Slay Bells and Satchels (Haley Randolph Mystery Series) (9 page)

“It’s not my fault,” I insisted.

“Yeah, Haley, it kinda is,” she said, and turned to wait on a customer.

Jeanette walked by with the guy she’d been talking to in the hallway. They exchanged a few more words, and he left. Jeanette spotted me. Her already sour expression worsened until she looked like the remains of a fruit basket two weeks after Christmas.

“We’re far, far behind all the other stores in this contest, Haley. We have a lot of ground to make up,” she said. “We desperately need those actresses back in the store to talk with our customers about charitable donations.”

“Can’t you just hire new actresses?” I asked.

“Word has gotten out about the murder,” Jeanette said, and narrowed her eyes at me. “No one will work here.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

“The two actresses have far out-performed our own employees,” she said. “You and the other girls who are filling in as elves are going to have to push much, much harder for donations, if we’re to have any chance of a respectable showing in this contest.”

I thought of a comeback but didn’t say it aloud because I needed to keep this job.

Sleeping with the store owner will only get me so far.

“Are you following our customer service guidelines and asking every customer to donate to our children’s charity drive?” Jeanette asked.

“See for yourself,” I said, and held out the booklet Grace had just handed me. “I had to come back for a new booklet.”

Jeanette glared at me like she didn’t believe me, or something. I thought it best to change the subject.

“Who was that guy you were just talking to?” I asked, my mind spinning, trying to recall where I’d seen him. “Did he used to work here?”

“He’s Trent Daniels, the boyfriend of that girl who was murdered,” Jeanette said. “The one
you
found in the stockroom.”

Jeez, was absolutely everybody ticked off at me for finding McKenna’s body? Wasn’t wearing this elf costume punishment enough?

I hate my life.

“He’s completely devastated,” Jeanette went on, like that was my fault, too. “He wanted to know if he could see the stockroom where her body was found.”

My brain cells finally locked onto the reason Trent looked familiar to me. I’d seen him in one of the photos in Jasmine’s apartment. He was standing in the background looking on as McKenna danced.

“I had to refuse his request, of course,” Jeanette said, just as if I was interested. “Can you imagine the—the trauma that might have resulted?”

Trauma
was code for
lawsuit
, of course.

“I have to get to work,” I said to Jeanette, and walked away.

I was, of course, in no hurry to do any actual work. I wanted to catch Trent Daniels and talk to him about McKenna.

This morning when I’d spoken with Detective Shuman he’d been all about the money McKenna would earn from her role in the sitcom. Even though I knew more was going on with her personal life, I figured Shuman had a point.

Nobody I’d spoken to so far had any info on how McKenna had gotten the role. It seemed kind of weird to me that she hadn’t told everyone. But I figured she’d told her boyfriend—and hopefully, he’d actually listened.

By the time I made it to the front of the store, there was no sign of Trent. I dashed to the door and spotted him pulling away in a Honda Civic.

No way was I running outside to flag him down wearing this elf costume.

“Hi, Haley,” Sandy called.

I saw her standing by the fake fireplace while customers filled out the entry forms for the contest. I walked over.

“I’m glad you’re still speaking to me,” I said.

“You’re my friend,” Sandy told me. “Even if you did ruin our chances of winning those great prizes in the contest.”

Oh my God, now even one of my closest Holt’s BFFs was blaming me.

At this point, there was nothing to do but tell an all-out, shame-on-me-but-I’m-desperate lie.

“I think the police are closing in on the killer, and that means the actresses will come back,” I said. “McKenna’s boyfriend was just here talking to Jeanette.”

“Really?” Sandy’s face lit up.

“I’m pretty sure he told her the good news,” I said. “He just walked past. Did you see him? The guy in the jeans and the Brooks & Dunn T-shirt.”

Sandy’s smile faded and she looked a little confused.

“That was McKenna’s boyfriend?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

I got a weird feeling.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Why?”

“He was in the store the other day. I remember because I saw his tat,” Sandy said and touched the back of her neck. “It’s a big gold star.”

I hadn’t noticed a tattoo on Trent, but Sandy’s boyfriend was an ink artist so she paid attention to that sort of thing.

