Fanny Packs and Foul Play (A Haley Randolph Mystery) (13 page)

“You didn’t slip away?” I asked. “Go
upstairs?”

“Of course not,” Erika insisted. “Why would I
kill Veronica?”

“So you could get Patrick back,” I said.

Erika expression morphed from I’m-stunned
into now-I-get-it.

“That’s what this is all about?” she asked.
“Patrick?”

“You can see where the police would think you
did away with Veronica to get your old boyfriend back,” I said.

Yeah, I know, I’d never actually heard the
cops say that—but they might have. In fact, they probably had.

“Patrick lost his head,” Erika said, as if
that explained everything. “He married Veronica on a whim. She
wasn’t worthy of him. Everybody saw it. Just ask Julia, she’ll
agree.”

I was sure Julia would agree. In fact, I
figured it was she who’d recommended that Veronica hire Erika to
decorate the house with the hope that putting her close to Patrick
again might re-ignite their relationship.

“I had nothing to do with Veronica’s death
and I certainly wasn’t angling to get Patrick back,” Erika told me.
“I suggest you talk to Julia. She indicated to me that there some
sort of problem between Veronica and Patrick.”

I wondered if that something was Patrick’s
plan to divorce Veronica.

Or maybe it was Julia’s plan to murder
Veronica.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Erika put her nose in
the air and left the room.

Regardless of Erika’s denial, I couldn’t
dismiss her as a suspect. I couldn’t dismiss Julia either.

Which of them had the most to gain by
Veronica’s death? I wondered. Erika could end up married to
Patrick—with his millions and the prestige of the Spencer-Taft
family name. Julia would have a suitable daughter-in-law.

Both were great motives for murder.

* * *

The crab-ass mood I’d successfully fought off
for the last few days was back with a vengeance when I walked into
Holt’s for my shift.

I mean, really, can you blame me?

I could have been having dinner tonight with
a hot lawyer, or hunting down a fabulous handbag, or buying myself
that Louis Vuitton tote.

As soon as I clocked-in and saw my name
listed under the accessories department on the schedule by the time
clock, my spirits fell further. I was looking down the barrel of
four hours of my life that I would never get back, straightening
rows of socks and displays of panty hose, belts, and house-brand
handbags.

I didn’t know how things could get worse.

Then they did.

When I stepped onto the sales floor, I
spotted Gerri. She was sizing blouses in the juniors department,
taking each one off the rack, checking the tag, and re-hanging it
behind the correct size divider.

Oh my God, was she really that concerned
about doing a great job—or deciding which styles to steal on her
next trip into the stockroom?

No way could I stand here and do nothing.

That’s how I roll.

Maybe I couldn’t figure out who murdered
Veronica, but I could do something to stop an employee from
stealing from Holt’s.

I walked up to Gerri and said, “I need your
help in the stockroom.”

She nodded quickly. “Oh, sure. Of
course.”

I led the way down the crowded aisles and
through the double doors near the customer service booth, then
continued past the shelving units to the receiving area. As usual,
nobody was back here. We had the place to ourselves.

I whipped around. She froze.

“I know you stole those panties,” I told her.
“I saw you. You’re probably stealing from Wal-Mart, too. I saw you
parked at the edge of their lot so you can make a quick getaway.
I’m telling the store manager, and I’m calling Wal-Mart.”

She burst out crying

Oh, crap.

This really took some of the fun out of the
whole thing for me.

Gerri covered her face with her palms and
sobbed. Tears rolled down her face. Her shoulders rose and fell
with each ragged breath.

Okay, now I felt like a jerk.

I caught her elbow and led her to the bedding
section. I pulled two Laura Ashley bed-in-a-bag sets off the shelf
and we sat down.

I’m not good with a crier, so I waited until
she wound down.

“You’re right,” Gerri finally managed to say,
as she wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “I stole those
panties. I stole food from other employees’ lunches, too.”

Oh my God, I’d solved two crimes?

“But I never took anything from Wal-Mart.
Never,” she said. “That’s not why I park over there.”

“So what’s going on?” I asked.

