by Lynn, JB
“I think we’re all trying,” she replied.
I took a second to really look at her, noting how she seemed to be glowing with happiness. Having Alicia back in her life had made a difference for her. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her so at peace.
“So …you and Doc?” I asked, trailing off, waiting for her to fill in the blanks.
“We’re serious,” she told me.
“I’m happy for you,” I said.
“Now we just have to get you married off, so you’re not the old maid of the family,” she joked.
“Oh, no worries,” I told her. “Aunt Leslie still holds that title.”
Marlene shrugged. “Maybe, but I’m not sure that’s going to be the case for long.”
I nodded. We both knew that Aunt Leslie was enamored with the girls’ teacher, Lorraine Lassalan.
“Have fun at the zoo,” I told her, patting her arm as I saw Griswald step out onto the porch and survey the area, obviously looking for me. “I’ve got to go.”
Nodding, she turned back to the car. I waved to the girls once more, and headed toward the house.
“Can you be ready to leave in about five minutes?” Griswald asked.
I nodded. “Let me just put the dog inside and change my shirt. Is there something special I should wear?”
“No,” he said with a chuckle. “But wait until you see Armani’s business-casual look.” Still laughing, he turned and went back inside the house.
I clenched my jaw, wondering what my flamboyant friend had decided business-casual at a lingerie shop looked like. She couldn’t look any more ridiculous than Loretta did. Hopefully.
I put DeeDee in my bedroom, changed my shirt, and checked on Benny, the little white mouse, to see how he was doing. “Do you need anything, buddy?”
“No. No. No,” he squeaked.
“What about you?” I asked God. “Do you want to come along for this assignment?”
“Well, it’s not like you can be trusted to do it on your own,” he said, diving back into my bra.
I didn’t see Armani on the way back out, something I was relieved about since it saved me from lying when she’d inevitably ask how she looked.
Griswald was quiet as we drove across town. “Let me do the talking,” he said as we pulled to a stop in front of an oversized McMansion.
“Okay with me,” I said, not even sure what I was doing there.
Together, we walked up to the front door, he rang the bell, and we waited. “Try to keep a poker face,” he muttered under his breath as the door swung open.
An older woman, in a navy power suit, greeted us crisply. “Come in.”
“I’m Lawrence Griswald, and this is Maggie,” Griswald said as we followed her inside.
“Of course you are,” the woman said. She stopped in the middle of her foyer and gave us both the once over.
I got the distinct impression that she did not approve of my sneakers, jeans and peasant blouse, but I managed to keep my expression neutral.
“We’re not going to bother to sit down,” she told us haughtily. “You won’t be here for that long.”
I slid a sideways gaze at Griswald and saw that he was equally impassive. I guess that was part of one of his job skills as a U.S. Marshal, to let his face reveal nothing.
“How can we help you, ma’am?” Griswald asked.
“Mrs. Hallangen,” she corrected sharply.
He dipped his head.
“I need you to find my husband,” she told us, anger making her tone strident.
6
Griswald was shaking his head. He’d been shaking his head for the entire time that we’d been in the car driving back from Mrs. Hallangen’s home.
“This is a first for me,” he muttered for the third time.
“Do you think it’s even possible to do?” I asked. For a while, I’d just let him rant, but now that he seemed a bit calmer, I decided that we could actually enter into a conversation about the case we had just taken on.
“How should I know?” he asked. “My job is to deal with living people. Not find a woman’s dead husband.”
“Especially one who’s been cremated,” I add with a chuckle.
Hearing my amusement, he glanced at me sideways. “It is kind of ridiculous.”
“It is,” I replied, dissolving into giggles. I’d been working so hard to keep my poker face in place when Mrs. Hallangen had insisted that we find her dead husband’s ashes, that I had to release some of my amusement.
Griswald began to laugh, too. “This is not how I imagined my retirement going.”
I didn’t ask him how imminent his retirement was, I just sat there and laughed.
“Maybe we shouldn’t tell Susan about this,” he suggested.
I nodded. I could just imagine what Aunt Susan would have to say about searching for ashes.
As we pulled into the driveway of the compound, we saw a man walking toward the buildings.
“Is that?” Griswald began.
“It could be Thurston,” I said hopefully.
As we pulled closer, I realized my wish had not come true. It was my father, Archie Lee, walking toward the house.
“Here comes trouble. Literally,” Griswald muttered, pulling alongside him. He stopped the car and I hopped out.
“Hi, Dad,” I said with false cheer. It usually wasn’t a good thing when my father came calling.
“Maggie May,” he beamed.
Griswald climbed slowly out of his car and stared over the roof at the man I was talking to. “Archie.”
Dad nodded his head in acknowledgement. “Marshal Griswald.”
“Is there something that you need?” Griswald asked. All traces of his previous laughter were gone. My father usually had that effect on him. After all, he was a lifelong professional criminal.
“I was hoping to talk to my daughter,” Archie said carefully. “If that’s okay.”
“Sure,” I said.
Griswald gave me a questioning look, and I could see that he wanted to warn me to be careful. He didn’t trust my father. Not that I could blame him, but recently my dad’s been a much better person than he had been for most of his life, so I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in this situation.