“He had on a Santa suit,” Sandy said. “It was the first day of the sale. The morning McKenna was murdered.”

Now I had two absolutely-for-sure suspects, and one kind-of suspect.

I went to the Shoe Department stockroom, ignoring customers with ease, and closed the door behind me. I needed time to think about my suspects which, since the murder had happened in Holt’s, technically meant that I was working.

Jasmine was my first suspect. I didn’t want her to be guilty because I liked her. She was trying really hard to live her dream, and had a lot working against her.

But I couldn’t shake the fact that she’d avoided my questions about why she hadn’t showed up to work at Holt’s the day of McKenna’s murder, if she was really so desperate for money. Likewise, she hadn’t told me whether or not she’d actually come to the store that morning.

It seemed like Jasmine had a good reason to want to keep McKenna alive in the hope of finally getting her back-rent. But maybe McKenna had told her she’d never pay her, even after those big fat sitcom paychecks finally rolled in. From what I’d heard about McKenna, she was moving ahead with her life and not looking back.

Trent Daniels also made a good suspect. Yeah, he really loved McKenna, according to everybody who’d talked to him—including Detective Shuman. But if he’d found out she was just using him for a free place to stay and thought she’d dump him as soon as she started collecting her twenty-thousand-dollar paychecks, maybe he’d gotten angry. Maybe he’d snapped—Shuman had said there was something weird about the guy. Plus, according to Sandy, Trent was in the store at the time of McKenna’s murder, disguised in a Santa costume. Showing up this morning, acting all broken-hearted in front of Jeanette, asking to see the stockroom might have been a way to throw suspicion off of himself.

I’d seen the back door to the stockroom open that morning. Jasmine or Trent could have slipped in, murdered McKenna, then left totally unnoticed.

Alyssa ranked kind of in the middle on my personal rate-a-murder-suspect scale. She’d talked trash about McKenna every chance she got, and seemed way interested in Detective Shuman’s investigation—almost
to
o interested. These were sort of lame reasons to consider her a full-on suspect, so I put her in my mental kind-of suspect category.

Of course, a motive would be nice.

I paced around the stockroom, thinking hard, trying to come up with something—jeez, I could really use a Snickers bar right now. A chocolate-coated brain boost couldn’t hurt.

There had to be some reason McKenna had been murdered. Who would want her dead?

Yeah, she’d skipped out on rent, used a guy who probably loved her for a free place to crash, and alienated everybody around her by bragging about her sitcom role. This made her a crappy person, and an even crappier friend and girlfriend. While some people probably wished McKenna were dead, I didn’t see where any of this would cause someone to actually murder her.

I kept coming back to the rent McKenna owed Jasmine. Maybe Shuman was right. Maybe this whole thing was all about money.

I knew just who to ask.

I left the stockroom and successfully avoided two customers—one of which actually yelled for me, which was way rude, if you ask me—and circled the store until I spotted Nikki in ILA—retail speak for the Intimates, Lingerie and Accessories Department. I ducked down behind a rack of demi-cup, wireless push-up bras while she talked to a customer, then strolled over.

“Hi, Nikki,” I said. “How’s it going?”

“Cool,” she said, and held out her charity donation booklet. “Look. I’ve gotten like ten donations this morning already. I just walked up to the customers and asked for a donation, and they all wanted to contribute.”

Wow, how weird was that?

“They all loved that ‘ho-ho-Holt’s-for-the-holidays’ line,” she said.

Crap. That stupid marketing phrase. I still wasn’t saying it—no matter how many donations I might get.

“I was thinking about what a tough break it was for McKenna,” I said, “getting the big role, then getting killed.”

Yeah, I know, I’d hit her with a hard topic without any sort of transition, something I’m sure all the top-rated detectives frowned on. But considering that Nikki was actually talking to customers, I couldn’t take a chance that we’d be interrupted.

“Wow, yeah,” Nikki said. “Like maybe they’ll make a movie out of it, or something.”

“How did she get the role?” I asked.

Nikki shrugged. “I don’t know. She never said. I just saw it on her Facebook page one day. Getting the role was a super-big deal. She didn’t even have an agent or anything.”

