Black Thursday (20 page)

“I'd expect you would and then some,” I said.

“I need to,” he said. “Her little hobby has ‘saved' us right into bankruptcy.”

Why hadn't I noticed before that the faraway look in his eyes, which I'd assumed was profound sadness, also contained more than a hint of desperation?

My text message alert pinged from inside my purse, upstairs in the front hallway.

“I should probably get going,” I said.

“You sure?” He smiled “You ain't seen nothin' yet.”

Suddenly, I felt sick. And so tired.

“How about I come back another time to see the rest?” I walked through what felt like marshmallow fluff, around a cherry red leather loveseat with an 80%-off tag hanging off the side.

“I don't believe I answered your question about the dark-haired man ahead of me in line yet,” he said.

“That's okay,” I said, fearing his answer.

“Now that I think about it, I don't believe there was a man of that description in the line,” he added.

“Great,” I said, starting up the first and then the second step. “I'm really not feeling very well.”

“That's because your tea was sweetened with Cathy's sleeping and anxiety pills.” The desk chair creaked as he stood. “All that shopping gave her terrible insomnia.”

My legs, instead of responding to what I'd hoped would be an adrenaline rush that would enable me to bolt up the stairs and out the front door, went leaden instead.

“You poisoned me?”

“Of course not,” he said. “I gave you something to help you relax.”

My knees buckled. The next thing I knew, I was falling.

John caught me in his arms.

“Why?” I asked, trying in vain to escape his firm grasp.

“Why did you have to keep looking into the circumstances of my wife's accident?”

Half-awake and trapped in a real-life nightmare, all the pieces started to fall into place.

“You …” I managed. “It was you all along.”

“What choice did I have?” he asked. “I tried to be nice and nip things in the bud by warning you and all your fellow bargain bloggers that this money-saving, coupon-clipping rage had a dark, downside …”

Sure, some stores offer a free frozen turkey with $50 minimum purchase, but what they don't tell you is they're so deep frozen you could miss Thanksgiving waiting for the bird to thaw
…

There's nothing gained by buying off-brands. The kids don't like them, they scare off the parents, and chances are the treats will just end up in the trash
…

“By heckling on our websites?”

“I was hoping to poison your Frugarmy and advertisers with doubt.”

I, for one, plan to take a pass on tonight
…
The sound system is the only special addition that seems all that special. To be honest, this whole event smells of a scheme cooked up by you, your TV reporter husband, and Bargain Barn to line pockets with kickback dollars. Namely yours
…
Everyone knows the deals are way better online these days, anyway.

“Too bad no one took CC or any of the problems
she
raised about your dangerous advice seriously. Worse, when I gave Cathy an ultimatum—me or the bargain shopping—she cut back but still couldn't stop herself from the had-to-have deals she kept finding online.” He shook his head. “I finally realized I had no choice but take action.”

“Let me go,” I punched, scratched, and wondered how I could have been so stupid not to have thought about the fact that John was also of average height, build, and had dark hair.

Or that Cathy Carter had known everything about me, but CC hadn't even known Frank and I were separated.

Or that the spouse was always the initial suspect.

But not
my
spouse.

Particularly not with the help of my in-laws in a scenario too far-fetched even for a movie of the week, much less the plot of a campy crime drama. A plot centering around the bad guy standing or not standing in a flat-screen TV line.

Pathetic.

I grabbed a handful of John's brown hair and pulled as hard as I could.

He grabbed my wrists and forced me down the hallway.

“Where are you taking me?”

“You haven't seen Cathy's grocery stockpile yet,” he said. “You, of all people, will love it.”

“Please let me go,” I begged as he dragged me into the utility room like the sack of potatoes I was quickly becoming.

He kicked the door closed behind us.

“You're just like her,” he said, letting go of me with one hand and reaching for the yellow utility rope from the workbench beside him. “You just won't stop.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “All I ever wanted to do was help—”

“If you wanted to help me, you should have stayed out of the middle of it all.” He wrapped the rope around my waist. “I had everything planned so perfectly.”

As he looped the rope around the leg of the heavy workbench, I glanced at the small, single, barred window and tried, through my growing brain fog, to plan an escape.

“You don't have to do this,” I pleaded, wondering if he'd leave a tool that would enable me to get the bars off after he left me there. Would I even be able to squeeze my smaller-than-usual hips through the tiny, code-violating egress window?

“You did this to yourself.” He chuckled. “Really, so did Cathy when she insisted, on your advice, that we
pre-shop
for a few must-haves at Bargain Barn three days before the sale.” He tightened the rope, tied it, and stepped across the room toward a shelf filled with various brands of laundry soap, stain remover, cleaning supplies, and utility items like sponges. “I ended up doing a little advance work of my own.”

