Pearls Gone Wild Read online

  A petite, scowling girl with blue hair and more than a few man-made holes in her head stood behind the case of pearls with the keys in her hand. Her pants looked synthetic and her shoes were of the Herman Munster variety. She hollered out to get Cat’s attention.

  “Who’s she?” I asked. I felt like I’d seen her before, but wasn’t sure why. Her heavy makeup and high number of piercings made her look like a lot of other goths around town. In the quest for individuality, their style had turned formulaic.

  “Shana Brice. My new assistant manager. She looks a little scary but her recommendations were solid.”

  Empty black velvet-lined trays sat on top of the jewelry case, and clear plastic bags of jewelry sat next to them. The mauve fixtures I’d used were off to the side. I’d merchandised that case with the precision of someone with OCD rearranging a partially full container of eggs. Unless there’d been a rush on cheap pearl knockoffs in the past half hour, there’d been no reason to redo it.

  Cat and I walked to the counter. “Hi, Shana,” Cat said. “I didn’t expect the store to be open already.”

  “I called the management office this morning to find out if we could get back in. They said sure, the police were done.” She looked at me. “Are you new? I could use some help redoing this case.”

  “I don’t work here. I’m Cat’s friend. Samantha.” I held out my hand to her. She looked at it and then kept working on the case. “What are you doing?”

  She scowled at me, though I wondered if it was a natural expression or if the heavy black eyeliner and brow paint on her face created it. “I’m rearranging the merchandise. Somebody wasted this case with a bunch of cheap pearls.”

  Cat turned to me. “I thought you merchandised the cases last night?”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to explain my reasoning for using the inexpensive pearls instead of the more valuable inventory in front of Shana so I said nothing.

  “We don’t lock up the cheap stuff,” Shana said. “It goes on the top-of-counter fixtures. Anything under two hundred dollars up top.”

  “Sam was just helping out,” Cat said. “I didn’t tell her our merchandising standards.” She thanked Shana and turned away.

  “Cat, there’s mail here too,” Shana said. She glanced at me quickly. “I don’t know why it was on the counter and not in your office.”

  “That was me too,” I said. I took the stack of envelopes from Shana and held them out to Cat. “The mail was on the floor at the front of the store last night, probably somebody pushed it under the gate. I didn’t know where to put it so I figured it was best to put it where you’d see it.”

  “Good thinking. Shana, it looks like you have things under control. Sam, can you come with me to my office?”

  “Sure.”

  As we headed through the store, the lights and the security gate by the mall entrance started to descend. I ran to it and threaded my fingers through the metal like Dante had last night. I yanked up but the gate kept moving. I reached for the control panel, hoping the switches were labeled. Not only weren’t they labeled, there weren’t any switches. Inside the metal box was a tangled mess of wires.

  I yelled to Cat for help. She ran to the control panel and flipped a switch under the wires. The screeching of the gate subsided and, moments later, it stopped.

  There was one remaining problem. The toes of my pink lizard boots were dissected underneath it.

  12

  SUNDAY, MID-MORNING

  Cat had a panic-stricken look on her face that was at odds with her chic red hair and elegant green dress. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Actually, I was a little shaken up. I bent down and unzipped the boots, and then pulled my feet out one by one. Fortunately for my future footwear choices, it was only the pointy tip of the boot that had been damaged, not my toes.

  A customer, bundled up in an oversized gray coat, stood next to the gate. “My packages are under there. Now I’m going to be late getting my kids. I don’t have time to wait while you fix this.”

  I looked at the packages and then at the woman. She had set multiple shopping bags on the floor while she’d stopped to sort through a display of Art Deco-inspired salt and pepper shakers.

  Cat’s professionalism took over. “I’ll arrange to have everything delivered to you. Let me get your name and address.” She looked at Shana and pantomimed writing something on a notepad. Shana ejected a length of register tape and brought it and a pen to Cat. “Your address?” Cat asked. The woman didn’t answer. “Are these gifts? We’ll arrange complimentary gift wrap along with the free delivery. Now, your name?”

