50% off Murder

by Josie Belle

  “Misters Applebaum!” Paula hollered after them. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “A trip to the Frosty Freeze,” Maggie said. “I heard the bus driver say they were going.”

  Moving as one, the rest of the seniors hustled up from their tables and hurried to the door. There was a little bit of a jam-up, but Dennis gave Jerry a wet willy by licking his index finger and sticking it in his brother’s ear. Ew!

  As Jerry jumped back, all of the seniors stampeded past him on their way to the front door.

  “What the heck was that all about?” Paula asked.

  “Ice cream at the Frosty Freeze,” Maggie said.

  “We don’t have a trip planned for today,” she said. “At least I don’t think so.”

  This was the beauty of Paula Duwalter. She was a former Miss Virginia, by about thirty years, but she still walked the walk and talked the talk, meaning she wasn’t the sharpest tack on the bulletin board.

  “Really? I saw Ray getting the bus ready,” Maggie said.

  “Huh, imagine that,” Paula said. “Hey, is Dr. Franklin in today?”

  “No, why?” Maggie asked. She was itching to get on her way, but she knew Paula, and if she didn’t stop and listen, Paula would get all huffy, and that never boded well for anyone.

  “I’ve got this twinge in my neck,” Paula said. “Whenever I sleep on my right side, I wake up all tight.”

  Maggie glanced down the corridor. The seniors were almost at the front. Oh dear, she really didn’t have time for Paula’s hypochondria right now.

  “I know how to fix that,” she said.

  “Really?” Paula asked. “Because I don’t want any pills. One of the contestants in the Miss America pageant with me was addicted to diet pills. I won’t take pills.”

  Somehow, Paula always managed to work her Miss America–contender status into every conversation. It was a gift, truly.

  “There are no pills. It’s very simple,” Maggie said. She was losing sight of the oldsters. Time to go. “If sleeping on your right side hurts, then don’t sleep on your right side.”

  She left the room with Paula frowning after her. Well, what did she expect when she asked the person in charge of billing for medical advice? It was like the old joke, “Doc, it hurts when I bend my elbow like this.” And the doc says, “Then don’t bend your elbow like that.”

  She hustled down the corridor to the front of the building. Ray was holding up his arms, trying to wave off the incoming tide of seniors that was headed for the bus. They plowed right over him in their orthopedic shoes.

  Maggie took a quick head count as they climbed in: eighteen seniors, plus Ray. Excellent.

  “Thanks, Mr. Ray,” Maggie smiled. “You’re really doing me a solid here.”

  “Huh,” he said. “At least with ice cream, there won’t be any runners, not like at the mall.”

  Maggie nodded. Ice cream would keep the oldsters subdued. One of the many reasons the facility liked Ray for their driver was that he had a knack for keeping tabs on the seniors, especially the runners, the ones who tried to make a break for it and go home.

  “The things I do for free ice cream.” He glanced over his shoulder at the rowdy group. “Pipe down, or we’re not going.”

  “Come on, everyone, let’s sing,” Dotty, a former cruise ship director, ordered.

  There were resistant grunts and groans, but she ignored them and, with her platinum wig bouncing on her head and her fake eyelashes all aflutter, she sang in a high, clear soprano, “One hundred bottles of Ensure on the wall, one hundred bottles of Ensure, you take one down and pass it around, ninety-nine…”

  Her voice trailed off as Ray pulled the doors shut and punched the gas. The bus bounced its way out of the parking lot toward the Frosty Freeze.

  Maggie pulled out her cell phone and called Max. She had to give him a heads-up that Ray got a freebie. Now Hugh would have his eighteen, Max’s job would be secure, and the seniors would be happy. Now she could go over to Ginger’s office and catch her up on what was happening.

  Max sounded impressed when she told him to expect the bus. Then they agreed to meet at Claire’s later in the day to discuss their strategy, should Claire get called in by the sheriff again.

  Maggie hopped into her car and drove to Ginger’s house. She lived in one of the historic houses on the town green. It had been a fixer-upper when she and Roger had bought it twenty years ago, and it had come a long way since, but with four teenage boys living in it, it had an air of frat house that could not be denied.