“I’ve been sleeping in my car,” Gerri
said.

Oh, crap. Now I really felt like a jerk.

“I had a roommate and we shared an
apartment,” she explained. “Only she stopped paying the rent and
got us kicked out. I couldn’t afford it on my own—I can’t afford
anything on my own. I’m trying to save enough money to find a place
but it’s all I can do to keep gas in my car and eat. I’m hoping
that if I do a really good job here, they’ll keep me on after
Christmas.”

“I’d noticed you kissing up to Rita,” I
said.

“I hate her.”

“That makes you my new best friend,” I
said.

A little laugh bubbled up, bringing on a
fresh wave of tears from Gerri. She gulped them down.

“I stay with some of my friends when I can,”
she said, “but I can’t really expect anyone to let me live with
them permanently when I can’t contribute to the rent.”

“What about your family?” I asked.

“It’s just me and my mom,” she said, and
tears pooled in her eyes. “She’s barely getting by and she’s
already helping with my school expenses. I can’t ask her for
anything else. I just need to get through the next few months. I
only have one more semester left of college. I’m going to be a
nurse.”

“A nurse, huh?” I asked. “Wow.”

“Then I can get a good job at a hospital and
everything will be fine,” Gerri said and managed a small smile.
“You’re not really going to tell the store manager what I did, are
you? I won’t take anything else. I promise. And I can pay the store
back for the panties I took, once I start working.”

She’d been put in a very difficult position
but was working hard to hang in there and finish school, even if
she’d made some mistakes along the way. I didn’t see how ratting
her out and getting her fired was going to correct those
mistakes.

“As long as you promise not to steal anything
else,” I said.

“I won’t,” Gerri said, shaking her head. “I
swear.”

“Okay, then I won’t say anything,” I told
her.

She heaved a big sigh. “You won’t regret
this. I promise.”

We got up and re-shelved the Laura Ashley
bed-in-a-bag sets.

“Everything is going to be fine. I just know
it,” Gerri said, as we headed toward the stockroom doors. “Next
year at this time I’m going to have a great job making a lot of
money, I’ll have a new car, and I can go see my mom for
Thanksgiving.”

Oh, jeez. There was that Thanksgiving thing
again.

Then it hit me what she’d said.

“You’re not going home for Thanksgiving?” I
asked.

“I volunteered to come in on Black Friday to
help set up everything for the sales,” she said. “Mom was
disappointed—me too, of course—but she understood that I had to
work.”

Somebody really wanted to spend Thanksgiving
with their mom?

How weird was that?

As Gerri pushed through the swinging door
ahead of me I felt my cell phone vibrate in my pocket. I yanked it
out and—oh my God—Liam was calling. I fell back into the stockroom
and answered.

“Why can’t you find lawyers sunbathing on the
beach?” he asked. “Cats keep covering them with sand.”

I laughed—I couldn’t help it.

“Are you a Federal agent working undercover
as an event planner?” Liam asked.

I didn’t know where that question had come
from but it sure as heck made me sound cool.

“Yes, I am,” I said.

“Good,” he replied, sounding businesslike all
of a sudden. “Because if you were operating in some sort of
official capacity and you requested information on a client, I
could help you out—under the right circumstances, of course.”

Okay, this conversation had taken a weird
turn.

“Let me give you an example,” he said. “Let’s
say you called and asked about a specific client. Let’s say you
wanted to know if he was represented by the firm I work for.”

Then it hit me—he was talking about my phone
call to him earlier today.

“And let’s say I discovered that person was,
in fact, a client of my firm,” Liam went on. “Understand?”’

Oh my God, this was some sort of
lawyer-code-talking. It was so cool.

“So if that happened could you, for instance,
tell me if the client was seeking a divorce?” I asked.

Liam paused for a few seconds, then said,
“Hypothetically, I could say this client was doing just the
opposite.”

Obviously, I’d been wrong about Patrick
secretly trying to divorce Veronica—and I was glad.

“Can I see you before Saturday?” Liam
asked.

The change in topics surprised me—and I was
glad about that too.

“How about tonight?” he asked.

