Good Buy Girls 05 - All Sales Final

by Josie Belle

  “Tell me about it,” Sam said. “Summer looked like she was going to put a hurt on Andy, and I think only Tyler holding her back kept her from doing so.”

  “That’s crazy,” Maggie said.

  “No, that’s loyalty,” he said. He cleared his throat and said, “It makes you wonder.”

  “Wonder if Summer has gone round the bend?” she asked.

  “No, it makes you wonder how far someone will go to protect someone they love.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been reading up on the Dixon family,” he said. “That book Ruth lent you that you forgot to return, and I was struck by the thought that if you read between the lines, Ida was a bit of a handful for Imogene.”

  “Yes, I got that, too. It seemed as if their father had a hard time raising Imogene and Ida on his own,” Maggie said. “But they were both very active in the community and really did a lot of good works.”

  “And yet, there was a dead man in their root cellar,” Sam said.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Sam dug in his carton with his chop sticks. He popped a bite of sweet-and-sour chicken into his mouth and chewed as if gathering his thoughts before he spoke.

  “Maybe Ida got into trouble with Jasper and Imogene took care of the problem,” he said.

  They were both silent as if waiting for the house—or more accurately a spirit in the house—to slam a door or flick the lights on and off. There was nothing.

  “Or maybe Imogene was afraid Ida would get married and leave her,” Maggie said.

  Again, they both waited but there was nothing.

  Sam let out a long sigh. “I can’t believe I’m actually throwing out theories and hoping the house will give me a clue.”

  Maggie sat back down and gave him a sheepish smile. “Me, too.”

  “You know, I just don’t see the sisters living here if they knew there was a body in their basement,” Sam said. “I didn’t get the crazy vibe from their bios. Eccentric, yes, crazy, no.”

  “So, you think someone else killed Jasper Kasey and the sisters never knew,” Maggie said.

  Bam! A door slammed upstairs and the lights flickered overhead.

  “Ah!” Maggie yelped and Sam started. Marshall Dillon came racing across the room with his tail at full fluff.

  When Maggie’s heart stopped racing, she looked at Sam. “Do you think that was a ‘By George, I think they’ve got it!’ door slam?”

  Sam gave her a wide-eyed look. “With a ‘Finally!’ light flicker? Yes, I do.”

  “Who would know for sure?” Maggie asked.

  They looked at each other and said at the same time, “Ruth Crenshaw.”

  Chapter 24

  As she stepped into the small building once again, Maggie realized that she had been in the St. Stanley Historical Society more in the past week than she had in her entire life.

  Mary Lou Sutton was behind the desk. There was no sign of Ruth. Maggie wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not. She knew Sam was going to be coming by to interview Ruth and that she really needed to butt out, but on her way to work her curiosity had gotten the better of her. Besides she had to return the book she had forgotten. She could admit that she was a little afraid of Ruth and didn’t want the woman coming after her for the book.

  “Hi, Mary Lou,” Maggie greeted the woman behind the desk.

  “Maggie, thank goodness,” Mary Lou said.

  Maggie looked at her in surprise. She held out the book in her hand and said, “I’m sorry this is late.”

  Mary Lou took the book. “No, it’s just that I’m here alone and I really need to use the bathroom, but I didn’t want to lock up and hear it from Ruth about abandoning my post.”

  “Ruth isn’t in today?” she asked.

  “No,” Mary Lou said. She sounded annoyed. “Not yet anyway. Do you mind keeping an eye while I go—”

  Maggie waved her hand. “Not at all. Go.”

  Mary Lou flashed a grateful smile. “I’ll be quick.”

  “No problem. Do you think Ruth is all right?” Maggie asked.

  “Who knows?” Mary Lou shrugged. “You know when I took this job a few months ago, I thought I would have proper training. Instead, I just get put on endless tasks like digitizing the files. She never lets me do any of the research.”

  “Ruth has been running this place a long time by herself,” Maggie said. “Maybe giving up control is hard for her.”