“Like finding a spot where you could climb up to the upper shelves without being seen?”

“That was the easy part,” he said fumbling around until he found what turned out to be a key. “Did you know they only keep their cameras trained on the easy-shoplifting aisles?”

“And you were caught on one of them,” I said, starting to slur. “Coming down.”

“From the back, and wearing a Bargain Barn polo like any other employee authorized to be on the upper shelves.” He chuckled. “Like Alan.”

“How did you get the employee shirt?”

“I saw it on a hook in the breakroom on my way to the bathroom. No one was around, so I snatched it and took it out to my car.” He shook his head. “While Cathy spent the next half-hour caught up in scoping out Black Friday pricing, I learned the layout of the store and where the various lines would be on Thursday night. All I really had to do after that was drive by Bargain Barn on our way home from Thanksgiving dinner, mention it might be nice to have the new TV and sound system she couldn't get early, and she practically jumped out of the car before I'd parked.”

“And then you lurked in the rafters until you had the perfect opportunity to push a double pallet on her?”

“Kind of ironic she met her end under a mountain of reduced-price toasters, don't you think?” He put the key into a padlock beside the shelf, twisted, and pulled open what appeared to be part of the concrete wall but was really a door. “Gotta love these Cold War– era houses.”

“A bomb shelter?” My voice was starting to sound gurgly even to me.

“Cathy called it her stockpiling Eden,” John said stepping inside and pulling on an overhead light to reveal a windowless room twice the size of my stockpile room. It was filled from floor to ceiling.

“I can't believe—”

“You know, I never realized just how out of control things really were until I went to Bargain Barn and saw how much the place resembled my basement.”

“So you had to kill her?”

“What was I supposed to do? Divorce her and split the debt?”

“And sell your half of the merchandise to recoup some of the losses.”

“First thing I looked into,” he said. “But the transaction costs of getting divorced outweighed any possible gains—at least according to Sandy.”

“Sandy?” My head felt like it had rope around it too.

“The woman who spoke at the memorial.”

“Cathy's telecommuting co-worker?”

“In a manner of speaking. She makes a living buying and selling on those auction websites you mentioned. They'd met because Cathy was buying from her. I went in to cut off Cathy's account, began to chat with her a little, and the rest, as they say …”

“You've been having an affair with Sandy?”

“Unconsummated until Cathy was gone. I'm not a cheater,” he said defensively.

Just a murderer
.

“Sandy is a minimalist,” he said dreamily. “She believes in saving money by not spending.”

My eyelids felt like they were holding tiny barbells. “So you planned this together?”

“What
I
planned was to get rid of my wife in an unfortunate shopping accident, collect the insurance money, and take Sandy, who had nothing to do with this, down to Ecuador or somewhere with fuzzy extradition laws and a low cost of living. I was going to enjoy the rest of my days sipping tropical drinks and living a modest, minimalist lifestyle—which, if you'll excuse me, is what I have to do now, way ahead of schedule.”

“What about me?” I asked, panicked but too drugged to feel.

“You, the constant thorn in my side?” He began to untie me from the leg of the workbench. “Who kept nosing around despite the warnings I had to go to the trouble to create on new and different email addresses? Who kept me from being able to sue on top of collecting insurance money by trying to help free the perfect scapegoat and perpetrator of bargaining madness, Alan Bader? Who's so relentless that you came over here and catapulted yourself right into the lion's den?” He grabbed the ends of the rope and began to drag me across the room. “I have the perfect plan for you.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“I don't need to,” he said, lifting me up by the rope still around my waist. “You're going to do it to yourself.”

“What the hell are you doing to me?”

“I'm banishing you to an eternity of canned and processed food bought using your very best couponing techniques,” he said strong-arming me into the stockpile room/bomb shelter. “Or at least until you get past the expiration dates.”

“You're not going to get away with this.”

“I already am,” he said. “You'll be out cold in a minute.”

The last thing I heard was the click of the door, the whoosh of a deadbolt, and the scraping sound of a shelf full of cleaning supplies being pushed in front of the already concealed entrance to the Carters' bomb shelter.

thirty

I woke up with
a pounding headache, a furry mouth, and an overwhelming feeling of utter despair.

I opened my eyes to complete darkness and remembered exactly why.

My first instinct was to cry, which I did for what felt like days, or at least hours. There was no knowing how long without the watch I'd given up as pointless in the age of cell phones.

