by Josie Belle
“I think Sam is right,” Claire said. She pushed her rectangular glasses up on her nose. “You may find that the poor man died of natural causes, which would make the house perfectly fine to live in.”
“Yeah, except for the moaning, door slamming and random lights going out,” Ginger said. “I say sell it, no matter what. Better yet, march over to Marcy Hayes’s office and tear that contract up right in her face.”
Maggie had thought about doing just that but with her luck, Marcy would have her arrested by her own fiancé. That was a thought too embarrassing to contemplate.
When the door opened again, Maggie was relieved. With all of the Good Buy Girls here it had to be a customer. She put on her best smile and turned to face the door. Her smile fell faster than a brick off a tall building when she realized who was standing in her shop, looking like she owned the place.
“What?” Summer asked. “Can’t a gal be neighborly?”
Yeah, the last time Summer had tried to be neighborly, she’d been pushed by her mother to try and steal Sam away from Maggie with every trick in the book, including having Maggie walk in on them in a seedy motel on the outskirts of town. Since Summer had married Tyler Fawkes, she had seemed to turn over a new leaf, but still, a lifetime of enmity was a hard thing to shake off.
“What can I do for you, Summer?” Maggie asked. She was pleased that her voice came out cordial instead of filled with hostility and suspicion.
Summer tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder and smoothed the front of her sundress. Marriage had also toned down Summer’s usual woman-on-the-prowl look a notch or two and it occurred to Maggie that if she was meeting Summer for the first time she wouldn’t consider her a she-devil. At least not right away.
“It’s not what you can do for me, but what I can do for you,” Summer said.
Maggie gave her a sideways look and noticed that Ginger, Joanne and Claire were doing the same.
“How do you figure?” Maggie asked.
“I saw that woman with Sam,” Summer said. “She’s trouble.”
“No, she isn’t,” Maggie said.
“Excuse me?” Summer gaped. “Did you see her?”
“Yes, I did,” Maggie said. “So what?”
She knew she sounded defensive but she couldn’t help it. Summer was putting voice to her own worries about Andy and she didn’t like it.
“What woman with Sam?” Ginger asked Maggie with one hand on her hip as if she was all put out that Maggie had been withholding information.
“Andy Lowenstein,” Maggie said. “She’s a colleague of Sam’s from the Richmond PD. She’s in forensics and is here to help identify the skeleton.”
“And she’s hot,” Summer said. “And young. Young and hot is not your friend, especially when he has yet to put a ring on it.”
“Gee, thanks for coming in today, Summer,” Maggie said. “As usual you’re doing wonders for my self-esteem.”
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Summer said. “I’m here to help.”
“Please,” Claire said.
“Honestly,” Joanne added.
“Do we look that dumb?” Ginger asked.
“No, I’m serious,” Summer said. “Running off competing women is a particular gift of mine.”
“She does have a knack,” Joanne conceded.
“But why would you want to help me? If we can twist this situation enough to think that running a forensic investigator off of an assignment is helpful, that is,” Maggie said.
Summer studied the pretty coral-colored polish on her fingernails. She seemed embarrassed and Maggie wondered what could make the blonde bombshell look so self-conscious.
“Tyler, well, he has a lot of friends,” Summer said.
“It’s true,” Ginger said. “He’s always the first one to help when someone needs a hand and he has a great sense of humor.”
“He was a dear helping us get the baby’s furniture into the nursery,” Joanne said. “I don’t know what we would have done without him.”
“And he always helps out at the annual book sale for the library. He dresses up in our dragon costume and dances on the corner drawing people into the sale. The kids love him,” Claire added. “He’s a huge Frank Herbert fan.”
“That’s an author, right?” Summer asked.
Claire nodded. To her credit, she didn’t make a “duh” face.
“What does Tyler being well liked have to do with you being here now?” Maggie asked.
“Because Tyler is popular and has loads of friends, and I . . . I don’t have any,” Summer wailed.
