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  “I hope so,” Sharon sobbed. “That was just the worst night of my life!”

  They navigated the neighborhood around the jail and headed for the interstate.

  “What are you gonna do about it, honey?”

  “Do about it! Mmmm, where do I begin?” Sharon had spent the entire night concocting a whole list of things she intended to do about it. “First I’m gonna call Darlene, because I’m sure she can make this whole thing go away. You’re right about that. But that doesn’t excuse Amanda for what she did.”

  “How are you so sure that Amanda was trying to set you up?” Heather asked, sneaking a quick peek at her lipstick in the rearview mirror. “Isn’t it possible that you just, like, saw a Neiman’s card and swiped it, hoping that Amanda wouldn’t notice?”

  Sharon looked accusingly at her friend. “I just came out of county jail,” she sputtered, “and you would dare to contradict your best friend with the truth?”

  Heather finally realized just how overwrought Sharon was. “You poor thing. You need a hot shower, a hot meal, and a nap. I don’t think you’re seeing things clearly.”

  Sharon blew her nose. “Oh, I’m seeing things just fine,” she responded darkly, adjusting herself under her sweater. “I’m seeing things perfectly fine.”

  That same morning, Amanda walked the children to Hillside Park Middle School, where Elizabeth picked up Amanda to drive her to the Longhorn Ball office. Before Amanda could say hello to her mom, her cell phone went off. She glanced at the screen and saw that the caller was “unknown.”

  “Who could this be? Hello?”

  “Ms. Vaughn?” an authoritative male voice drawled.

  “This is she,” Amanda confirmed, puzzled. Elizabeth glanced at her. What’s this all about?

  “This is Sam Horn, chief of security at Neiman Marcus,” the caller continued. “I hate to trouble you, ma’am, but would you mind coming by the store at your earliest convenience? There are some security questions that only you can answer.”

  This is odd. What’s going on? Amanda asked herself, but then she knew. The gift card.

  “Really? Why me? What is this about?” Amanda asked, not willing to reveal too much until she knew who had tried to use the card.

  “Honestly, ma’am, we’d only need fifteen or twenty minutes of your time. It would be best,” the Neiman’s man said, his tone impassive, “if you could swing by the store. We’ll explain when you get here. We need you to take a look at a security video. I promise it won’t take more than half an hour.”

  “I’d better say yes before you tell me it’s going to take all day. We’ll be right over.” She hung up.

  “What’s that all about?” Elizabeth asked.

  “It sounds like somebody tried to use my card at Neiman’s,” Amanda explained. “They want me to head over there right now.”

  Elizabeth checked the dashboard clock. It was just after eight a.m. “But the store doesn’t open until ten.”

  “I guess security keeps longer hours.”

  “If it means they found your card, I guess it’s a good thing.” She turned the car around and headed for Neiman’s.

  Amanda and Elizabeth reached Neiman’s ten minutes later, where they were quickly shown into the same basement security facility where Sharon had been interrogated the night before. Sam Horn, the security officer who had called Amanda a few minutes earlier, ushered her and Elizabeth into seats, pushed a few buttons on his laptop computer, and turned the screen toward the two women. Sam leaned over, pushed a couple of more buttons, and the women listened to the conversation between Sharon and Travis. Sam played the entire exchange, culminating in Travis’s disappearance with the card, presumably to get its contents registered on a bunch of other cards. Amanda and Elizabeth were predictably horrified, although not altogether surprised.

  “I never liked her,” Elizabeth said flatly. “She’s just wretched,” Amanda agreed with a sigh.

  “Ladies,” Sam drawled, “can you identify the woman on that video?”

  You mean the one with the three sixes on her head, just smokin’, Amanda wanted to say, but forced herself to suppress the tangent she wanted to go on.

  Amanda and Elizabeth looked at each other like a couple of schoolgirls who had shown up unprepared for a pop quiz.

  “Do I have to?” Amanda asked.

  “It would certainly aid our investigation,” Sam replied. “Can you identify her?”