  The woman provided her name, address, telephone, and probably would have given her Social Security number and blood type if she thought Cat would throw in a few extras. Cat handled the issue gracefully, the true hallmark of customer service. When the woman was gone, Cat gave the information to Shana. “Call a delivery service and wrap these. I’ll call maintenance to deal with the gate.”

  I followed Cat to her office. She sat behind her desk and called security. “This Catherine Lestes at Catnip. Yes, that’s the store. The security gate malfunctioned. Customers are trapped inside.” She paused. “Yes, I’d say this is more of an emergency than a lightbulb out in the ladies room.” She slammed the phone down. “I should have kept the store closed. Did you see the crowd out there? Those people aren’t shopping. They’re just here to see the freak show. And lookie! Faulty gate traps people in store. We just gave the newspaper their follow up story.”

  “Cat, that wasn’t a faulty gate. You saw the jumble of wires in the control panel. That was sabotage and you need to call the police. Dante and I checked the gate last night and it was fine.”

  Tears formed and fell and she swiped them away. “Damn hormones,” she said. “I never cried this much before I was pregnant.”

  “Who has a key to the store?” I asked.

  “Everybody on my staff. I want them to trust me.” Neither of us mentioned the irony. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t do everything myself but I can’t trust anybody either.”

  “Cat, don’t you think it’s suspicious that all of this is happening now? The thefts and the vandalism? In the same week your husband was murdered?”

  She went pale. I paused for a moment, expecting her to tell me to stop talking about the murder. I took her silence as encouragement to continue. “Dante and I cleaned the store last night. The gate was fine. Those envelopes,” I pointed to the mail, “were under the gate. Whoever delivered it did so between the murder and the police releasing the crime scene. It’s one more thing that’s out of order.”

  She opened the top envelope, pulled out a sheet of paper, and then handed it to me. “It’s the invoice for the pearls that were stolen,” she said.

  I scanned the page. Cat’s payment terms were Net 30. It was common practice for distributors and designers to set up payment terms with existing retail accounts. “Net 30” meant that Cat was expected to pay in full thirty days from the date on the invoice.

  “When did you place that order?”

  “A couple of weeks ago when George first told me about the pearls.”

  To hear Cat tell it, George had done her a favor by cutting her a special price on his inventory, but I couldn’t help wonder if he’d been motivated by something else. Breaking off a ten-year marriage the month before his wife has their first child wasn’t the action of a man afraid of his future, it was that of a man who was desperate for an escape hatch. He was one of the few people who knew the full value of the inventory at Cat’s store and knew exactly where she’d merchandise it. I wondered again why he was at the store the night he was killed. It was starting to look like he’d been in on the theft all along.

  Cat interrupted my thoughts. “I should never have placed that order. Business as usual is an expression for a reason.”

  “No. The way to get ahead is to take risks, and if you wanted different results, you had to try something new. Your instincts were on target.
You never could have predicted what happened.”

  I set the invoice down as a different idea came to me. “Didn’t you tell me you bought workrf here before you owned the place?”

  “Yes, from Jim Insendo. You met him at the holiday party, remember?”

  “Why’d he sell?”

  “He hit a point where it wasn’t fun for him anymore. He wanted to have time to travel. He sold the store to me in a turn-key transaction”

  “Why was he at the holiday party?”

  “He was in business for a long time, and sometimes he consults for companies.”

  “But you said you never ordered from Kenner & Winn.”

  “Jim did, but I didn’t. When I bought Catnip, I took over the store with the inventory as it was, but as we sold out of his inventory, I found new resources. That’s been my favorite part of owning a boutique. Why so curious about him?”

  “No reason.”

  I hadn’t given much thought to seeing Jim on the sidewalk outside of the store. He could have been shopping or visiting friends at the outlets. And I could already tell Cat wasn’t the type to sit around and theorize about the murder, but too many seemingly random things were happening for me to ignore them. I would have liked to call Eddie, but the needs of the visual department had kept him busier than Santa’s elves.

