“Yes, she work today,” she answered in a thick Russian accent. I had a feeling that at one time in her life, she’d been on the other side of the counter, doing the buying, not the selling. That’s the way it is at Bloomingdale’s. The place seems to be staffed with women, like Ginny and this Russian dame, who’ve fallen on hard times.

“You like this?” she asked, holding up a two-hundred-dollar crystal and pearl necklace. “It will look marvelous on you, I can tell.”

I did like it. A lot. But I couldn’t afford it.

“Sorry, no. I don’t think so.”

“Come on. We just try on. For fun.”

But I was strong. No frivolous expenses.

I walked away from the necklace without a backward glance, feeling quite proud of myself.

But as long as I was in Bloomie’s, I figured I might as well stop off for a lipstick. I was almost at the bottom of my current tube of Frosted Bronze, and I really needed another. So I headed over to the cosmetics counter, where a woman who looked like she could’ve been the former Shah-ette of Iran asked if she could help me.

“I need a lipstick,” I said, firm in my resolve not to spend a dime more than I had to. “That’s all. Just a lipstick.”

Twenty minutes later, I walked away with three hundred dollars worth of cosmetics.

I know, I’ve got the backbone of an egg noodle. But the Shah-ette swore to me that my Magic Restorative Eye Crème would make my fine lines and wrinkles disappear in a matter of weeks. And the way I saw it, I was saving money. When you think of the thousands of dollars it would have cost to have an eye job from Hal Kingsley, I was actually being very frugal.

Vowing to spend not a penny more, I headed straight for the hosiery department to see if Ginny had returned.

Okay, so I didn’t head straight for the hosiery department. I made a quick pit stop at the Eileen Fisher boutique, where I dropped another fifty bucks on a cotton pullover. But once again, I was saving money, since the pullover had been marked down from $135. If I kept this up, I’d be saving thousands of dollars in no time.

Thankfully, I didn’t keep it up. I tore myself away from Eileen Fisher and went downstairs to talk to Ginny. But she was still nowhere in sight. Once again, I was reminded of how easy it would have been for her to slip out of the store on her break and drive over to SueEllen’s. But if she’d been on her break, wouldn’t someone have remembered, and told the police? And wouldn’t she have to clock in and out?

These were the questions I mulled as I left the store and headed for the parking garage. But I stopped mulling in front of Tiffany’s. Because that’s where I saw Ginny coming out of the store, arm in arm with Hal Kingsley.