Free An Uplifting Murder by Elaine Viets Page B

me when we were in class. You stayed in the locker room to make sure she didn’t make any more ugly remarks.”
     
    “I tried to say that, but she sat there like little Miss Perfect. Members of her clique backed her up. They said my ‘creepy’ sister stared at their breasts, and so did I.
     
    “The principal didn’t want to believe his scholar was a liar. Frankie wasn’t lying about my sister. Not entirely. Pat did stop by my office at the gym to give me two tickets to a theater performance. She’d signed in at the administration office. That was on the record. Pat waved at me and left the tickets on my desk. She didn’t stay long enough to ogle anyone.
     
    “Frankie knew about my sister, or guessed it. Pat looked rather butch. Pat is a lesbian, though she hadn’t come out of the closet back then. She kept her sex life quiet, because of the prejudice against gays. Pat worked at a kindergarten run by a church nursery school. They would have fired Pat if they’d known her sexual orientation. I was afraid Frankie’s false accusations would hurt my sister’s career.
     
    “Frankie told the principal, ‘It runs in the family. Mrs. Hayes may be married, but it’s a cover for her perversion.’
     
    “I was allowed to quietly resign without references. I was too heartsick to fight back. A year later, I was no longer Mrs. Hayes. My husband left me, saying, ‘No smoke without fire.’ He abandoned Kate, our ten-year-old daughter.
     
    “I took jobs in retail. I met my husband, Langley Ferguson, while I worked for a dry cleaner. He’s a broker in Clayton. Lang came in to pick up his shirts and started dating me. It was a whirlwind courtship. My life has been good ever since I met him. Until Frankie turned up in my shop yesterday.”
     
    “But why do the police think you killed her?” Josie asked. “Why would you ruin your new life?”
     
    Laura sipped more coffee. “That’s what I told the detectives. But they said a video camera outside the bathroom door captured me going inside. They showed me the video, thinking I would confess. This person has dark hair. She’s wearing that black-and-white scarf, the one you admired, except it’s covering her head, babushka-style.”
     
    “Can you see the woman’s face?” Josie asked.
     
    “No.” Laura fortified herself with more coffee. “The video is grainy. All you see is a dumpy woman in a dark coat and print head scarf opening the door to the bathroom, then coming out fifteen minutes later.”
     
    “She could be anyone,” Josie said. “Those scarves are on sale at this mall. I bought two.”
     
    “I said that. But the police claim the murder is premeditated. They say I sent Frankie to that bathroom so I could ambush her.”
     
    “It’s a public bathroom in a mall,” Josie said. “Any woman can use it.”
     
    “We have a restroom here in the store and our customers are allowed to use it. The police know that. I didn’t tell Frankie about it. She was insulting the other customers and upsetting my staff. I wanted her out of here. I may pay for that petty act for the rest of my life.”
     
    “Why would you use a yucky public bathroom when you had one in the store?” Josie asked.
     
    “The police say I wore the scarf to hide my face and killed Frankie in the restroom. The person who’s supposed to be me is seen entering about two minutes after Frankie went inside at eleven twelve. She never came out. The police figure she died between eleven twelve and eleven thirty, when the person who looks like me left.”
     
    “You went for a walk around the building on your lunch hour, didn’t you?” Josie said. “Won’t the mall cameras show you outside?”
     
    “The closed-circuit system malfunctioned in the cold,” Laura said. “It wasn’t fixed until two that afternoon. There is no video of my walk.”
     
    “Oh,” Josie said.
     
    “It gets worse,” Laura said. “My fingerprints are all over the plastic bag that killed Frankie. I