Shop Till You Drop (3 page)

“The FBI are everywhere. Two of them even rang my doorbell at seven a.m. They asked if they could come in, and I had to let them. I couldn’t have the neighbors see me with the FBI. But I didn’t offer them coffee or juice or anything.”

Brittney acted as if she’d punished the agents severely. Helen listened, spellbound.

“See, Vinnie and I had dinner with Angelo and Heather about a week before they died. We didn’t know they were going to die, of course. They seemed just fine. Heather was wearing the cutest Dolce & Gabbana outfit—the black one that was in the last issue of
Vanity Fair
. D&G is so hot. Angelo must have really loved her,” she said, and this time, the sigh was sad.

“After their bodies were discovered, the FBI showed me the grossest pictures. Polaroids of those poor dead people. They were in awful shape from the water and the sun. Heather had always taken such good care of herself, too.

“That FBI agent said, ‘Did you have dinner with these people Wednesday, August first?’ I looked at those terrible photos and I said, ‘Would I have dinner with someone who looked like that?’ ” Brittney was trembling with indignation. “That’s when I told Vinnie that I couldn’t see him any more. It’s too dangerous to go around with him. That’s why he has a wife.”

“Vinnie’s married?” Helen blurted. Christina frowned at her, and Helen felt like a hayseed from the Midwest, as she often did at Juliana’s. But Brittney was not offended.

“Of course he’s married,” she said. “His wife knows we date.” Helen thought “date” stood for another four-letter word.

The doorbell chimed. Christina buzzed the green door, and it swung open to admit a young Asian woman with straight black hair down to her size-two tush. She was accompanied by a forty-something boyfriend with a bull neck and a bald spot. He had one hand possessively on the small of her back.

“You wait on them,” Christina said. “I’ll take Brittney.”

The long-haired lovely was named Tara. Her boyfriend was Paulie. Paulie had her try on everything in the store and made crude comments like “Those pants really show off your ass.” Tara simply smiled and tried on more short, tight clothes. Paulie dropped nearly nine thousand dollars, a sweet sugar daddy indeed.

After the couple left, Christina congratulated her warmly. Helen barely heard her. She couldn’t get the woman who could not frown out of her mind. Helen was haunted by Brittney’s sweet nature and her oddly immobile face. She did not know why such a lovely creature would go out with a mobster. Brittney did not seem to understand that dumping Vinnie might not be enough. If all the mobster’s friends were dying or disappearing, then she might be in danger, too.

She wondered if Brittney would live long enough to get wrinkles.

Helen was not really surprised three weeks later when she read in the paper that the body of a ninety-eight-pound woman with blonde hair and sapphire-blue contacts was found in a barrel in Biscayne Bay.

But she was surprised whose body it turned out to be.

Thursday was Helen’s worst day since she fled St. Louis. It was raining that morning, a hard tropical downpour. A relentless wind drove the rain under her umbrella. Helen was soaked by the time she’d walked to work. Her black silk Ungaro suit was wet and wrinkled. Her hair was damp and frizzy. She squished watery footprints across Juliana’s freshly vacuumed carpet.

“You look like a bag lady,” Christina said. “You can’t wait on customers dressed like that.” Christina’s own clothes—white Chanel pants and an Italian knit top—were perfectly dry. Her blonde hair curled obediently around her shoulders. Maybe she had teleported to Juliana’s, Helen thought.

“But if I go home for more clothes, I’ll just get wetter,” Helen said.

“Then borrow something in the store, and don’t get anything on it,” Christina snapped. “There’s a hair dryer you can use in the stockroom for your damp hair.”

Helen dried her hair, then looked for something to wear. Nothing fit. Not one single item in the whole store. She found scores of size twos, fours, sixes, several zeroes, some eights, and one size ten, but no twelves she could wear.