  Cat pushed the invoice back into the envelope and set it in her inbox. We left her office and she pulled the door shut behind her. Two men in brown coveralls worked on the gate by the mall entrance. Shana directed customers to the door that exited onto the sidewalk. Cat joined the workers and I wandered down the aisle. Until Dante showed up with my keys, I was stuck in the store.

  Thanks to Tradava I had both money and time to burn, a rare new circumstance. Add in the fact that I hadn’t even started my holiday shopping, and the decision to hang out at Catnip was a no-brainer.

  I idled by a table of cashmere sweaters and considered how wrong it would be to shop for myself and not the many people on my list. Just as I was about to continue on to the men’s department, I got distracted, but not by merchandise.

  The woman who I’d seen outside the mall last night with Jim walked into Cat’s store. She was wearing the chinchilla coat. She shrugged out of the coat, revealing a beige crocodile blazer underneath. I quickly found Cat arranging and pointed the woman out. “See that woman? She was hanging around your store last night after Dante and I left.”

  “Which woman?”

  “That one. Right there. In the beige crocodile jacket.”

  Her eyes grew big. “I don’t see anyone other than Lela.”

  “Who’s Lela?”

  She pointed directly at the blonde. “Lela Sexton. My top associate.”

  13

  SUNDAY, NOON

  I looked at the blonde again. “How come I don’t know her?” I asked. “I shop here all the time.”

  “She worked here when I first bought the store, but one of those big luxury stores in King of Prussia recruited her and she left. Now she’s back and the timing couldn’t be better. Remember I said somebody quit the other day? Lela called and asked if I had any openings. She’s not management material but knows how to sell and she buys enough to keep the lights on.”

  If Cat wasn’t going to wonder why her associate was sneaking around the mall after dark, then I was. Cat went back to her office and I approached the jewelry counter. I pasted on what I hoped was a friendly smile. “Nice jacket.”

  “Thank you. It’s one less thing to lock up at the end of the night.”

  I decided to play dumb. “You work for Cat? We haven’t formally met. I’m a friend of hers, Samantha Kidd.” I held out my hand.

  “Lela Sexton.” She offered up her fingertips to shake, just like Joyce Kenner had. Who shakes a hand like that? Was this a thing I hadn’t read about on social media?

  Lela glided toward a couple of customers that had wandered into the store. If Cat was paying her associates enough to buy crocodile blazers then maybe I was working at the wrong retailer.

  I watched Lela from afar. It wasn’t just the expensive jacket that made her stand out. Her taupe silk shell and matching skirt, her thick gold necklace with the single pearl pendant, her gold chain belt…it was understated elegance. Most people didn’t know how to do that. And for sure most people who knew how to do that weren’t looking for work in an outlet store, even with Cat as the owner.

  I hid behind a display of sunglasses. As I tried on pair after pair, I fake-looked around for a mirror, while really keeping my eyes on Lela. She was at home in the store. Her keys didn’t jangle around her wrist like most sales associates who work in stores that lock up their pricey merchandise, but rather hung from the end of a chain belt that she had slung around her waist. She smiled at everyone and assisted them as if she were the hostess at her own cocktail party. There was no air of retail angst in her; she made the job look like the prize in a popularity contest. I pulled on a pair of round purple frames and glanced at her feet. She was doing it all in three-inch heels.

  I didn’t know what I was hoping to see, but this picture of perfection never slipped up. When the customer rush subsided, she stepped out from behind the cases of jewelry and walked toward me. I unfolded a pair of silver frames and pretended to admire myself in the mirror, even though they weren’t right for my face.

  “The plum ones would suit you better.” She handed me a pair with a three-digit price tag. “I noticed you trying to get my attention, but I couldn’t get away. It’s tough when it gets busy and there’s no one else around. Cat needs more staff.”

