CHAPTER 5
Oddly enough, I’d never been the Employee of the Month. I had no idea what the requirements were, but I knew I should find out.
I left Jeanette’s office and stopped at the customer service booth. I’d often been assigned to this area of retail purgatory where we handled returns, did price adjustments, gave out gift boxes, and pretended to listen—maybe that was just me—to customers’ complaints.
Grace was inside tapping on the keyboard of the inventory computer, putting a pile of returned sweaters back into the store’s stock. I liked Grace. She was cool to work with—and that’s saying something here at Holt’s. She was young, petite, and always wore her hair in the trendiest styles. Just a week ago, she’d shaved one side of her head, left the rest of it short and spikey, and dyed it blue. It was really working for her.
“What do you know about becoming the Employee of the Month?” I asked when she walked over.
“Not much, since I’m marooned in this booth,” she said. “There are sales goals and something about attendance, I think, that sort of thing. The info is in the employee benefits handbook.”
Was I the only person who didn’t know there was an employee benefits handbook?
Apparently.
Rita walked up. “You’re supposed to be in the shoes department,” she barked.
“I’m picking up go-backs,” I told her.
It was a total lie, but so what?
Grace grabbed two boxes of shoes she’d rung back into the store’s inventory and handed them to me. Is she cool or what?
Rita glared at me. I glared back as I walked away.
At least now I knew where I supposed to work today.
Hours that I was never going to get back passed as I stocked shelves, straightened up the department, and avoided waiting on all but two customers—a personal best for me. When my shift was close to ending—well, kind of close—I headed for the time clock.
The fabulous Mystique clutch had filled my head most of the afternoon. I absolutely had to have it, and the only way to get it—with an equally fabulous eighty percent discount—was to guarantee my continued employment with Holt’s and qualify for a transfer by winning the Employee of the Month award. I figured it might be a bit of a stretch for me, but I was confident I could handle it. I can rise to most any occasion when I have to. Really.
I bypassed the breakroom and went into the assistant store managers’ office. No one was there—whichever assistant manager was on duty was probably on the sales floor—so I went through the cabinet where the materials for the new-hire orientation were stored and grabbed an employee benefits handbook.
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I checked the ID screen and saw another text message from Juanita, asking me again to call my mom. I’d intended to call her after my shift ended—really, I swear—so I accessed my contact list.
But I couldn’t quite bring myself to hit the button. Instead, I called Detective Shuman. With any luck, he and Madison had uncovered enough evidence to know I wasn’t involved with Asha’s death, making it easier for me to focus on whatever problem my mom was having.
“Please tell me you solved the murder,” I said when he answered.
Shuman chuckled. “And get you off the hook this quickly? Forget it. Madison is going to drag this out as long as possible.”
He’d said it in a joking way, but I was afraid he was right.
“That crackerjack partner of yours must have come up with all kinds of evidence by now,” I said. “Anything you’re willing to share?”
“Preliminary autopsy report indicates the victim was shot point-blank in the chest. A handgun. Thirty-eight,” Shuman said. “This was up close and personal. A murder. No question about it.”
“Any suspects?” I asked.
“Besides you?” Shuman chuckled again. “No, we’re still gathering evidence.”
He seemed to be in an awfully good mood for a homicide detective who was on duty. I guess some days were easier than others.
“What about Asha’s car?” I asked.
I hadn’t noticed Asha’s banged-up Chevy in the parking lot when I’d discovered her body. It was impossible to miss, but with everything that was happening at that moment, I hadn’t thought to look for it.
“We towed it in,” Shuman said. “The lab guys are going over it.”
He’d been so forthcoming, I wished I had some meaningful info to share. I went with what I had.
“I heard Asha quit Holt’s because she got a higher-paying job someplace else. She needed money,” I said. “Maybe she was involved with something illegal and that’s what got her killed.”
“Always a possibility,” Shuman agreed.
He didn’t say anything else so I figured that was all I was going to get from him today.
“Thanks for the update,” I said. “I’m asking questions. I’ll let you know if I hear anything else.”
“Not a good idea, Haley.”
Shuman switched to his cop voice. It was way hot, of course, but right now kind of frightening.
“Madison thinks you’ve involved somehow. You should stay as far away from this as you can,” he told me.