Juliana’s women were built like little girls with big breasts. Helen was a big woman. Not a fat woman. At six feet and one hundred fifty pounds, she was slim and willowy by some standards. But in Juliana’s she felt like a great galumphing giant. Sometimes she thought that was why Christina had hired her. Even on their fattest day, the teeny customers could feel superior to the huge Midwestern saleswoman.

“I’m not huge,” Helen told herself. “Twelve is not a big size for a grown woman my height. And I’m good-looking.”

So good-looking my husband of seventeen years hopped into bed with another woman, she thought. And now I’m on the run.

Helen was feeling low. The storewide clothes search depressed her, and the pounding rain didn’t help. She finally plugged in the steamer in the stockroom and used it to get the wrinkles out of her suit. Then she reapplied her makeup.

“Much better,” Christina said, when the spruced-up Helen emerged from the stockroom. “I’m sorry I grumped at you. You don’t have to worry how you look, anyway. I expect this will be a slow day with the rain.”

With that, the doorbell rang and didn’t stop ringing for the next two hours. They were overrun with customers that morning. Perversely, the rain seemed to bring them out, the way a hard rain brought out earthworms on the sidewalks in Helen’s hometown of St. Louis.

And worms were all that came to Juliana’s that morning. The little sweethearts with the sunny dispositions stayed home. Helen and Christina waited on complainers, crabs, grumps, and grouches. They brought racks of clothes for customers who didn’t like the styles or the prices. They hunted up accessories for women who refused to be delighted by the clever materials and cunning details.

Helen got stuck with two abrasive New York women for over an hour, until she was ready to strangle them with a silk scarf. The funny thing was she liked New Yorkers—in New York. There they were witty and kindhearted, even heroic. But out of their element, they seemed rude and provincial.

The New York women tried on twenty-three dresses, seventeen pairs of pants, fourteen tops, eight sweaters, six belts, and three scarves and dropped everything on the floor. They complained that there weren’t enough black styles in their size (New Yorkers always wore black). After all that work, only one of the women bought anything, the cotton-and-spandex pants for a lousy two hundred ninety-five dollars. In black, of course.

Helen was still hanging up their clothes when the doorbell rang again. “Quick, Helen, it’s Lauren,” Christina said in an urgent whisper. “Now, listen to me. I’m going to let her in and wait on her. Your job is to watch her like a hawk. Make a note of everything Lauren puts in her backpack, but don’t say anything about it. Never leave her alone for a minute when she’s on the floor. And count everything I take into the dressing room, then count it again when I bring it out, so I have backup. I’ll watch her in there.”

Helen wondered how Lauren could wear those black leather pants in the humid Florida weather. She had a beautiful lion’s mane of tawny hair, green eyes, and a long nose that had to be her own. Most of Juliana’s women had had their noses done. Helen admired Lauren’s daring move in keeping her oversize schnoz. It gave her face character.

Lauren was the most skillful shoplifter Helen had ever seen. While she talked to Christina about the rain and the fall fashions, she slipped a two-hundred-seventy-five-dollar top, a two-thousand-dollar dress, and a four-hundred-dollar scarf into her black Gucci backpack. Helen would never have noticed the vanishing merchandise if Christina had not alerted her.

Lauren also bought two dresses and a suit. Christina acted as if nothing was wrong. She rang up Lauren’s purchases and ignored the bulging backpack. When she left, Christina sighed with relief.

“Lauren is a kleptomaniac,” she said.

“A good one, too,” Helen said. “I could hardly keep track of everything that passed through her sticky fingers.”

“Her husband is a big-time criminal lawyer. Lauren is his third wife, and he really seems to love her, despite her little problem.”

“Maybe he loves the criminal in her,” Helen said.

Christina smiled. “Whatever. I send him an itemized bill of everything she shoplifts, and he pays it without a whimper. In cash. He has the money delivered by messenger. He’s grateful that we don’t prosecute her. Most stores do these days, even if he offers to reimburse them double the amount.”

“If Saks can arrest Winona Ryder for shoplifting, Lauren doesn’t stand a chance,” Helen said. “No wonder he’s grateful.”

