THRIFT-ZILLA KILLAH
Gloria had been volunteering at Thrift-Zilla for the past ten years. When she first started, the store was under different management. Then it was called, “Charity Angel”. Now, Debbie (the hipster, millennial who roller derbys) owns it and she calls it, “Thrift-Zilla”. Everything about Debbie annoys Gloria, but she kinda likes the new name. The logo is a dinosaur searching through a dumpster for clothes. Gloria thinks that’s a step too far, but there’s no telling Debbie anything.
Gloria’s best friend, Pam Stevens, is a private eye in the area. Pam throws Gloria an extra $50 to luminol the donations once a month when her caseload is slow. Gloria tries to do it before Debbie comes in for the day. She hasn’t, exactly, explained to Debbie what the hell she’s doing, so she likes to do it solo. She figures if anything ever comes of it, she’ll beg for forgiveness later. It involves walking around the new inventory, spraying the racks and bags with luminol, and waiting for that tell-all glow. She’s not worried about it, though. There’s been no glow for over a year. It’s stupid to think people would drop off evidence of a crime to a thrift store, but Pam always says it’s plausible. Gloria thinks of it as an easy $50 to take from Pam, who she knows doesn’t really need the money.
Gloria had some Bill Withers gently playing on the radio. “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone”, to be specific, as she went about spraying the racks and a new donation of 10 garbage bags that just came in. She hit the lights, as Bill sang, “I know, I know, I know, I oughta leave young thing alone…” and -BAM- one of the garbage bags lit up like a tweaker selling glow sticks at a rave.
“Holy Shit!” Gloria said out loud.
Pam arrived ready for action. She had gloves on her hands and booties on her feet and she was delicately going through the garbage bag when the police showed up. Pam was annoyed with me for calling the police so quickly, but what are you supposed to do when you find a bag of clothes tie-dyed in blood?
A Sergeant Somebody-or-Other had Pam off to the side, as they negotiated what she could get involved in and what was off limits. I heard Pam say, “I know the ins and outs of this thrift store and the locals that donate to it. You don’t.” Gloria thought the Sergeant So-and-So would’ve had an easier time of it, if he just worked with Pam, but when it comes to PIs everybody’s always thinking they got the bigger gun.
Debbie walked in and pulled down her Beats headphones. She did figure 8s on the skates, as she took in the scene. “Ah, Gloria, what the fuck is going on?” she asked.
“Well, I found a bag filled with bloody clothes,” I replied.
“When was it dropped off?”
“Last night, I think.”
“Have you checked the cameras yet?”
“No…,” I began, but Debbie had already turned wheels towards the office. I followed. Might as well, while the private dicks fight it out by the donated vinyl.
Debbie fired up the computer. She had quite the system in the office. It was probably worth more than our entire inventory combined. Debbie scrolled through the footage and stopped when she came upon a man dropping off some garbage bags.
“You think that’s him?” she asked.
“Well, yeah, the amount of bags are right and nothing else came in,” I answered.
The man was wearing a red baseball cap, so it was hard to see his face, but the car was unmistakable. It was a VW bug, but the roof of the car was shaped like a huge donut. It was the company vehicle for Milly’s Muffin Shop. No doubt about it. But, who was this dude? It didn’t look like Milly. Debbie dumped the footage off onto a drive and deleted the footage from the mainframe.
“Why you doing that, Debbie?” I asked with disapproval in my voice.
“My store. My crime,” she said. “And you know what’s going to put Thrift-Zilla on the map? A bag full of crime falling right into our laps.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. But, I could tell there were a lot of personalities up in the mix. I knew that being around it would only trigger my anxiety. “You think I can take off for today?” I asked.
Debbie gave me a look.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that the whole thing reminds me of Rodger,” I continued.
And with that, Debbie nodded. It was the shrug of indifference I had seen 1,000 times before. “Poor Gloria,” she was thinking. I didn’t care. All I wanted was out of there and I was perfectly happy to use my dead husband as an excuse to make it happen.