The Yoga Store Murder (14 page)

“OK,” the trainer responded. “I hope all will go well with your friend.”

Two hours later, she took a Budokon Flow & Flexibility yoga class in Bethesda and met a guy she was dating for coffee.

Brittany was burning candles at every end—work, exercise, barhopping, debts, babysitting her nephews, responding to Craigslist ads. She managed to communicate with at least five men interested in her, juggling those she met in person and had a romantic interest in with those she met online.

“How’s your rainy day off going?” asked a man named Rick. “Not too bad,” Brittany answered. “Definitely didn’t get much done. Didn’t want to be out in this weather. How’s your day?”

“Yeah, also a bit lazy at work,” Rick said. “I need to hit the gym after taking the weekend off. Maybe you can give me a personal training session!”

“I would love to,” she texted back to Rick.

The two talked logistics for that night. “Unfortunately I do have a roommate so could only host if it’s during the day,” Brittany wrote. The two made tentative plans for Brittany to take the subway to a bar where they’d meet for a drink. Rick would then drive her to his home in Potomac, a suburb farther out from the city beyond Bethesda, and take Brittany back to the subway station.

“That works for me,” Brittany said. “What time do you typically get off?”

Seven minutes later Brittany received a text from her mom, who signed off with a family nickname. “Hey! Where Are You? I’m missing you. Just call, e-mail, g-mail, text, fax, Western Union, or just plain write a letter. Love You, Sparky.”

Brittany didn’t text her mother back, instead typing out a question to Rick: “Well, how do you want to do this?”

Three hours later they met at a bar called Clyde’s in the upscale Friendship Heights area just south of Bethesda, touching off a night that had Rick checking in the next day. “Fun time last night. Getting distracted thinking about it at work.”

By then Brittany was back in the store and didn’t text him back. Instead, she wrote to two close friends, saying she was feeling down. “It’s been such a long day.” One of them offered to drop by the store. “Yah! I’m here ’til 5.”

Four days later, Brittany made plans to meet up with Bobby from Craigslist, asserting she was interested in a long-term relationship. “To be completely honest, I’m a normal girl. Can’t believe I answered an ad on CL, but seems like something really good can come out of it. I can definitely have a freaky side, so am pretty sure you won’t be disappointed in that area. But also really hope that we connect even in a nonsexual way. I don’t have any hidden agendas. Am just a younger woman with goals/dreams and could use financial assistance.”

Bobby appeared smitten. “I can tell you have a great heart. You make mine pitter patter.”

“I really hope I have the pleasure of meeting you,” Brittany wrote. “Kind of giving me butterflies.”

Brittany’s fitness regimen continued at full speed. With lulu freighting the cost of health-club visits, she avoided the personal trainers. “Still in NY,” she wrote from D.C., continuing that saga of the car accident. “My girlfriend went into a coma two days ago. Not looking good. Just trying to stick around for any changes.”

“Sorry to hear about condition of your friend. Stay strong and I’ll send a few prayers for her.”

Two hours later, Brittany was out with a friend, club hopping into the morning hours.

*

On March 4, 2011, Courtney Kelly worked a shift at lulu, placing her bag next to Brittany Norwood’s on one of the big orange chairs in the stockroom. Inside was her wallet, with $13. That night, at a friend’s house, Courtney took out her wallet for the first time all day and found just $3. The only thing that made sense was that a coworker had stolen the $10. Yet that made no sense. Why slip into someone’s bag for such a meaningless amount? Some kind of thrill? And who among her coworkers would have done so? She reviewed everyone she’d worked with on Friday. They’d all been in and out of the stockroom. None of them seemed capable of it.

Courtney’s next shift was on Monday. She approached an assistant store manager. “This is going to sound strange, but I have money missing,” Courtney said.

“Tell me you’re kidding,” the manager said.

“I’m not kidding.”

“You’re the third person to report something.”

The manager called up a computer screen in front of her that showed who’d been working that Friday. “Shit,” she said, turning to Courtney and pausing. “I can’t tell you.”

Later, another manager called up the same screen for Courtney to see, pointing to Brittany’s name. The same Brittany who knocked out push-ups with customers, who joked about their shared taste in bagel sandwiches?

“Really?” Courtney said. “No. Really?”

