Line Dancing Can Be Murder (13 page)

Mystery shopping? That was pretty much the last thing I expected to hear. Mental fatigue hummed along my nerves. “I think so. Maybe. I’m not sure.”

She filled me in. “It’s a perfectly legitimate tool used by market research companies or companies themselves to measure a store’s quality of service, compliance with regulation, or to gather specific information about products and services. As a mystery shopper, I’ll purchase a product, ask questions, register complaints, and behave a certain way, and then provide feedback on my experience. Then they send me a big check for my trouble. Easy peasy.”

“When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is,” I said. An uneasy feeling slid over my collarbone and settled between my shoulder blades. “What’s the catch?”

“There’s no catch.”

My eyes narrowed. “Exactly how is Keith involved?”

She cleared her throat. “He’s the middle man. A restaurant or grocery store will hire him to hire the mystery shopper. He doesn’t earn enough being a tour director to live comfortably, so he does this on the side. He takes a cut from each job.”

Something was rotten in the state of Denmark, or in South Dakota, as was more the case. “You’re going to do this in Harley’s Grove?” It didn’t make sense. There weren’t but a handful of downtown businesses anymore. None of them could afford that kind of service. “How does Keith find these clients in small towns like ours?”

“Larger businesses in the bigger cities are the clients,” she clarified. “I’ll probably have to drive to Champaign or Bloomington. We haven’t worked out the details yet. But I’ll get paid to shop and dine, and all that was required was an up-front fee to join.”

A red flag flew up in front of my eyes. “What kind of fee?” I barked. “And to whom did you pay this fee?”

The lines around her mouth tightened. “You don’t have to bite my head off, Teresa. I wrote Keith a check. He told me there was only one position left in the organization. If I didn’t grab it now, another position might not open up for months. It seemed like such a good opportunity.”

Not believing what I was hearing, I repeated my previous question. “How much money did you give Keith?” When she told me the amount, it took all my willpower not to throttle her. “How could you hand over your hard-earned money to a scam artist? Because that’s what Keith is, pure and simple.”

“He’s not!”

My gaze searched her innocent face. “Don’t you know anything about the Federal Trade Commission?”

“No. Why should I?”

“If you did, you wouldn’t have been such a gullible horse’s ass.” My mouth ran like a stampede of horses, but there was no stopping it now.

Donna’s eyebrow lifted in defiance. “How dare you call me an ass, Teresa! What’s the FTC got to do with mystery shopping?”

“The FTC regulations state that under no circumstances should anyone be forced to pay a fee in order to obtain a job in the United States, and that would include this ridiculous mystery shopping job.” I knew about the FTC because of an employee at the trucking company that had been scammed by a previous employer. My temperature rose like a kettle set to boil. “Keith has scammed you.”

Slowly, her face grew ashen. “He wouldn’t, I’m telling you.”

“Why are you defending him? Because he has a pretty face and a body like Adonis, and you’ve been lonely since Chad died, and you enjoyed the attention? You don’t know him from Adam, Donna. Keith would, and he did scam you! You’ve got to tell him you made a mistake and you want your money back. Or at least stop payment on the check.”

Her lips quivered, and she looked like she was going to cry. “It’s too late. He’s already cashed my check.”

“How do you know?”

“He…he told me last night,” she stammered. “He said everything’s set. I gave him my email address, and he promised to contact me soon after I get home to give me my first assignment. I trusted him.”

“A lot of women trusted Ted Bundy, too.” Instead of shrieking, I smoothed my face into a blank mask. “Keith has balls of steel to take advantage of a nearly penniless widow.”

Donna’s eyes squeezed together, and she pounded her fist on the mattress. “You’re right, Teresa. I
am
a jackass. I feel so foolish.”

I tried to put myself in her shoes and took a deep breath to calm down. “Don’t be. You weren’t the first to be swept off your feet by Keith and you won’t be the last, unless he’s stopped. He knew the right things to say and do to win you over. It’s not your fault.”

“Did he win you over?” she asked hesitantly.

“No, but I’ve been told I give off a vibe.”