  “Sharon Peavy,” the women chorused.

  Sam glanced at the papers on his desk, checked to see that the name was correct, nodded, then closed the laptop. He seated himself behind his desk.

  “Ladies,” he began, “do you realize that Ms. Peavy yesterday tried to commit fraud with a gift card, which totaled—”

  He paused to check his paperwork again. “Ninety-eight thousand dollars?”

  “We didn’t know until just now,” Amanda said, miserably uncomfortable. Sharon had been her best friend growing up, she had baked Amanda a pie—a chocolate pecan pie, no less—and had even gone to the trouble of getting Amanda the position of Longhorn Ball Chair. Why would Sharon do a thing like this?

  Sam wanted to know the same thing. “Do you have any idea how Ms. Peavy came into possession of your gift card?”

  “Do I have to say?” The idea of getting Sharon in trouble held no appeal.

  “You don’t have to tell us,” Sam said, “but it would certainly assist us in our investigation.”

  Elizabeth glanced at Amanda, wondering what her daughter would do. It was her call.

  “Let me just make sure I understand what’s going on,” Amanda said, buying time. She looked puzzled. “Excuse me, Mr., um—”

  “Horn,” he said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Horn,” Amanda said. She felt her heart racing. The idea that Sharon would steal her gift card was just unimaginable, and yet it made all too much sense. “What exactly is going on?”

  “We just want to understand the circumstances by which Ms. Peavy came into possession of your gift card,” Sam explained in an East Texas monotone. “How did she get your card?”

  “It’s not my card.” Elizabeth threw her a confused look.

  Sam looked surprised, as well. “It’s not your card? It’s got your name on it.”

  “What exactly would I be doing with a ninety-eight-thousand-dollar gift card from Neiman Marcus?” Amanda asked. “We’re comfortable, but I don’t have that kind of money.”

  This was a twist that Sam had not expected. Nor had Elizabeth, for that matter, who stared at her daughter, bewildered.

  “Why would a Neiman’s gift card with something like ninety-eight thousand dollars on it have your name on it?” Sam asked.

  “It must be an accounting error of some sort. I’ve never seen a card with that much money on it in my life.” She grinned. “I’d like to.”

  “I’ve got one right here for you,” Sam said, reaching into a desk drawer, and taking out a plain white envelope. “The original, as you can understand, is being held by the police as evidence in the case being built against Ms. Peavy.” Elizabeth shot Amanda a deeply puzzled glance.

  “We made up a new one with your name on it this morning,” Sam continued. “That’s why we called you in so early, and I hope we didn’t disturb your day, ma’am. We just didn’t want you to be without it. Anybody who had lost a ninety-eight-thousand-dollar gift card would probably be very upset.”

  Amanda forced a laugh. “I’d be upset if I lost a gift card of that size,” she admitted. “Wouldn’t you, Mom?” Elizabeth, stupefied, took a few seconds before she could register exactly what Amanda was asking her to say.

  “Oh, no doubt!” she finally said, shaking her head in disbelief. Her daughter, she decided for the millionth time, was somethin’ else.

  Sam Horn’s eyes narrowed. “Are you really telling me,” he said, amazed, “that you did not have a ninety-eight-thousand-dollar gift card in your possession, that you do not have a store credit with Neiman Marcus in the am
ount of ninety-eight thousand dollars, and that if I handed you this gift card with that value on it, you would refuse to take it?”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t take it,” Amanda noted with a grin, “but then I’d be stealing, too, wouldn’t I? I mean, it’s not my card. It’s not my money. I really don’t know what this whole thing is about.”

  Sam looked as bewildered as he felt. A routine investigation had turned into something he could not wrap his mind around. “I’m just a little bit confused, ladies, and I apologize. You’re telling me . . . that . . . Sharon Peavy did not steal your card.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” Amanda said, the picture of serenity.

  Elizabeth shot her a glance that asked “Are you out of your mind?”

  “You do understand,” the increasingly flustered Sam said, “that without your willingness to aver to the fact that Ms. Peavy stole your card, we have no case against her?”