  “That’s not it,” Mary Lou said. She glanced around the room as if someone might have appeared who could overhear them. “She’s been odd ever since you and Sheriff Collins bought up the Dixon house.”

  “Odd how?” Maggie asked.

  “Nervous, twitchy,” Mary Lou said. “It’s like she has something to hide. It’s just weird.”

  She disappeared through the door, leaving Maggie to puzzle out her words. What could Ruth be nervous about? Was it Sam’s questioning her about the Dixon house? Did she know more than she was saying? Maggie wandered around the room. She browsed the shelves, looking at the historical volumes that covered the town, the county, the state and even the country.

  It never ceased to amaze her that St. Stanley was just a stepping-off place for many of its residents. They’d had a United States senator, a rock band and a soap opera star all come from this tiny town nestled in the Virginia hills.

  Maggie wondered if her life might have played out differently if she had left St. Stanley. She had assumed when she’d married Charlie that he would work his way up to sheriff in some other town and had always figured that they would move, but when he was killed, she had pulled her community into her heart to help buffer the pain and the fear of being on her own. The people of St. Stanley hadn’t let her down and now she could never imagine living anywhere else.

  Mary Lou arrived back in the room, breaking Maggie out of her reverie.

  “Thanks so much.” Mary Lou let out a breath. “I think I can make it now.”

  “Good,” Maggie said. “You know, if Ruth doesn’t turn up, you may want to call Sheriff Collins.”

  Mary Lou nodded. “I’m sure she’s fine. She’s just working through something.”

  Maggie tipped her head to the side and studied the other woman. “Mary Lou, is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Mary Lou bit her lip and then the words burst out of her in a gust of air. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”

  “Okay.”

  Mary Lou glanced around the room as if to make sure they were still alone. “I did some reading in the restricted books.”

  “Restricted books?” Maggie asked.

  “Shh,” Mary Lou hushed her and they both leaned forward over the counter. Mary Lou continued in a whisper, “Those are the books she keeps upstairs that no one is allowed to touch because they’re fragile.”

  “Oh.” Maggie nodded.

  “One of the books is her mother Violet Crenshaw’s diary,” Mary Lou said.

  She reached below the counter and pulled out a small, red, leather-bound book. The edges were worn and the binding was cracked and Maggie could see that the pages were yellowed. There was no question it was an old book. Mary Lou pushed the book at Maggie.

  “I think the answers you’re looking for are in there but if you tell anyone, especially Ruth, where you got the information, I’ll deny it. Also, you have to get the book back to me as soon as possible, preferably before she notices that it’s gone.”

  Maggie quickly tucked the book into her purse. “Thank you, Mary Lou.”

  Mary Lou made a shooing gesture with her hands. “It’s fine but go before she gets here and remember: Do not say a word.”

  “My lips are sealed,” Maggie said and she hurried out the door.

  She had parked behind the small building and as she hurried to her car, she noted that her car looked oddly lopsided. She moved closer and realized that her right front tire was flat.

  Maggie glanced at her watch. She’d have to call Sal from the garage
to come and fix her flat. She did not have time for this. She had to be at the shop and ready to open in fifteen minutes, which was about how long it would take her to walk there.

  She made sure her car was locked and then hurried up the sidewalk to the main road. She knew she could take a shortcut along one of the neighborhood streets and get to the back of her shop in less time.

  She felt like a felon fleeing down the street with the Crenshaw diary in her bag. She’d had no idea there was a restricted collection of books in the historical society and she was betting no one else did either. As soon as she got to the shop, she planned to call Claire and see if she knew about it.

  She knew Ruth was an odd duck, and Mary Lou’s report about Ruth behaving strangely made Maggie uneasy. Could the person who tied the trip wire to the porch steps the night that Maggie fell be Ruth? The idea boggled.

  Lost in thought and with the Crenshaw diary burning a hole in her purse, Maggie took a sharp turn down the narrow tree-lined residential street, planning to jaywalk halfway down to get to her shop.

