Eternally 21: A Mrs. Frugalicious Shopping Mystery (16 page)

Mrs. Piggledy took two waxy, foot-long sleeves and opened the glass door of the popcorn machine. She filled the first, handed it to me, and scooped another for herself.

Despite the promise of oily, salty goodness and a breakfast of only coffee, I could only manage a token nibble.

“I wish all the goings on around here had the same effect on my appetite as they seem to be having on yours.” Mrs. Piggledy grabbed a hearty handful from her bag. “My nerves have me noshing away.”

“I just wish I knew what to think.”

“But you won’t,” Mrs. Piggledy said. “Not until Mercury starts to go direct again next Monday.”

Not that I bought into any of it, but the last thing I needed was more confusion, especially until the TV people had come, a contract was signed, and they left town.

With the thought, I grabbed my phone.

No texts. No messages.

“I will say Laila was a terrible flirt.” Mrs. Piggledy grabbed another handful of popcorn. “And she definitely had a thing for men in charge.”

“So you think Dan was cheating with her?”

“Maybe,” she said.

“If so, either or both of them had a motive to want to get rid of Laila—especially since they’re still together.” I forced myself not to think about my husband’s continued
togetherness
with Anastasia. “Of course, that would totally refute Griff’s theory that no one at the mall would or could have murdered her.”

“Poor dear. This whole business has been extra tough on him, con-
sidering … ” She loaded popcorn into her mouth.

“Considering?”

She chewed and swallowed. “There are also the Tarot cards to consider.”

“You threw cards this morning?” Mr. Piggledy asked, returning from the backroom.

“I did.”

“And?”

“And one thing’s for certain.”

“Which is?” I asked.

A knowing smile crossed Mrs. Piggledy’s face. “Laila’s murder was a crime of passion.”

“A crime of passion?”

“That’s what the cards said.”

“Interesting,” Mr. Piggledy said. “But not at all unexpected.”

Despite Tarot cards as the source and Griff’s admirable but somewhat Pollyanna notions about his fellow mall employees, I had to admit a romantic entanglement gone bad did make sense.

I entered the sporting goods store, picked out a pair of already marked-down size-twelve cleats for FJ, and took them to the register with my coupon for an additional $10 off.

Far and away the most sense, I decided as I ducked into the watch place to have a new battery installed in Frank’s watch.

Crime of passion
rolled over and over in my head as I scanned the sale items at House of Blue Jeans for a blog post once I had a free moment to catch up at Mrs. Frugalicious.

Finally, I made my way to Macy’s and picked out two pairs of khakis the boys could wear with blazers and button-down shirts in their closets in lieu of purchasing pricey suits. From there, I planned to leave the mall, hit the gym, get the car washed, etc., etc., until it was time to get the boys to and from practice.

I accepted the shopping bag from the clerk, then headed out of the store and into the mall itself. I was halfway to the parking lot when I heard the squawk of a walkie-talkie.

I looked up and discovered Patricia from the mall offices standing near me, in line at Pretzelmania.

“Maddie.” Her face crinkled with her tight smile. “I heard you were out and about around here today.”

“You did?” I asked, somewhat surprised my presence warranted even a blip on the mall gossip radar.

“I’m just glad to know all this craziness isn’t putting off our loyal clientele.”

“Next!” called the pimply teenager at the register.

“Can I get you something?” Patricia asked looking at the menu board. “The Cinnamon Crunch are simply to die for.”

To die for
seemed to float in the buttery, bread-scented air.

“Thanks.” I rubbed my exercise sore but not nearly flat enough belly, “much as I’d love one, I’d better pass.”

“A mixed baker’s dozen should do it then,” Patricia ordered. “Please.”

“If eating like that is your secret for staying so trim, maybe I should change my mind.”

“I couldn’t eat one right now if I tried,” Patricia said watching the clerk pick up pretzels with a tong, place them into individual sleeves, and load them into a bag as big as any I was carrying. “These are for the police.”