I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t lie to Shuman, so I kept my mouth shut.
“I know you’re not going to do that,” he said. “Just be careful.”
“That I can do,” I said, and we ended the call.
I was about to access Juanita’s latest text message when the image of Liam flew into my head.
Oh, crap.
Liam was my sort-of boyfriend. I should have called him first.
Maybe I need to work on my sort-of girlfriend skills.
I accessed my contacts list while I paced across the office, and called Liam. His voicemail picked up so I left an aren’t-I-clever message.
Then Jack Bishop sprang into my thoughts and I realized he hadn’t called me today. I was more than a little relieved. I still wasn’t clear on exactly what had gone on last night, and no way did I want to face him until I remembered.
Since I was still on company time, I checked my texts and read Juanita’s message. This one was worded a little stronger, insisting that I call right away.
Okay, now I was kind of worried. Juanita seldom contacted me, but she’d reached out several times today. Maybe something terrible really had happened to Mom.
I called my parents’ house. Juanita answered right away.
“You have to come. Now,” she said before I could ask anything.
Juanita sounded mega-stressed, which, of course, caused me to be mega-stressed.
“Your mother is terribly upset.”
The possible death of a family member or close friend popped into my head.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Juanita said. “She won’t tell me.”
Or maybe it was a medical problem. Troubling test results or bad lab reports. Something she could only tell me, her oldest daughter.
“Her copy of Harper’s Bazaar magazine came two days ago,” Juanita said. “She hasn’t opened it yet.”
Oh my God, it was worse than I thought.
“I’ll be right there.”
* * *
I grew up in a small mansion in La Cañada Flintridge, a town near Pasadena that was set against the San Gabriel Mountains overlooking the Los Angeles basin, with my older brother, now a pilot in the Air Force, and my younger sister, who attended UCLA and worked as a model. Dad was an aerospace engineer.
My folks still lived there. The place had been left to my mother, along with a trust fund, by her grandmother. Just how my great-grandma—long dead before I came along—had acquired such wealth was a generations-old family secret.
Mom had wanted me, her first-born daughter, to follow in her footsteps down the runway to beauty queen fame. I’d endured years of dance, modeling, singing, and nearly every other imaginable lessons—with Mom coaching me while she struggled to find some tiny kernel of actual talent in me.
Since I carried only fifty percent of her beauty queen genes—and most of them were recessive—things hadn’t gone well. It didn’t help that I hadn’t really liked any of that stuff. Mom finally admitted defeat when, at age nine, I set the den curtains ablaze attempting to twirl fire batons.
By then, my younger sister, a nearly perfect genetic copy of our mother, began to display great promise in filling Mom’s five-inch pumps. So that was that. She was in. I was out.
When I’d left Holt’s, I’d hit the Starbucks drive-through and gulped down a Frappuccino, fortifying myself for whatever the heck was going on with Mom, and headed east on the 210. By the time I took the exit, my chocolate-coffee-caffeine-infused brain had conjured up every possible horrific thing that could have befallen Mom.
I drove up the winding road and pulled to a stop in the circular driveway, relieved that the house was still standing and the worst-case scenario I’d imagined—a serial bomber bent on destroying the homes of former beauty pageant winners—hadn’t happened. Juanita must have been watching for me because she opened the front door before I even got out of the car.
“She’s in the media room,” she said, waving me toward the rear of the house with both hands, like a ground crew member marshaling a passenger jet away from the terminal.
I walked deeper into the house, to the spot Mom had recently redecorated and dubbed the media room, a large space with a giant TV, comfy recliners and sofas, and a crank-it-up-even-if-it-makes-us-deaf sound system. She’d finished the room off with framed posters of classic movies and TV shows, and artistically rendered film reels, cameras, and whatever you called those black and white boards they snapped before a scene was shot.
The TV was off, the lights were low, the room was silent.
I didn’t know why Mom was in that particular room. I doubted it was to catch up on the news.
She was holding a glass of wine and staring at a Back to the Future movie poster. My mom was tall—like me—with dark hair—like me—and stunning beautiful—totally unlike me; I was merely pretty, as I’d overheard her say many times.
She was dressed in a Zac Posen sheath, four-inch Louboutins, perfectly coordinated accessories, with full-on hair and makeup—just your average housewife at home on a weekday afternoon.