She lowered her head and sobbed into her open hands. If Maggie hadn’t already been having the weirdest week of her life, this moment surely would have taken the blue ribbon for bizarre. Summer in her shop, sobbing, looking for friends: It just didn’t get any more odd.
Ginger and the others looked at her and Maggie realized that since she and Summer had been enemies, oh, since they’d first spied each other in pigtails and kneesocks, they were waiting for her to give a sign as to what to do.
Maggie studied Summer and a sigh welled up inside of her. She would have to have a shriveled-up prune for a heart to ignore the big gushing sobs that were wracking Summer’s busty frame.
“There, there,” she said. She snatched a tissue out of the box nearby and handed it to Summer. “Don’t cry.”
Ginger raised her eyebrows, giving Maggie the signal that she sounded about as sincere as a sinner with a hangover on Sunday.
Maggie rolled her eyes and Ginger made a shooing gesture with her hands in Summer’s direction. Maggie would have stomped her foot in protest but she didn’t want to wake the baby.
She stepped forward and looped an arm around Summer’s shoulders. Summer lifted her head and used the tissue Maggie gave her to dab at her eyes. She had the big raccoon mascara circles going, so at least her tears had been genuine.
“How can I not cry?” Summer asked. “Tyler is everything that is good and I’m, well, I’m just a horrible person.”
“No one is all bad,” Claire said. She looked sympathetic and Maggie knew it was because of her own checkered past. “Everyone has their good points.”
Maggie frantically scanned her brain trying to come up with Summer’s good points. She was drawing a blank. She was sure if she was a man, she could have started with her knockout figure and ended with her propensity for dressing like a slut, but she wasn’t a dude and she and Summer had been enemies for a very long time.
“Yeah, I’m sure you have many fine qualities,” Joanne agreed. Maggie didn’t think she was the only one who heard the lack of conviction in Joanne’s voice.
“Do you mean it?” Summer asked.
She looked so vulnerable that all of Maggie’s friends moved forward as one to pat her on the back and give her a kind word of encouragement. Even Maggie found herself muttering something that sounded, well, not like an insult, so that was encouraging.
“So, you mean it?” Summer asked. Her face lit up and she clapped her hands together. “I’m in?”
“In what?” Maggie asked suspiciously.
“Your group, stu . . . er . . . silly,” Summer said with a grin. “I’m a Good Buy Girl.”
Chapter 14
Maggie felt her chest constrict like she was a diver with decompression sickness, aka the bends. She could not have heard what she thought she heard. Could she? She put her finger in her ear to make sure a wax ball wasn’t impairing her hearing.
“Repeat that again,” Maggie said.
Summer leaned close and spoke loudly in Maggie’s ear. “I’m a Good Buy Girl.”
Maggie glanced at the others. They looked as flummoxed as she felt and the baby was beginning to fuss. She mouthed the words Help me to the others but they all glanced away. Clearly, no one was up for another bout of Summer’s tears.
The baby began to wail and Joanne looked overjoyed. “Oh dear, time to feed the baby. Excuse me.”
She hustled out of the shop with Cla
ire right behind her, exclaiming, “Look at the time. My break is definitely over, way over, in fact, I’m sure I’m late for the desk.”
Ginger tried to sidle to the door but Maggie locked her fingers around Ginger’s wrist in a grip that would require a sharp blade to be severed.
“Where are you going?” Maggie asked.
“Client?” Ginger guessed.
“No,” Maggie said.
“Okay,” Ginger sighed.
“Come on, guys, it’ll be great,” Summer said. “We can shop together and have coffee at the Daily Grind.”
“Yeah, here’s the problem,” Maggie said. “The Good Buy Girls look out for one another. We share sale and bargain information and clip coupons together. It’s a more cooperative relationship, which we all know is not really your forte.”
“What does that mean?” Summer asked. She looked truly perplexed.
“Sharing is not your gift,” Ginger said.
“Oh, I know,” Summer said. “I’ll work on it. I don’t like sharing my clothes, jewelry or men, but I can share other things.”
