She grinned. “That’s great. I only need a part-time job, because I’m going to college in the fall. I don’t think I could handle more than twenty or twenty-five hours a week.”
I nodded. “That’s a good number of hours that my mom can work with. She usually hires part-time help, and they usually work between twenty and thirty hours a week.”
She held her hand out to shake mine. “Shayna Gates. Pleased to meet you.”
I felt my eyes widen, and I hoped she didn’t notice. “Mia Jordan. Pleased to meet you.” I shook hands with her. “Oh, Shayna, do you have any experience in the candy-making business?”
She chuckled and shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. But I’ve worked at a diner, so I understand about handling food and being careful with it, and I used to work down at Betty’s Closet.”
Now was my chance. “Oh my gosh, did you hear that one of the employees at Betty’s Closet died?”
Her eyes went wide now, and she nodded. “Yes, Hailey Strong. We were best friends.” Her eyes teared up, and she looked away for a moment, then she turned back to me. “I just can’t get over it. I can’t imagine who would want to kill Hailey.”
“I’m not sure that I knew Hailey,” I said carefully. “But I can’t imagine anybody murdering under any circumstance.”
She nodded again. “What kind of crazy person would do something like that to her? I heard she was buried at the park. Who thinks of something like that? Why would they do that?”
I shook my head. “I wish I knew. So do you still work at Betty’s Closet?”
She shook her head. “No, I quit last Christmas. Things were just crazy down there. I hate to speak badly of a former employer, but the owner there, Betty Mays, is really difficult to work for.”
I thought she was probably telling the truth about Betty. There was something about her that suggested she was high maintenance, and I thought working for her probably wasn’t a lot of fun.
“What do you mean by difficult?” I asked.
She shrugged and glanced at the display case. “You just couldn’t make her happy. She was always complaining about everyone’s work and sometimes she would encourage animosity between the employees.” She looked at me. “Oh, sorry, I really shouldn’t be saying these kinds of things. You’re going to think I’m a terrible person and that I would be difficult to work with, but I swear I’m telling the truth.”
“It’s okay, some jobs aren’t so great. I’ve had a few of them in my past. How did she encourage animosity between the employees?” This was interesting. I wondered if Betty Mays had caused problems between Hailey and Shayna.
She sighed. “She would tell one person that one of the other girls was complaining about her when she wasn’t around. So, of course, that made them upset and they would go and confront the other girl, who of course, would say that she never said anything about her to begin with. We all finally got it worked out that Betty was just making things up at times. Not always, but sometimes.”
“I wonder why she would do that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Honestly, Betty Mays is just a high maintenance person.” She chuckled, but it sounded forced. “It seemed like she liked to stir up drama at work.”
I nodded. “So was Hailey still working there before she died?”
She nodded. “Oh yes, she’d been working there for a couple of years.” She glanced over her shoulder, but the candy store was empty besides the two of us. She turned back to me again. “Between the two of us, it wouldn’t surprise me if Betty had something to do with her death.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “Oh? Why do you say that?”
She shrugged again. “Maybe I shouldn’t say something like that. But there’s just something about Betty that I’ve never trusted. And she and Hailey had issues. You see, nobody knows about this except for me, but Hailey caught Betty cheating on her husband. And she held it over Betty’s head.” She frowned. “I told her she was going to regret doing that, but it didn’t stop her.”
I was shocked, to say the least. “How on earth did she catch her cheating on her husband?”
“She happened to run into her having dinner with some guy over in Truckee. I guess Betty thought she was safe since they were meeting out of town, but when she saw Hailey, she about fell over herself trying to come up with an excuse why she was there with this guy. Hailey said she probably wouldn’t have thought much of it except for the way that Betty acted. She started getting nervous and claiming that it was her cousin. The guy looked at her like she was out of her mind when she said it, and Hailey put two and two together and accused her the following day.”
“That’s crazy,” I said slowly. Maybe Hailey had died because she knew too much.
She nodded. “I told Hailey she was playing with fire and she needed to just drop the whole thing. I told her she should get another job someplace else because this wasn’t going to end well.”
“What did Hailey say to all of that?”
She sighed and her eyes teared up again. “She said she knew how to handle Betty Mays.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
She nodded. “You’re telling me. It was a crazy situation. And now, I just have to wonder about what happened. I wonder if Betty got tired of Hailey holding her secret over her head and did something about it.”
I was quiet a moment. “Maybe you should talk to the police about this.”
Her eyes went wide