  Ginger had converted the stand-alone garage into an office for her accounting business. It worked perfectly, except for when her boys were home and started to play basketball, using the hoop attached to her office, which was why she stuck primarily to morning hours.

  Maggie parked in the drive and hurried to the side door. It was unlocked, so she popped her head in and found Ginger working on her computer. She waved and waited for Ginger to stop typing before she spoke.

  “Okay, I’m saved and good,” Ginger said. “Now what the heck is going on? How’s Claire?”

  “She’s been better,” Maggie said.

  “Did Sam arrest her?” Ginger asked.

  “No, but I’m worried that he will,” Maggie said.

  “But why would he?” Ginger asked. “So what if she knew the man five years ago? It doesn’t make her the killer. I mean, why would she kill him?”

  Maggie shrugged. She had been kicked out of the interview room, so she was left not knowing very much.

  “That’s what we’ll have to ask her,” Maggie said.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Ginger asked.

  “I’m going to stop by More than Meats to see Joanne and get her up to speed, and then we’ll have an emergency meeting of the Good Buy Girls tonight and see what we can do to help Claire.”

  “Does she want our help?” Ginger asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maggie,” Ginger began, and then paused as if choosing her words carefully. “Not everyone is like you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Maggie asked, wondering if she should start feeling offended.

  “Simply that you are not one for secrets,” Ginger said. “You are very open about your life and your feelings. Claire isn’t like that. Claire is very private. She may not want the rest of us mucking around in her business.”

  “If Claire ever needed her friends, it’s now,” Maggie said. “I say we have the meeting, and if she wants us to back off, we will, but we’ll offer her our support first.”

  Ginger nodded. “I guess that would be okay.”

  Maggie studied her hands. She found it amazing that the person who knew her better than anyone else on the planet thought she wore her heart on her sleeve and had no secrets. She wondered if she should tell Ginger about her romance-gone-wrong with Sam Collins. She opened her mouth to begin, but then found she couldn’t say a word.

  Somehow, talking about it would bring it all back, even more than having him here in St. Stanley again, if that was possible, and she was having a hard enough time with that. If anyone knew that they had once been a couple, she feared it would make dealing with him even worse.

  “So, seven o’clock. I’ll pick you up,” Maggie said.

  “I’ll be ready,” Ginger said.

  “Bye.” Maggie rose and headed for the door. She always said good-bye first, so that Ginger could have the last word.

  “Bye,” Ginger called after her, and Maggie smiled.

  Since Maggie was already in the center of town, it was a short drive from the residential section of old, historic homes, around the town square, to the shops that lined Main Street. More than Meats, a combination deli and butcher shop perched on Main Street near First Street, was nestled between the Perk Up and the Enchanted Florist.

  Maggie parked on First Street and walked back around the corner, pausing to admire the bucket of blossoms outside the florist, before heading into the deli. Thankfully,
they were in the middle of the afternoon lull. Joanne was wearing her usual bright yellow apron while she hustled around the tables refilling the sugar bowls and wiping down any crumbs left from the lunch crush.

  “Hi, Joanne,” Maggie called as the door shut behind her.

  “Maggie, how’s Claire?” Joanne asked, dropping her cloth and reaching out to take Maggie’s hands in hers. “Ginger said she was taken in for questioning. Is she all right? I texted her, but she hasn’t gotten back to me.”

  “Hi, Maggie!” Michael Claramotta, Joanne’s husband, waved to her from behind the deli counter at the back of the small restaurant.

  If there was such a thing as a perfect couple, Maggie thought Michael and Joanne Claramotta were it. They’d been childhood sweethearts since the second grade, when Michael had given Joanne a cheesy paper valentine with a honeybee on it that asked, “Will you bee mine?” Joanne said she knew when she opened it that she was going to marry him.

  Michael was the perfect other half for Joanne. He complimented her slender build with a muscular physique, and he stood a half foot taller than she was. Ginger often joked that they could be models for the bride and groom statues on the tops of wedding cakes, they were such a perfect-looking couple.