The police? There went my theory about Patricia trying to avoid law enforcement. “I’m sure they’ll appreciate the gesture,” I managed. “I can’t imagine how much time they’ve spent here since last week.”

“And now they’re on their way back to meet with Mr. Mitchell.” Patricia handed the clerk a credit card in exchange for the bag. “Poor man is a wreck.”

Her walkie-talkie beeped as if in confirmation.

“They’ll be here in five,” said a man, presumably Dan Mitchell himself, in a gravelly panic-tinged voice. “Out.”

“On my way now. Out,” she said in response and clipped her walkie-talkie back to her belt. “As if it wasn’t enough for someone to concoct a vicious rumor about Dan with that trampy Laila DeSimone, now he has to waste valuable time that should be used finding the real killer explaining to the police what
didn’t
happen between them.”

Meaning Dan didn’t have an affair with Laila, and thus didn’t have motivation to kill her either?

“Unlike a lot of the petty gossips around here, Dan Mitchell is a man of character.” Patricia shook her head. “And Nina. Can you imagine what it’s like to not only hear such whispers about your fiancé and your former best friend but then have to defend your good name over her murder?”

I nodded. The thought of my good name sitting on a list somewhere down at police headquarters certainly gave me a bit of a shudder.

“If you ask me, loose tongues are just as evil as wicked hands.” Patricia glanced over her shoulder as if she were checking to see who might have overheard. Instead of lowering her voice, however, she spoke even louder. “When will they learn true love can’t be broken by mall gossip and petty jealousies?”

“If you ask me, they’re not
engaged
engaged until she’s sporting a rock.” Tara Hu said over the thumping bubble gum beat of Katy Perry. “But Patricia’s mostly right.”

I’d left my odd and oddly serendipitous run-in with Patricia feeling much the same as I had after meeting with Griff yesterday: thoroughly confused. But this time, instead of spending an evening tossing and turning over how weird it was for Patricia to materialize beside me and all but blurt out what was and wasn’t going on with Dan, Laila, Nina, and the police, I sent a text to Chelsea saying I was going to be a few minutes late and made a beeline for Eternally 21. It was time to stop eavesdropping and start asking a few direct questions. “Patricia’s right about what?”

“That whole Laila and Dan getting it on business is just mall gossip.”

“So nothing ever happened between them?” I asked, not entirely proud of the sinking feeling I had in regard to my rapidly shrinking suspect list.

Tara directed a trainee over to a table of T-shirts that needed straightening. “Well, I mean, Laila was all over Dan whenever she had the opportunity.”

“Even though she was seeing Richard, and Dan was going out with her best friend?”

“That was Laila for you.” Pain filled Tara’s face. “It was beyond awkward talking to Claudia when she called, and—”

“Claudia? As in Richard’s wife? Why would she call here?”

“She helps out part-time at the regional offices,” Tara said dismissively. “Worse was running into Nina knowing her supposed best friend was constantly bragging to me about trying to seduce her boyfriend, and I couldn’t say a word. Not if I wanted to keep my job, anyway.”

It also explained how odd Tara had seemed with Nina at the food court that morning.

“Luckily, Laila was always complaining that no matter what she said or how sexy she looked, he kept turning her down.”

“Every time?”

“Dan only has eyes for Nina.”

“But if she was pursuing him that aggressively, isn’t it possible he let his guard down once or twice?”

Tara motioned me to follow her toward a rounder of skirts, which she began to reorganize by color within each size. “The day before she died, she did come back from the loading dock all flushed and giddy, saying Dan admitted he was attracted to her, and that there’d been an embrace and possibly an almost-kiss before he added the 'no can-do cuz I’m in love with Nina’ part and pulled away.”

“Which someone saw?”

She nodded. “And assumed they’d seen much, much more,” Tara said, thereby removing herself from contention as the
witness to and gossiper about what apparently did not go down at the loading dock. “That, or saw exactly what happened, told someone, and the story got the telephone treatment around the mall.”