My second instinct—which kicked in as soon as I realized crying wasn't going to change anything and that I might have forever to do just that—was to stand, adjust to balancing on my wobbly legs, and feel my way to what seemed to be the middle of the room. I put one foot in front of the other and walked slowly with one arm ahead of me and one arm raised in search of the overhead light cord.

Days or hours or minutes passed as I collided lightly (and sometimes not so lightly) with the shelves lining the walls—their mere existence the only thing keeping me from believing I wasn't trapped in a terrible hallucination.

I knew I was definitely living a nightmare that began with John Carter drugging me and admitting he'd killed Cathy, and ended with me locked in a basement bomb shelter.

Alone.

Surrounded by darkness.

My finger finally grazed cold metal.

The cord swung away into the blackness only to hit the back of my hand.

Twice.

I'd never felt so relieved as when I finally grasped the short string of tiny, cool, conjoined metal beads and pulled.

The room lit with blessed florescent light.

I began to cry again when I saw the shelves and realized that the stockpile was three times as extensive as I had imagined.

While the bottles of cooking oil, condiments, pasta, rice, and jars of pre-made sauce weren't going to do me much good, there were shelves filled with cereal, granola bars, peanut butter, applesauce, crackers, fruit snacks, pudding cups, and what looked to be an infinite supply of canned corned beef, ravioli, peaches, pears, soup, and the like—many with metal pulls.

Everything was dusted, labeled, and organized both alphabetically and by expiration date.

From looks of things I could survive a solid two years before …

I tried not to think about the passage of time, instead choosing to focus on the mountain of sports beverages, enhanced water, soda, and plain old water bottles amassed against the back wall.

John's plan for me was clear.

I was going to be a prisoner, living on processed food until I died from old age or overconsumption of artificial colors, food additives, and products containing corn syrup as their primary ingredient.

On the plus side, there were mass quantities of deodorant, feminine products, over-the-counter medications, antacids, shampoo, and body wash. More than I could ever use, particularly in the rusty but blessedly functional half-bath.

And paper towels.

I said a prayer aloud to Cathy for the lifetime supply of toilet paper.

_____

And a lifetime it so quickly became.

Luckily I found the pen and notepad Cathy kept in the room to track supply levels. To prepare for what I prayed would be my quick rescue, the first thing I did was recount John's entire confession before I forgot a single clichéd
you ain't seen nothin' yet
statement
.

Had I actually believed that my father-in-law, Gerald, could have penned those notes?

To stop from beating myself up about being so incredibly, fatally stupid that I'd walked right into my own prison, I also listed the reasons why I would surely be found any second:

My Cell Phone
—Once I was reported missing, the police would surely track my most recent whereabouts using cell phone towers and would soon figure out I'd stopped at or near the Carter house.

My Car
—Someone had to have seen my vehicle parked in front of the house and reported it to the authorities.

Frank, Griff, Detectives McClarkey and Ross, Anastasia, and even Alan
—All of them had to be looking for me. Someone was sure to put the pieces of my sudden disappearance together and connect it to John Carter. Somehow.

John Carter Himself
—At some point, someone besides me would have reason to contact him, discover he'd fled the country, and track him down in Ecuador or wherever it was he'd gone.

I was going to be rescued any time because I simply had to be.

I didn't allow myself to write down the one compelling reason I might never be found:

I was locked in a hidden concrete bunker concealed from view behind a shelf filled with household supplies.

_____

I started every day, or what I perceived to be a day (the time defined by careful conservation of my precious florescent light, toilet paper rolls, fruit roll-up wrappers, and empty cans and bottles) by doing push-ups and sit-ups, dusting the stockpile with Cathy's feather duster, appreciating something simple like the fresh and/or fruity scents of the health and beauty products, figuring out alternate uses for the growing wrappers, and penning Mrs. Frugalicious blog posts.

Posts I was saving up for later.

When I was free …

Posts that were necessarily shaped by my intimate experience with stockpiling and the tragic circumstances that led to said knowledge. But I also wrote them as hopeful and open-ended, in the hopes of someday interacting again with my Frugarmy.

Dearest Frugarmy,

We all know that while couponing saves us money and helps manufacturers and stores rid themselves of overstocked and feature products, extreme couponing can sometimes raise ethical questions. For instance, is it okay use a coupon specified for a certain size item on a smaller size to get a bigger discount?

Even though the grocery store computer may scan the discount because it's in the same product family, with a similar UPC, does that make it right?

I say it's both unethical and illegal to break the rules, even if the store accepts the coupon.

