Bedpans, Teapots and Corpses (A Maggie and Irene Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by Kitty Margo

  If I go on the beach, there is an umbrella, chair, and a cooler filled with naturally decaffeinated Sierra Mist already waiting for me.

  She is a sports fanatic. Lord, if you value your time, do not get her talking about the Dodgers. And she has attended every tennis, football, or baseball game her grandchildren have ever played in.

  I have probably attended three sporting events in my entire life.

  Maggie’s husband died suddenly a few years ago, leaving her a wealthy woman.

  I work my tail off to make ends meet.

  Yet, by far, the main difference between us is punctuality. I love her to death, but to tell the truth Maggie could give a rat’s ass about the words being on time. The girl will promise to meet you at 9:00 and come strolling in at 9:30 without a care in the world.

  For some reason, it doesn’t really flip a negative switch in my brain when she does it quite as much as when someone else does. However, the reality is that it pisses me off to the height of pisstivity. Here is the way I look at it.

  If I say I am going to meet you in town at 9:00, I leave my house by 8:45 unless there is a dire emergency. Now mind you, I have clothes to wash, clothes to take out of the dryer, dishes to put away, floors to sweep and mop, people to call, Facebook newsfeeds to scroll, family to visit, and a thousand other chores just like you do. But at 8:45 I stop doing them and get in the car, because I told you I would and I don’t care to come off as a liar.

  Then, from 9:00 to 9:30, while I sit there waiting on you, I am literally fuming over the things I could be doing at home while you are still at your leisure. I find always being late one of the most disrespectful things a person can do. It’s like you are saying, “My time is so much more valuable than yours, so you just sit there and twiddle your thumbs until I finish what I need to do and if I get caught up in the next hour or so I will come meet you.”

  Okay, rant over. Man, that felt good to get it off my chest.

  So, as you see, we are as different as day and night, but she is my very best friend in the world. Therefore, I can say what I want to about her, but if anyone else tries to, I will hunt you down.

  Chapter Five

  Maggie

  It goes without saying that I don’t have enough decent summer clothes to go on a cruise. Then, to top it off, I have been informed that since it’s an eight day cruise there will be two formal nights instead of one. Irene said they had those cute maxi dresses on sale at Belk’s for 20% off. I guess I would need two. Though I have plenty of church and funeral clothes, as Irene likes to refer to my wardrobe, the majority of my casual attire has grass stains on the knees from kneeling in my flowerbeds. And let’s not forget a new bathing suit. Heaven help us! I only hope the bathing suit cover ups are on sale as well.

  It was settled then, Irene and I needed a trip to the mall. But first I intended to sit on the back porch with a cup of coffee and read the morning paper. The section above the fold immediately caught my eye.

  NO LEADS IN EXPLOSION AT LOCAL CHEMICAL COMPANY

  At least 90 people are still out of a job this morning after an explosion at Pine View Chemicals and subsequent fire burned the plant to the ground last week. It is believed that no one was in the building other than Blakely Owens, president and CEO of the company. Owens was believed to be working late in his penthouse office at the time. Investigators are continuing to comb through the rubble looking for any clues as to the cause of the explosion.

  Lord have mercy! First Blakely Owens loses his life in an explosion at the chemical plant, and now some poor girl is decapitated and left practically on my doorstep. Mama always said, “When it rains it pours, Maggie.” Pine View was having a deluge this week.

  Next I flipped to the obituaries and was saddened to learn that Rusty Weston, one of our high school classmates, had passed away the day before. His body would be at the funeral home tomorrow night.

  All thoughts of shopping were put on hold as I hurried into the kitchen to make a pound cake for his grieving family. While I was beating the sugar, butter, cocoa, baking powder, and salt together, I thought of Irene and what she might need for the funeral.

  Oh, my, She is going to need a lot!