Griswald got back into his car and drove away, leaving Dad and I standing in the driveway.
“You look tired,” he said.
I nodded. “I am.”
“How are the girls?” he asked, inquiring after his granddaughters.
I smiled. “They’re good. They’re not here right now. They went to the zoo with Marlene and Doc.”
He nodded. “Good, good. It’s great that they’ve got a normal life.”
“Except for the fact somebody’s trying to kill them,” God muttered from my bra.
Dad shook his head at the squeaking sound, but didn’t comment on it.
“What’s going on?” I asked him, knowing well that I should not ask if there was something he needed help with.
“I’m looking for a job,” he said, looking away and kicking the ground awkwardly.
“A job?”
He nodded. “A legit job.”
I squinted at him suspiciously. My father wasn’t known for taking real jobs. Then again, I seem to be following in his footsteps, considering the closest thing I had to job was having been hired to find somebody’s ashes.
“I was wondering if you could talk to your aunt for me,” he asked hesitantly.
I shook my head. “Susan isn’t hiring anybody.”
He laughed, throwing back his head. “As if that witch would ever hire me for anything, even if she was,” he said with more than a hint of bitterness.
“Please don’t call her that,” I requested quietly. I knew my aunt and dad shared a less-than-stellar history, but that didn’t give him the right to call her names. After all, she’d been the steadiest adult influence in my life.
He shrugged an apology. “I meant Loretta. I was thinking maybe she could hire me to work
at her underwear store.”
I stared at my dad, who looks a lot like Santa Claus, wondering what he thought he could do at The Corset. Then again, she had recently hired Soulful & Sinful, a pair of singers in drag to work there, so what did I know?
I shrugged. “I can ask her,” I said carefully. “But I can’t make any guarantees. For one thing, I don’t know if she’s hiring, and for another…”
“Loretta always liked me,” he said with confidence.
I bit my tongue, not pointing out that Loretta pretty much liked every single straight man on the planet.
“Do you have any special job skills I should tell her about?” I asked.
“I could stock shelves,” he said. “And I think I’d be good working with the public. I’m a natural salesman.”
I shrugged. This whole keeping a poker face thing was coming in very handy. My dad wasn’t great with people. He thought he was a conman, but he really ended up getting caught more times than he’d succeeded in pulling off his jobs. Now, Templeton, him I could see as a successful conman. I didn’t say any of this to my father. I just said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
“I appreciate that, Maggie May.”
“How did you get here?” I asked curiously.
“Ian brought me,” he said. “He went down to visit with Susan. I figured I wouldn’t be welcome there so I’ve just been pacing the length of the driveway waiting for you to get home.”
“You could have called,” I reminded him. “It would have been a bit more--”
“I wanted to see you, Maggie May,” he said. He opened his arms. “I was hoping to get a hug.”
Nodding, I stepped into his embrace and was rewarded with a tight squeeze.
“You’re family, Maggie May,” he murmured into the top of my head. “You know I’d do anything for family, right?”
I nodded. I would, too. That’s what had gotten me in so much trouble.
7
After taking a little while to visit with my half-brother, Ian, and Aunt Susan, I decided to see what I could do for my dad. I couldn’t ever remember him even wanting a legitimate job before, so I felt like it was my obligation to try to make it happen for him.
“See?” God said as I drove toward Loretta’s shop. “Perhaps a leopard can change its spots.”
“You do know that’s not biologically possible, right?” Piss teased. She had decided to come along for the ride to The Corset.
“It’s a figure of speech,” God told her haughtily.
“I know that,” Piss said. “What I don’t think, is that Archie Lee can really change his ways.”
I glanced over at the cat who, for once, was riding shotgun since DeeDee wasn’t along to claim the front seat.
“I mean, I hope he has, for your sake, sugar,” she purred. “But in all my days, I’ve never seen such a thing happen.”
“She does have a point,” God admitted.
“I have to give him the chance,” I told them both. “He did come back for me when the Bed & Breakfast was going to explode.”
“True,” God agreed. “Definitely a point in his favor.”
As we pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall where The Corset is housed, I saw a familiar figure skulking between the cars. “Is that Templeton?”
God, who was perched on the dashboard, confirmed my observation. “It is.”
“What is he doing?” I asked, pulling into the nearest spot and putting the car into park so that I could watch him more closely.
“Maybe he’s going to steal a ride,” Piss suggested.
“That’s ridiculous,” God said. “He’s a conman, and a lousy poker player, he’s not a car thief.”
I figured the lizard was probably right, but Templeton was definitely acting very strangely, walking through the rows of cars half crouched over.
“Maybe he’s watching the singers,” God suggested. He flicked his tail in time with the beat of the music that we could hear being played in front of Loretta’s lingerie shop. The two singers, Soulful and Sinful, dressed in drag, were singing a version of Mockingbird, to a couple that was dancing along to the music. Soulful had bongo drums hanging from a strap around her neck, and was keeping the beat. The duo really was quite talented. Both had nice voices and the duet showed them off, even though they were singing slightly different lyrics than what I imagined James Taylor and Carly Simon had sang.
