“No.”
“Block you physically?”
“No.”
“Threaten arrest?”
“She said she would call police.”
“Did she actually call?”
“No.”
“Any financial loss?”
“No.”
“Emotional?”
Diana looked at Rachel.
“That’s a lawyer question.”
“It is.”
“Yes.”
Rachel nodded.
“Thank you.”
Naomi interviewed employees separately.
Kevin went first.
Then Ashley.
Then Marcus.
Then other sales associates.
The store videos were copied under legal hold.
Point-of-sale logs were preserved.
Customer complaints from the previous year were gathered.
Patricia was asked to provide a written statement through HR rather than communicate directly with staff.
By noon, the investigation had already moved beyond Diana’s experience.
One sales associate named Leila Morgan described a pattern.
“Patricia calls certain customers ‘lookers.’”
Naomi asked:
“What does that mean?”
“People she thinks won’t buy.”
“How does she decide?”
Leila hesitated.
“Clothes. Car. Sometimes age.”
“Race?”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
Naomi did not react.
“What happens?”
“She tells us not to spend too much time.”
“Exact words?”
“Things like, ‘Don’t burn forty minutes on a three-hundred-dollar customer.’”
“Anything else?”
Leila stared at the table.
“Sometimes she says ‘tourists’ when she means Black customers.”
Naomi wrote it down.
Another employee mentioned a private spreadsheet Patricia kept tracking average transaction size by salesperson.
There was nothing inherently wrong with the spreadsheet.
The notes column was the problem.
Several customers were categorized with comments such as:
LOW VALUE.
WINDOW SHOPPER.
LIKELY FINANCING.
NO LUXURY PROFILE.
One line read:
DO NOT OPEN AURORA UNLESS QUALIFIED.
Rachel asked:
“Qualified how?”
Nobody could identify a formal policy.
A review of company standards confirmed there was none.
Luminous required identity verification for certain transactions, additional paperwork above regulatory thresholds, and secure procedures for unusually high-value purchases.
It did not require customers to show bank balances before viewing merchandise.
Not at Beverly Hills.
Not anywhere.
By late afternoon, Naomi found three prior customer complaints involving Patricia personally.
All had been closed at store level.
That concerned Diana.
“Who closed them?”
Naomi answered.
“Patricia.”
Diana stared.
“She responded to complaints about herself?”
“The old workflow allowed store managers to close low-severity service tickets.”
“Change it.”
Rachel raised a hand.
“After review.”
Diana nodded.
“Fine.”
She hated being corrected.
Which was why she employed people willing to do it.
“Review it today.”
The first complaint came from a Latino man who had entered wearing work clothes and asked about a watch for his wife.
He wrote that the manager repeatedly directed him toward lower-priced items until he mentioned he owned a construction company.
The second came from two young Black women who said they were followed around the bridal cases and asked repeatedly whether they needed help finding a “more affordable” collection.
The third was from a white college student who said Patricia dismissed him until his mother arrived wearing recognizable designer clothing.