“Mom?”
A few seconds passed before she turned away from Marty McFly and the DeLorean, and spotted me. Immediately, she straightened into her pageant stance and her well-practiced I’m-so-pleased-to-see-you expression—wide eyes, smile with narrowly parted lips, head tilted slightly to the left.
“Haley, what a nice surprise,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
Mom seemed normal. She looked and sounded as she most always did. I couldn’t imagine why Juanita had thought something was terribly wrong—despite Mom’s avoidance of her newly arrived Harper’s Bazaar magazine.
I was slightly miffed that I’d been so worried and rushed over here, apparently for nothing.
“So what’s up?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Mom insisted, and gestured with her wineglass. “I was just wandering through the house.”
Note—she hadn’t wandered into the utility closet and grabbed a mop to help Juanita scrub the floors.
“And I ended up in here . . . somehow,” Mom said, looking around as if seeing the room for the first time.
Okay, that was weird.
She widened her smile and pushed her chin up a notch. “I was thinking about the time machine in the movie. Going back, you know. Back to our past and, well, perhaps changing things.”
Okay, that was really weird.
“Not that I’d want anything changed in my life, of course,” Mom insisted and pushed a little harder on her smile. “I’ve had a magnificent life. So many wonderful things. You children . . .”
She’d mentioned me and my brother and sister first?
“And this beautiful home. Your father. Certainly your father. I’ve been blessed with so very many . . .”
Mom blinked quickly and gulped hard. She sipped her wine.
What the heck was going on? She was upset, something way beyond my-mascara-wand-is-clogged upset. Was she on the verge of tears?
I was totally at a loss. I’d never seen her like this before.
Even though we were at opposite ends of the personality scale, I had to hand it to Mom—at her core, she had grit.
She’d been hardened by years on the pageant circuit. She’d endured hours of spray tanning, two-sided tape, and over-the-counter meds used for purposes the manufacturer never intended. She’d learned to control her emotions—surely even Mom had eventually grown weary of the what-kind-of-vegetable-would-you-be type questions—and had learned early on to hold a smile and clap enthusiastically while another contestant took the crown she knew should have been hers.
“Mom? Mom, are you crying?” I walked closer.
“No. No, of course not.” She turned her back to me and sniffed.
“Yes, you are,” I insisted.
Okay, now I felt like a total idiot and horrible daughter. But Mom was always so pulled together—in her own way, of course. What was I supposed to do?
My first thought was to call someone to take over—which was bad of me, I know. But I’m not good at this sort of thing.
Was my sister home? She was great in situations like this. And what about my dad? Could I call him to come home from work and jump in here? He’d married her. He was legally obligated, right?
Yes, I could do those things, but Mom sniffed again and I knew this was all on me.
And I knew I could handle it.
“Mom?” I stepped in front of her. Tears pooled in her eyes. “Mom, tell me what’s wrong.”
She met my gaze and, I suppose, she was deciding for herself whether I could handle it.
“Tell me,” I said.
She blinked back her tears and said, “Rumors have surfaced. Accusations have been made.”
My thoughts scattered. Had Dad accused her of cheating? Had someone told Mom he had cheated on her?
“I heard something from one of my friends,” Mom said. “You know, my standing luncheon with other pageant women.”
Mom and a group of former pageant queens—whom I mentally referred to as a coven—met regularly to support ongoing beauty pageants, coach contestants, and give out advice.
Knowing the rumor came from one of them, my thoughts flew in a different direction.
Had somebody accused Mom of dyeing her hair with boxed color at home? Had they suggested she’d had work done?
“You recall that I was in the Miss California Cupid pageant?” Mom asked.
She’d been in dozens of pageants back before she’d met my dad. I didn’t know one from the other.
“Sure,” I said.
This was easier.
“It was my first truly important pageant. I was only nineteen,” Mom said. “I took second place, but it got me noticed.”
Oh, yeah. Now I remembered. It was early in her pageant career so, even though she’d come in second, she’d been thrilled.
“With that attention, I was able to get the recognition and, well, the confidence I needed to keep entering pageants,” Mom said. “The Miss California Cupid contest was my stepping stone to national competitions.”
Back before she’d married my dad and hung up her crown, Mom had been Miss California and third runner-up in the Miss America pageant.