  I love the girl dearly, but at times she dresses like she’s 24 instead of 54. Nothing revealing, she doesn’t run around showing tits and ass. You can bet your bottom dollar I wouldn’t be seen in public with her if she did. It’s just that she makes such a… colorful… flamboyant... um… bold statement with her clothes. Personally, I have a perfect navy dress and hat for just such an occasion. Whereas I doubt Irene even owns a dress and I am certain there isn’t a hat to be found anywhere on her premises.

  We are as much polar opposites when it comes to clothing styles as we are everything else. Irene only wears peach and pink, with an occasional yellow or pale green garment thrown in. Her wardrobe consists of Bermuda shorts, capris, or sometimes a skort. Anything that touches her body has to be pastel or she won’t step foot out of the house in it.

  She would look so respectable in a navy or black dress with a nice string of pearls, but it will never happen. I lose sleep wondering how in the hell I am going to persuade her to wear the traditional Red Hat outfit of purple and red, that our tour group has already agreed upon, when we board the boat in Miami. It will require herculean effort to even convince her to put a hat on her head, let alone a red one.

  I added the eggs one at a time, mixing them with the other ingredients as my mind rambled on for a few minutes without me. Then, still pondering the dilemma of how to make Irene dress age appropriate for the viewing of our classmate’s body, I sifted the flour and alternated pouring it in with the milk. With all the ingredients mixed together, I poured in my secret ingredient that has people raving about how moist my pound cakes are. Three cups of ground zucchini. Chocolate Zucchnini Pound Cake. If I had time to bake them, I could sell them by the dozen.

  After I had slid the cake into the oven, I called Irene. “Did you hear about Rusty Weston dying?”

  “Yes. I saw it on Facebook this morning.” I could hear Irene’s voice becoming melancholy. “You know I was just talking to Rusty at KFC last week.”

  “What!” I shrieked, unable to believe what I was hearing. “You actually ate food at KFC.”

  “Damn!” Irene mumbled. “I forgot.”

  “Meaning you forgot you weren’t supposed to tell me that you ate there, or you forgot how those poor chickens suffer?”

  “Both,” she admitted.

  How could she possibly forget something so important? “You know I have signed PETA’s petition and boycott KFC.”

  “I told you I forgot,” she mumbled, not sounding the least bit repentant.

  “Can I just read you a few lines from PETA’s petition so that perhaps next time you will remember?”

  “Sure.” She sighed.

  It only took me a couple of minutes to find my copy.

  “PETA is asking KFC to eliminate the worst abuses that chickens suffer in the factory farms and slaughterhouses of its suppliers, including crippling injuries because of cruel breeding practices and the overuse of drugs, having their throats slit while still conscious, being dunked into tanks of scalding-hot water while still alive and able to feel pain, and breeding them to grow so large that they become crippled beneath their own weight.

  Again Irene sighed. “I agree, it sounds horrible.”

  I was so upset I could cry. “And to think you ate one of those poor birds yesterday.”

  “I said I was sorry. Now let’s not beat a dead horse into the ground, Maggie,” she grumbled irritably. “When you have finished with your rant, I will tell you that Rusty looked just as healthy as all get out when I saw him.”

  Taking a deep breath, I attempted to calm my rattled nerves. How on earth could the woman be so unconcerned about the rampant animal abuse occurring in the world around her? “I heard he dropped dead from a massive heart attack.”

  “Wow. That hits close to home, doesn’t it? He was th
e same age as us.”

  “I’m going to call when we get off the phone and make an appointment for my annual physical.” I had put it off long enough. “It’s time to have my cholesterol checked. Last year it was a little high.”

  “I remember,” Irene said. “And you need a mammogram too.”

  “True. Anyway lets run to the big city tonight. I need a few things for the cruise.”

  “I do too,” she was quick to agree. “Scratch that. I need a lot of things for the cruise.

  “Do you want me to drive?” I offered, even though I knew it would fall on deaf ears. “I just had little red serviced and she’s ready to go.”

