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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781449017866 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 04/08/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 316 |
| File size: | 855 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Drop Dead
By Robert Imrie
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Robert ImrieAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-1784-2
Chapter One
On the morning of Thursday, November 15th at just past seven o'clock, 77-year old Greta Turnblad strode purposefully into MightyMall, the world's largest shopping and entertainment complex, located in Saint Commercia, Minnesota.Outside, the wind blew cold amid a slushy snowstorm. Greta had left home earlier than usual because she knew traffic would be slow going. Thick, wet flakes had been falling since midnight, with several inches expected by noon. Cloud cover kept the morning sunlight to a minimum. The temperature was 28 degrees; the dampness made it feel colder.
Greta stopped just inside the entrance, waiting for the door behind her to close. The difference in air pressure inside the building and outside created a faint moaning sound. A final stomp! stomp! stomp! and the remaining snow and salt fell from her boots.
The first floor of MightyMall felt like the inside of a 21st-Century techno-cathedral with its hundred-foot ceiling and galaxy of wall colors blinking like CGI-generated stained glass windows. Space above the store fronts was dominated by endless 30-foot video screens announcing special sales, upcoming celebrity appearances and testimonials by aging actors insisting that they shopped at MightyMall or they shopped nowhere at all. Public service announcements reminded everyone that MightyMall Gift Cards were "the ideal way to show you care."
Some of the video screens periodically flipped open, allowing futuristic robots to jut out above the passing crowds to sing and dance like corporate Hummel figures, spouting the name and web address of their sponsor, before returning silently to the bowels of the mall like high-tech butlers.
Greta enjoyed the shows as much as the next person but felt vaguely guilty: weren't there better things to spend money on than the myriad products they advertised? But then she remembered how much she enjoyed the climate-controlled comfort of MightyMall, or an advertisement she'd seen for something available only at MightyMall, erasing the guilt from her mind like an invisible Handi Wipe. Follow the light, the light!
Greta's cheeks burned slightly from the sudden warmth after the stinging combination of cold wind and snow outside. She was wearing a long, red, hooded parka with a flannel-lined nylon sweat suit and snow boots. She had a small frame, despite her Scandinavian heritage, barely over five feet and one hundred ten pounds. These old bones freeze up quicker than they used to, she thought to herself.
Greta walked over to a wooden bench in front of the Welcome Desk and pulled off the boots she always wore outside during the cold Minnesota winters. She put on a pair of white sneakers she had bought at The Sports Authority on the sixth floor, carefully tying the laces. The pink swoosh on the sides matched perfectly with her pink sweats.
Greta came to MightyMall to meet her best friend, Char Goblirsch, three times a week to walk and chat for an hour or so. They visited more frequently between October and April when it was just too cold and slippery to stroll outside. Lake Harriet, she thought, beautiful as it was to amble around in the summer, sailboats bobbing in the background, was darned unpleasant in the winter. Once the autumn leaves were gone there was nothing to stop the arctic winds that raced down from Winnipeg from rubbing your skin raw.
It never snowed inside MightyMall, was never windy, never too cold nor too warm. Greta never got lost, though the two-mile circumference could be challenging when her arthritis acted up. From a few miles away it looked like a giant, glowing piston; Greta wouldn't want a monstrosity like this in her back yard, but twenty minutes away by car was fine. She and Char used to take their walks at that other Twin Cities mega mall over in Bloomington but got tired of the confusing parking ramps named after states and fruits. Finding her car at MightyMall was a snap since that nice young man at the Welcome Desk had given her a credit-card-sized medallion with a viewing screen and metallic strip to put on her dashboard. It showed the location of her car inside the mall parking ramp and gave her step-by-step instructions to get to it from any point in the mall. No need for one of those confusing mobile phones.
"MightyMall is plenty good enough for walks," she used to tell her husband, Hank, before he succumbed to heart disease four years ago. "As long as you're safe and warm," he would say in return.
Greta liked to start early in the morning while the hallways circling the mall were still relatively people-free. Storekeepers didn't arrive for another couple of hours. Except for the coffee shops, which she never bothered with anyway; coffee gave her the runs. She and Char occasionally completed a once-around in the morning without seeing another soul, especially if they were done by eight o'clock. That was when most of the mall walkers began trickling in. The storm will probably keep people away until 8:30 or 9 today, she thought, as she stood up from the bench.
Greta had considered moving to a warmer climate after Hank died. They had no children and most of her friends were living in Florida or Arizona at least part of the year. But Greta liked her old house and so did her two cats. She loved her garden in the spring, and the fall colors, and all the lakes with paved walkways. And Minnesota winters were gosh darned pretty, the blankets of snow making everything look clean, quiet and peaceful. She wondered what she would do in a place like Florida that looked and felt the same year-round and was always getting washed out to sea.