  Amanda thought for a long time before she answered. “I don’t exactly know what ‘averring’ means, but if it means the same thing as ‘saying,’ then yes, that’s what I’m saying. I’m saying that I never had a gift card of that size, and Ms. Peavy therefore could never have stolen it from me.”

  “But the video—” Sam began.

  Amanda cut him off. “That video proves nothing. I’m not a lawyer, but it sure looked like your employee was trying to entrap her into an illegal action. I mean, dividing the one big gift card into a whole bunch of little gift cards was his idea. And unless you’ve got it on tape somewhere that she actually took possession of the smaller gift cards and actually tried to use one of them, I don’t even know what kind of case you’ve got against her in the first place.”

  Sam looked as if he’d lost his best friend.

  “Are you sure—” he asked, hoping against hope that Amanda would say something to implicate Sharon with a prosecutable offense.

  “I don’t mean to get involved with your store’s internal affairs,” Amanda began, gaining confidence now. “But if you can’t figure out what she did wrong, I don’t know why you’re asking me.”

  “B-but—” Sam sputtered.

  “Is there anything else?” Amanda asked impatiently. “My mother and I have a lot of work to do. I’m the new Chair of the Longhorn Ball. If you’d like to donate the value on that gift card to the Ball as an item for our auction, I’d be very interested in discussing that with you. But otherwise, I think we need to bring this conversation to a close.”

  Sam was dumbfounded. “That wouldn’t be my decision to make. I’m just in charge of security. Or I will be until somebody finds out what’s gone on here. You’d have to talk to somebody in, I don’t know, marketing or community relations. Or something.”

  He looked just devastated that his case was collapsing, and with it, perhaps, his entire career in store security. And if the case was as much in free fall as it appeared, then he would have to answer both to the store and to Sharon Peavy for having pressed charges and sending her for a night in county jail. Elizabeth glanced back and forth between Sam and her daughter, quietly amazed by the turn of events.

  Amanda stood, and so did Elizabeth, and so, instinctively, did Sam, a Texas gentleman who rose whenever ladies did. “Don’t you want your gift card?” he asked forlornly, holding the envelope for Amanda to take.

  “I keep trying to tell you,” she said politely but firmly. “It’s not my gift card. I hope you find out whose it is. I’m sure they’ll be really happy to get it back. Unless there’s anything else, Mr. Horn, my mom and I’ll be on our way.”

  With that, Amanda led Elizabeth out of the security office, to the elevator, outside the building, and to Elizabeth’s car.

  Elizabeth handed Amanda the keys. “You’d better drive. I’m too stunned.”

  Amanda, calm again after the adrenaline rush of the conversation with Sam Horn, unlocked the doors, waited for her mother to get in, adjusted the driver’s seat, and drove away from Neiman’s and back toward Hillside Park and the Longhorn Ball office.

  “What just happened?” Elizabeth asked. “I’m more confused than Paris Hilton at an outlet mall.”

  “What happened where?” Amanda played dumb.

  “Why did you do that?” Elizabeth asked as her daughter nosed the car into traffic. “Sharon stole your card! She just flat-out lifted it off your desk, hoped you wouldn’t notice, and took it to Neiman’s. And it was her bad luck that instead of ninety-eight dollars or ninety-eight hundred dollars, there was ninety-eight thousand on it. Otherwise, she would have spent it—and unless they videotape every transaction, you’d never have seen that money again and would’ve never known what happened to it!”

  Amanda said nothing.

  “Well, why’d you do it?”

  “I honestly don’t have a good answer,” Amanda admitted. “The last thing I want to do,” she explained, “is get involved with some kind of criminal charges against Sharon, or against anybody. There’s no peace in that. Nothing good can come of it. I’m not looking to make enemies. Besides, Mother, you always taught me it’s okay to take on someone smarter than you are, but don’t ever take on someone who’s meaner than you are. I saw a mean side to Sharon when we were little, but she never turned it on me. I can’t say that anymore. You seem to be right once again, Mom . . . there’s nothing more dangerous than white trash with nothing to lose.”