  “You know damn well I am not riding with the top down. My hair would be standing straight up on top of my head and I would be burnt to a crisp by the time we got there. Let alone the fact that there is no protection, and if you decide to get a lead foot and flip us out across a corn field there is nothing to stop our heads from bouncing on the pavement.”

  “The car came equipped with this miraculous new invention called seatbelts,” I snapped, not in the mood for another repeat of her same old tired argument.

  “Huh! I refuse to put my life in the safety of a two inch strip of material.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “I might as well be.”

  Chapter Six

  Maggie

  Now it’s a known fact that we don’t get to choose our kinfolks, but if I could Irene would be my sister. I love her dearly. She has her faults, and a lot of them, but she is about the fairest person I ever met, and if she smells the slightest hint of injustice in the air she is going to roll up her sleeves and rush headfirst into the melee. You know that old saying, “A Southern girl is sugar and spice on the outside, but filled with piss and vinegar on the inside?” That’s Irene.

  A truer friend I have never had, but Lord knows the girl is way to colorful for a 54 year old. Pink and orange. And if she could get away with wearing pink and orange together she would, and I bet she has. I know it’s a little late in the game, but I feel like I have to help her make better fashion choices.

  A few years back a dear friend of Irene’s gave her a beautiful set of pearls. Jewelry store pearls mind you, and can you believe they have never once been draped around her neck. I fully intend to convince her to purchase an outfit today to wear with those pearls if it’s the last thing I do.

  We needed a trip to Macys. They have nice reasonable prices and I know how hard Irene works for her money. I wish she had a better paying, and much less stressful, job than sitting with Miss Nellie. That crotchety old woman is getting more ornery by the day and poor Irene is nearing her wit’s end.

  I picked her up in little red, adamantly insisting that she ride with me this time. Surprisingly there was no argument. As we were fixing to leave, her youngest son drove up and I had to stop and speak to that sweet child. Honey, he is as handsome as they come and has more girls after him than Carter’s got liver pills. It wouldn’t do for me to be 40 years younger. Irene, like myself, raised three wonderful and extremely handsome sons. Of course they all take after their mothers.

  I pulled out of her driveway and we were not five miles from her house before Irene started complaining. “What idiot drives a car without a roof?”

  “Umm… perhaps your best friend?”

  She pooched out her lips and arched a brow. “Well yes, but you have to admit your Happy Meal is a few French fries short of a full dinner.”

  “Keep on insulting me.” I glanced over at her with a purely evil grin. “You know I could make the 30 minute drive to the mall in 10 minutes if you piss me off.”

  Irene adjusted her seat belt just in case. “And you will be the one getting the speeding ticket too.”

  And you will be the one taking nerve pills for the rest of the night after I scare the hell out of you.”

  “Humph,” she snorted.

  When we arrived at the mall, we went to Macy’s first with me heading to the section for the more mature woman, while Irene gravitated toward the youthful apparel.

  I perused the racks until I found just what I was looking for. Yes, these would do just fine. Satisfied with my choices, I went in search of Irene and found her with her arms loaded down with, what else, peach and pink.

  “Are you ready to go to the dressing room?” I asked, busying myself with a table of folded up tank tops so she couldn’t focus on what was in my arms. I knew I would have to work my way up to this. I couldn’t just rush in.

  “Not yet. There are just too many gorgeous outfits to choose from and I can’t decide which ones I want,” she gushed. “Don’t you just love these colors for the cruise?”

  I try really hard not to lie. “Although they are not colors I would choose, they are very… colorful.”

  I went back to shopping and found a Sunday dress that I just had to have. When I looked up, here comes Irene prancing toward me with a pair of chartreuse capris and a cross between a Hawaiian, chevron, and paisley nightmare of a print top. Was she packing for a trip to Maui that she hadn’t told me about? “Honey, we are going to the Caribbean, not the south Pacific.”

  “I know that.” She screwed up her face at me. “I chose this for you.”

