Black Thursday (18 page)

My head was spinning.

I'd come to coffee sure Wendy was going to confess to murder, not to have an awkward but otherwise innocuous conversation between two friends who were now involved with brothers.

“So you say you've been seeing each other all weekend?”

“Friday night we had cocktails and talked for hours,” she said wistfully. “Saturday night it was dinner and dancing. Then, last night—”

“That's fantastic,” I said before she gave what was threatening to be way too much information.

“Better than fantastic.”

True though it seemed to be, I was having a hard time believing that Craig, who I'd never seen look at a woman any less than twenty pounds heavier than athletic Wendy, had fallen as hard for her as she had for him.

“That dark curly hair and those blue eyes … I can't believe I didn't spot him while I was in the TV line.”

“You didn't?” I asked, lamely addressing the question I'd originally thought I'd come to ask.

“We met right after the pallet fell. He came out of the men's room and asked me what was going on. I told him everything I knew, and …” She paused. “Maddie, I really think he's The One.”

With that, her cell rang.

She grinned like a lovesick teenager, turning the phone so I could see his name in the display. “I just can't believe it took someone dying for my life to come alive like this.”

_____

With a quick hug and the legitimate excuse that I needed to get home to prepare for Channel Three to arrive, I left Wendy to flirt and coo with my brother-in-law.

I got into the car, put my nearly full coffee into the cup holder, and plugged my phone (which had a five-minute recording limit and the sense to shut off long before I'd been smart enough to realize I wasn't going to be hearing anything of note) back into the charger. It was then I noticed that the call, which had come in during Wendy's
confession,
was from an unfamiliar number.

I turned on the engine and listened to the message:

Maddie,

This is Joe, the acting store manager here at Bargain Barn. I just got off the phone with Mr. Bader down at the jail.
His voice cracked.
And, um, he insisted I call to fill you in on a few things.

First off, he told me to tell you that he'd have to be a complete fool to have given the police surveillance video of himself climbing down from the upper shelves.

Second, the video showed the person from behind so they couldn't positively ID the face.

Third, that face was not Alan's and he asked me to reiterate that he didn't kill anybody.

Ever.

Joe paused to take a breath, and exhale.

Listen,
he continued.
I just want you to know I wouldn't have delivered this message if I didn't believe Mr. Bader was absolutely, positively innocent. I've worked at Bargain Barn for over ten years and the man is top shelf.

Pardon the analogy.

The main reason I'm calling is that we've discovered some new evidence down at the store. When I called Alan to fill him in, he insisted I have you come down to Bargain Barn and take a look before the police get here.

At this point, you're the only one he trusts
…

twenty-seven

I had no idea
whether my trip to Bargain Barn was really a mission of mercy, or if I was falling for Alan Bader's nonsense yet again, but seeing as it was 8:30 and I needed to be home by 9:30 so I was camera ready by 10:00, I had a less than an hour to find out.

Before I did, I texted Griff back with one question:

How did they ID Alan's face?

I wiled away the seconds that felt like hours, thankful my unfounded suspicions hadn't ruined Griff's relationship. Craig and Wendy seemed almost as unlikely as Griff and L'Raine, but, as my father-in-law would certainly say, love is blind.

Wasn't privy to that info, so not sure
finally popped up as a return message.
Will find out and get back.

With his equivocal response, I backed out of my space. My coffee was sloshing out of the lid and into my cup holder as he followed up with another text I couldn't return while driving.

Why?

_____

“Thank you for agreeing to come.”

Joe, the former assistant and now acting store manager, greeted me at Bargain Barn's Customer Service desk. He not only looked like he'd aged ten years since Thursday night, but like he'd grown a permanent furrow between his sandy brows.

“I only have a few minutes,” I said, a convenient truth in case this was some kind of weird ploy or trap. “Anastasia Chastain and the Channel Three news cameras are expecting me at my house to film a Cyber Monday segment in less than an hour.”

“This won't take long,” he said. “And you've been great on TV all weekend, by the way.”

