Mr. Selfridge was startled. “May I help you, young lady?”
She cocked her hips and jammed her fists against her sides, “Your employee stole my credit card!”
I’d spoken too soon. Never put it past Tiffany to do her very best to ruin my life.
Mr. Selfridge walked over to the counter. “I’m sorry,” he said to Tiffany, “what did you just say?”
“I said,” Tiffany huffed, “your employee stole my credit card.”
Mr. Selfridge leveled a look at me over his glasses.
I sighed. At least Tiffany was crazy, and it would only take a second to prove to Mr. Selfridge that I was innocent. I mean, why would I take Tiffany’s credit card? This was proof she had finally cracked.
“She must’ve taken it from my bag when she made me put it behind the counter,” Tiffany growled.
Mr. Selfridge raised his eyebrows at me.
“She’s crazy,” I laughed defensively. “I didn’t take her credit card.”
Tiffany slammed her bag on the counter, opened it, and wrestled with the contents inside like her bag was full of rabid chipmunks. Eventually, she pulled her wallet out. She opened it and presented the missing space. “See? I keep it right here. It’s gone.”
Tiffany had so many other cards of every sort in her wallet, it was like she was pointing at a lawn and accusing me of stealing a blade of grass.
More importantly, I didn’t steal it.
“How do you know you didn’t lose it someplace else?” I scoffed. “Maybe it fell out of your wallet. It’s probably in the bottom of your purse.”
Tiffany narrowed her eyes. “I looked,” she hissed.
“Look again,” I sneered.
Mr. Selfridge watched all of this with neutral interest.
“I didn’t take her credit card, Mr. Selfridge.”
“You’re such a liar,” Tiffany sneered.
Mr. Selfridge cleared his throat and said to Tiffany, “Perhaps you’d be willing to place the contents of your hand bag on the counter top, young lady?”
Tiffany glared rusty daggers at me. “Fine.” She up ended her bag and everything spilled out like a garbage truck emptying its load at the dump. I was surprised a cloud of dust didn’t billow up. How did she find anything in there? I thought my purse was bad.
Tiffany spread the contents out on the counter until it looked like landfill. “It’s not here,” she grunted.
“You’re sure you didn’t lose it someplace else?” Mr. Selfridge asked.
“Yes. I used it to pay for my museum ticket. I have the receipt right here.” Tiffany held the slip of paper up to show Mr. Selfridge. “See?”
Mr. Selfridge nodded. “And the card is not in your wallet?”
“No! Do you want me to pull out every credit card to prove it?”
“Yes, as I matter of fact, I do,” Mr. Selfridge said calmly. At least he was on my side in all this. “May I see your receipt from purchasing your museum ticket?”
Tiffany jammed it in his hand.
He examined it. “We’ll check the number on the receipt against the cards in your wallet.”
This was such a waste of time. Tiffany had run out of good ideas about how to ruin my day so she was grasping desperately at anything she could think of to piss me off. Whatever. I was over it and over her. She was a nuisance at best.
Mr. Selfridge meticulously matched the numbers on each card with the number on the receipt. When he was finished, he sighed and looked at me gravely. “I don’t see the card here anywhere. Could it be in your pockets?”
Tiffany laughed in his face. “Do I look like I have any pockets?” She motioned toward her tight dress. While it was true she had no pockets, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d shoved her credit card up her butt just to get me in trouble.
“Maybe you dropped it outside,” I suggested. Or threw it in the bushes or a garbage can on purpose.
Tiffany snarled, “I told you, she took it from my bag when I left it behind the counter while I toured the museum.”
Mr. Selfridge raised an eyebrow and folded his arms across his chest. He stroked his chin with one hand. “Samantha?” he asked expectantly.
“I promise, Mr. Selfridge,” I sighed, “I didn’t take it.”
“Check her bags,” Tiffany insisted. “She must have stolen it. Where else could it be?”
“This is crazy,” I said absently. “I didn’t take her credit card, Mr. Selfridge.”
“Do I have to call campus security?” Tiffany demanded.
Mr. Selfridge looked between me and Tiffany. He said, “The simplest thing to do, Samantha, is for you to turn out your own bag. If you didn’t take this young woman’s credit card, we won’t find anything, correct?”
“Yeah,” I said. I just hoped Tiffany didn’t demand a strip search after going through my book bag failed to turn anything up. “I’ve got nothing to hide.” I reached under the counter for my book bag and set it on the other side of the counter from Tiffany’s pile of crap. I didn’t want her claiming that her stuff had been in my bag. I pulled out my laptop and my books.
“What about the side pockets?” Tiffany demanded.
“I don’t have your credit card, Tiffany,” I said as I grabbed everything out of the side pockets and added it to the pile of my stuff on the glass counter. Amongst pens, my keys, a tube of lipstick, crumpled receipts, a nail file, an eyeliner pencil, two tampons, and twenty other things, was only my wallet. “See? No credit card.”
“Check her wallet,” Tiffany insisted to Mr. Selfridge, like I wasn’t even there.
“Do you mind, Samantha?” Mr. Selfridge asked.
“It’s not in my wallet.” I opened my wallet and showed it to both of them. “Do I have to go through every pocket?”
Tiffany gave me a dirty authoritarian look. “Yes, you do.”
“Fine.” I began peeling cards out of my wallet and slapping them down in a row on the counter. “MY Driver’s License,” SLAP! “MY SDU Student ID,” SLAP! “MY MasterCard,” SLAP! “MY Frequent Buyer’s Card for Bath & Body Works,” SLAP! “MY Debit Card,” SLAP, “and…”
SLAP.
Why was there a fancy black VISA card in my wallet?
Tiffany’s lips curled into a victorious smile. “That’s my card. Just like I thought. She took it.”
What? I glanced at the black VISA card. How had it gotten into my wallet?
Mr. Selfridge reached over and picked up the card and examined it closely. “You are Tiffany Kingston-Whitehouse, correct?”
Tiffany pulled her SDU student ID and her driver’s license out of her wallet, which Mr. Selfridge had never checked, and showed it to him.
Mr. Selfridge examined both, then looked at me over his glasses. “This doesn’t look good, Ms. Smith,” he muttered.
Why had Mr. Selfridge gone from calling me Samantha all the time to Ms. Smith all of a sudden? The answer was obvious. I had been framed by Tiffany Kingdumb-Sleazehouse and Mr. Selfridge thought I was a criminal.
“I told you she stole it,” Tiffany growled.
“Yes,” Mr. Selfridge sighed, “I’m afraid this doesn’t look good at all, Ms. Smith.”
And that was how I got fired from my job at the campus art museum.
If somebody had offered me a job working nude in a rat infested dungeon as a math tutor for convicted rapists, I would’ve gladly taken it.
Mr. Selfridge didn’t have a choice. It was academic policy at SDU that any student employed at an on-campus job would be terminated if caught stealing. Mr. Selfridge was very apologetic, but said that because of the evidence, he had to let me go.
The good news was that Tiffany had her credit card back, and I know I hadn’t used it to pay for anything. And I’m sure no one else had used it between the time it was sitting safely in her purse and mine.
The bad news was that Tiffany had filed an official grievance with the Dean.