  “Hi!” She waved back and turned to Joanne, “Yes, it’s true, and she’s okay, but I don’t have much more information than that.”

  Michael came around the deli counter with a frosty glass of sweet tea that he handed to Maggie. Michael was always the perfect host; it was exactly what she needed.

  “Thank you,” she said, and took a long drink.

  “The rumors have been flying fast and furious all afternoon,” he said. “Was the man really naked except for a pair of women’s high heels?”

  Maggie almost had tea come out her nose.

  “Ew, no!” she said as she coughed.

  “Oh.” Michael looked disappointed.

  “I told you that you can’t trust anything Summer Phillips has to say,” Joanne chided her husband in a gentle tone.

  “I know,” he said. “Still, you have to admit…”

  “No, I don’t. That is a disturbing mental picture that only someone as vile as Summer could think up,” Joanne said.

  “Well, in all fairness, she’s not the only one,” he said. “How about Tyler Fawkes saying that the body had been dismembered with a rusty hacksaw?”

  “Oh, ick,” Maggie said.

  “Oh, yeah, and Jamie Singleton said the body was decapitated, and the head was missing,” Joanne said.

  “Oh, double ick,” Maggie said.

  “Yeah, it’s been a long day,” Joanne said.

  “Well, I saw the body, and I can tell you, it was clothed, no high heels, all body parts were attached, including the head,” she said.

  Joanne reached out and put an arm around Maggie’s shoulders. “That must have been rough.”

  “I thought I’d seen some gnarly things while working for Dr. Franklin,” Maggie said. “You know, we get the occasional goiter or festering chancre, but this was…well, I’m good with never seeing a dead man with a knife through his chest ever again.”

  The bells chimed on the door, and Michael left them, giving Maggie’s shoulder a squeeze as he went to wait on the deli customer.

  “So, Ginger said we’re having an emergency meeting of the GBGs,” Joanne said. “I’m in.”

  “Seven o’clock at Claire’s,” Maggie confirmed.

  “I’ll meet you there, and I’ll bring a deli platter,” Joanne said. “We have to make sure she keeps up her strength, and nothing says you care like a plate full of cold cuts.”

  Maggie had to agree.

  Chapter 12

  Maggie knocked on Claire’s front door. She lived in a small bungalow in an older neighborhood that surrounded the town’s abandoned wire factory. The factory had been closed long before Maggie was born, and the small houses in the neighborhood that surrounded it, which had once been the factory workers’ homes, had become an artists’ haven.

  In her non-library spare time, Claire painted small still lifes in oil, so she fit right in with her glass-blowing, steel-sculpting neighbors. Twice a year the artists had a weekend-long art show on the town green. Maggie loved it because she always found new and unusual gifts for people at the show, and she had noticed that if she waited until the last day, the prices dropped dramatically because the artists were looking to unload some inventory.

  A movement in the window caught Maggie’s attention, and she glanced over to see Claire’s cat, Mr. Tumnus, watching her from his bay window perch.

  “Maybe she’s not home,” Ginger said. She was carrying an orange pound cake with vanilla glaze that she had made that afternoon, while Maggie had two bottles of wine tucked in the crook of her arm.

  “She has to be home,” Maggie said. “Where else could she be? On a hot date?”

  The door was yanked open, and Claire poked her head out. “Who’s on a hot date?”

  “We were wondering if you were,” Ginger said. “Open up. We come bearing food.”

  “Is that your famous pound cake?” Claire asked.

  “The one and only blue ribbon–winning pound cake in all of St. Stanley, yes, it is,” Ginger said.

  Claire stepped back, opening the door wide.

  Pound cake will get you in every time, Maggie thought.

  She trooped in, with Ginger bringing up the rear. Just before Claire shut the door, Joanne arrived with her tray of deli goodies.

  “Wait for me!” she cried, and followed them into the small house.

  “Have you eaten?” Ginger asked, looking Claire over with her best “don’t even try to lie to me” mother look.

  “I forgot,” Claire admitted. She gestured to the shirt she was wearing, an oversize blue T-shirt covered in paint splotches in a rainbow of colors. “I was trying to do some art therapy to see if it would help.”