Donna didn’t seem inclined to ask what I meant by that comment. “I’ll probably never get my money back,” she said, staring blankly into space. Then the floodgates suddenly opened and tears splashed down her cheeks. “What am I going to do?” she sobbed. “I gave him everything I have left.”

We stared at each other for several long moments. Then I patted her hand. “Try not to worry. I’ll figure something out.”

~ * ~

After breakfast, Wayne drove us into the Black Hills to our first stop, the Crazy Horse Memorial. Keith stood in the front of the bus wearing his usual khaki shorts and tee shirt talking into his microphone.

“South Dakota is famous for Mount Rushmore, but it’s also making room for a second colossal mountain carving that, when finished someday, will dwarf the four presidents. The sculpture in progress is of the Lakota warrior, Chief Crazy Horse, astride a stallion with his arm and pointed hand stretched out over the horse's mane. The monument, taller than the Washington Monument and well over two football fields wide, has been sixty-four years in the making. Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski began the project in 1948. His wife and seven of their children took up the project after her husband's death in 1982. By the late 1990s, the face of Crazy Horse had emerged from the mountain carving. The last decade has been spent roughing out the horse's head, which is twenty-two stories high.”

“That’s a huge undertaking,” Crystal whispered into my ear. “I doubt Crazy Horse will ever be finished. The sculptor’s family will all be dead someday, and that’ll be the end of it.” When she noticed my gaze riveted to Keith, she elbowed me in the rib. “Did you hear me, Teresa?”

My gaze jerked toward her. “Sure. You were talking about dead people.”

“No, not exactly.”

I lowered my voice. “Crystal, have you ever hated someone so much you wanted to kill them?”

There was no hesitation on her part. “Yes. My ex-husband.”

“I guessed that much. Anyone else?” When my gaze flicked back to Keith, her eyes followed and I felt her tense beside me.

“There have been people who’ve caused me so much pain that I’ve wished them dead at the moment,” she confessed, “but everyone thinks stuff like that at one time or another. It’s just a reaction when you’ve been hurt or you’re really angry. No one really means it.” We both stared at Keith for what seemed like an eternity before Crystal quietly added, “Everyone has some kind of darkness inside them. What separates us from animals is not acting on that darkness.”

The depth of her statement surprised me. “I might be able to commit murder, if given the right provocation,” I blurted.

Her mouth gaped. She whispered, “Are you insane? What would be the right kind of provocation?”

The memory of something that happened to me a long time ago emerged like a creature rising up from the dark lagoon. My heart thundered beneath my tee shirt. I stuck my hands under my thighs to keep Crystal from seeing them shake.

“We’re all responsible for our actions,” I finally said. “People who do wrong by others should get what they deserve.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Truth Is Revealed

We had just unloaded at Mount Rushmore when Mike made an announcement to the group. “I just got a call on my cell phone from our son in Atlanta. Anna and I are grandparents of a healthy bouncing baby boy! He weighed in at twenty pounds and seven inches!”

Anna laughed and playfully smacked his arm. “It’s the other way around, Mike! By your measurements, he’s either a worm or an extremely large pumpkin.”

“Whatever,” he said, excitedly. “I gave up smoking cigars years ago, so it’s chocolate covered cherries for everyone!”

They’d been waiting since yesterday morning to hear that their daughter-in-law had given birth. Mike had bought the candy at a shop in Deadwood in anticipation. As he eagerly passed the chocolates out, Keith explained the remainder of the day’s schedule.

“You’ll have two hours here at your leisure, and then we’ll drive through Bear Country USA, a wildlife park, on our way to the hotel. Tonight, for those who wish to, we’ll return to Mount Rushmore for the evening lighting program, which is really spectacular. If you need to do some last minute shopping, check out the gift shop (he pointed in the general direction), and there’s a café where you can grab lunch and a snack bar which serves some really good ice cream for you folks with a sweet tooth. But before you all break off on your own, let’s gather for a group photo to commemorate our time together.”

All forty of us followed him and Wayne to a spot along a low wall where the backdrop for the photo was a clear view of the four presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln.