As they sang, and the couple danced, a small crowd gathered to watch the show. Templeton kept creeping between the cars.
“Maybe he’s spying on his beloved,” God suggested.
I shook my head. “Why would he bother doing that? He always knows what Loretta is up to.”
“You think you know what Loretta is up to,” God said. “You never know what kind of secrets people are keeping.”
“Secrets,” Piss purred. “They are what makes the world go ‘round.”
I frowned at her. “This from the one who won’t even tell me what her name is.”
She squinted at me with her one good eye. “I didn’t realize that was still something you wanted to know.”
“I got tired of asking you,” I confessed. “If you don’t want me to know, you don’t have to tell me. I love you just the way you are.”
“Aww, sugar,” she said, reaching out to knead my thigh with her claws. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her nails were digging into me, instead, I just gritted my teeth against the pain and rubbed the top of her head.
“Are you going to sit in the car all day?” God asked. “I thought the whole idea of hurrying right over here was so that you could be gone before the news crew shows up.”
“You’re right,” I said, patting the cat one more time and holding out my palm for the lizard to hop on to.
He jumped onto my hand and ran up my arm to my shoulder. “Geronimo!” he yelled, diving into my bra.
“We won’t be long,” I promised the cat.
“And I won’t go anywhere,” she murmured.
I got out of the car, glanced in the direction Templeton had been, and realized he was no longer there. I scanned the parking lot but could not find Loretta’s other half.
The crowd watching Soulful & Sinful erupted into a smattering of applause. I joined them, even though I was halfway across the lot.
“Try to be quiet,” I begged the lizard as I hurried across the asphalt. “There’s going to be a lot of people around.”
“As if I’m not always the epitome of discretion,” he huffed.
I rolled my eyes. He really wasn’t. Still, this wasn’t the time to argue with him. I waved to Soulful & Sinful, skirted around the crowd, and entered The Corset.
Here’s the thing, whenever you’re walking into a lingerie shop, that has more than its fair share of sex toys, you never know what you’re going to see. I’m always braced for something unusual.
But I wasn’t ready for this.
Aunt Loretta was making out with someone. And that someone wasn’t Templeton.
“Loretta!” I shouted in a tone that reminded me so much of Aunt Susan that I winced.
Guiltily, my aunt sprang apart from her snogging partner.
“Is that you Maggie?” she asked breathlessly.
“You know it’s me,” I said. “Even if you do have your dangling spiders blocking your vision.”
The short man, wearing glasses and a smarmy smile, whom she’d been locked in a passionate clench with, waved at me. I flipped him the bird in response.
His eyebrows practically lifted off his head.
“I like Templeton,” I announced to anyone who was listening.
“What does that have to do with anything?” God asked, unable to see what was going on since he was down my shirt. I was jealous that he had not witnessed Loretta’s indiscretion.
“This is none of your business, Maggie,” Loretta warned.
“Don’t fight with her,” God urged. “You’r
e not here to fight with her, you’re here to get your father a job.”
“I’ll see you at home,” I told Loretta, spinning on my heel and rushing right back out of the shop. I almost knocked over Soulful, or maybe it was Sinful, on my way. Muttering an apology, I made a beeline back to the car. I was only halfway there when I saw Templeton, looking heartbroken.
8
Templeton’s gaze locked on mine for a brief moment. I saw the aguish in his eyes and my stomach clenched in sympathy. Then, he turned away and began striding across the lot as though he needed to put as much distance between us as possible.
“Templeton,” I called after him. He raised his hand in a wave but didn’t stop and didn’t look back.
God scrambled out of my shirt, pulling himself up on my bra strap. “What on earth is going on?”
“Loretta was tonsil-dueling with some random guy,” I muttered bitterly. “And I think Templeton saw.”
“Oh,” God murmured. “This could be bad.”
“You think?” I asked.
I turned in the direction of my own car and began to walk toward it. “Why can’t she just settle down and pick one guy to be with?”
“Says the woman that has three or four men vying for her attention at any time,” God reminded me.
“Nobody’s vying,” I said.
“Uh huh,” God replied noncommittally.
“And we’re not talking about me,” I reminded him. “Poor Templeton.”
“Maggie!” a gravelly voice called from just behind me. Startled, I turned to find Jack Stern, Armani’s boyfriend, striding toward me.
“Oh, hey, Jack,” I said. “I didn’t know you were back in town.”
What I didn’t say, was that I wasn’t thrilled that the crime reporter was back in town. The argument we’d had about whether my friend RV had committed murder the last time I’d seen him still bothered me.
“You don’t look happy to see me, Maggie,” Jack said.
I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or if he could really pick up on my hostile feelings. I shrugged. “It’s not you. I’ve got other things going on.”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” he said. “I go away, and you seem to be embroiled in one thing after another.” He crossed his arms over his chest and gave me a hard look. I did my best not to squirm. I like Jack, but I am not a fan of the fact that he’s an investigative reporter who could, if he figured anything out about me, blow my life right out of the water.
