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

Had they then gone and reported all they “knew” about my questionable actions—from my warning to Laila that she’d
pay for this
to my most recent trip to chat up Tara?

I had to tell Griff everything I’d heard so he could help me stop those two before things went from worse to jail-cell worse. My hands shook as I twisted the key into the tumbler and opened the locker door, fumbled through my purse for my phone, and located an out of the way corner behind the showers where I could speak with some semblance of privacy.

My cell rang in my hand as I began to dial.

The caller ID showed
South Highlands Valley Mall.

“Hello?” I answered.

“It’s Griff,” he said in a clipped, muffled, almost unidentifiable whisper.

“I was just calling you,” I whispered back. “Andy and Tara—”

“Not over the phone,” he said.

“So you know?”

“I know things are bigger, worse than I thought.”

“Meaning what?” I said.

“Meet me in fifteen minutes.”

“Where?”

“North side maintenance corridor.”

A cold sweat broke out across my chest. “You mean in the mall?”

“There’s a bench near Chico’s.” His whisper was nearly inaudible. “Don’t let anyone who knows you see you.”

“But—”

“Just get down here,” he said. “Your future depends on it.”

Twenty-Four

I pulled into a
spot in the B-7 area of the mall garage, grabbed one of the boy’s baseball caps from the back seat, and slid out of the car. Wearing my stay-at-home jeans, smudged makeup, and massage oily hair, at least I felt incognito enough to heed Griff’s warning—by doing exactly the opposite of Anastasia’s warning.

Head down, I ran across the parking lot, through the second floor doors, and crossed the catwalk to the west side of the mall. Moving as fast as I possibly could without drawing attention to myself, I passed American Girl, GNC, LensCrafters, and a blur of other stores I seldom visited while avoiding the ones I did.

I rushed by the food court, presumably out of range of anyone who could possibly ID me. I didn’t dare look up, much less across the railing, to see who was on the clock at Eternally 21.

As I prepared to zigzag across another catwalk back to the south side of the mall to avoid passing Circus Circus, I noticed the lights were on, but the front door was closed. Before I could tell if the Piggledys were mid-clown act for a particularly rowdy party of preschoolers, they emerged from Tommy Bahama.

My legs felt like melting rubber as they stepped beyond the plantation-style front porch and fell in just behind me.

“Honey, there’s not much more we can do about Higgledy right now but wait for word on his whereabouts,” Mr. Piggledy said.

“We can drive around the perimeter of the mall again.”

“Will it make you feel better?”

“Much.”

“I’ll get the keys,” he said as they disappeared into their store.

Perspiring through my gardening T-shirt, I continued on, reaching the bench by Chico’s with one minute and little left in the way of nerve to spare.

There was no sign of Griff yet.

I continued over to the north maintenance hall door.

Locked.

I waited a few seconds and tried again.

Still locked.

I spent the thirty remaining seconds until Griff was due sitting on the bench, trying to catch my ragged breath and figure out why it was I had to meet him here. And why now.

Another minute passed.

And then another.

I could only hope Griff had been waylaid by Higgledy’s latest disappearance and not
bigger, worse
things.

Three more minutes ticked by. Four, according to my cell phone, which was a minute ahead of my watch.

He’d called from a landline, but I had to assume Griff had his phone with him, so I texted him from mine at 4:26 p.m.

I’m here.

I pressed Send and waited another minute and a half for a response that didn’t come before I looked up and almost locked eyes with Hailey Rosenberg coming out of Caché, three stores to my north. If Andy and Tara’s mystery suspect was me and they’d already leaked their information, there was no knowing how far along the mall gossip gauntlet the news had already traveled.

I made a snap strategic decision to duck into Bath & Body Works, where I joined a trim blond of about forty at the antibacterial hand soap display. I sniffed a bottle of Caribbean Escape until Hailey passed the store, crossed to the other side of the mall, and disappeared into Lucky Jeans, a safe distance down the way.

I ventured back into the mall, checking in every direction for a sign of Griff.

Nothing.

I was only in the store for a total of three minutes. Had he come by, he should still have been waiting. I stopped on my way back to the bench and looked down the maintenance hallway window.

Empty.

Three more minutes passed, most of which I spent wondering why my future depended on rushing to get to the mall, only to sit on a bench and/or hide from anyone familiar who happened to chance by.

I fired off another text:

I’m here. Where are you?

No response.

I spent another four minutes pondering what it was Griff couldn’t tell me over the phone that I didn’t already know. Tara and Andy did kill Laila after all? Tara and Andy were trying to frame me? Tara and Andy …

Somehow all roads seemed to lead to the two of them.

