Necklaces & Nooses Read online

  He chuckled. “No. You can sit up front with me. I don’t think you’re a flight risk or that you’ll harm me.”

  Thank goodness. What a night. Wait until Anna and Jared, my two best friends, heard about this, they wouldn’t believe it, I still didn’t believe it. Who would have thought a simple job in retail would turn out like this?

  Chapter 2

  I had of course been in police stations before, but not one in Chicago, and this had an entirely different feel than the one in my small hometown. It was much more grimy, and not nearly as open and friendly. It definitely wasn’t a sleepy country police station. By now it was just after 11 p.m., and it seemed the police station was just starting to ramp up. But then, night is when all the crooks come out. Though, in Chicago, crooks were often out at all times, especially in certain parts of the city.

  Detective Landon—Willie—told me to sit on the very uncomfortable chairs in, I guess, what was probably the station’s waiting room. He told me he would come get me when he was ready and disappeared in the back somewhere, doing who knew what. Ready for what, I didn’t know. I believed I shouldn’t be worried, since I hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe this was part of his method to get criminals to talk. Let them sit and stew. It was stressing me out. After about thirty long minutes of waiting—they really needed magazines in this place or a TV or something—Willie came to get me.

  “C’mon. Follow me.”

  “I got up and obediently followed him back through a maze of desks to a bank of what I assumed were interrogation rooms across the back wall. This was sort of interesting. I filed it away mentally in case I ever decided to write about a crime.

  “Have a seat, Presley. Can I get you anything? Water, soda?”

  “Is this the part where you try to make me think we’re friends?” I said nervously. “That’s what cops do in TV shows.”

  “Aren’t we friends?” He smiled. He had a nice smile.

  “Well, I just met you, so I’m not sure I’d classify us as friends, but I guess we aren’t enemies either.” I smiled back. What was going on? I thought we were flirting. Just a little. But still, it wasn’t the best time for this. What was wrong with me?

  “Okay. I need you to walk me through the entire day at the store…”

  “Boutique,” I interrupted.

  He looked at me funny.

  “Solange had a fit when anyone called it a store. She always said stores were where you bought groceries and toilet paper, not high-end dresses that cost more than the average person made in a week.”

  “Okay then. I need you to walk me through the entire day at the boutique.” He emphasized the word, making it clear he thought I was nuts. “Through, well, until you called 911.”

  “Didn’t we already cover this?”

  “Yes, but… just humor me okay?” He flashed that smile again, and I couldn’t help but give in. Not that I had much choice, but he made it seem much more palatable.

  “It was just Solange and I working all day, and we both got to the boutique around 9 a.m. We open at nine and close at six, Monday through Saturday, closed on Sundays. We often stay later than six in the store to process shipments and do the behind the scenes work. We received a shipment of jewelry from South America, where we get most of our jewelry. Which was the only delivery we got today. Solange left about eight, and I stayed to about nine finishing up.

  “Really, South America? Why there?”

  “Why do you think? Cost! It’s less expensive to make there. The labor is much cheaper than here, and yes, I know people aren’t always happy about manufacturing overseas, but it’s a fact of profitable business, Solange would say.”

  “Wouldn’t India or Vietnam be cheaper?”

  Obviously, Detective Landon knew nothing about jewelry. “Not for the kind of merchandise we carried. It’s very high-end with real metals and gems, not plastic and nickel. South America has the best quality of the merchandise we need.”

  “Ahhh, so you got a shipment. Do they come every day on a regular schedule?”

  “No. We order as we sell, so sometimes we might get one or two shipments a week during peak times, like around holidays. But during slower times, we may only get one a month. It really depends. We have a very exclusive clientele, and we often custom order pieces, so we don’t carry a large run of any one SKU.”

  He looked at me blankly.

  “Where do you normally shop?” I asked him.

  “In Banana Republic or Gap.”

  That explained a lot. “Okay, both those stores usually carry several quantities of each size within a style. They sell on mass quantity. At Silk, we may only have a couple of sizes in each style available, so we often custom order special pieces for customers. It makes us seem much more exclusive that way.”

  “Ah, I get it. Does the same person bring your shipments?”

  “No. It’s UPS usually, and so it just depends on who is working the route. We usually have the same few drivers, but no one consistently.”

  “So after that, what did you do?”

  “We unpacked some of the shipment, put what we could on the sales floor, and by then it was time to open the store. Once the store is open, it is pretty routine. Wait for clients to come in and cater to their every whim.” I must have had a tone when I said that because Detective Landon looked at me with raised eyebrows.

  “The clients aren’t fun?”