The MightyMall Welcome Desk sat just inside the entrance, next to a bank of coin-operated lockers. Greta had her pick of the lot at this time of day. She walked over to one and set her handbag down on the floor. She chose a locker at eye level-no point straining her back if she didn't have to-and swung the small door open.
Greta removed her parka, carefully folded it and pushed it to the back of locker #501. She inserted her boots, careful to face the heels away from her parka; the parka was new and she didn't want to soil it. Satisfied that she had loaded all nonessential items, Greta took the four quarters she had brought specifically for the locker out of her sweatpants pocket and dropped them into the proper slot and swung the door shut. She turned the orange locker key, heard the lock click and the quarters fall as if in a slot machine, removed the key and dropped it into her pocket.
Still facing the locker, Greta paused to wonder where Char was. Char was always so punctual. Stuck in the storm? Greta began turning around when her foot struck something on the floor below: her handbag. She had forgotten to put her handbag in the locker!
"Uffda," she said. "You forgetful old biddy." She smacked herself lightly on her forehead with the palm of her hand.
Greta wondered if maybe one of those nice MightyMall security officers would open the locker for her. She wasn't trying to cheat anyone-she'd paid her dollar-but if she reopened the locker now she wouldn't be able to close it again without another dollar, which she didn't have. Surely the officer would understand her predicament and be sympathetic.
Greta looked down the great hall, hoping to catch an officer on patrol, or rounds, or whatever they called it. No one in sight.
"Well, there's a phone at the Welcome Desk," Greta said to no one in particular. "I just know there is."
She walked over to the Welcome Desk, intending to push open the wooden gate, and walk behind the counter. "I'll just call the operator and explain things to her." Or him: she had noticed more operators these days were male. The gate was closed.
The Welcome Desk wasn't actually a desk but a ten-foot-long counter flanked by two four-foot-high sides. It served as an information desk for first-time visitors, a dispenser of wheelchairs and a supplier of discount brochures and mall maps. The purpose of the wooden gate on the right side was less about security and more about containing newly arrived guests who were über-eager to get down to the business of shopping till they dropped after twenty-hour motorcoach rides from Kansas City or fifteen-hour flights from Shanghai. Everyone needed their brochures, discount cards and electronic maps now, now NOW and didn't want to wait in a stupid old line to get them. The concentration of so many ways to spend money in a single, enclosed building made adults behave like tweens attending a Lady Gaga concert.
Greta had seen staff reach inside the gates when they thought no one was looking and unlock the door from the inside. Standing on her toes, she reached over the gate and slid her hand around trying to find the latch. When she felt nothing latch-like after making several wide passes with her hands, she leaned farther over to get a better look.
"Oh my," Greta said, as she fell forward, ass over tea kettle as the British say, her body coming to rest inside the Welcome Desk.
Greta Turnblad was dead before her body hit the floor.
Chapter Two
"This is it?" screamed Carolyn Noxon Batch, MightyMall's Senior Vice President. "A dozen raisin cookies and coffee? For a major press conference like this?" She scanned the faces of her junior staff. "Is this a fucking joke?" On a rectangular table against one wall of the Voyageurs Room sat a large imitation stainless steel serving plate adorned with twelve cookies. Two coffee dispensers sat next to the plate. Styrofoam cups were stacked between the dispensers and the serving plate. Four round meeting tables covered in white linen tablecloths sat at the far end of the rectangular room. A portable dais with microphone stood at the very back. A projection screen behind the dais proudly displayed the MightyMall logo."They're fresh ..." said Nicole, manager of the MightyMall VIP Premium Voyageurs Room. "I think. I mean ... they're warm. The cookies ..."
"Well, thank God for small favors," Carolyn snapped. She picked up a cookie, took a small bite and chewed meditatively. MightyMall's Senior Vice President had joined straight out of college. Her father was Denny Noxon, owner of Sell-U-Right, the Upper Midwest's largest chain of pawnshops and a tenant in MightyMall from the start. Denny had been negotiating with the mall's owners for a space for his latest retail concept, a chain of bait and tackle shops called Spawn. MightyMall granted his daughter an internship in the public relations department as a gesture of good will. Spawn failed to catch on, but Denny's daughter swam quickly up MightyMall's corporate ladder.
Though Carolyn was only five feet five, she was still a formidable woman. She knew how to project her voice and she switched easily between four letter expletives and multi-syllabic corporate mumbo-jumbo depending on the crowd; her staff was usually on the receiving end of the expletives. For today's press conference later in the morning Carolyn was wearing a black Ann Taylor suit with a skirt that ended above the knee. She'd fretted over which shoes to wear- the Christian Louboutin platforms she preferred in cold weather like this, or the Prada pointed-toe pumps. She went with the Pradas because they were more comfortable; she would need absolute focus when talking to all those nasty reporters.