  “And?” Maggie asked.

  “It didn’t,” Claire said.

  The house consisted of one large front room, which Claire used as a living room. It was cozy with wood floors, overstuffed bookcases, a fireplace and a large TV in the corner. They trooped through the arched door at the end of it into the kitchen, which had been recently renovated.

  A large granite breakfast counter that seated four separated the eating area from the rest of the kitchen, and the ladies placed their food on the counter and each took a stool, while Claire passed out plates and glasses.

  “This is so nice of you,” she said to the others. She looked a little misty, and Maggie suspected she wasn’t used to having others do for her.

  “Nah, this is nothing,” Ginger said, making light of it. “It’s just what GBGs do when one of us needs a boost.”

  “I need more than a boost,” Claire said. “I need an alibi.”

  “You don’t have one?” Joanne asked. Two worry lines formed a V between her eyebrows, and she nibbled on a piece of Swiss cheese with tiny little bites. Joanne was an emotional eater.

  “Not unless you count Mr. Tumnus,” Claire said. They all turned to look at the chubby gray tabby, who began to lick his chest hair as if priming himself to be the center of attention.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Ginger said. “Anyone who knows you knows that you’re not capable of murder. The whole thing is just silly.”

  “Well, that’s the problem,” Claire said. “Sheriff Collins doesn’t know me. The only thing he knows is that I used to date John Templeton, the deceased, and the sheriff thinks it’s mighty suspicious that he was found dead in my library with my cake knife sticking out of his chest and with one of the books from my personal library lying beside him.”

  Maggie, Ginger and Joanne sat staring at her, utterly gobsmacked.

  “Oh, you didn’t know all that?” Claire asked faintly. “I just assumed with St. Stanley being so small—well, if it makes any difference, I loaned that book out so long ago, I can’t even remember who I lent it to…”

  “No, we didn’t k
now all of that,” Maggie said. “In fact, the St. Stanley rumor machine is such that we’ve heard all sorts of things, but not that.”

  “Like what?” Claire asked, looking worried. “What are people saying about me?”

  “No, no, not about you,” Joanne assured her. “More about the body.”

  Claire, looking in need of fortification, handed Maggie the corkscrew. “Explain.”

  “Well, I heard that the body was dressed in a clown suit,” Ginger said. “But that came from one of my boys, so I didn’t believe it.”

  Claire’s mouth formed a small O, and she blinked, obviously dumbfounded. Maggie took pity on her and gave her the first glass of wine.

  “Oh, that’s the mildest of the rumors,” Joanne said. “You let Summer Phillips loose with some gossip, and it goes all kinds of sideways, like the body was naked…”

  “Except for a pair of high heels,” Maggie added.

  Claire cringed at the distasteful mental picture. “What is wrong with people?”

  Maggie filled the rest of the glasses and passed them out. The ladies filled their plates and nibbled at their food while they talked.

  “Speaking of Summer Phillips,” Joanne said. “Did you know she used to date the new sheriff, Sam Collins, back when he lived here?”

  “We knew,” Ginger said. She waved a hand to indicate herself and Maggie.

  Maggie felt her fingers tighten on the stem of her wineglass, but she bit into a slice of salami in an attempt to seem nonchalant.

  “Well, it seems Summer is eager to revisit their former relationship,” Joanne said. “At least, that’s what it looked like when we saw her draping herself all over his car this afternoon.”

  “Do tell,” Ginger said. “I know Maggie would love to hear all about her favorite law enforcement officer.”

  Maggie gave her a scorching blast of stink eye, but Ginger had known her for so many years that she had built up a powerful immunity. Unfortunately.

  “That’s sarcasm, right?” Claire asked. “Because I’ve seen how you two look at each other, and Sheriff Collins doesn’t seem overly fond of you either.”

  “Let’s just say that the sheriff and I have known each other since we were in diapers, and we get on about as well as a baby’s butt and a vicious case of diaper rash,” Maggie said. “I’ll leave it to you to figure out who is the butt in this scenario and who is the rash.”