Free Shop Till You Drop by Elaine Viets

seemed to intensify the perfume until it was almost liquid.
    “Jimmy says I can keep the condo in the Towers and the ring, but he wants his freedom.”
    He bought his freedom at a high price, Helen thought. Condos in the Towers started at one million, and that ring had a rock the size of Delaware. Little jilted Niki would be well fixed.
    “He doesn’t mean it,” Christina soothed. “You’ve been engaged for four years. This is just a passing fling. Nervous bridegrooms do dumb things. Jimmy will get tired of Desiree and come back to you.”
    “He won’t,” Niki sobbed, and Helen had never heard such despair. “She’s younger than me. She’s blond.”
    “She’s bleached,” Christina said. “Anyone can be blond these days.”
    Helen thought this jab at Desiree was unfair, since Christina owed her own blondness to the bottle.
    “She’s never done anything. I’ve been in Playboy ,” Niki said proudly, and sat up straight, so that her imposing implants stuck out farther. The movement unleashed another choking cloud of perfume.
    “That’s how you and Jimmy first met, wasn’t it?” Christina said.
    “Yes,” Niki said. “He saw my picture in Playboy . He remembered it for six whole months. He recognized me at a South Beach club and introduced himself.”
    Helen hoped it was her face Jimmy recognized.
    “It was love at first sight. Jimmy was so proud of me. When we started dating, he bought a hundred copies of my Playboy issue and gave them to all his friends and business associates.”
    To show them what he was getting, Helen thought.
    “That’s how his wife found out about us. She saw the bill for all those back issues on his credit card. She was so mad. She said she’d take him to the cleaners. Poor Jimmy had to hide things offshore and everything. The divorce took four years. I went through hell. Now he’s marrying that bitch on the beach in Belize next month.”
    “I hope the sharks get her,” Christina said.
    “I want her dead before that,” Niki said, her eyes suddenly hard mean slits.
    “Don’t you want him dead?” Christina said. Good question, thought Helen. That’s who I’d want to kill if Jimmy dumped me right before the wedding.
    “No, I want her dead,” Niki said. Her words were a vicious slash. “Maybe when she’s dead, he’ll come back to me.”
    Niki wrapped her pipestem arms around herself and rocked back and forth, spotting the black silk-satin loveseat with her tears and sending waves of perfume rolling through the store. It was time for serious grief counseling.
    “Helen, would you unpack that Blumarine jeans stock for me?” Christina said. “I’ll take Niki back and show her some pretty new things to make her feel all better. She’ll have herself a new man in no time.”
    “I don’t want a new man. I want Jimmy,” Niki wailed, like a spoiled child.
    Christina herded her gently toward the dressing room, a good-hearted but firm nanny. “Come on, sweetie. I have some lovely white wine. Would you like a glass of wine? Or maybe some Evian?”
    That was kind, thought Helen. Smart, too. Niki would buy up a storm in her shattered state. Christina was hauling half the store into that dressing room.
    Before Helen could unpack the jeans, the doorbell rang. Helen recognized a regular, Melissa, and buzzed her in. Melissa was the blonde with the eighteenth-century face and the twenty-first-century boob job. Good thing she’d persuaded her boyfriend to let her keep that Armani gown. Now he wanted her to get “something cute” for a barbecue.
    Melissa tried on a long strapless tube of ruched material in lavender. It looked smashing with her blonde hair. If you were more than a size four, you’d look fat as a French bonbon. This four hung on Melissa.
    “You need a size two,” Helen said. “I know we have one somewhere. Let me find it for you.”
    The top wasn’t in the shop or the stockroom. It must be in Niki’s dressing room, thought Helen, along with most of the