"Would you like me to call Fantastic?" asked Nicole said. "See if they can bring some more food, maybe?" Fantastic Catering had purchased exclusive rights to provide food and beverages for all MightyMall's public and private events. A representative had dropped off the cookies and coffee earlier in the morning.
"My God, yes!" Carolyn said. "I'm about to make the biggest announcement in the history of Minnesota in, what," she glanced at her watch, "two and a half freekin hours?"
"I thought it was all about the presentation," Jeff Patter said. "The project? The visuals? The future?" Patter was Carolyn's Director of Marketing. "Aren't they going to be busy watching you and the screen? They're not really going to care what they're eating, are they?" He knew the answer but enjoyed egging Carolyn on when she got like this.
"They won't notice the food if it's good," Carolyn said, "but they will if we serve them something that looks like I picked it up at a Super America convenience store on the way in. These aren't refreshments," she waved dismissively at the cookies, "they're after-school snacks."
"Those jerks from Fantastic are simply awful, aren't they?" Patter said. He made a sympathetic tsk tsk, then pursed his lips together. Patter was slim but fit and in his mid forties. He was currently sporting a pencil mustache like the one Brad Pitt had worn recently. Consensus among the women in the office was that the look worked for Brad Pitt but not for Patter; it made him look like an effeminate Hitler.
Patter had suggested days ago that they hire a special chef for the event. If Carolyn wanted to save on costs, as she always did, then how about cheese, cut fruit, fresh-baked bread, and wine? Snobbery worked at events like these. Carolyn, however, in her infinite wisdom, had been confident she could bully Fantastic Catering into giving her what she wanted free of charge. Fine, Patter thought. How's that working out for you?
"It'll be great publicity for them," Carolyn had told Nicole last week, explaining why Fantastic should give them free refreshments for the event. "Tell them that. They'll make it all back in the new clients they'll get."
The Fantastic representative had been less than enthusiastic when talking to Nicole. "What do I care about publicity? I've got a spending budget and I've got sales goals. People listen to a press conference like this and then they leave and go to their next meeting. They don't give a shit what they ate at the press conference."
"But Carolyn said ..."
"Doesn't matter," the rep had said. "I'll send you some cookies and a couple pots of coffee. And that's just because you're a nice kid. But anything more than that and your boss lady is going to have to pony up and spend some real money. Sorry. It's in the contract."
"That's okay," Nicole had said. "Thanks."
"What is wrong with them?" Patter maintained a look of concerned consternation on his face.
Carolyn took another contemplative bite of her cookie, careful as always to display the $38,000 Cartier diamond and sapphire ring she wore on her right hand. Her father had bought it for her after her divorce from Luther.
"Is the projector hooked up?" Carolyn said.
"It will be," Nicole said. "Tech person's coming at nine o'clock. I can't remember her name."
"Are the artist renderings all set?"
Nicole snapped her fingers. "Rakhshanda ...?"
"What?"
"Sorry," Nicole said. "I think the techie's name for today's presentation is Rakhshanda. Or something like that." She shrugged. "From India, I think. Or Pakistan?"
Carolyn leveled a withering gaze at Nicole. "You might want to stay focused here, sweetie. You've already fucked up catering arrangements. Let's hope you don't make it any worse." She turned around to stare out the window.
Nicole glared at the back of Carolyn's head. "Sorry," her voice wavered. Her eyes were moist. "They're in the closet," she said. "The renderings, I mean. I'll put them up after we finish setting the tables." She fished a tissue out of her purse and dabbed her eyes, hoping no one noticed.
Patter leaned toward Nicole and spoke softly in her ear. "Honey, don't let her get to you. Everything is always someone else's fault. Except when something goes right; then it's all her brilliance and execution. You better learn to accept that or you'll be crying all the time."
"Coffee and twelve fucking cookies?" Carolyn said, still counting the cookie she was eating. "How many media are we expecting today?" She brushed the crumbs from her hands and picked up another cookie.
"We've invited every newspaper and magazine on the Minnesota and Wisconsin public relations list," Patter said. "Plus all the TV and radio stations ... except Channel 6, of course. We're still mad at them because their reporter snuck that piece of dynamite into the mall."
"The police should've arrested him, the prick," Carolyn said. "And stop saying dynamite. It was a firecracker with the fuse removed."
"Right." Patter nodded obediently. "A firecracker. But our sniffer dog gave the Channel 6 guy a pass and started barking instead at some guy eating a bratwurst ten feet away. Channel 6's camera caught the whole thing."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Drop Dead by Robert Imrie Copyright © 2010 by Robert Imrie. Excerpted by permission.
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