I was tempted—really tempted. But I still had
several hours to work and no way did I want him seeing how bad I
looked at the end of my shift.

“Tomorrow?” he asked. “No, not tomorrow. I
can’t do tomorrow. How about Thursday?”

“Thursday is Thanksgiving,” I reminded
him.

“You have the feast at noon,” he said.

Wow, did he remember everything I ever said
to him?

“I have to go to my mom’s afterwards,” I
said.

Liam must have picked up on the total lack of
enthusiasm in my voice for Thanksgiving with my family because he
said, “Not looking forward to spending the afternoon at your mom’s,
huh?”

“Not exactly,” I told him.

It was the nicest thing I could think of.

“Okay, I’ll see you on Saturday,” he said,
and I was relieved he hadn’t asked for details.

We ended the call and for a few seconds I
just stood there with the phone still pressed to my ear, enjoying
the afterglow of our conversation—something about Liam affected me
that way.

I was grateful that he’d gotten me the info
I’d asked for, and he’d done it in a way that hadn’t violated his
ethics. I liked that about him.

I was starting to like a lot of things about
him.

Then something flew into my head.

Since Patrick wasn’t planning to divorce
Veronica, the announcement she intended to make couldn’t have had
anything to do with him—anything bad, that is.

So what was it?

And did it have something to do with her
murder?

I didn’t see how.

I really hoped Jack had come up with
something on the blackmailer theory.

It was a
Fendi day. Definitely a Fendi day.

I dashed around my bedroom pulling together
the accessories for my navy blue business suit, gathering the
things I needed for today and dropping them into my Fendi handbag.
I loved the bag and I hadn’t carried it in a while. Still, it
didn’t make up for the I-know-it’s-out-there-somewhere handbag of
my dreams that I was destined to find.

With a final check of my hair and makeup, I
left my apartment and went downstairs to my car. I was actually on
time this morning—not bad for hump day—and considered swinging
through the Starbucks drive-thru—I mean, really, it’s not a big
deal to be a few minutes late for work—when I spotted a black Land
Rover parked next to my Honda.

No way would I be on time now—and I’d
definitely need a Starbucks.

Jack got out of the Land Rover as I walked
over. He was dressed in jeans, CAT boots, and a black T-shirt. He
had a little beard going. I figured he’d been up all night,
working.

Jeez, how come I never looked that hot after
an all-nighter?

“What have you found out?” Jack asked.

It wasn’t like him to be quite this intense,
so I figured he was still under serious pressure to find out who’d
murdered Veronica.

“Two suspects,” I said, and told him my
suspicions about Julia and Erika, then had to admit that I’d come
up with only kind-of-sort-of motives and no evidence.

“I been running your blackmailer theory to
ground,” Jack said. “Bank records indicate Veronica had taken more
money out of their account than usual, but nothing significant.
Small amounts every few days for the last several weeks.”

“She could have been spending it on herself,
or on the new house,” I said.

“Or by withdrawing small amounts frequently,
she might have figured she wouldn’t arouse suspicion,” Jack
said.

The blackmail theory made more sense than my
suspicion of Julia and Erika—especially in view of the fact that
Patrick had told me that he and Veronica had had several
conversations about how much money she was spending lately.

“That would mean she probably met with the
blackmailer often,” Jack said.

A vision popped into my head that made me
shiver. I pushed it out.

“But if she was cooperating, why would he—or
she—kill her?” I asked.

“Maybe she got tired of being the goose that
had to keep laying the golden eggs,” Jack said, “and threatened to
go to the police.”

“Do you think whoever it was came to the
house, confronted her, then killed her to keep her quiet?” I
asked.

“Security in that neighborhood amounts to
getting past the gate guard. It wouldn’t be a problem for someone
determined to gain access,” Jack said. “There was a lot of
commotion at the house. Workers coming and going. Lots of different
faces. One more in the crowd wouldn’t draw attention.”

We were quiet for a moment, then Jack said,
“I want to get this case wrapped up before the Thanksgiving feast
tomorrow. The house will be full of the candy company employees,
plus the event support staff.”