Dying in Style (17 page)

The store was packed, but no one was buying. Hordes of curiosity seekers came to see the murder scene. They were fatter than the elegant mourning customers, and favored pastel polyester pantsuits and flea-market Fendi.

“Is that price tag a mistake, hon, or is this piddly little purse really three thousand dollars?” A plump grandmother in lavender dangled something the size of a teabag.

The razor-thin mourning customers reacted with scandalized silence.

Josie thought the woman had good sense—and good taste. Like many Danessa products, the three-grand purse was not first quality. The stitches on the strap were crooked.

A sleek little sales associate cut the lavender woman dead and hurried toward Josie and Alyce.

“Looks like we passed inspection,” Josie said.

“My name is Olga. May I help you?” Josie remembered the saleswoman, but Olga seemed to have forgotten her. Retail amnesia was a common disease. Olga was still small and neat, but today she didn’t look like a self-satisfied cat. Close up, the saleswoman seemed frantic. Her spiky hair looked like she’d been trying to tear it out. White showed all around her eyes, like a frightened animal. In the crowded store she was rapidly losing her catlike self-possession.

“Yes,” Josie said. “Last time I was here, I was waited on by a saleswoman named Marina. Is she here today?”

Olga seemed to go rigid. “No Marina works here,” she said. She would not look Josie in the eye.

“I’m sure she waited on me, too,” Alyce said.

The saleswoman stared at Alyce. “You look familiar. You have been here before. Perhaps I waited on you.”

“Oh, no,” Alyce said. “You don’t look anything like Marina. She was tall and blond.”

“We have had no tall blondes here, except Danessa. If the store became busy, Danessa would personally wait on customers. That’s who you saw.”

“Oh, we both know who Danessa was,” Josie said. “Everyone does. Marina had an accent like yours. It’s very attractive. Russian, right?”

Olga looked wildly around the room, then said, “May I get you something? If not, I must go. We are short of hands. That is correct to say, yes?”

“Yes. You are shorthanded. But you’ve been helpful. I’d like to come back when it isn’t so crowded and do some serious shopping. You said your name is Olga?”

“Olga Rachmaninoff, like the composer.” She fled into the crowd like a cat who’d been stepped on.

“Well, that was interesting,” Josie said, as they headed toward Alyce’s luxurious SUV. She sank into the soft leather seats. “Olga was lying her little head off. She knows Marina.”

“Certainly does,” Alyce said. “What do you want to do next?”

“Can I talk to Danessa’s housekeeper?” Josie said.

“Mrs. Perkins? You can, but she won’t talk to you. Oh, she’ll be polite, but she won’t tell you anything. When the FBI interviewed her, she bored them silly with her household routine. The feds asked her what Serge and Danessa were like, and she said he ate four eggs, pork chops and bacon for breakfast and Danessa wanted her sheets changed twice a day.”

“Why wouldn’t Mrs. Perkins cooperate with the police?” Josie said.

“With Serge and Danessa dead, she’s out of a job. Housekeepers who tell secrets don’t work again. Mrs. Perkins knows we’re all watching her. On the other hand, she may talk to you as a favor to me. It’s very delicate. Mrs. P. has to be approached carefully. Let me ask my housekeeper, Mrs. Donatelli, the best way to talk to her. What do you want to do in the meantime?”

“Let’s visit the other Danessa stores and see if we can find Marina,” Josie said. “Is that too much driving for you?”

“My time is yours, until two o’clock.”

They headed west on Highway 40 to the new rich subdivisions. There’d been a cold snap last night, and the oaks and maples lining the highway were a riot of red, yellow and orange.

“Fall is my favorite time of year,” Josie said. “I couldn’t live in a climate like Florida, where you don’t have four seasons.”

“It’s beautiful,” Alyce said. “But it makes me feel sad. The seasons mark the passage of time, and I wonder what kind of future I have.”

“A good one, from the way you performed at the police station.”

“That was a fluke,” Alyce said. “I feel old, fat and trapped.”

Josie wanted to tell her friend how smart and strong she was, how she could succeed at anything if she’d believe in herself. But Josie had heard that same lecture too often. She knew it would do no good. Besides, who am I to judge a woman who has a gorgeous house and a rich husband? What do I have that she doesn’t?

Your freedom, whispered a little voice. Unless the cops arrest you.

