Merchant Found Shot to Death in Beverly Hills Shop : Crime: The woman’s slaying is the fourth murder in the city since August. The victim was to receive an award from the Chamber of Commerce next Friday.

Police on Thursday were investigating the shooting death of a Beverly Hills clothing store owner, the fourth killing since August in a city where the homicide rate rarely tops two a year.

Sherry Morgan, 45, was shot and killed in her small Olympic Boulevard rental gown store Wednesday evening, not long after the second-floor shop’s 6 p.m. closing time, police said.

Morgan had been active in the Beverly Hills Women’s Network, a division of the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce, and was scheduled to receive the chamber’s first Woman in Business Advocate of the Year award next Friday.

“Sherry encouraged people to better themselves,” said Janet Rothstein, owner of a jewelry store near Morgan’s shop and a member of the Women’s Network. “She was upbeat, encouraging and had a positive spirit.”

Morgan’s death is the fourth homicide in Beverly Hills in four months. Among the most recent was the Oct. 2 murder of a gay rights activist visiting the area from Chicago. Police said Jon Simmons had been shot in the head by an unknown assailant in an alleyway behind a row of Beverly Hills mansions.

Police also are investigating the Sept. 6 murder and robbery of a Brinks guard in front of a Wilshire Boulevard bank and the Aug. 11 burning death of an alleged arsonist, a crime police are investigating as a homicide.

All the cases remain unsolved.

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“There are no patterns to these homicides,” said Lt. Frank Salcido of the Beverly Hills Police Department. “We’re concerned whenever we have a homicide, much less four in (four) months.”

Police discovered Morgan’s body about 7:35 p.m. inside Starlit Soiree, the shop she co-owned with her husband in an Olympic Boulevard strip mall.

Police said they were responding to a call from Morgan’s husband, Gordon, who told them that his wife had phoned to say she was leaving the shop at 6:30 p.m. but had not arrived at the couple’s Westside home by 7:30 p.m.

When police went to investigate, they found Morgan dead, lying on the floor behind the store’s counter. The store’s lights were on, its glass front door was unlocked and the shop did not appear to be ransacked, Salcido said.

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Mall retailers said police told them that Morgan had been shot once in the neck, but police would not confirm that information nor would they comment on the type of gun used in the slaying.

Morgan’s slaying stunned neighboring merchants in the two-story Beverly Hills Plaza mall.

“It’s really scary,” said Michele Matthews, a salon employee at Tamara de Beauty. “I’m afraid to tell my husband. He’s paranoid enough when I work late.”

Some merchants said they were puzzled why anyone would go to the trouble of robbing a rental gown store on the second floor of a mini-mall.

“There have been muggings and cars broken into and a woman was robbed out in the parking lot once,” one retailer said. “(But) we’ve always felt very secure up here on the second floor.”