Juliana’s looked like a battleground after the brutal morning. Shirts hung unbuttoned. A sweater was dropped on a chair. Belts were draped over the sideboard.

Helen stared up at the full-length oil painting of the forties woman in the daring black dress that hung over the sideboard. The woman seemed to survey the disordered store with disdain. Her mouth was a cruel red. Her eyes were dark and hard. She looked like the wicked woman in a noir film, the one who made a fool of the trusting hero.

“Is that Juliana?” Helen asked.

Christina laughed. “Are you kidding? The owner bought this picture at an Episcopalian rummage sale.”

“She doesn’t look Episcopalian,” Helen said.

“She doesn’t look like the real Juliana, either,” Christina said. “She was a short little woman. Great body, good sense of style, but a face like a frog. Nowadays, plastic surgery would have taken care of her problems.” Christina sighed at the thought of the woman born too soon to be saved.

“Juliana was the original owner’s mother. Mr. Roget—Gilbert’s father—founded the store in 1965 and made a fortune. He had the touch. He knew what Juliana’s women liked.”

Money, thought Helen.

“His son Gilbert took it over when Mr. Roget died, but Gilbert doesn’t have much interest in fashion. He has an air charter business in Toronto. All Gilbert cares about is cashing those checks. He comes down for one week in December, known as Hell Week. The rest of the time, we never see him, thank God.

“Now you know Juliana’s big secret,” Christina said lightly. “Tell anyone about that painting, and I’ll have to have you killed.”

Helen laughed, even though Christina’s words sounded oddly threatening. Maybe Helen was just tired.

“This is the first break we’ve had in hours,” Christina said. “Watch the door for me, will you? I’m going to the little girls’ room. I finally have time to pee.”

Helen carried the pile of pants and tops abandoned by the New Yorkers to the mahogany sideboard and began putting them back on hangers. A wooden pants hanger was missing. Did Lauren shoplift that, too?

Helen went to the front counter to get another hanger out of the box. The bill for Lauren’s shoplifting spree was next to the cash register. It was for three thousand six hundred seventy-five dollars—exactly one thousand more than Helen saw Lauren steal.

Helen read the list. It said Lauren had taken a blouse and a belt, along with the items Helen saw her swipe. Maybe Lauren helped herself to them in the dressing room. Except Christina didn’t take any belts or blouses into the dressing room. Helen counted all the clothes when they went in and again when they came out.

But she didn’t have time to puzzle over the problem. A large woman rang the doorbell. Helen was about to buzz her inside when Christina came out of the back screaming, “Stop!”

“What’s wrong?” Helen said, frightened by her desperate shriek.

“Don’t let her in. She’s fat!” Christina said. She sounded as horrified as if Helen was admitting a serial killer.

“So what?” Helen said. “She’s nicely dressed. She’s wearing Carole Little.”

“Her clothes may be Little, but she’s too big. There’s nothing she can buy in this store.” Christina threw herself in front of the buzzer.

“Those five-hundred-dollar evening purses would fit just fine,” Helen said.

“What if she told someone she bought them here?”

“What’s wrong with that? She might have a slim sister or a size-six daughter,” Helen said.

“What if my Brazilians saw her? They already think Americans are cows.”

“Who cares what the Brazilians think? Half the people in Rio live in cardboard boxes. They’re really thin, and your precious Brazilians don’t care. Besides, their money is practically worthless.”

“Not here it isn’t,” Christina said. The woman looked in and tapped on the window glass. She had big brown eyes, a round pretty face, and curly dark hair.

“Wait, I know that woman,” Helen said. “It’s Sarah. She used to live in my apartment at the Coronado. She was nice to me when I moved in. I’m letting her in. You can fire me for insubordination.” She bumped Christina out of the way with one hip and pressed the buzzer.

But when the green door swung open, Sarah did not walk in. She was gone. Instead, it was one of Christina’s blasted Brazilians. Bianca was a preternaturally perky size four who was married to a Brazilian industrialist.