“I rushed out of Spencer’s Grill to pick up Amelia yesterday,” Josie said. “I didn’t thank you properly for saving my job.”

“Don’t thank me until you see what Harry is giving you,” Alyce said. “You may be cursing my name.”

“This is such a mess,” Josie said. “It’s bad enough I’ve sucked Mom into this. When I was growing up, she worked hard for me. Now that she’s retired from the bank, she deserves to have fun. It’s not her job to raise my child. I feel so guilty. Then yesterday I roped you into this.”

“Josie,” Alyce said, “your mom loves you. You’re my best friend. We want to help you. Quit feeling guilty. You’re a mom. You’re supposed to make other people feel guilty.”

Josie laughed. But Alyce’s gracious speech didn’t make her feel better. She didn’t like owing people.

“Why did the police come down so hard on me yesterday?” Josie said. “So what if I flunked that lie detector test? Those tests aren’t admissible and they aren’t reliable.”

“The cops did it because they could,” Alyce said. “My husband Jake goes on about this all the time. His firm sees it with white-collar crimes, too. This is far worse. It’s a high-profile double murder. The police are under tremendous pressure. They’ll use any means to go after a suspect. Don’t take this wrong, Josie, but you’re not protected like the people at Wood Winds. That’s why I wanted you to get a lawyer, someone from Jake’s crowd.”

Alyce seemed embarrassed to have mentioned money, even indirectly. She abruptly switched the subject. “Do you ever find these malls depressing? It’s the same stores, the same people, the same canned air and music.”

“Oh, no,” Josie said. “Everyone thinks that. But malls are like Levittown, that subdivision where all the houses were alike. Scholars went back later and found that people had stamped their own personalities on the houses. The homes had become different.

“Malls are that way, too. Some get better, some get worse with age. Malls can make dumb decisions. One nicely moneyed mall put in a shop that sold gang clothes and ran off their high-priced tenants. Some malls make smart moves, like Plaza Frontenac. They added those upscale movie theaters that serve espresso. Brilliant. It revived that shopping center.

“The Mall at Covington is an interesting case. Mid-westerners think valet parking is a waste of time and money, and they don’t like the car parkers playing with their radio buttons. Many Midwest malls have only a token valet service. But a bunch of transplanted New Yorkers live out by Covington. New Yorkers think valet parking is classy. So Covington had to expand its valet service.”

Inside the Mall at Covington, the Danessa store looked exactly like the one at Plaza Venetia. It was packed with curiosity seekers, a scattering of mourning customers, and enough flowers for a greenhouse. The cloying scent of hothouse blooms and high-priced perfume made Josie dizzy.

An elegant saleswoman named Charlotte told them, “We’ve never had any Marina work here.”

“Excuse me, miss, do you have this in yellow?” a woman said. “Or brown?”

“I have to go,” Charlotte said, rushing off to locate the handbag.

“I think she’s telling the truth,” Josie said. She was examining a black Danessa clutch. One of the pavé diamonds on the clasp was covered with glue, a careless little detail.

“Me, too,” Alyce said. “Let’s get out of here. It reminds me of my grandmother’s wake. All it needs is an open casket by the cash register.”

They reached the green lawns and carefully tended flower beds of the Shoppes at Greenhills twenty minutes later.

“This place looks like Forest Lawn,” Alyce said.

“You’ve got funerals on the brain,” Josie said.

“Gee, I wonder why?” Alyce said.

This Danessa store had the most extravagant displays of grief. Josie and Alyce picked their way through piles of teddy bears, homemade cards, a WE LOVE YOU FOREVER, DANESSA banner, and mounds of mums, roses and stargazer lilies. The funeral-flower scent sucked the life from the room. The elegant mourning customers and the chubby curiosity seekers mingled uneasily, carefully avoiding one another.

“Hi, my name is Barbara. How may I help you?” This saleswoman was a brisk redhead of about thirty.

“I’m looking for an evening purse in gold,” Alyce said.

Josie stared at her, but said nothing. This wasn’t part of the plan. Alyce had never shown any interest in little frivolities. Her friend was full of surprises lately.

Barbara brought out satin-lined boxes of tiny purses. Josie hated evening purses. Carrying one made her feel like she was in drag. Alyce picked through the pretty trifles, snapped several open and shut and settled on a delicate gold-filigree number for a thousand bucks.

When Barbara went into the back room for more wrapping paper, Josie said, “What’s got into you, spending a grand on a useless purse? I’ve never seen you pay more than five hundred dollars for a dress.”