“Such as?” Maggie asked.
“Knowledge,” Summer said.
Maggie and Ginger exchanged a glance.
“Explain,” Maggie said.
“This Andy woman is not just here to help Sam with a case,” Summer said. “She’s working an angle. I saw them together at the Daily Grind and I heard them—”
“Wait, they were at the coffee shop?” Ginger clarified.
“Oh yeah, and she was talking about this old case they’d worked on together and that old case they’d solved together,” Summer said. “It was a regular jog down memory lane for the two of them.”
Maggie felt a sludgy icky twist in her insides. She was not a jealous person, generally speaking, as she had realized long ago, thanks to Summer, that it was a largely useless emotion. But she had just gotten Sam back in her life and there was a huge chunk of time that they had been apart, and while she loved him and felt like she knew him, she clearly didn’t know every single detail of the twenty years they’d spent apart and Andy seemed like she might be a big detail.
“Now listen,” Summer said. “I can advise you on how to handle this.”
Maggie was tempted, oh, was she tempted, to take Summer up on her offer. She let go of Ginger and took up her coffee mug. She took a long bracing sip.
“Thanks for the offer, Summer,” she said. “But I’m okay.”
“Oh, good grief,” Summer said with a shake of her blond hair. “You’re not going to listen to me, are you?”
“I trust Sam,” Maggie said.
“You are an idiot,” Summer said.
“Hey!” Maggie snapped.
“Now, now ladies, let’s keep it cordial.” Ginger stepped in between them. “There’s no need to lose our tempers.”
She gave Maggie a pointed look and Maggie turned away. She was not going to be lectured about how to talk to Summer.
“You’re right,” Summer said. She shook her hair out and forced a smile. “There, I’ve forgiven you already.”
“You’ve forgiven me?” Maggie sputtered. “I don’t need your—”
“I don’t know why I get so upset,” Summer interrupted. “It’s just a misunderstanding.”
“No, it’s not,” Maggie protested. “You and I have nothing in common. Friendships have to have common ground. We have nothing.”
“Not true,” Summer said. She stepped away from the counter and began to look through Maggie’s shop. “We were both born and raised here in St. Stanley.”
“That’s a circumstance of geography,” Maggie argued. She heard a funny sound coming from Ginger and when she glanced at her she was pretty sure Ginger was trying not to laugh.
“We both own secondhand stores,” Summer said.
Maggie wanted to point out that it was because Summer had copied her but she refrained. Instead, she stated the obvious, “Which makes us each other’s competition thus not friends.”
“We’ve both been in love with Sam Collins,” Summer said. Then she glanced at Maggie and grinned. “That’s three for three.”
“I’m not going to be able to get rid of you, am I?” Maggie asked. It was beginning to sink into her head that she was not going to be able to talk Summer out of this madness.
“No, you’re not,” Summer said. “I’m telling you, Mrs. Tyler Fawkes is a brand-new person, a better person. You’ll want me as a friend. You’ll see.”
With a swish of her long blond hair, she left the shop, leaving Maggie and Ginger gaping after her.
“Because I don’t have enough on my plate with a wedding to plan, a skeleton in my house, my mother in town and Andy being a good-looking woman instead of the beer-bellied, hairy-eared man I thought she was, I now have this?” Maggie asked.
Ginger nodded. “So it would seem.”
“Summer as a friend,” Maggie said. “It’s like quantum physics. I can’t even wrap my brain around the concept for more than a second before poof! It goes away.”
“Maybe it’s just a phase that will pass,” Ginger said.
“Like the moon?” Maggie asked.
“Don’t werewolves come out at the full moon? What phase is it in right now?”
“I think it’s full,” Maggie said. “So, Summer wanting to be our friend is like being stalked by a werewolf?”
“There are marked similarities,” Ginger said.
“I don’t know. She wasn’t looking very hairy.”
“That’s a myth.”
“So, werewolves aren’t hairy?”