“Thanks,” I said, following him inside. We started toward the back of the store.

“As I said, I've worked with Mr. Bader for almost ten years and he's never been anything but generous and honest,” Joe said, cutting through the hardware aisle.

“Were you working here when his wife died?” I asked.

“I started just after,” he said. “He put up a tough front, but the man was grieving until he met The Floozy.”

“The Floozy?”

“That awful new wife he's finally getting rid of.”

“But you don't think he had anything to do with getting rid of the first one?”

“I was starting to worry that I had no choice but rethink everything I believed about him and his values.” He led me back into to the restroom area, stopped at the employee breakroom, and opened the door. “Thankfully, I don't have to.”

A very tall, husky, African-American man of about twenty stood beside a bank of lockers.

“This is Eli. Eli, this is Maddie Michaels, better known as Mrs. Frugalicious.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, extending his hand and offering a meaty handshake.

“Eli is in college here in town, but his family lives in Chicago.”

“That's nice,” I said.

“I'm telling you this because we require all of our employees to be on the clock during the Black Friday weekend,” Joe said. “All except for Eli.”

“Mr. Bader knows I'm putting myself through college and don't get the chance to see my family very often. He gave me the whole weekend off to be with them.”

“That was very generous,” I said, my mind wandering to Eloise, who'd gone back to school without responding to my text message.

Because she had nothing to say, or nothing she was willing to say?

“Today was my first day back on the schedule.” Eli clicked open a locker marked with his name. “I found this inside.”

A black polo shirt lay rumpled in the corner.

“For liability reasons, employees can't leave anything in their lockers when they clock out,” Joe added. “In fact, they even provide their own padlocks, which they take back and forth with them.”

“So you couldn't have accidentally left it inside your locker?”

“I own two work shirts. The one I'm wearing and the one in my laundry basket at home.”

“Cathy Carter's murderer was wearing that shirt,” Joe said. “He climbed down from the upper shelves, came in here, pulled it off, and threw it in the locker.”

My pulse began to race. “You're sure of that because … ?”

“For one thing, I'm a size 2XL,” said Eli, who had to be six-five and at least 300 pounds “That polo is a medium and says Smith on the label.”

“Have you talked to this Smith person?” I asked. “Maybe he accidentally tossed it in the wrong locker.”

“Charlie Smith quit two weeks ago,” Eli said.

“Was he disgruntled or anything like that?” I asked.

“Not at all,” Joe said. “He moved to Colorado Springs and got into management at a store down there thanks to Mr. Bader's referral.”

“Did he have dark hair?”

“Smithy's a ginger.” Joe crossed his arms over his chest. “And Cathy Carter's killer may have been wearing a Bargain Barn shirt, but he wasn't an employee.”

That low feeling of dread I thought I had at bay began to rise again like flood waters. “How do you know?”

“Follow me.”

The next thing I knew we were standing in Alan's office.

Joe turned on a monitor and dimmed the lights.

“You found more video?” I asked, expecting to see someone scrambling up into the rafters from some remote spot in the store.

“The police took everything they thought was important
,
” Joe said as a pair of vending machines and a up-close view of the first row or two of the employee lockers filled the screen.

“But no one thought anything about the breakroom camera since it's really only there to keep employees from tampering with the snack machine.”

Joe pressed play and we watched as what seemed to be a disembodied arm open Eli's locker, toss a black polo inside, shut the door, and disappear.

“This was recorded exactly one minute and fifty-four seconds after the pallet fell, when no one was on break because every other Bargain Barn team member was required to be on the sales floor.”

“But you can't see a body,” I said. “Much less a face.”

“No, but you can tell that the person who threw the shirt is using his right hand because you can also see the left.” He played the tape again, stopped at the three-second mark and pointed at the lower part of the screen. “Right here.”

“Which proves what?” I asked.

“Mr. Bader can't be the killer.”

“Why's that?”

“He wears a gold medical alert bracelet on his right wrist.”