“Last night Jake said I dressed like a country bumpkin at his law firm functions. Those were his exact words. He said my clothes didn’t cost enough and I made him look bad. I have to go to the firm’s winter dinner-dance. Well, that’s one problem in our marriage I can fix. Our credit-card bills are going to look like the national debt.”

Oh, oh, Josie thought. Grudge spending—the wronged wife’s revenge.

“Also, I thought the salesperson might talk to us more if I bought something,” Alyce said.

Barbara returned with a credit card receipt and a pile of filmy black paper printed with silver
D
’s. She began tenderly wrapping the tiny purse.

“I guess you’ve sold a lot with all these people here,” Josie said.

“This is my only sale today,” Barbara said. “Nobody is buying. They’re all lookie-loos.”

“Last time I was here, I was waited on by Marina,” Josie said. “Tall blonde with a Russian accent. Does she still work here?”

“She never did,” Barbara said, and two bitter lines appeared around her mouth. “Marina is Serge’s sister. I can see why you’d think she was staff. She walks around like she owns the place.”

Alyce isn’t the only one who wants revenge today, Josie thought.

Then it hit her: Marina was real. I’m not crazy. I didn’t make her up. Charlotte has just confirmed that Marina was in this store.

“Actually, she waited on me,” Josie said. “She was rude and I didn’t buy anything, but she did show me—” She started to say “a snakeskin belt” then changed it to “some things.”

“You definitely got Marina.” Barbara’s eyes lit up with anger. “She’s always horning in on our sales. ‘I am a natural at selling,’ she says in that stagy accent. She comes by to ‘help’ us.” Barbara made quote marks with her fingers. “Mostly she interferes with our sales and jams the cash register. She wanted part of my commission. I nearly quit over that one. Danessa gave her the commission, but to her credit she didn’t take it out of my money.”

“How is Marina taking Serge and Danessa’s deaths?”

“I have no idea,” Barbara said. “I haven’t seen her in a month. If I’m really lucky, I’ll never see her again.”

Josie raised an eyebrow.

“I must sound terrible, but it’s one of the curses of retail—putting up with the owner’s relatives—or in this case, the owner’s boyfriend’s relatives.”

“I’m sorry,” Josie said.

That small show of sympathy started the words pouring from Barbara. Josie could only guess what set her off: the hot, crowded store, the sales dry spell, the weird tributes from grief-stricken people who never knew Danessa.

“You don’t know what it’s been like working here,” Barbara said. “Danessa’s moods, the craziness with Marina, the arguments. Marina, Danessa and Serge were always fighting. They’d yell and throw things in the stockroom. I had to stand out here on the floor and smile and pretend I didn’t hear the shouts and thumps in the back room.”

“I’m not surprised,” Josie said. “Sales is an emotional business. What did they fight about?”

“I’m not sure,” Barbara said. “When Marina got really upset, she’d lapse into Russian, which Serge and Danessa understood, but I didn’t. The last time she was here, I heard her fighting with Serge in the stockroom, but I didn’t understand a word.

“I guess you think I’m being disloyal.” Barbara’s pale skin was flushed with anger, or maybe embarrassment. “But I can’t take it anymore. I’m quitting. Today is my last day. I have a job at the Galleria. Danessa’s death was the last straw. We had people with Geiger counters or something, testing all three stores for radiation.”

“Did they find anything?” Josie asked.

“Of course not,” Barbara said. “They would have closed us down if they did. But ever since Danessa’s murder, I’m scared to work here. I won’t go in that stockroom alone after dark. I keep wondering which of us is going to die next.”

Chapter 17

“What a drama queen,” Alyce said. “Did she really say, ‘I keep wondering which of us is going to die next’?”

Josie and her friend were strolling toward their parking spot at the Shoppes at Greenhills. The mall’s lawn and flower beds seemed peaceful and protected as an English estate. They seemed to say that murder happened to less-privileged people.

“You’re too rough on her,” Josie said. “Barbara’s boss was found dead in a stockroom. Sure, it happened at the other store, but it would freak me out. Did you get a look at some of Barbara’s customers? Ghouls bringing flowers and touching the dead woman’s purses. I swear some of those people had extra-long eyeteeth.”

“The store should have closed for a mourning period,” Alyce said. “It’s attracting the wrong people. The right ones won’t come back.”