“How could she get a part like that without an agent?” I asked.

Nikki thought for a minute. “Maybe she won a contest.”

Now I was really confused.

“Production companies hold contests for roles?” I asked.

“Sometimes agents, casting directors, and producers will hold a contest on Twitter. It’s sort of like their way of giving back to the industry and helping actors who are struggling,” Nikki said. “You know, they tweet that the fiftieth—or whatever—person who tweets back will get a meeting, one-on-one, where they can ask questions and get personal advice. It’s way cool. Alyssa won a meeting with a producer once.”

I could imagine how fabulous face-time with a Hollywood insider would be to an aspiring actor.

“So did Alyssa get offered a great role or something?” I asked.

“I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. I just heard about it from somebody else,” Nikki said. Her usual perky smile faded a little. “Alyssa’s been around for a long time, you know, trying to break in. She’s older than she looks. She’s like twenty-five already, or something. You know, she’s really getting up there.”

Nikki thought twenty-five was old?
I’ll
be twenty five in a few months. Yikes!

Nikki leaned in a little. “I think Alyssa is getting kind of desperate. Last year she shaved her head for a role.”

“She shaved her head?” I might have shouted that.

“Yep,” Nikki said. “And they only paid her a thousand dollars.”

“One lousy thousand dollars?” I’m sure I yelled that.

Oh my God. I couldn’t believe somebody would actually do that. I would never be that desperate—not even for a Breathless satchel.
That’s
how I feel about my hair.

“So, I don’t know, maybe McKenna won a contest and whoever she met with got her the role,” Nikki said. Her gaze wandered off, then came back to me. “There’re some customers by the panties. Do you want to ask them about the charity donation?”

“The what?”

Nikki held out her booklet. “The charity donation for children.”

I was way too traumatized by that whole head-shaving thing to wait on customers. I walked away, forcing the image from my mind.

I could really use a mocha frappuccino right now to steady my nerves.

Trent Daniels popped into my head. Of my two yeah-they-really-could-have-done-it suspects, and my one I’m-suspicious-but-don’t-have-any-actual-reason-to-be suspect, Trent was the only one I hadn’t spoken with yet. Shuman had told me he’d talked with him already and had picked up some weirdness but not a he-did-it vibe, but I didn’t know whether Shuman had brought up McKenna’s big sitcom break.

I paused near the racks of greeting cards. Maybe I should call Shuman and suggest he talk to Trent about it, see if he would admit that McKenna was going to dump him and move out. But Shuman might not appreciate my oh-so fabulous suggestions on how to conduct his investigation—which I totally didn’t get—plus, he could have already thought of that, and I didn’t want to look like a moron if he had.

That meant I would have to talk to Trent myself. I didn’t have any contact info for him, but I figured I could find him on Facebook.

I glanced around and didn’t see any other employees—being really tall helps when I’m in stealth mode—so I slipped through the double doors into the stockroom.

Not a creature stirred back here, as usual. Just to make sure I wasn’t interrupted—which is code for
caught
—I hurried up the big concrete staircase as fast as my pointed-toe elf shoes allowed and dashed between the huge shelving units to the back corner where the lingerie was kept.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and logged onto Facebook. Of course, there were more Trent Daniels listed than lights on the Rockefeller Plaza Christmas tree, but I finally found him. I messaged him, explaining that I was a friend of Nikki and Alyssa—which was kind of true—and asked him to contact me about McKenna.

I took a minute to check out his wall. Wow, this guy loved photos. He had a zillion pictures, one for every moment of his life for the past several years, it seemed.

A photo caught my attention. It was the one of McKenna I’d seen in Jasmine’s apartment, where McKenna was dancing and everybody else was standing around watching. Only this picture was different.

Trent must have Photoshopped it because now he was no longer standing in the background. He was on the dance floor with McKenna, and she was gazing up at him like she was having the time of her life.

Okay, that was kind of creepy.

Obviously, Trent loved Facebook. Not only did he post photos, it seemed he also posted absolutely every thought that went through his head.

Until this morning, that is.