  I thought carefully about my choice of words. “Maybe she can’t find people she can trust.”

  She looked at me like royalty who’d been challenged by one of her subjects. “She said that?”

  “No, just my theory.”

  Her eyes stared into the sunglasses that were perched on my face.

  “You really should consider those frames. They set off your cheekbones nicely.” She excused herself and walked away. She’d turned my surveillance mission into a need for high priced eyewear.

  She was good.

  I amassed a pair of cashmere socks (for Nick), a purple scarf (for Eddie), and seven sweaters (for me), and then, feeling guilty over my obvious one-for-you-a-whole-bunch-for-me shopping strategy, put it all back. Dante came into the store while I was rehanging the socks. As soon as he saw me, he headed my way.

  “Cashmere socks. Wow, that’s an intimate gift. Who’s the lucky fellow?”

  “My brother-in-law,” I lied. I held out my hand. “My keys?”

  He pulled them from his pocket. He put his left hand under mine and placed the keys into my palm with his right. He closed his right hand over the top of mine, making a hand-and-key sandwich that was not altogether appropriate. I balled up my fist around the keys and pulled my hand out.

  “Do you always keep your house at a steady fifty degrees?” he asked.

  “Um, no?”

  “I didn’t think so. Your pilot light was out. I fixed it, but still had to dig a couple of blankets out of your hall closet. Cat called me when you two left this morning and I went to her place.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. “Is this yours? It was charging in her kitchen. My sister is anti-Apple so I know it’s not hers.”

  It was the Nick Phone. I took it and clutched it to my body. “Yes, it’s mine. You didn’t look at it, did you?”

  “Why? Did you use it to take selfies in your underwear?” He pretended to try to see the screen and I blushed.

  “No,” I said. “Thanks for changing my tire and taking care of my house.”

  “No problem. Just be careful—you’re driving on a donut. You’ll want to get a real tire on that car soon.”

  I left Catnip and drove home. It was early, but I was tired. I had every intention of taking a bath, putting on my pajamas, filing the vandalism report, and crawling into bed.

  Plans can change.

  The door pushed open when I stuck my k
ey into the lock. The living room was dark but lights were flickering in the kitchen. I stood still, listening for unusual sounds. The house was eerily silent. And then, footsteps. Coming down the stairs.

  I ducked into the coat closet and pulled the door shut behind me, wondering if the perpetrator was aware of my presence. My heart pounded in my chest so loud I was certain it could be heard down the block. The vacuum cleaner handle caught on the hem of my skirt and then slid underneath it.

  The footsteps stopped. I’d spend the next twenty-four hours in the closet if it was necessary, but sooner or later I was going to have to get out of there. The front door was only a few feet away, and if I was lucky I could make it to my car and drive away before my intruder could get to me.

  The vacuum cleaner handle was cold against my tights. I shifted my weight and stepped on the hem of a trench coat. The coat fell from the hanger. The hangers knocked against each other in a symphony of wood and metal. Whoever was outside the closet had to have heard.

  I unsnapped the vacuum cleaner extension and aimed the angled end like a weapon. Shadows formed below the door. It was just a matter of time until I was exposed.

  14

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON

  “Kidd, are you going to come out anytime soon or do I have to refrigerate dinner?” Nick’s voice asked.

  I opened the door and stared at him. “You’re back? You’re here? How is it that you’re here?”

  “I persuaded the factory owner to show up early and caught the red-eye. Surprise.” He had one hand on either side of the door frame. The sleeves of his taupe sweater stretched across his shoulders and chest, and hinted at muscles underneath the argyle pattern. His dark curly brown hair was mussed up in a way that suggested he’d slept on it, and he had a two day beard growth. But it was his eyes, his root-beer-barrel colored eyes that got to me the most. They searched my face, crinkling at the corners with the faintest hint of a smile when he took in the vacuum cleaner attachment weapon. He leaned down and kissed me. “I missed you.”