After posing for the professional photograph, my five friends and I passed through the patriotic Walkway of Flags and then took our time hiking along the wooden boardwalk path called the Presidential Trail. Every bend offered a different vantage point of the sculptures carved into the granite face of the mountain. The scenery and carvings were far more dramatic and beautiful than I’d imagined they’d be. For that short time when we were laughing and snapping pictures, I forgot all about Keith and my plan for revenge.

“Do you guys remember the Hitchcock movie,
North by Northwest
?” Annette asked. We stood on a wooden platform at a point so close to the mountain that we were looking almost directly into the presidents’ faces. “In the movie, when Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are dangling from the presidents’ faces, it looks like they’re miles high up on the mountain, but apparently they weren’t.”

“I love that movie,” Kim said. “Why don’t they make men like Cary Grant anymore? He was so handsome and sophisticated, and debonair.”

“He was married five times,” Donna said. “Why would you want a man who can’t commit?” As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized what she’d said, but it was too late to reel them back in. “Sorry, Kim. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Forget it. We all know Eddie is never going to marry me.”

That was the first time I’d heard her say it out loud.

“Poor Kim,” Crystal said, flinging an arm around her shoulders. Just be thankful you have a man to go home to, unlike me. And who cares if you haven’t walked down the aisle? At least you’re not Jackie. One more wedding and she’ll be tied with ‘ol Cary Grant. By the way, Jackie, have you chosen your next husband yet? There are a couple of fellas on this tour who would be happy to accommodate.” Crystal chuckled, but the rest of us didn’t.

Jackie’s eyes grew as hard as bullets. “No more husbands for me. Milton is the last. He’s the only man I’ve ever known who isn’t a pig.” She stepped off the trail and dropped onto a bench under a tree. Glad for shade, we joined her. “I hope Milt’s still alive when we get home,” she said, softly. “I want to tell him how much I’ve appreciated him and all he’s done for me. He probably won’t understand, but it’ll make me feel better to say it.”

Surprised at her sentimentality, I covered her hand with mine. “That’s a great idea, Jackie. Milton
has
been good to you. Because of him, you’ll never want for anything material for the rest of your life.”

We all sat together, listening to birdsong, feeling the soft breeze blow through our hair, and watching the tourists. Unfortunately, the talk of men got me to thinking about Keith again, and my mood sank. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with the same reaction.

“I slept with Keith,” Annette blurted. Five pair of eyes regarded her with shock and then curiosity. Despite the warm weather, her body began to shake like she was standing naked in a river on a February morning. “This secret has been killing me. I need to tell you what happened. Let me get it out before I change my mind,” she said, not returning our gazes. Her voice trembled as she explained.

“It happened the night of my birthday in Jackson. As you all know, I drank too much and Keith volunteered to walk me back to the Antler Inn. Instead of going straight to my room, however, we went to his room for a nightcap. He kissed me and told me I was beautiful, and, well, one thing led to another. You can imagine the rest. There’s no need to fill you in on the gory details. Obviously, I wasn’t thinking straight, and I was so angry with Bruce for not even calling to wish me a happy birthday. I suppose that’s why I let it happen. Bruce and I have been increasingly growing apart, and Dustin moving home has made things even more stressful. To be honest, I’m not sure my husband and I love each other anymore. But that’s no excuse for sleeping with another man,” she said quickly.

Several heartbeats passed in silence. Then she said, “I felt like a slut when it was over. I’ve been so ashamed ever since. But you want to know the worst of it?” Probably no one did, but she told us anyway. “I got sick and threw up. Keith got so mad, he literally chucked my clothes at me and told me to get out of his room. Then he shoved me outside half dressed.”

Stunned, Kim’s hand flew to her mouth.

“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry,” Donna said, touching Annette’s arm.

Crystal shook her head. “What a disgusting creep. He took advantage of you knowing you were drunk and a married woman. He had no right.” She paused before delivering her own bombshell. “Just like he had no right to do what he did to me.”

“What are you talking about?” Jackie asked. The rest of us shifted our focus to Crystal.

Evidently, she hadn’t told anyone but me that Keith had given her a “prize” for winning at bowling. But what
hadn’t
she told me? “What really happened that night at the bowling alley?” I asked her.