Free Eternally 21: A Mrs. Frugalicious Shopping Mystery by Linda Joffe Hull Page A

Valley Mall community. She collapsed Friday around one p.m. after what mall officials are calling a stroke.”
    “That isn’t the woman you were talking about that you helped the other day, is it?” FJ asked.
    “How many people could have collapsed while Mom was out shopping?” Trent asked.
    “Shh!” I said again.
    “It was awful.” A woman appeared beside Anastasia who roughly fit my description—late thirties-ish, medium height, blondish shoulder length hair. “I shop at this mall all the time, and I’ve never seen anyone wheeled off like that.”
    “So she did die?” Trent asked.
    “Trent!” FJ said.
    My delicious dinner began to churn in my stomach.
    “Doctors say the chances of a fatal stroke in someone this young and healthy are highly rare.” The reporter looked into the camera and offered as serious an expression as she could muster given her Kewpie-doll looks. “Police have made no official comment yet, but sources tell News Three that initial autopsy results were inconclusive.”

Seven
    I’d watched enough crime dramas to know an autopsy was all but routine after any unexpected death, suspicious or not. And I’d been around TV stations enough to know producers were never beyond a sprinkling of good old-fashioned sensationalism on a slow news day. Still, the word inconclusive kept rolling through my head as I looked around at the weepy, standing-room-only crowd at Laila’s memorial service. Detective McClarkey told me himself the investigation looked pretty routine . Any hint of what seemed to be general antipathy for the woman was all but drowned out by the sniffles, sobs, and the occasional honk of a nose blow echoing off the glass storefronts surrounding the center courtyard of the South Highlands Valley Mall.
    “I would like to read a poem by William Wordsworth.” Dan Mitchell, the dapper mall managercleared his throat and leaned in toward the mic set in front of the indoor rock water feature.
    “She dwelt among the untrodden ways.
    Beside the springs of Dove;
    A maid whom there were none to praise,
    And very few to love … ”
    Nina Marino, one of the few real friends Laila had in the place, looked pale, wan, and miserable as her boyfriend recited the rest of the poem.
    “That was lovely.” Mr. Piggledy wore a crushed velvet robe that must have been made by Mrs. Piggledy since it matched both his wife’s apron dress and the swanky short pants suit Higgledy the monkey wore for the occasion. He put a hand to the mall manager’s back and sent him toward his seat. “A fitting sentiment in these oh so difficult to accept circumstances.”
    In the front row, Tara Hu erupted into a dramatic high-pitched wail. As she buried her head into a red-eyed Andy Oliver’s shoulder, I couldn’t help but think about how she might have been teetering on the edge of being fired. As for him, he’d not only called Laila a beyotch but openly hoped she’d choke on her French fries.
    “We have lost one who is very near to us, and we all feel that loss deeply, painfully, and as a community,” Mr. Piggledy said. “But, be assured, the Places Beyond are pleasing, beautiful, and far from the cares of this reality. A place where a forever young, beautiful, and vital Laila DeSimone now frolics happily, waiting to greet us with open arms when our turn comes to pass on into the non-physical.”
    The man I presumed to be Richard the regional manager—on account of his salt and pepper good looks, expensive suit, and position on the other side of Tara—dabbed his eyes with a tissue. To my horror, he put his arm around the attractive, well-dressed brunette in her early forties seated beside him.
    As she wiped away one of the tears staining her otherwise flawless foundation, there was no missing the enormous diamond on her left hand.
    I looked up at Griff, who was stationed halfway up the central courtyard steps overlooking the proceedings. I tried to catch his attention for some