Make, Take, Murder (15 page)

A few minutes later,
Bama bid us all goodnight and left through the front door.

Most of our croppers finished what they were working on quickly and headed for home. Daisy, the young mother of twins, acted like she was in a special hurry to get home. Laurel cleared away the mess so quickly I didn’t need to hang on as long as usual. She climbed into an old Mustang convertible and roared off into the night. Mert and Clancy helped me walk the dogs to my car and load them up.

“Excuse me?” A man stepped out of the shadows.

The mutts went wild.

Mert’s hand dipped into her purse. Missouri is a concealed carry state, and I knew exactly what she was fishing for, a small handgun. I stiffened and stepped to the front of our crowd. My goal was to protect the man from Mert. The last straw would be a shooting in our parking lot.

“I hoped to catch up with Bama Vess,” he said as he showed us a dozen roses in a big glass vase. “I have instructions to deliver these to her personally. They’re a surprise from a secret admirer.”

“You missed her.” I studied the intruder in the half-light of the streetlamp. He was a big guy, broad shouldered and muscular, wearing a baseball cap with “Floral Delivery” embroidered above the bill.

“Will she be in tomorrow? Could I have her home address?”

I studied the flowers. They would certainly do her a world of good. She needed cheering up. “I’m not at liberty to share that with you. She’ll be in late on the next day, Friday. She’s working the crop.”

He tipped his cap to me politely. “Have a good evening,” and he climbed back into a big black van.

“She could use a bouquet,” muttered Clancy. “Of poppies. To put that little witch to sleep.”

I laughed.

Mert kept her hand in her purse as she watched the van pull out of the lot. “Maybe. Or maybe not. This don’t feel right to me.”

“That’s because you’re in a take-no-prisoners type of mood,” I joked with her. “How is the court case coming?”

Mert grumbled. “She’s had her say. Done accused me of stealing money, breaking stuff, and what-not. Her hubby’s managed to bump into me twice in the halls, accidental-like, but hard enough to send me flying. I get my say tomorrow. We’ll see what happens then.”

“Are you defending yourself ? They say the man who defends himself has a fool for a lawyer.” Clancy’s eyes twinkled in the half-light.

“That’s talking about men. Not women. I ain’t no fool, but this woman sure is. By the way, your boyfriend Detweiler really came through for me.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I retorted angrily.

“Maybe, maybe not. Any whosis, he got a hold of some pawn shop records that prove I ain’t no thief.”

Good for him, I thought to myself. And good for Mert. At least the two of them had something to be happy about.

I sure didn’t.

I picked up Anya from Sheila’s house. Linnea was there, but my mother-in-law wasn’t. Once again, all my daughter could talk about was the upcoming dance at school, and what she intended to wear with her new Uggs. That optimism that everything will come out exactly as you wish is one of the joys of youth. It didn’t seem to dawn on Anya that I might not be able to afford the boots.

I guess she was right. She knew me well enough to know that I didn’t want to disappoint her. While we watched
Miracle on 34th Street
for the umpteenth zillion time, I put down my crochet hook long enough to put a pencil to paper. With the dogsitting money coming in, I could cover the cost of the boots if we kept our grocery costs to a minimum over the next month. My calculations didn’t include any possibility of extra income from the store. As Anya did her homework in her room, I went online to Zappos and ordered her a pair of the classic short boots.

My daughter accompanied me to check on Monroe. She giggled with delight as he ate pieces of apple from her palm.

After adding water to the tree, I unwrapped Gracie’s tail and gently cleaned the area. The skin around the stitches seemed even more puffy and angry to me. After Anya put on her jammies, we snuggled on her bed with the dogs. Izzy yawned from his perch on my daughter’s shoulder, looking more like an exotic bird than a canine companion. Fluffy and Jasper curled up on the floor, while Petunia spooned against Gracie. Anya had borrowed a Madeleine L’Engle book from her school library, and I had a book Clancy had suggested I read on charting your own destiny. Suddenly my child set down her book and gave me a hug. “I miss Daddy, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Especially when I think about Hanukkah starting tomorrow. Gives me a lump in my throat.”

“Me, too. Not only do I miss him, but I liked it better when you didn’t worry so much about money.”

“Who says I worry about money?”

“Mom! I’m not a baby. I can see it in your face. You tense up.”

“I’m not going to lie to you. Things are tight, but we’ll get by. The store is doing well.”

Anya smiled. “You’re a survivor, Mom. I’m down with that.”

“Huh?”

“I mean I appreciate that you’re a survivor. I love you for it. I just wish you didn’t always have to work so hard.”

Moving Izzy aside, I hugged my daughter close. “I wish I didn’t either, honey. How about if we plan something special for the weekend?”

“Our schedule’s already pretty busy. Tomorrow’s the auction at my old grade school. Friday night’s the school dance. Don’t forget, you said I could spend the night at Nicci’s house.”

“Okay, how about Sunday? Do you want to visit Santa’s Magic Kingdom? Oh, and Ben wants to take us for dinner on The Hill on Tuesday.”

“He wants me to come, too?”

“Yes, and he’s planning to feed us both Italian.”

“Yum, yum. Doesn’t he have any idea how much spaghetti I can eat?”

“I hope not.”

The two of us fell asleep on her bed with visions of pasta dancing in our heads.

Thursday, December 17
First Day of Hanukkah

My daughter’s boots arrived
at the store early the next afternoon. I quickly wrapped them and locked them in the trunk of my car. Clancy helped me with my crocheting in between waiting on customers. A steady stream walked in and out with large bags of merchandise. Our page kits quickly disappeared, and I settled in to make more. Double-page spread kits are one of our best startsellers, so we normally stock two albums worth of designs. While I gathered more supplies, I decided to do a quick check on the Cricut cartridges.