The next day, one of the store’s assistant managers had Brittany sign her “pramana lululemon U.S. Employee Handbook Acknowledgment” form, something she’d been late in doing. The form bound her to lululemon’s Code of Business Conduct and its Ethics and Integrity Program. While the company used the yoga term
pramana
, which loosely translated to “obtaining knowledge,” the form Brittany signed was standard fare in the world of retail: “I acknowledge that lululemon has the right to end my employment with or without cause or without notice.”

On Wednesday, March 9, the store’s management team held its regularly scheduled meeting. Six people attended, including Courtney, who had recently been promoted, and Jayna Murray. The store manager walked the group through a number of housekeeping matters. Then she brought up three separate incidents: the missing perfume, the missing $10, and $60 previously reported missing from the wallet of another worker. Brittany Norwood had worked all the shifts where items had gone missing. There was one more telling clue, which one of the supervisors spoke up about: just days before, she had looked inside Brittany’s bag after a shift as per standard procedure—lulu workers employed bag checks, as was typical retail practice—but what was noteworthy was that she’d seen a bottle of Vera Wang perfume in Brittany’s bag. It meant little to the supervisor at the time, but now, hearing about the missing bottle, she thought the two could be connected.

The whole thing was bizarre. Why would Brittany steal items of relatively small value? And why would she bring one of them back into the store, knowing about bag checks? It was as if she got a thrill out of it. As a store manager, Rachel was one of the few people outside the Georgetown lulu store who knew about Brittany’s dustup over “Shop Night” there, and told the group about the backstory. “The reason why Brittany left Georgetown was because she closed two nights in a row and money was missing,” she said.

The group’s conclusion was that they had among them a petty thief willing to destroy the trust everyone had with each other, not a dangerous criminal. But what if Brittany was stealing merchandise as well? That would make the whole store look bad, since they were ultimately judged for keeping track of inventory.

With no interior security cameras, and no eyewitnesses, the managers didn’t feel that they could go to the police. Besides, it was their store, their problem, and they were going to figure out a way to solve it. They discussed ways to catch Brittany. Maybe they could buy a nanny-cam, one of them suggested, only half kidding.

*

That same week, things had picked up for Brittany. Equinox, a high-end health club two blocks from the store, granted her an initial interview to be a fitness trainer. It’d be a foot in the door ahead of the official personal-trainer certification she was expecting soon. The first interview went well, and Brittany looked forward to being called in for a second one.

On Thursday, March 10, she walked up from her basement apartment to house-sit for her sister Marissa while a serviceman installed windows. Their sister Candace called to say she expected a long day in the operating room, and asked Brittany if she could pick up her two boys at school. Brittany agreed, looking forward to seeing her nephews after not having done so for two weeks. Brittany sent a text to Marissa, saying she would bring Candace’s sons back to her house: “Your friends will be here when you get home tonight.”

Brittany remained close with her older sisters. Just four days earlier, they had eaten brunch and looked for a wedding dress for Marissa, whose marriage was set for the end of the year. Now, alone in Marissa’s town house, Brittany checked her e-mail. The Equinox fitness manager had just sent one: he wanted Brittany to meet with the health club’s general manager on Monday. Elated, Brittany dashed off a text to the friend who worked at the club and had helped set up the initial visit.

“I have an interview Monday!!!!!!!” Brittany wrote. “I’m sooooooo excited and just as equally nervous!”

“Ha, you shouldn’t be nervous. You killed it yesterday and have such a great personality.”

“I owe you big time.”

“Oh please you did it all yourself.”

Brittany headed out from Marissa’s place to pick up her nephews, walking to catch a bus in the driving rain. She again texted her health-club friend, offering to buy the friend’s sister something from lulu with her store discount. “Find out what your sis’ wants and let me know.”

When Brittany got off the bus, it was still raining as she walked to the school. She got the boys, and the three left in a taxicab. Brittany took them to an Italian place for dinner. Checking her phone, she could see a text from a guy she liked, who wanted to see if they were still getting together on Sunday. Yes, Brittany said, adding that she was out with her nephews. “My food was horrible, but I knew my nephews would eat pizza and pasta.”

“Pizza always saves the day with kids,” the guy said.

“Who’re you telling!” Brittany fired back.