I spent five more minutes talking myself out of a growing fear that Griff was in some sort of peril at the hands of his supposed friends. Instead of sending another text, I called the main switchboard and asked to be connected to mall security.

I was urged by recorded prompt to leave a message.

I hung up, dialed Griff’s cell instead, and then left the most direct, non-incriminating message I could. “Griff, it’s Maddie. Weren’t we supposed to be meeting at 4:20? It’s now 4:43, and I’m wondering where you are. I’m going to give it another two minutes and then I have to assume—”

I spotted a telltale hat and the distinctive green uniform of the South Highlands Valley Mall security halfway down the corridor by the wildflower sculpture garden outside of Macy’s.

“Never mind. I think I see you coming now.”

I tossed the phone into my purse and looked back down the hallway feeling nervous, relieved, and then ultimately more confused. The approaching security guard was female, African-American, and definitely not Griff.

“Excuse me?” I swallowed away a lump of disappointment as it became clear she was rushing past me, not
toward
me to relay an urgent message from Griff saying he was okay but couldn’t make it because he was sidelined searching for Higgledy.

Or something like that.

“Yes ma’am?” Her tone was clipped and her attention four or five doors down the way. “How can I help you?”

“I was supposed to meet Griff Watson,” I said.

“Here?”

“Yes. Over twenty minutes ago.”

“Huh,” she said. “On mall business?”

I nodded, despite how personal that mall business had become.

“That explains why his phone was beeping and ringing.”

“You have his phone?”

“We dock our work cells in the office and check them in and out with every shift.”

“So Griff’s not working?”

“He wasn’t on the schedule today.”

“Huh.” I’d assumed that we needed to meet at the mall because he was working and couldn’t leave the premises. “So he’s not here at all?”

“I think he’s out of town, actually.”

“Out of town?” I repeated. Meaning he wasn’t and hadn’t been at the mall at all today?

“That’s what he told me.”

Clearly, something
bigger, worse
was going on at the South Highlands Valley Mall. What wasn’t clear was if it wasn’t really Griff who’d called to tell me, who had?

As Griff’s co-officer disappeared into Bath & Body Works, I knew without a doubt I needed to get out of there before I found out.

I almost made it.

“Hey there!” A voice said from above me as I stopped for the world’s fastest incognito shoe tie to avoid tripping over my dangling lace. “Mrs. Frugalicious!”

I tried to tell myself I couldn’t really have heard what I thought I’d just heard, that it couldn’t be happening.

Not here.

Not right now.

Blood rushed out of my hands and legs so fast I wasn’t sure I could stand. I considered pretending whoever was above me looking directly down at me was talking to someone else. I thought about curling into a ball and rolling away—I might have even tried it had there been somewhere I could roll to fast enough to escape. With no good option but to deny, deny, deny, I looked up and into the face of the woman from behind me in line at the grocery store.

The woman I’d given coupons for free pizzas.

She smiled. “I thought that was you.”

“Ummm …” I managed. I knew she’d heard of the Frugalicious blog because she’d mentioned her friend was a devotee. I’d figured she could be Wendy K., of the
how to doctor up store-bought pizza
comment that appeared on my website. What I hadn’t considered until exactly that moment was that she might also be a certain relentless journalist named W. Killian from
What’s the Deal
magazine.

Wendy
Killian?

How else could she have made the leap from chancing upon me, a garden-variety coupon clipper, in line at the grocery store to figuring out I was Mrs. Frugalicious? I’d only posted the party post-game blog two hours ago.

“Twice in one week,” she said. “What are the chances?”

Pretty good, if she’d been following me. I considered the possibility that she was somehow connected to the garbled voice I’d so naively believed was Griff calling me from the mall. “How did you figure out I—”

My question was interrupted by the blip of a walkie-talkie.

I managed a quick glance to my left.

Nina Marino, office worker Patricia, and Dan Mitchell had materialized from inside Teariffic and stood huddled together in front of the doorway, dangerously close to us.

Dan glanced in our direction.

Patricia’s walkie-talkie squawked a staticky sentence: “Perp still thought to be on premises.”

Perp, as in me?

“Listen,” I said to Wendy K. or W. Killian or whoever she was. “I’ll give you your interview or whatever it is you want. I’ll email you back as soon as I can.”

Her face registered surprise. “But—”

“I’ve gotta run.”

Exactly thirty-seven minutes after I arrived at the mall, I was back in the car readjusting the rearview mirror I must have knocked askew in my rush to meet
not
-Griff and peeling out of the garage to speed back home.

Where I should have stayed in the first place.

Twenty-Five

I was too focused
on making sure no one followed me home to think about anything more than getting past our neighborhood guard gate and back into the safety of my house. How I managed to feign nonchalance about the dubious details of my afternoon and make small talk with my husband about the boys before they headed to a varsity team get-together, I’ll never know.