“What kind of rumors and accusations are circulating?” I asked.
“It seems that someone with inside knowledge of the Miss California Cupid pageant during the year I competed is threatening to go public with allegations of wrongdoing,” Mom said. “A conflict of interest involving a contestant and one of the judges.”
That was it? A conflict of interest? That’s what had Mom in tears?
I didn’t get it.
“This could ruin everything,” Mom said, and gulped down the last of her wine. “If a formal complaint is filed, the board of directors will have to take action. Crowns and titles will be stripped. The media, of course, will get involved.”
Okay, I could imagine what bloggers and late-night talk show hosts would do with the situation.
“Who’s making this claim?” I asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Who’s the judge?”
She waved my question away and said, “If this comes to light, everyone will be making tawdry remarks—forever. This will never be lived down or forgotten.”
Mom didn’t want the pageant that meant the most to her smeared by scandal. Even though I wasn’t exactly on board with the whole beauty pageant thing, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing to help.
“I’ll check into it,” I told her.
“You’ll—you’ll what?”
“I’ll ask around,” I said.
“No.”
“I can find out who’s involved.”
Mom shook her head. “No. No, you mustn’t.”
She didn’t know I’d been involved with a number of murder investigations and worked with a homicide detective and a private investigator.
“I can do this,” I told her. “I know people who can help.”
“I forbid it,” she said, switching to her mom voice.
“But, Mom—”
She snapped into her pageant stance and said, “I refuse to be involved in this distasteful affair in any fashion. Certainly, no more attention should be drawn to it by pursuing the matter.”
She had a point. The whole thing might lose steam and disappear if nobody was giving it any energy.
“Well, if you’re sure,” I said.
“I’m very sure.” Mom looked relieved. “The less said, the better. And, please, don’t mention this to anyone.”
Since I didn’t travel in pageant circles, I knew no one who’d want to know—or would have the least bit of interest in—this particular rumor.
“No problem,” I said.
On my way out, I stopped by the kitchen and assured Juanita nothing serious was going on with Mom, then got in my Honda and headed for the closest Starbucks. Yes, I’d just had a Frappie on the drive over but, really, can you have too much chocolate and caffeine?
As I sat in the drive-through digging in my purse for my wallet, I pulled out the Holt’s employee benefits handbook I’d grabbed from the assistant store managers’ office earlier. The line stretched eight cars deep so I had some time to kill. I flipped to the chapter that detailed the Employee of the Month info.
Wow, this was a long chapter.
Under normal circumstances, being Employee of the Anything wasn’t something I would aspire to. But it was a small price to pay to keep my discount at Nuovo.
The stunning Mystique clutch bag bloomed in my head. Yes, definitely worth it and, really, how hard could it be?
The line moved forward. I inched up a bit.
I skimmed the list of requirements and—oh my God. Oh my God.
Total panic mode swept over me.
To get the Employee of the Month award I’d have to develop a minimum of twenty credit card applications and ring up over five grand in sales. I’d have to sell two hundred dollars’ worth of gift cards. That meant I’d have to work the checkout line and talk to the customers—actually provide service.
Plus, I couldn’t be late for my shift one single time, and I would have to get a recommendation from the Rita, the cashiers’ supervisor.
Oh, crap.
A car honked behind me. I pulled forward.
Jeez, employees at Holt’s accomplished all of this?
I ordered my Frappie and slumped down in my seat.
How would I pull this off? Yeah, okay, I could do those things for a day—maybe—but for several weeks? And, surely, I wasn’t the only person who’d thought of this. Everyone in the store would be vying for the award to ensure a transfer to another store—which meant I’d have to up my game considerably and do even more actual work.
I drove up to the window, paid, and grabbed my Frappuccino. Gulping it down, I pulled away, forcing my brain to think harder. There had to be a way to get around this. There had to be.
Then it hit me.
If Detectives Shuman and Madison solved Asha’s murder before the story gained any traction, the corporate office would have to scrap their plan to close the store.
Then something else hit me.
I didn’t have to wait for Shuman and Madison. I could solve Asha’s murder.
I hopped up and down and did a little dance in my seat as I drove away.
Oh my God, this was a brilliant idea—and it would be a heck of a lot easier than earning the Employee of the Month award.