  “Ha.” I snorted. “Some of them are, but most of them are demanding and high maintenance. Oh, and convinced they are a size four when they are clearly a tad bigger than that. I have learned to be very tactful in this job.”

  “Then why work there?”

  “The discount.” I didn’t hesitate with that answer. Solange, for all her faults had impeccable taste in apparel and accessories. We would get things in that I would see and wonder what on earth was she thinking, but then she would put it together in an amazing outfit. She was also generous, as we were able to get everything at cost plus ten percent for shipping.

  “That makes it worth dealing with the high maintenance ladies?”

  “Absolutely, Detective Landon!”

  “I said call me Willie.”

  “Okay. Willie.” My, but he was cute and sweet. Not what I would normally think of as cop traits.

  He leaned back in his chair and took off his sport coat and rolled up his sleeves. I noticed he had sleeves under his sleeves. Tattoo sleeves. Wow, not at all what I would expect from a cop. He was effectively ruining the stereotype I had of police officers, in a good way. My last experience with the police, one person in particular, had me believing he was a good cop, and he turned out to be quite the opposite. It made me a little sour on law enforcement.

  Willie noticed me staring and grinned sheepishly. “Surprised?”

  “A bit, aren’t you cop types supposed to be clean cut?

  “I get that a lot. You shouldn’t stereotype.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I like tattoos, even have one myself. But I guess it seems out of the norm for a cop. To have full sleeves, I mean.” I sounded judgmental, or at the very least lame. Neither of which I was meaning to be. It had just taken me by surprise.

  “I had a bit of a wild youth, and this is one of those things that I did not realize at the time, how it would carry with me forever. Not that I regret getting them. I don’t, but there are many other things I did in my youth that now I just wonder what the heck I was thinking. Though, I guess I should be grateful it wasn’t much worse.”

  “We all do crazy things when we’re young.”

  “True. So, back to your boss, is there anyone you can think of who might want to hurt her? Or who disliked her in any way?”

  “Not really. I mean, she was going through a horrible divorce. She and her husband, James, seemed to hate each other and had constantly been fighting over money, but I can’t see him killing her.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “Because he doesn’t do any type of physical dirty work. He’s a corp
orate lawyer with the firm Smith, Smith & Holt, and he seems like much more bluster than physical altercation.”

  “He could have hired it done. If he works at Smith, Smith & Holt, he probably has the connections.”

  I wouldn’t have even thought about that. “Yeah, I suppose so. I guess it just seems weird to even think of someone doing that. Especially someone I know. But I guess anything is possible.”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “Not extremely well, but he came into the store a lot to argue with Solange. If she tried to ignore his calls, he would call me and bother me until she finally got on the phone. So, I know him better than I want to.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “That’s pretty aggressive.”

  “I think it was his way of being controlling with her and the situation. Even then, he seemed all hot air. Solange was more annoyed by him than she was ever frightened or anything. That’s at least how it seemed.” Willie seemed interested in that, or at least he was writing something down. I would’ve given anything to see what he kept putting down on the yellow legal pad of his.

  “Can you think of anyone else, Presley, who might want to do her harm?”

  “No, although she fired an employee a couple weeks ago called Amy Irvin. But she’s a scrawny thing, so I sure couldn’t see her hang anyone against her will, if that’s what happened,” I said, fishing. Willie just looked at me, so I kept talking. “She probably doesn’t have the money to hire a killer, and this was a part-time job. I can’t see anyone killing over a part-time job. She’s still a college student. How do you know it wasn’t suicide?”

  “Until I officially rule you out as a suspect, I am not at liberty to say.”

  That caught me off guard. Way off guard. Holy crap. How in the world could I be considered a suspect? “What? Why would I want to harm Solange?”

  “Calm down. You don’t seem to have an apparent reason to harm her, and I doubt you’re strong enough, which is why I don’t think you killed your boss. But I need to write up an official report so you’re officially cleared.”

  Whew. I slumped back in my chair. The quick adrenaline rush I got in that split second when I thought I might be a suspect left my body, and I just felt emotionally drained. I wanted my bed, a bath, and a glass of wine. Not necessarily in that order. How did this happen?

  “Do you know how I can get in touch with this Amy Irvin?”

  I gladly gave him her phone number, as it was a relief to get the focus off me, and I knew she didn’t do it either. If he didn’t think I was strong enough, Amy definitely wasn’t.

  “I think she went to visit her boyfriend after she was fired, and he lives in Michigan. He is a grad student at U of M.”

  “Who are the other employees and their contact info, if you have it?”

  “Yep. Steph Collins, Edie Thompson, and Lily Watson. Edie is in Costa Rica on her honeymoon right now for a month, and she just left, so her return date is something like three weeks from now.” Lucky her, being out of town, out of the country, when this happened.