What do you think?

_____

Dearest Frugarmy:

Many of us store our goods, goodies, and deals in stockpiles generally in our basements or garages. While most couponers have a good grasp on how much to store to feed their families for a specific period of time, sometimes the high of scoring deals can cloud our better judgment.

If you feel you don't quite know when to stop or notice your stockpile is creeping out of your designated area and migrating to spots like your family room, your children's bedroom, or in closets alongside clothing, it may be time to set limits.

If you already have enough stockpiled deodorants to last a year, you don't need more just because you can get another 15 free with your coupons. If you have to buy them, don't keep them—donate to your local food banks. Do good with your couponing while keeping your stockpile from overtaking your home.

And your life.

_____

Dearest Frugarmy,

Are you spending 30–60 hours a week clipping coupons and shopping? If so, are you really saving your family enough to justify the time, or has bargain hunting become a serious fixation?

If you have any doubt about the answer, you may want to consider getting some professional help. Remember that having healthy finances isn't just about scrounging for opportunities to save money. Especially when those savings come at the expense of spending time with loved ones.

Obsessions can have serious effects on your marriage and family happiness. Don't let the thrill of scoring bargains turn into an addiction.

_____

And then there was the post I wrote not so much from the heart, but straight from my gut.

Dearest Frugarmy,

Are you putting your family's health at risk as a result of your couponing habits? While it feels fantastic to score a very big deal at precious little cost, how will it feel to your body? Even if it's free, does it make any sense health wise to stock the pantry with sugary soda, junk food, and cans of prepared food like chili that can contain 1000mg of salt per serving? Fresh produce may cost more but is money in the bank for your health. If coupons aren't available for fresh fruits and veggies, try frozen (particularly flash frozen, which retains more nutrients) instead of canned goods, which often contain preservatives and have lower nutritional value.

As they say, an apple a day.

What I would have given for an apple …

_____

As the granola bar wrappers, potato chip bags, and empty cans began to pile up, most recent expiration dates first, my blog titles began to reflect my growing despair.

Are You a Bargain Shopping Addict? Take This Quiz and See.

Surviving Coupon Hell

When Frugality Kills

And my lists simply morphed into page upon page of questions:

Why didn't I give more information to Griff, or Joe at Bargain Barn, or even FJ, so they'd have more to go on about where I might have gone?

How could I have been so stupid as to not suspect John Carter before it was too late?

When the label says
cheese food
, doesn't that mean it's not really cheese, which has to mean it's not really food, either?

Thanksgiving—will I ever get to enjoy the smell of roasting turkey or have Thanksgiving with the Michaels family, or anyone, again?

Will I ever see my kids again?

I penned messages of love and guidance to them, just in case:

Dear Eloise,

You have turned into a beautiful young woman, but you will always be my darling little girl. I hope you are taking good care of your dad and brothers and finding your path as an adult. With your appreciation for the finer things in life, you'll need to find a way to sustain the lifestyle you were, and would once again like to be, accustomed to. Some advice? Find a career you love and make it work for you. A good man will come along, but then you'll always be confident in what you yourself were able to create in the meantime.

I love you,

Maddie

_____

Dear Trent:

I know you will get a football scholarship and maybe even go on to the NFL. I am proud of how tough and strong you are. With all your physical abilities, please don't forget to exercise your mind just as hard in college and beyond. And keep your room clean.

I love you,

Mom

P.S. Marry a nice girl—and by nice, I don't just mean nice-looking.

_____

Dear FJ,

You are such a special soul—good at everything from football to theater to your knack for the computer. I only wish I had shared my suspicions with you, off as they were, about Cathy Carter's murderer. I know you'd have sent me in the right direction. I also know you will soar in college and beyond, no matter what career path you decide upon. I suspect there may be more than one—even simultaneously. Even though your father sometimes projects his own expectations onto you, we both know they don't always suit who you really are. You, of all people, must follow your heart, both professionally and personally, no matter what anyone else wants or expects.

I love you,

Mom

I saved the last page of the notepad to compose my note to Frank:

Dear Frank,

Even though I technically agreed to try and reconcile, I wasn't at all sure it was the right thing to do. Not for me, anyway.

I was still so suspicious of you, and your motives, and I got myself into this mess trying to get to the bottom of it all.

Which I did. The rock bottom.

If I've learned anything, it's that life is way too short and precious.

I forgive you.

Love,

Maddie

With no more notepad on which to write, I clicked off the light, rested my head on my makeshift toilet-paper-package pillow, and covered myself in long strips of paper towel to sleep away a few more endless hours.