If Dan hadn’t succumbed to Laila’s come-ons, he had no real motivation to get rid of her. Not permanently anyway. Meaning only Nina remained as an officially viable person-of-interest. While Tara seemed to have kept her mouth shut about Laila’s intentions where Dan was concerned, maybe someone else had filled her in. If so, Nina might well have taken matters into her own hands. “Did Nina know Laila was after her boyfriend?”

Tara shook her head. “Blissfully unaware.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure she was going on about Dan this and Dan that when she came into the store for coffee with Laila the morning she died.”

“Who brought the coffee?”

“You sound like the police.”

“So they’ve questioned you about Dan and Nina?”

“Well, yeah, they just left,” Tara said. “And like I told them, I made the coffee in back. I’d just finished brewing it when Nina showed up.”

“There goes that theory …” I’d meant to think the phrase but accidentally spoke aloud.

“You’re really getting into this whole investigation thing, huh?”

“It’s hard not to when someone practically drops dead in your arms.” I couldn’t exactly explain any of my more pressing motivations, like having to clear my name ASAP and get a certain perky news reporter free to film financial segments with my husband. Not that I wanted her anywhere near my husband, but that wasn’t really the point.

She half-smiled. “You must have other theories besides Nina and Dan.”

“Nothing Griff didn’t shoot down as soon as I ran it by him.”

“He’s like that,” Tara said.

“So I’m told.” I sighed. “But with Nina and Dan out of the picture, I guess I’m back to his take on the murderer.”

“Which is?”

“An unknown someone from outside the mall,” I said. “That, and the murder was a crime of passion.”

“Griff said that?”

“No. Mrs. Piggledy saw it in her Tarot cards.”

As we both rolled our eyes, Hailey appeared from the back holding an open tin of assorted candy filled with everything from gummy bears to cocoa-dusted almonds.

Tara grabbed a handful of jellybeans.

“Maddie?” Hailey offered.

“Maybe just a couple.” I helped myself to a few lemon drops to take the edge off my lack of breakfast. “Condolence gift?”

“Those have been mostly flowers,” Hailey said. “Aside from that fruit basket Claudia sent.”

“Claudia sent a fruit basket?” I asked.

“Which Laila would have hated.” Tara shook her head. “For obvious reasons.”

“She’d have loved these cocoa-dusted almonds, though,” Tara said wistfully.

“Not to mention the sales numbers for last week.”

“I wish he’d send that caramel corn again.”

“He?” I asked, the comment about Claudia’s sympathy gift also nagging in my craw.

“Technically, it’s the regional office.” Hailey grabbed some gummies and loaded them into her mouth.

“But Richard started this promotion.” Tara grabbed a few more jellybeans. “He has candy sent whenever we exceed our sales projec-
tions.”

“To thank the sales team for a
sweet
week,” Hailey said.

My heart began to thump. “And how often does that happen?”

“At our store? Every week for the last month.” Tara smiled and bit into a dark brown jellybean.

Suddenly the message inherent in a condolence basket filled with the one food Laila would have hated from the supposedly oblivious, temporarily estranged wife of her paramour seemed obvious. I doubted anyone could have offered up a more potent statement.

Except for, possibly, Richard himself?

“Candy like the assorted chocolates you had in here last week?” I asked.

Tara and Hailey both nodded as they chewed in unison.

“I have something for you that may be very important.” I handed the squished, melted, somewhat furry, half-wrapped chocolates I’d thankfully forgotten to give my boys but had been carrying around in my purse to Detective McClarkey. I’d found him and a few of his colleagues just outside the mall offices.

“Okaaay,” he said.

I should have known better than to discount the erstwhile boss/love interest and/or his lovely, no-longer-estranged wife by virtue of the fact they weren’t on the premises the day of the murder. Even a third-rate detective on a soon-to-be-cancelled show wouldn’t have marked them off with such a cavalier slash of the pen. Not without considering any and all possible ways they might have had such simple access to the victim, say via food gifts delivered weekly by, or authorized by, either one of them.

“And this is?” he asked.

“Possibly the smoking gun.”

Could I really have been carting around such potentially crucial evidence for the better part of a week without giving the chocolates or their significance any thought?