“That one isn’t at any rate.”
“So, we like Summer as a werewolf more than we like the idea of her genuinely wanting to be our friend?” Maggie asked.
“Yup,” Ginger agreed, making a popping sound on the P.
“Okay, then,” Maggie said.
Ginger pulled Maggie in for a bracing hug. “Don’t fret. Everything is going to be just fine.”
“The wedding—” Maggie began but Ginger interrupted.
“Will be beautiful.”
“The skeleton—”
“Will be identified. As if you even need it to be, knowing you and Sam you’ve probably already named it.”
“Captain Bones,” Maggie said.
“See?”
“Andy the hottie who was supposed to be a man—”
“Will go back to Richmond sad and alone,” Ginger said.
Maggie let out a pent-up breath and felt her shoulders drop. “Thanks. I needed that.”
Her cell phone chimed from its holder on the counter. Maggie glanced at the display and frowned. “My mother.”
“On that note, I am out of here,” Ginger said. She blew Maggie a kiss from the door. “Good luck.”
She waved and tried not to have pouty voice when she answered the phone.
“Hi, Mom,” she answered.
“Sweetie, where are you?”
“At the shop,” she said.
“Excellent, I’ll be right there,” her mother said.
“Why? Is something wrong?” Maggie asked. Her first thought was for her daughter Laura and her second was her grand-nephew Josh. Had something happened to one of them?
“I’ll say,” her mother said. Her tone sounded irritated instead of alarmed, which should have been Maggie’s first clue. “We need to talk.”
“What about?”
“Your future mother-in-law,” her mother said. “I ran into her at the florist and she was actually picking your floral arrangements.”
“What?”
“I know,” her mother continued. “Can you imagine? Does she have no sense of propriety or boundaries? I am not certain what sort of family you are marrying into, Maggie.”
“Mom, you’ve known the Collins family for decades,” Maggie said. “They’re a lovely family as you’ve said yourself.”
“Be that as it may, she was picking your flowers,” her mother said.
Maggie was quiet for a moment. “U
m, so what were you doing at the florist, Mom?”
“I, well, I was merely pricing them for you, you know, for your bouquet and boutonnieres,” she said.
“Oh, and what were you thinking for my bouquet?” Maggie asked.
“Well, I thought an armful of Gerber daisies would be colorful but she was picking out lavender roses,” her mother complained and followed it up with a retching noise.
Maggie rubbed her temples with the fingers of her available hand. She inhaled through her nose, held it and slowly exhaled. Everything was going to be fine. She and Sam were getting married. Everything else was just details.
“Hey, I’m pulling up in front of the shop,” her mother said. “Now about your dress, I had some ideas . . .”
Her mother kept talking but Maggie slowly lowered her phone to the counter. All she could think when she reviewed the insanity of her day was, What next?
Chapter 15
She shouldn’t have asked. Maggie listened to her mother rattle on about her plans for the wedding. How they were supposed to pull off what her mother wanted to be the social event of the season in less than three weeks Maggie had no idea.
When her mother finally exited the shop, Maggie sagged against the counter in relief. Her anxiety was spiking and she was pretty sure the only cure would be to down an entire bottle of wine. Somehow, she didn’t think that would go over too well the next morning, but it was still oh so tempting.
Since there seemed to be a lull in customers, Maggie decided it was as good a time as any to crack open the books Ruth had lent her and study up on the Dixons. Surely, given that they were one of the older families in St. Stanley, if there was any gossip, it would be chronicled in the books.
She started with the prominent families of St. Stanley book. It showed the most promise, with an entire chapter devoted to the Dixons.
Neil Dixon arrived in St. Stanley when it was just a tiny crossroads, a small farming town in southern Virginia.
Maggie wondered what Neil would think of it if he could see it now. It wasn’t much bigger than that long-ago crossroads, but they did have a town green, schools and a small hospital. St. Stanley had gone through wars, depressions, recessions, and it was still here. She thought Neil would approve.