  She paused to look both ways before stepping into the road. She took three steps when a small dark-green sedan came screeching around the corner headed right for her. Maggie had heard the saying that your life flashes before your eyes when you stare impending death right in the kisser, but it wasn’t true.

  She got nothing, nada, bubkes. There was no remembering her first kiss, birthing her daughter or reconnecting with Sam. Her brain instead made a loud buzzing noise like an entire swarm of bees were encircling her head, and she couldn’t think through the hum enough to tell her legs to move.

  The car was right on top of her when some crazy instinct kicked in, and she leapt back onto the sidewalk in an ungraceful frog hop that caused her to go splat while the sedan zoomed away, disappearing around the next corner.

  “Crazy drivers!” a crotchety voice shouted from a nearby yard.

  Old Man Hanley was standing in his yard holding his hose over his rose bushes in one hand while he shook his other fist in the direction of the car.

  “Don’t just stand there cursing, George,” the kinder, gentler Mrs. Hanley chided him. “Help Maggie up.”

  Mr. Hanley dropped his hose and came at a fast shuffle to Maggie’s side.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “Do you need me to call Doc Franklin?”

  Maggie got to her feet, feeling her knees knocking against each other as she did. There was a tear in her jeans at the knee and she could feel a little blood gushing out of the wound, but otherwise she was fine. Heck, she was alive so she was great.

  “I think my dignity took the hardest hit,” she said.

  Old Man Hanley clapped her on the shoulder. “That’s what I’ve always liked about you, Maggie. You’ve got spirit.”

  “Come on in and get cleaned up, dear,” Mrs. Hanley said.

  Where Mr. Hanley was big and rawboned, Mrs. Hanley had the delicate build of a sparrow. Glancing between them, Maggie had a feeling the sparrow ruled the birdhouse.

  “Thanks, but I have to open my shop,” Maggie said. “I can clean up there.”

  “Oh, are you sure?” Mrs. Hanley asked. “That’s a nasty scrape.”

  “Yes, I’m fine, really,” Maggie said. “Besides I want to call the sheriff and report that driver.”

  Old Man Hanley nodded in approval. “That’s right, sic your boyfriend on them. That’ll teach them.”

  Maggie smiled and began to walk away. Her knee was stiff but she figured it was probably better to be moving it, even if she did feel the blood dripping down into her shoe.

  While she walked she took out her phone and called Sam. Not, as Mr. Hanley had suggested, to sic her boyfriend on the driver but rather because she recognized the green sedan. She remembered it from where it was always parked in front of the historical society. It belonged to Ruth Crenshaw.

  Chapter 25

  By the time Maggie arrived at her shop, she found Ginger pacing at the back door.

  Before she could say a word, Ginger hugged her tight and said, “Sam called me. He’s out looking for the car and told me to come and make sure you’re all right.”

  “I’m fine,” Maggie said. And this time when she said it, she meant it.

  “You could have been killed,” Ginger said. “I am in no way prepared to lose my best friend.”

  “You’re not going to lose me,” Maggie said. She unlocked the back door and let them both in.

  “I’ll make coffee,” Ginger said. “You go clean that knee.”

  Maggie went into the bathroom. She opened the cabinet and retrieved ointment and bandages. She washed the cut out with soap and water, which stung to no end, and while it air dried, she opened her purse to check on the state of the book.

  She hadn’t thought of it until now, but if anything had happened to the Crenshaw diary, she would have felt horrible. Thankfully, it was as intact as it had been when Mary Lou gave it to her.

  Unable to resist, Maggie cracked the volume open and began to peruse the pages. She flipped through Violet Crenshaw’s entries, although she was Violet Minton in the beginning of the diary as she had yet to meet Craig Crenshaw, her future husband.

  She kept very detailed descriptions of the events she attended and the Sunday school classes she taught. She had a wry humor that made Maggie smile. She had flipped through a quarter of the volume before a name leapt out at her. Jasper Kasey!