It wasn’t until I stepped into the shower to rinse off the slick of sweat, massage oil, and panic covering my body that thoughts of the last two hours began to bubble in my head.

If Griff hadn’t called me, who had?

Why had I been called to the mall in the first place?

Was it a coincidence I’d run into Wendy K. in the midst of it all?

In the midst of what, exactly?

Other than discovering the person behind the quiet, strained voice that had entreated me to rush to the mall and the gut-churning accidental run-in with Wendy K., nothing
bigger
or
worse
had happened during the thirty-nine minutes I’d spent waiting. And if Wendy had so easily recognized me, why hadn’t the Piggledys noticed me right in front of them? How had both Hailey and Dan Mitchell looked directly at me and not seen me? How had I gotten out of the mall unnoticed by Patricia, Nina Marino, or anyone else who might consider me a “perp still thought to be on the premises”?

Dumb luck?

It was possible Wendy could have followed me, which would explain our “chance” encounter, but it was impossible she’d had someone impersonate Griff and drop information she couldn’t have known to get me to the mall.

I turned the spigot up until the hot water felt like sharp needles.

Considering the weird way no one seemed to notice me while I was at the mall, I couldn’t help but wonder if the mall gossip gauntlet was functioning as something more than a conduit for rumors about job openings or who was hooking up with whom. There was little doubt in my mind that Andy and/or Tara had to be responsible for the murder, but could the cover-up be something more of a group effort?

The day after Laila died, I left the mall with more potential cause of death theories than people I’d spoken with. I left trip number two with an endless list of potential suspects, courtesy of my Andy Oliver–endorsed listening device and a mall full of employees who
happened
to be talking about the murder as I chanced by. Was it a coincidence I’d overheard Patricia on the phone in the executive offices, had come upon Dan and Nina having a kiss and cry by the food court, and then chanced on Patricia outside of the pretzel place once again? Was I so ridiculously predictable that they knew if they dropped the information in my lap, I’d run back up to Eternally 21 so Tara and Hailey could casually mention the food gifts being sent by Richard and Claudia?

I put my forearm against the tile, rested my head, and closed my eyes.

Tara had to know I’d report what I’d heard to the police, thus incriminating Richard, Claudia, and myself—all three of us suspects from outside the mall—for the authorities to focus their attention upon.

Andy and or Tara had to have put the poison in Laila’s drink, and one or both of them had to be behind the call to me, but who had actually dialed the phone and pretended to be Griff Watson?

As I reached down, grabbed the conditioner, and ran it through my hair, I grew more convinced it took a village where Laila DeSimone’s murder was concerned .

I dunked my head under the water.

If only I could figure out why the villagers needed me to rush over to the mall for nothing in particular to happen while I was there.

The answer came sooner than I could ever have anticipated.

I stepped out of the shower to Frank standing in the bathroom looking pastier than the evening he’d first uttered
Ponzi
scheme
in relation to our decimated savings account. “You need to come downstairs.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Now.”

I was out of my towel, into a pair of sweats, across the bedroom, and out in the hall with my hair dripping onto the decorative railing before I could speak the words associated with the sick feeling rushing through me like electricity. “This isn’t about one of the boys. Oh God!”

Frank looked down onto Detective McClarkey and the two uniformed officers standing in my front hall. “Thank God the kids already left.”

“Shit!” I said under my breath.

“No shit!” Frank said under his.

The fibers of the Oriental runner seemed to flatten beneath my leaden feet as I forced myself down the stairs without daring to look back up at Frank, whose confusion and distress were somehow more palpable than my own.

“Mrs. Michaels,” Detective McClarkey said, in far too formal a tone.

“’Evening, officers,” I managed, despite the crushing sensation in my chest.

It couldn’t be a coincidence the police were at my house once again mere hours after I’d left the mall.

“Where were you this afternoon between three and five p.m.?”

“She was at the gym,” Frank said from the top of the stairs, where he still stood, all but frozen in position. “Having a massage. Right?”

“I was.”

Detective McClarkey narrowed his eyes. “For the entire two hours?”

I had a lot of back story I’d hoped to spare Frank until after his deal was signed on Monday, but there was nothing I could do about the cold, hard fact and fiction of it all at the moment. “From three until a little after four.”

“And after that?”

I suddenly felt like Rosemary in that old horror movie, being watched and groomed, not to give birth to the spawn of Satan, but to take the fall for the act Tara and Andy had committed with the blessing of their fellow mall employees.

“The mall,” I had no choice but admit.

Frank put his head in his hands.

The officers gave each other almost imperceptible nods.

“That would be the South Highlands Valley Mall?”

“Yes,” I finally said. “And I can explain why.”

