being harassed by people who’d gotten there too late. Even so, a tussle broke out because someone snatched the sale item out of another person’s cart and said it wasn’t fair that she got to buy ten and some people hadn’t gotten any.
“It’s a free country,” the woman with the cartful of merchandise said, trying to get back the snatched item.
Dinah stood on her tiptoes and tried to see what the fuss was about. Then she started to laugh and nudged me. “You won’t believe what the dollar-of-the-hour item is.” She knew how to use a pause to build up suspense. “Cotton candy makers.”
When things went back to normal, I found the clerk who’d opened the boxes. He was half in an entryway that said “Employees Only.” His eyes widened as we approached him and he put up his hands in a defensive manner. “There’s no more in the back, ladies. No matter what you say to me or promise me, everything we had was in those boxes.” He let out his breath. “And I know the store is called Hollar for, I mean More Bang for Your Buck, but the dollar-of-the-hour specials are five bucks.”
“Really,” Dinah said. “You know that’s false advertising. It should be the five-dollar-of-the-hour special.”
“I’ll tell the boss.” The clerk started to back away, but I stepped in and said we wanted to speak to Dan. The clerk had put more distance between us before he said that Dan wasn’t there, while mumbling that even if it came with extra pay he wasn’t going to be doing the dollar-of-the-hour item anymore. “He’s in the middle of a family situation,” the guy said, looking Dinah and me over carefully. “I’m the assistant manager. Anything I can do for you?”
I was tempted to bring up getting one of the bargain items as a joke, but he didn’t look like he had a sense of humor. I told him we’d known Dan’s wife and we’d stopped in to give him our condolences. The man’s demeanor changed and he actually stepped closer to us. Now that he knew we weren’t trying to squeeze more cotton candy makers out of him, he relaxed.
“So you knew her,” he said with a sad movement of his head. “It’s just terrible and so pointless. If somebody wanted to rob the place, why did they have to kill her,” he said. “I only met her once. Dan kept hoping she’d work here and help out. It’s not easy launching a store,” he said gesturing toward the line at the registers. “It looks like the customers are buying a lot, but you’ve got to remember everything, but the special, is a dollar. Somebody can walk out with two bags of merchandise and only drop ten bucks.”
After dealing with the crush of crazy customers, the man seemed relieved to talk to us. Or rather unload. He started telling us how until recently it had been hard to get the merchandise for the dollar-of-the-hour special, which it turned out was really the dollar-of-the-day special. “Dan wanted to call it the dollar-of-the-hour special because dollar and hour rhyme.”
I saw Dinah reacting and he looked at her. “I know it’s false advertising, but nobody else has complained.” The man had a walkie-talkie stuck to his belt, and it began to squawk. “Sorry ladies, got to go.” He took off toward the front of the store where it appeared some kind of fuss had broken out.
“Did you notice that the assistant manager is the only one who seems to think Kelly’s death was really a robbery gone bad?” I said when we got outside.
“Can you blame him? Everyone who doesn’t think it was a robbery, thinks his boss did it.” Dinah looked around and then glanced back at the store. “We forgot about the yarn. Should we go back and find the cart?” We both looked at the chaos in the store and shook our heads in unison.
I was working the late shift at the bookstore and still had time before I was supposed to start. I turned to my friend. “I’d really like to hear Dan’s side of things. What do you say we make a condolence call at his house?”
I noticed Dinah was smiling as we started down the street and I asked what was going on. “I’m just so happy to be your Watson again,” she said. She had been the first person to be my sidekick in an investigation, but ever since she’d started the relationship with