  “You’re not looking to make sense,” Elizabeth chided. “You just left ninety-eight thousand dollars on the table.”

  “It was never my money,” Amanda said, keeping her eyes on the road. “It’s Mr. Black Mercedes’s. Let him go after Neiman’s. Or after Sharon. Just leave me out of it.”

  Elizabeth was all but speechless. “As your mother, all I can do is take credit for how well you turned out.”

  Amanda grinned. “That’s the first time you’ve ever said you were proud of me—but technically, you really said you were proud of yourself.”

  “It’s as close as you’re gonna get. So enjoy it.” Elizabeth stretched out a well-manicured hand to give her daughter a reassuring pat on the arm.

  What an ordeal, Amanda thought. And it just keeps getting crazier and crazier. She stepped on the gas and headed for the office.

  Chapter 19

  After the unexpected side trip to Neiman’s, Tuesday morning at the Longhorn Ball office found Amanda and Elizabeth trying to line up women to take on committee chairwoman roles and other volunteer tasks within the organization. In addition to having an overall chairwoman of the Ball, the planning structure called for chairwomen to be in charge of underwriting, table sales, the auctions, security, entertainment, food and beverage, location selection, and planning the fall and spring luncheons. The Ball held the member luncheons in order to announce the location, the headline entertainer, the underwriting dollars raised, and, as a motivational device, how the money raised for the Pediatric Foundation actually went to help children. One of the first tasks for the Ball Chair each year was to line up individuals to take on these duties. Normally, these people were already in place the previous year, but this year, everything was different.

  The committee chairs were chosen from the active members of the organization, which comprised one hundred women in and around Hillside Park’s social, religious, country club, and school communities. Sharon had helped locate a list of active and inactive members, along with their phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Since Amanda and Elizabeth had no computers and no office phones, their only method of reaching out was by cell phone, so, one by one, they called each name on the list. It was a trip down memory lane for Amanda—she had known most of the women when she was growing up in the community, had gone to college with some of them, had been sorority sisters with others, and otherwise was familiar with most of the names on the list. Naturally, because she had been away for twelve years, there were about two dozen women she had never met or heard of, women who had moved into the community after her departure. She gave those names to her mother and beg
an to work her way down the list of women she had known from the past. As expected, when everyone is too jammed for time even to answer their own cell phones, Amanda reached voice mail with two-thirds of the phone numbers.

  With the remaining numbers, a peculiar pattern ensued. Amanda and the committee member she was calling would be very excited to be back in touch after all these years. The committee member would commiserate with Amanda about her divorce and talk about her own status—married, divorced, single, or some unique hybrid thereof. Eventually, the conversation would get around to the question of taking on a leadership role at the Longhorn Ball, and that’s when things got more bizarre time after time. Every single woman Amanda contacted said pretty much the same thing, in pretty much the same words—she’d love to do it, it’s such a worthy cause, isn’t Amanda sweet for taking on the responsibility of running the Ball, but it just isn’t a good time. It’s the children. Her husband just started his own company. It’s other responsibilities in the community or other philanthropic commitments. It was a million things, and it was everything but “yes.”

  Elizabeth encountered the same level of resistance on her calls. Everybody was delighted to get a call from the mother of the Longhorn Ball Chair, everybody was so excited that Amanda had agreed to rescue the thing, everybody agreed that the Longhorn Ball did such great things for suffering children, and not a single person had a free moment in order to take on any responsibility connected with the Ball. After a fruitless, frustrating morning of voice mail and rejections, Amanda and Elizabeth snapped shut their cell phones, sat down opposite each other at Amanda’s desk, and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

  “Susie’s got this thing so screwed up nobody wants to touch it,” Amanda said, shaking her head. “I can’t get a single person to do a single thing. Even the girls who are literally the bottom rung on the social ladder. The ones who the only time they ever heard their mothers use the word ‘luncheon’ was when it preceded the word ‘meat’ are actually turning me down.”