“I wish you would,” Frank said.

“I got an urgent call on my cell saying I needed to come down there immediately.”

“From?” Detective McClarkey asked.

“Griff Watson from mall security,” I said. “Or so I thought.”

“But now you don’t think it was him that called?” Detective Mc-
Clarkey asked.

“I absolutely did when he said we needed to talk urgently, that the conversation couldn’t take place over the phone, and that I needed to come to the mall and meet him at a bench near the north maintenance hall door on the second floor by Chico’s.”

“How do you know this security guy, and why would you need to be meeting with him in the first place?” Frank asked.

“He was there when Laila DeSimone collapsed,” I said, glossing over the shoplifting non-incident and the friendship we struck up in the security office. “And he agreed with me there’s a piece of the puzzle missing where finding her killer is concerned. He’s been helping to look into things,” I added for the benefit of the police, but not adding
on my behalf
,
until I’m exonerated
or
while I’m temporarily at the top of the suspect list.

“Was there any reason he insisted on that location?” Detective McClarkey asked.

“I figured he was on duty and couldn’t leave the premises.”

“So you went?”

“Because he said things were ‘worse, bigger than he expected.’ And that my future depended on it.”

“Your future?” Frank repeated.

Under different circumstances, the question would have been the ideal entre to the long-overdue conversation we’d be having as soon as the police were done with whatever had brought them here.

My throat felt tight with the thought of what that was. Detective McClarkey knew I’d been at the mall, which meant someone had seen me there and reported it to him, making the reason why all the more troubling.

“And you say the phone call came from the mall?” Detective Mc-
Clarkey asked.

“From the main number,” I said.

His scribbling grew more furious.

“Which I didn’t think much about at the time, although I should have since all the other calls I’ve gotten from Griff came from his cell.”

“And how many other calls have there been?” Frank asked.

Under, once again, different circumstances, and considering the secret I feared he’d been hiding, I might have reveled (but only for a second) in the confusion that crossed my husband’s face. “Enough that I should have been more suspicious of his unusually halting tone.”

“Meaning what?” Detective McClarkey asked.

“Griff never showed up.”

Detective McClarkey nodded as though agreeing about how gullible I’d been. “What time did you arrive at the mall?”

“I pulled into the parking lot at 4:16 p.m.”

“And you were there for how long?”

“I was back in my car, heading home at 4:55.”

“And you parked where?”

“B-7 section of the south lot, where I always park,” I said despite the seeming irrelevancy of the question. “So I don’t have to remember where my car is when I’m done shopping.”

“South lot,” he repeated. “And you went directly from your vehicle to meet the caller you assumed was Griff Watson.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Did you see or speak with anyone on the way?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Piggledy from Circus Circus were walking just behind me. I overheard them talking about how their monkey was missing, which I later assumed was why Griff was late.”

“But you didn’t acknowledge them?”

“No,” I said.

“Because?”

“The caller told me not to be seen by anyone who—”

“Who what?” Frank interjected.

I managed to avoid his gaze. “Might recognize me.”

“And you reached your meeting spot at what time?”

“4:19.”

“Were you there for the duration of your visit to the mall?”

“I did go into Bath & Body Works for a few minutes because Hailey Rosenberg from Eternally 21 was headed in my direction,” I said. “But then I went right back to the bench.”

“Where you remained until … ?”

“Until I was sure Griff wasn’t coming.”

“Which was when?”

“I saw a different security guard approaching at 4:43, who I assumed was coming over to tell me Griff had been delayed. Instead, she told me he was not only not on the schedule, but out of town.”

Detective McClarkey scratched his head. “Hmm.”

“Exactly,” I said. “So I was called to come down to the mall by someone familiar with the details of the case for what were supposed to be urgent reasons, and then no one showed.”

The uniformed officers gave each other the same sideways glance they’d shared earlier.

“I have to believe something was supposed to happen, I’m just not sure what it was, or why it didn’t.”

“Interesting question,” Detective McClarkey said.

“I thought you’d think so,” I said, preparing to outline my Andy and Tara as ringleaders of a possibly mall-wide conspiracy theory.

“I believe I have the answer,” the detective said first.

“Which is?”

“Tara Hu was hit by a car at approximately 4:24 p.m. in the parking lot while she was walking with Andy Oliver to her car at the end of her shift.”

“What?”

“Witnesses say the car came around a corner at a high speed. Andy tried to push Tara out of harm’s way and was clipped himself before the driver continued on.”

“Oh my God,” I said.

“No one was able to get a glimpse of the driver because of tinted windows and the direction of the sun, but witnesses ID’d the car as a white Lexus SUV.”

A white Lexus SUV?

“Mrs. Michaels, what kind of car do you drive?”