  I was the only one that we knew of who had been around the body, and there were no witnesses. I hadn’t realized prior to this moment how that could put me in jeopardy, especially if someone was thinking I had done something wrong. I was almost afraid I was guilty of something, and there was no reason for that. I had never been able to understand how on the cop shows I watched the bad cops coerced people into saying they were guilty when they weren’t, but I could almost see it now. You just wanted to tell the cops something to get them to stop asking questions. “Ooh, I might have an alibi.”

  He looked at me strangely. “Do you need one?”

  “I’m innocent, if that’s what you’re asking. But if more information will help clear me faster…” I trailed off, not sure if this would help or hurt me if he thought that I thought I needed an alibi.

  “Okay, shoot. What’s the alibi?”

  “If you have a time of death, I can prove I was trying to convince the parking lot attendant at the Harrison building to let me give her an I.O.U. so I didn’t have to walk all the way back to the boutique for my wallet. It’s about a five- or ten-minute walk from the boutique to the parking garage and back. It didn’t work, unfortunately. She wouldn’t take pity on me, and that’s when I went back and found Solange. The attendant will remember me, I’m sure. She was annoyed I was taking her away from her magazine.”

  “Not sure we can ascertain the time of death down to that narrow of a window, but if we need to know the times we will contact her,” he said, writing something down on his yellow legal pad.

  “Back to James, he seemed to despise Solange but trust me; she wasn’t his biggest fan either. He isn’t technically a true ex yet, and I think that was most of the issue. They couldn’t agree on a settlement. I didn’t know them when they were happily married, but they did nothing but fight now, mostly over money and the boutique.” I was babbling again, but I couldn’t help it. I had all these thoughts in my mind, and I felt the more I got them out there the better it would be, at least for me anyway.

  “Do you know why? Why they fight over money? It would seem that they both have plenty.”

  “I know her side of it, but wouldn’t that be hearsay?”

  “You watch too much Law & Order, and that’s in court. We’re not in court.” He smiled. “I’m just looking for information that might help me solve a murder.”

  “Fine, then.” I smiled back. “From what Solange told me, he wanted her to pay him the money she used to start up the boutique, or sell it and divide up the assets. However, it wasn’t his money or even community money in the first place. She had an inheritance that she’d used to open the store, so she said she didn’t owe him anything and would give him money over her dead body.” I shuddered when I realized what I had just said. Maybe James had taken her at her word.

  “Do you think that’s what happened?” Willie asked.

  “He’s a lawyer, I told you. It doesn’t seem like he would stoop to murder.”

  “People do strange things over money.”

  “True.”

  “Is there anyone who works at the store, or maybe who comes in and shops that Solange had a problem with?”

  “Not that I can think of. Just Amy Irvin, who I already told you about, but again I can’t see her doing anything to hurt Solange. She wouldn’t hurt a fly. Plus, she weighs about twenty pounds. So, she couldn’t hurt a fly even if she wanted to.”

  “Why was she fired?”

  “You know, I’m not sure. Solange didn’t want to discuss it, and we didn’t push. We figured it wasn’t our business, and it seemed Solange just wanted the matter dropped.”

  “So, you didn’t talk to Amy after it happened?

  “No. I called her a couple times, and I think one of the other girls, Steph, did too, but she never returned our messages. We just assumed she was embarrassed over the firing and didn’t want to talk about what happened.”

  “Probably a good assumption, but I will still want to talk to her and the other employees, too. Anything else you can think of that might be helpful?”

  “I wish I could think of something that might be a clue to who killed her, but nothing outside the ordinary ever happened at Silk. Well, until now.”

  “Okay. Please make sure to call me if anything comes to mind after you leave here, no matter how insignificant. You never know how it might relate.” He wrote a number on the back of a business card and slid it over to me. “The precinct information is on the front of the card, and my cell phone number is on the back. You can pretty much reach me day or night.”

  I liked the sound of that, although I was sure he said that to most of his witnesses, if that’s what I was now instead of a suspect. I certainly hoped I was just a witness.

  “So, am I officially not a suspect?”

  “Well, not yet.”

  My face fell.

  “Don’t worry. I just have to follow up on a few things first, but I’m confident you
will be easily cleared. I wouldn’t worry about it.

  Easy for him to say. He had such a beautiful smile. If only we had met under different circumstances.

  “I’ve got all the information I need right now, so we should probably get you back to your car. It’s late.” He stood.

  I looked at my watch to see the time and was shocked to see it was 1:20 a.m. Time had flown by. “I can get a cab back if you’re busy. After all, I don’t want to take you away from clearing my name,” I said, only half joking.