  Maggie devoured the next few pages, forgetting all about her throbbing knee, her near-death experience and the fact that she was holed up in a bathroom. Ruth had told her that she had only heard Jasper Kasey’s name mentioned once, but if her own mother had been engaged to him that had to be a lie. Why would Ruth lie?

  She read about Violet’s love story with Jasper Kasey. According to the diary, Jasper swept her off her feet and they were engaged shortly after they first met.

  Ruth had never mentioned her mother’s relationship with Jasper Kasey. Why not? Maggie flipped ahead in the diary and it was then that she noticed several pages had been torn from it. In fact a whole section was missing. Could that be the evidence Sam needed to determine who had killed Jasper Kasey and stuffed him in the Dixon basement?

  An insistent knocking on the door broke her concentration and Ginger called out, “What happened? Did you fall in?”

  Maggie started and hastily shoved the diary back into her purse. She opened the door and found Ginger standing there, looking worried.

  “I need to talk to Sam,” she said.

  Ginger looked her up and down. “Didn’t you go in there to put a bandage on?”

  “I forgot,” Maggie said.

  “Forgot?” Summer asked as she appeared behind Ginger. “You’re bleeding all over your jeans and you forgot? Did you hit your head when you fell?”

  “What’s she doing here?” Maggie asked Ginger.

  “All of the Good Buy Girls are here,” Ginger said. “Come on, let’s go out front. You can make your call while I bandage your knee myself.”

  Sure enough Claire and Joanne with baby Patience were sitting out front waiting for her. When she arrived with Ginger and Summer, they both jumped to their feet and began firing questions.

  “What happened?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Do you know who did this?”

  “Give the woman a chance to catch her breath,” Summer said. “And I think it’s pretty clear who did this.”

  “It is?” Maggie asked. She couldn’t fathom how Summer could know about Ruth.

  “Yes, it’s that Andy woman,” she said. “Clearly, she hasn’t given up on bringing Sam back to Richmond.”

  “No!” Claire said. She looked shocked.

  “But she works for the police,” Joanne protested.

  “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t do bad things,” Summer said.

  “She has a point,” Ginger said. “That woman was pretty determined to bring Sam back to his old life.”

  “But trying to kill me just so sh
e could have her work buddy back seems a little above and beyond crazy,” Maggie said. “No, I think it was—”

  The door to the shop opened with a clang of bells and Maggie stopped in mid-sentence as she took in the sight of her mother walking in with Sam’s mother. Neither of them looked very happy. That was an understatement. They were glaring daggers at each other.

  “Tell this woman that she is not allowed to make decisions regarding your wedding cake,” Maggie’s mother said. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Sam’s mother.

  “Uh-oh,” Ginger said under her breath.

  “What do you mean ‘uh-oh’?” Summer asked. “This is fixing to be good.”

  Maggie frowned at her and Summer sighed. “Sorry.”

  “Well, given that my opinion of the flowers didn’t matter, I just thought I would help in some small way.” Trudy Collins sniffed. “Clearly my help isn’t wanted.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Maggie protested. “It’s just that there’s been so much going on, but you don’t need to worry. Sam and I have everything under control.”

  “Really?” Lizzie turned to look at her daughter. “Do tell.”

  “Sit,” Ginger said to Maggie. “You can talk while I get this bandage on you.”

  “Bandage?” Trudy Collins asked. “What happened to your knee?”

  “She was almost ru—” Summer began but Maggie interrupted.

  “I fell,” Maggie said. She gave Summer a look and Summer shrugged as if to say lying is pointless because they’re going to find out anyway. That was fine with Maggie so long as they figured it out when they weren’t with her and couldn’t fuss her into suffocation.

  “That is a nasty scrape,” Lizzie said.

  “Your dress should cover it though, right?” Trudy asked. She leaned over Maggie to examine her knee and Maggie felt as if she were under a laser-like scrutiny that would determine whether she was lying or not. Given that Sam was one of four boys, she was pretty sure Trudy Collins had perfected the look.

  “Yes, absolutely,” Maggie said.