to kill the former nurse: Frankie Angel was tormenting his son.

After the paramedics released her, Josie was escorted into the manager’s office down the hall. The manager, Mr. Higgins, had brought Josie the blanket and sugary coffee “on the house.” Josie wondered how Sale Away had the nerve to charge for that brew, which tasted both burned and boiled. The coffee was so strong it nearly dissolved the foam cup.

The frightened Mr. Higgins kept wringing his hands and repeating, “I don’t understand. Mr. Wayne had such good references. I checked them myself. Our store policy is not to pursue shoplifters. If they leave the building while security is in pursuit, they could get hit by a car.”

Or eaten by dogs, Josie thought. The manager’s monologue was getting on her nerves. “I told Cody that,” Mr. Higgins said. “I told him the pursuit wasn’t worth the risk of a lawsuit.”

She was relieved when Officer Norris called him away. Josie listened to a flaccid string version of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and thought it was the perfect sound track for Sale Away shoppers.

Josie hoped Officer Norris believed her this time. When the two Venetia Park detectives who’d investigated Frankie’s murder arrived, Josie took that as a good sign. The rumpled Detective George Waxley was doing his Columbo impersonation, pretending that he didn’t have a clue. His impeccably dressed partner, Detective Michael Yawney, didn’t bother hiding his disgust with the store, its stock, and its staff. Josie wondered if the handsome Yawney would need medical attention to uncurl his lip.

Detective Yawney made Josie repeat her story until she lost track of how many times she told it. Around noon, someone brought her a limp sandwich. Josie thought it would take more than two detectives to solve the mystery of the gray meat between the stale bread slices. She ate the sandwich anyway.

Officer Norris stopped by periodically to check on Josie. At two o’clock, she gave Josie permission to call her mother. Jane would have to pick up Amelia at school. Josie’s cell phone was still part of the restroom crime scene. Norris let Josie use the office phone.

Jane, after a flurry of worried questions, promised to pick up Amelia. “I’ll speak to you, young woman, when you get home.” Josie felt like she was bringing home a report card withaDon it.

“I won’t be long, Mom,” Josie said. It wasn’t the first or the last untruth she told that day.

By three o’clock Josie had signed a statement for Detective Yawney. She’d recovered enough to feel restless.

Mr. Higgins was still wringing his hands. “I don’t mean to be rude, miss, but my first shift has to cash out their registers. I need my office. When are you all going to leave?”

“Good question,” Josie said.

When Officer Norris dashed back in, Josie asked, “May I pick up my wallet, please?”

“No, that trail you left is still being photographed by the crime-scene techs,” Officer Norris said. “Including your keys and lipstick.”

“If I knew my lipstick was going to be immortalized, I would have bought a better brand.” Josie’s giggle was too high.

Officer Norris turned eyes like flamethrowers on Josie. “Is that a joke? Because I’m not laughing. In case you’ve forgotten, a woman was suffocated—and that’s a horrible death. Today, you accused a hero of murdering her.”

“Has Cody been arrested for murder?” Josie asked.

“He’s being booked for agg assault with a deadly weapon.”

“But Frankie’s dead,” Josie said.

“The aggravated assault case is you.”

“What was the deadly weapon?” Josie asked.

“The bathroom door. He hasn’t been arrested for Frankie’s murder. He asked for a lawyer and won’t talk.”

“Can I go home, please?” Josie asked.

Officer Norris left, her body bristling with annoyance. At three thirty, she returned with Josie’s purse. “I think everything is in there. If I were you, I’d wash it before I used it. That bathroom floor looked disgusting. You can go now and so can your friend Ted. He’s in the hall.”

Ted was waiting with open arms. Josie ran straight into them. He hugged her until she said, “Ouch! My shoulder.”