“Crud!” I rocked back on my heels. “Another three are missing.”

“You checked them against the POS?” Clancy asked.

POS was a Point Of Sale inventory system that could give us a running total of almost any item in the store. I showed her how to pull up the POS. Sure enough, we lost three cartridges and a set of Cricut tools.

I stomped my foot and snarled. “How can someone do that to us? That’s like stealing money right out of my purse.”

Clancy turned about face, marched into the backroom, and handed me a Diet Dr Pepper. “You need this.”

She was right.

I did.

Laurel tottered in on mile-high boots. She wore a fake leopard jacket and a pair of sleek black pants. I bet she came directly from auditioning for America’s Top Model. Whatever. I could still be thrilled to see her, and she was such a sweetheart I couldn’t hate her for being gorgeous.

“All we can do is keep a closer eye on customers,” I said.

“That and concentrate on activities that make a lot of profit for you.”

“Page kits,” I said. “Especially those that use up some of our less popular paper.”

Two husbands showed up to buy gifts for their wives. I think they rode over together as a “buck up” buddy precaution before entering an all-female zone. They made a lot of guffawing and sports references, but when the two got a gander at Laurel, the testosterone really started to ooze along the floorboards. I saw a way to work this to our advantage. I excused myself and went over to where Laurel was cutting paper. “Wait on them, will you? I’ll take over the page kits”

She did.

Boy, oh boy, did she ever.

She sold $525 to one guy and nearly $700 to the other, and they loved every second of her attention. Both men staggered out under their purchases. Clancy whistled through her teeth. “Gotta love the weaker sex. They had no idea how to resist Miss December, did they? By the way, did you check her for staples across her midriff ?”

“Meow.” I shook a finger at Clancy.

She laughed. “Just call me Catwoman.”

With Laurel knocking them out of the park and Clancy re-stocking, ringing stuff up, and doing displays, I knuckled under and finished the auction items for St. Louis Day School, Anya’s old preschool. I prepped a “Scrapbooker’s Dream Supply” donation, filling a canvas tote with punches, stickers, chipboard letters, and slabs of paper. Next, I completed the last pages in a customized 8” by 8” album with the school’s logo on the front. Finally, I framed a one-of-a-kind layout that could be modified to feature any St. Louis Day School child.

I was typing up the descriptions when Clancy called me over to the computer terminal at the front of the store. “You need to see this.”

My jaw dropped. Mommy’s Memories to Go was the name of an online store with a mailing address less than five miles away. Under the heading “New—Just In!” were photos of all the Cricut cartridges that had turned up missing during the past two weeks. No other cartridges were displayed but the specific ones we’d lost. The photos were blurry, the merchandise casually arranged, and the feel of the site was amateurish. We clicked on the site and discovered it had only been up a couple of weeks.

“I googled ‘New Merchandise Online’ and ‘Cricut’ and pulled this up,” Clancy said.

“Please call a couple of the other nearby stores and ask if they’ve lost cartridges, too,” I suggested.

Needless to say, I was badly shaken by this discovery. If the clock didn’t say that the auction started in forty-five minutes, I would have moped around the store. Instead, I fished around in my wallet and handed a card to Clancy. “Here’s the number of the Richmond Heights Police Department,” I said. “Detective Stan Hadcho has been here a couple of times for that Cindy Gambrowski investigation. Call him, please.”

Clancy nodded.

“You need a night off.” Laurel put a hand on my shoulder. “Try not to let it bug you. You’ll get to the bottom of this, and we’re here now to help. We’ll make a special point of greeting every customer. Once they know you’ve noticed them, it’s harder for them to steal.”

“Let’s start asking customers to put any large carry-alls behind the counter,” suggested Clancy. “That might help. Our thief must have carted these out in a purse or a bag.”

I nodded.

“I’ll also check into getting a closed-circuit TV installed. Don’t tell me you don’t have the money. Let’s see what they cost first. Hey, how about I take care of the dogs for you tonight? Show me what needs to be done to Gracie’s tail.”

After I explained the procedure of checking her wraps, Clancy also offered to drop the dogs off at the house for me. “Isn’t tonight the first night of Hanukkah?”

“I’m going to Sheila’s to light the candles. Then there’s the auction at Anya’s old preschool. Anya and I will exchange gifts when we get home. We have our big celebration on the last night.”

I didn’t add that since George died, Sheila, Anya, and I worked hard to avoid the first night. His loss brought such pain that it was difficult to properly celebrate a day that involved such special traditions. I suppose we were all running away from reality. We couldn’t bring George back. We couldn’t imagine the first night without him. So we indulged in a sort of fantasy by omission. If the first night didn’t happen, we didn’t have to come to grips with our loss, did we?

“You can’t go to an auction at St. Louis Day School dressed so casually,” said Clancy. There wasn’t a smidgeon of meanness in her voice. Protectiveness, yes; snarkiness, no.

Laurel loaned me a recently dry-cleaned white blouse from her car so I wouldn’t have to run home and change. (Wonder of wonders, it fit. Could I possibly be that chesty? I guess so.) Clancy handed over her black cashmere cardigan, which went well with my black slacks and turned the simple shirt and pants into an outfit. After a long survey of my appearance, Clancy retrieved a red and black print silk scarf from her coat pocket and tied it around my neck. The effect surprised me. I looked polished and professional.

A few minutes later, I was looking fine as I pulled out of the parking lot with the auction items on the passenger seat.

What would I do without my friends?