*

That same Thursday night, Jayna had dinner inside her condo with her friend from undergraduate days, Marisa Connaughton, the woman she’d prompted to answer the phone when her ex-boyfriend called so soon after their breakup and who’d first shown her a lululemon bag. The two normally ate together on Friday nights, but Jayna had swapped shifts with a coworker who wanted to leave town for the weekend to go see her boyfriend. Dining on leftovers and a $5 bottle of Merlot, the longtime friends talked about their dwindling days in Washington. Marisa was moving with her fiancé to Atlanta, and Jayna would soon join her boyfriend in the Seattle area. They talked about the remaining places in Washington they wanted to see and cross off their list. But both felt good about where they were headed. Jayna spoke a little bit about work, how the store was currently understaffed. Indeed, instead of the normal three people working late the next night, there would be only two.

*

When Brittany woke up the next morning, Friday, March 11, the warm and fuzzy feelings she always got from spending time with her nephews gave way to something else. At 6:53 A.M., she visited the first of seven Craigslist offerings. “Spring Breakers where are you?” the listing read. “I need some fun and am generous.” Brittany sent a message to Bobby, the man who earlier had called her his Craigslist princess. “Are we still on for this weekend?” Brittany asked.

Wanting to exercise before her shift started at 3:00 that afternoon, Brittany left her apartment for Crunch Fitness, a gym with the industrial decor of a stylish dance club. She walked to the rear classroom, with its wooden floors, cement columns, exposed ductwork, and mirrors on three walls. Brittany wiggled into a hammock-like sling hanging from the ceiling for an “aerial yoga” class. The suspended positions allowed everyone to twist and move into all kinds of contortions. After the class, Brittany sent a text to coworker Eila Rab, who was supposed to have met her there. “Urrggh, I can’t believe u stood me up!!!!” But Eila was waiting for her in the health club’s lobby. “Since I missed class, why don’t we go to lunch?” she said.

They headed off to the Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery in Bethesda, about seven blocks away from lululemon. Brittany ordered a beer with her food, and spoke about wedding-dress shopping with her engaged sister—and how she was enjoying living the experience vicariously. “It’s so much fun,” Brittany said. As for lululemon, she said she didn’t feel she had much chance for advancement there. “If I get this job at Equinox, I want to cut back my hours at lulu.”

“That seems like what you want to do,” Eila agreed.

The two finished lunch and walked six blocks to get manicures and pedicures at Blue Zen, a salon one block from the yoga store.

*

Jayna also was scheduled to start her shift at 3:00 P.M., but she left her apartment around noon, wanting to get there early to help with what she figured to be a typical Friday afternoon surge of customers. On the drive over, she spoke by phone to her good friend Rudy Colberg, her salsa dance partner from the Semester at Sea college program. Rudy also was getting his MBA, at the University of Michigan, and had earlier passed his CPA exam. Jayna wanted to set up a time over the weekend to double-check her tax forms. “I want to make sure I am paying my fair share,” Jayna said. As she got close to the store, she told him she’d call him on her way home.

In the store, Jayna and Courtney spoke privately about Jayna having to work alone with Brittany later. “I have to close with the thief tonight,” Jayna said. “Do you think I will catch her?”

*

At Blue Zen, 3:00 P.M. was fast approaching as the beautician finished up Brittany’s toes and fingers. Brittany asked her to spray them with a drying enhancer. She hustled out, flip-flops still on, walking down the cobblestoned Bethesda Lane, lined with its boutique dress shops, a French bakery, and a restaurant that offered house-made duck prosciutto and $17 cheeseburgers. Brittany walked by a line already forming outside the Apple Store for the prized iPad 2, set to go on sale that night at 5:00 P.M.

Once inside lululemon, she walked about with her fingers outstretched because the polish was still drying, then changed into a pair of running shoes. Four other saleswomen were working, though soon they started clocking out for the day. One of them, DePaul mathematics graduate Chioma Nwakibu, lingered a bit, speaking with Jayna about how her parents didn’t understand why she was working retail. To Chioma, lululemon was much more than a store: it was a place that encouraged self-development and a chance to advance up into a corporation. Jayna agreed, and told her she was impressing all the managers. “Thank you for listening to me,” Chioma told Jayna by text after leaving.