Whoever threw the shirt into the locker was wearing what seemed to be a clear surgical or food service glove, but there was no sign of Alan Bader's heavy gold jewelry.

“He could have taken it off,” I said. “Right?”

“Wrong,” Joe said. “It's so valuable, he actually had that bracelet soldered on his wrist so it won't ever fall off.”

“Oh,” I said, my resident butterflies taking wing and beginning to flutter frantically throughout my body.

“Exactly.”

“And you've called the police to let them know?”

“Right before I called Mr. Bader,” Joe said, nodding. “They're supposed to be sending someone out, but I got the distinct feeling they weren't in any particular hurry to examine a shirt in an employee locker.”

I, however, was suddenly frantic for answers.

If Alan was innocent and Joe was right that all store employees were out on the sales floor, didn't that once again narrow my suspect list down to two dark-haired men of medium height and build that still weren't accounted for at the time the pallet was pushed?

Namely, Frank and Craig.

Frank was the most likely suspect, except that he was helping with the rescue effort within a couple of minutes of the pallet falling. Wouldn't he have been held with the rest of the people in the back of the store if he'd climbed down and tossed the shirt into the locker?

And then there was Frank's likely accomplice—his brother Craig.

I can't believe I didn't spot him while I was in the TV line.
Wendy's words rattled in my head.
He came out of the men's room and asked me what was going on
…

Craig said he was in the TV line when the pallet fell. But seeing as we were let into the store first, shouldn't he have been up at the very front? Mr. Piggledy came back to the middle of the Frugarmy line with a voucher of some sort. Why hadn't Craig gotten his TV when he met up with us, nearly a half-hour later?

Maybe because he hadn't been in that particular line at all, but had instead gone to some predetermined site somewhere in the store, climbed up, pushed the pallet, and scrambled back to be caught from behind on a grainy, older surveillance camera?

Craig, who'd thrown the black shirt into a random locker then run into Wendy on his way out of the employee locker room and taken up with her thinking it would give him an alibi?

“You said the police took all the important surveillance tape,” I said to Joe. “Would that include footage taken of anyone going in or out of the restroom area?”

“The camera in that area records right outside the entrances to the bathrooms themselves, but it doesn't cover the length of the hallway.”

“Were there cameras on the various lines throughout the store?”

“Depends on the line.”

“What about the flat-screen TVs?”

“The surveillance is mainly in the parts of the store with easy-to-steal items. In the big-ticket areas, there's really no need because no one can really march out of the store with a television under their jacket.”

“Makes sense, I suppose.”

“But that particular line started near Sporting and Camping and eventually wove past Automotive,” Joe continued. “So it's possible there were some images captured on the Zone C and maybe even the Zone D cameras.”

“Which the police have?”

“Not sure,” he said turning to the computer, presumably to take a look. “What are you looking for?”

Before I could figure out a way to tell him I needed to confirm the whereabouts of my own brother-in-law in such a way that he wouldn't suspect I was suspicious of not only him, but my entire extended family including my husband, the store intercom beeped.

“This is Joe,” he said, pressing the speaker button.

“This is Courtney at Customer Service. Detectives Reed and McClarkey are here to see you.”

“Be right there,” he said.

As the furrow between his brows seemed to ease, I could feel a huge one forming between mine. There was no way my presence at Bargain Barn could ever be considered
laying low.

“Will you join me?” he asked.

“Under normal circumstances, I definitely would,” I lied. “But Anastasia's going to be at my house any second and I really do need to rush home or I'll never make it on time.”

“Of course,” he said, leading the way out of Alan's office. “I'll walk you out.”

“I'm pretty sure I parked right near the employee entrance,” I said. “Mind if I head out that way, instead?”

“No problem,” Joe said, cracking open the door to the executive offices. “But—”

“But those two detectives have pretty big egos. For Alan's sake, it's probably best if you don't mention I was here before they were,” I said, checking to make sure the detectives weren't looking in our direction so I could slip away down a side aisle and out the employee doors. “Or, better yet, not at all.”