  “For me?” Why, I wouldn’t be seen in public wearing that experiment of colors if every yuppie in the Research Triangle Park begged me to. Hoping to distract her from the rainbow nightmare draped across her arm, I said, “Look what I found for you. Honey, this outfit will look so pretty on you. A crisp white pair of capris and a beautiful button up, three quarter length sleeve, Carolina blue shirt.”

  Her eyes blared and a hand automatically went to her throat. “Lord, it makes me sweat just looking at it.”

  “Nonsense. You just have to add this ensemble to your wardrobe, and it’s on sale. If I use my credit card we can save 20% off what is already marked down and you can pay me when we check out.”

  I knew I was rambling, but I couldn’t stop. If I did she would toss that hideous Hawaiian/chevron/paisley print shirt in my face and tell me to go try it on. “You can have this for pennies on the dollar and you never know when you might need good quality, decent, clothes. You can wear this to any church in America and fit right in.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “I might as well be.”

  “Good, go try these on.” Irene took on that wheedling tone she uses when she is trying to persuade me to do something against my will. “You would look so good in color. I wish, just once, you would let me choose an outfit for you and get you out of black and navy.”

  Wait? Seriously? This opportunity was too perfect to let slip away! “Okay, let’s do just that. Let’s choose each other’s outfit.”

  “Are you for real?” She looked way too thrilled by the prospect of dressing me. “And will we wear what we choose for each other to the viewing tomorrow night?”

  Oh, no! No way in hell was I wearing an outfit to the funeral home that she had chosen. I would suffer humiliation to such a degree that I would have to flee the state to hide from my shame. But I knew I would never again, in this lifetime, be presented with the chance to appear in public with Irene when she didn’t flash like a neon sign.

  Oh my God!

  For the first time in my life, I could make Irene Spencer actually blend in with the rest of society.

  I had to do it. For her. “Okay,” I said. “I will be right back.” I hastened to hang the pants and shirt I had chosen back on the rack and make my way to the more dressy attire, before she changed her mind.

  I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around slowly when I heard her calling my name behind me. Damn, she was backing out! I knew it was too good to be true.

  “One condition,” she added, rushing up breathlessly behind me. “It has to be sleeveless and it has to have some color. You know I will die of a heat stroke if I have to wear sleeves, and I simply refuse to be seen looking like somebody’s dowdy old grandma in a below the knee dress of black, navy, or
dark brown.”

  “No sleeves,” I agreed, “as long as anything you choose for me does have sleeves and it cannot be neon in color. And try to remember that we will be going to a funeral home.”

  “Don’t worry,” she quipped. “I won’t let you make a spectacle of yourself. It will be something that I would personally wear for a somber occasion.”

  I was screwed.

  Chapter Seven

  Irene

  We were on our way to the funeral home the following evening and neither of us had eaten supper. I gazed upon the restaurants we passed wondering which food establishment was least likely to have a boycott against them at the current moment. Man, I would kill for a Chick-Fil-A sandwich, but I wasn’t about to get Maggie started in on the constitutional rights of chickens again. I tried to rack my brain, remembering whether or not she had anything against a piece of steak. As it was, I could hardly think straight since she was just winding down from her diatribe against the tuna industry.

  “It’s horrible, Irene. You see those helpless dolphins commonly swim with yellow fin tuna. Since they swim closer to the surface than tuna, they are a good indicator to boat captains that tuna are in the area. Unfortunately, when the captain nets the tuna, the dolphins are also snagged in the seines. Since the 1950’s over 6 billion dolphins have been captured and subsequently murdered.”

  “6 billion?” I had to admit, that was a lot of dolphins.

  Now believe me, I am not a tree hugger by any stretch of the imagination, but as she was talking I got to thinking. What about all those poor tuna that are netted by the millions? Shouldn’t we feel just as sorry for them as we do the dolphins? Did anyone ever sign a petition to save the tuna? Was anybody filing a lawsuit on their behalf? While Maggie chattered on about the poor dolphins, I pulled up the PETA website on my phone looking for the answer: