A Gift for Murder

by Capri Montgomery

  She and Pebbles were dishing about old Hollywood style and the opera gloves that went with them when Georgia Schafer waddled her way inside straight over to them.

  Megan rolled her eyes. Why couldn’t they pester the detective about the murder instead of her? They didn’t know her, really, and they weren’t all that close to where her café was so they didn’t need to show up while it wasn’t even open yet. Given the grandma style Georgia was wearing, Megan didn’t figure there was anything in this store for her.

  “You are sleeping with Holmes. That’s why you’re not a suspect.”

  Megan blew a soft breath of frustration. She was a thousand percent sure she was not intimate with Merck.

  “No I am not. He’s a detective and he investigates. That is his training.” That is his career. Megan knew if he thought she was a real suspect he would ride her hard too.

  “You have to have been with him. He would question you as much as he’s questioning us if you weren’t with him some nights. Maybe while he’s still on duty too. Plus, you are the only one he let stay in your chair while he questioned you. He even pulled up a chair.” She jabbed her finger at her.

  “No, as I said, I am not coupled up with Regal Detective Holmes. I am not a suspect because I was the only one there in that room, at the time, who was not shagging that Sterling like some of all of you were. I also never met the man. And,” she emphasized the word and. “It was my first time, ever, in the spa in the first place. So I am not the problem. You are. Being repeatedly questioned is on you, not me. All of you are fibbing enough to garner the need for more investigating.” Megan had just had her limits of their world of stupid. She left for a day out for a calming break from the books and design stuff, not to walk feet first into hell.

  “Now, you are in a store. You are in this woman’s store. No sane human being is here to buy your gossip. So either find something you want to buy and pay for it or get out of her store.”

  Megan knew she did not have a right to tell anybody to leave the store. It was not her store.

  “That is why your father left your mother. Because of you. You ruin everything. That’s why the ladies say you never got invited to parties. Your father didn’t want you and they didn’t either.”

  Georgia turned around with her nose up in the air and she waddled her trifling behind out the store. Megan shook her head. She was frustrated at how people could stomp her down and blame her for something that was not her fault. Maybe they were all guilty. Maybe they were like Agatha Christie’s Murder on Orient Express.

  Merck was kinder to her, she would guess. At least he was in their opinion. In her opinion he just stayed sitting because he didn’t want to talk all about murder with her. He wanted to find out who she was nowadays and how long she was planning to stay in the city.

  Megan looked at Pebbles and apologized to her for kicking the woman out her store, but Pebbles didn’t seem to be upset about her telling the woman to get out of the store if she wasn’t buying anything.

  “I actually cannot stand that woman. She is always mean to my mother. What she said and did…it always hurt my mother. She picked on her clothing, her hair and everything else. She just tormented her. My bio dad running off didn’t help, I guess. My mother was beautiful but that woman always put her down, which is why we were glad when she stopped coming in our store. She never bought anything anyway. It’s not like we lost a paying customer when she stopped coming in here.”

  Pebbles laughed until she looked at what she had sitting there on the counter and then back up to Megan. She had a startled look of being afraid that she might not go ahead with the purchase.

  “I really do not know you…I mean I don’t know if you are who I think you are—the girl my mom told me about. My mom said that they said bad things about you but that you actually weren’t a bad person. She said that you, the girl that is, was not deserving of the cliché beware of Greeks bearing gifts. And right now you seem like a nice person to me. I am sorry I could not stand up for you.”

  “It is okay; trust me. I cannot lose myself against bullies. If I stake my life, my happiness and my health on fighting her, it simply hurts me. I just have to use her evil to remind me to learn to let it go, get over it and move on.” Megan technically ran once. She was not running away again.

  The old use of hurtful words was chock-full of misnomers. She was not Greek and she was not some magical genie in a bottle either.

  “Anyway, I’m shopping not moaning about the past. Ring me up because I really want to get everything you have on the counter right there before I remind myself that I was not suppose to buy more clothing.”

  Pebbles nodded and started ringing up the items laying there for her to ring up. She folded each piece flawlessly, sat them in a tissue paper box, each on to a single box, closed it up and stuck all of them in a pretty fabric bag. Megan knew she could take one bag but the boxes would have been hard to take one by one in her arms. It wasn’t the typical bag and Megan hadn’t bought it, yet Pebbles had gifted it to her.

  “Hang in there. And for the record, I think the detective is a very handsome man that would be the perfect match for you.”

  Megan smiled at the happy as a bee eating from an orange blossom flower. While she did not share the Megan and Merck wagon she could appreciate that there was somebody in Forest Springs, back in the past, or even today, who didn’t blame her for every ill that happened at every event they hosted.

  Maybe Forest Springs wasn’t as dark as she remembered it. There was at least a shimmer of light there somewhere.

  Megan went back to her home and balanced her checkbook, washed the new clothes and other clothes in her basket and hung them to dry in the laundry area. She knew she could put a line on the balcony so the clothes could dry but she thought better of it. It was a small walkout that she hadn’t planned to use much anyway, but cluttering it with strings to hang freshly washed clothes. She always had a habit of washing before wearing no matter where she bought clothes, and no matter how old the clothes were they had to be cleaned before wedding. The drying machine could work but she had less of a chance of wrinkles if she hung these clothes up straight.

  Megan realized today that more people knew who she was. More than she thought anyway. Maybe that was good. It was better to know where the coin fell before she opened her café. Knowing now would help her organize the most friendly and civil response later. She knew some of the ways to shut it down but she wasn’t a little girl anymore and she had lived a real woman’s world. Keeping her mouth shut and civil wasn’t as strong as it used to be. She was more likely to stand up for herself now and she wasn’t going to change that.

  Chapter Six

  Captain’s Orders

  Merck sat in the white, cracking leather chair in the Captain’s office. Captain Zack Melbourne was not usually as riled up as he was today which told him the meeting he had with the mayor was not so peaceful.

  “He acts like the murder happened a year ago. I keep telling him, all of them, that it takes time. None of them will listen.”

  Merck shook his head. “We cannot arrest them all until one of them cracks. It’s an investigation. We are still working on it.”

  Melbourne nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I said. But it’s a high money area with high money rollers and they don’t want crime scene vehicles sitting around anymore.”

  The vehicle was only there to get more bottles out the refrigerator for testing.

  Melbourne snapped the number 2 pencil in his hand. “I have to issue these orders, but I won’t pressure you to arrest anybody until you know it’s the right time and the right person, but limit the uniforms and other crime vehicles in the area.”

  Merck reluctantly nodded. If he needed more evidence he just might need a refrigerated box and that didn’t mean it would be small enough to fit in the trunk of a car.

  Money and politics could be the death of Lady Justice.

  Chapter Seven

  A Walk in the Park

>   Megan couldn’t actually explain her whereabouts today in a way that made total sense. Most of her trek out today made sense but not all of what she opted to do made sense at all.

  She had a café to get together and ready to open and she still needed to find workable art that would fit her mix of modern day elegance. She had the two pieces she brought back from Venice since she had paid good money for them and one of her favorite hourglasses, but she loved the painted works of black and white oil. The painting with the man holding a woman in his arms, and the painting with the woman sitting by the naked gondola docking side were classically beautiful. The Venice inspired painting piece was so peaceful and so not real because morning, noon and night had tourists and regular Venice dwellers crowding up that area, and that wasn’t to mention the men needed to navigate those beauties from one island in the city. Megan had never thought of them being islands. She just knew Venice, Italy as a city but as the travel specialist had told her there were more than a hundred, or so, islands with water separating them. “Same city, but have you ever taken a car to get you from one section across the water to the next?” Valerie Kent, the travel specialist, was right. Since Valerie had studied in college to become a travel specialist who knew geography facts around the world Megan would believe her on that. Valerie had actually left the United States to live in Venice which is why they probably got along so well, other than her delivering snacks of candy and treats sent from Romeo’s father. The man was shy when it came to women he was interested in but not so much when it came to women he would never date. Since Megan was dating his son while playing in the kitchen with him she figured Romeo’s father, Giovanni Amato, didn’t have a problem with excessively flirting with her because she was off limits. No risk in flirting when you knew you neither needed, or wanted, to take it further.

  The first painting she had fallen in love with was tastefully passionate and the second, at some looks, was sad, like a woman alone and lost. Other times she looked at that silent image it seemed secluded yet peaceful as if the woman alone in the painting was enjoying her time alone after a hectic work day or week. She understood those days of so much time sifting flower and baking pastries that she could understand wanting to be somewhere without any distractions. She could understand it but she still was opening her own café which guaranteed that there wouldn’t be any vacations ever again.

  Since Megan had opted to keep both paintings for her flat upstairs she needed to get something for the walls downstairs. She wanted beauty but she also needed something that fit the style of her café. The walls were basic white which left room for a pop of picture color, but the floors were faux marble black and white and the blinds were a deep cherry wood which meant the art on the wall would have to be beyond black and white to lighten up the place and so far she had only seen black and white paintings she liked, and bought two of them to be delivered from a local artist in Forest Springs.

  Megan laughed at herself. The one painting was a woman sitting in a Parisian café sipping a cold, or warm, for all she knew, drink. The woman had a look out at the world around her. The second one had a Monroe look, only more beautiful, and while in that painting she didn’t have anything to drink in hand she did have the wind whipping up her flared halter dress. She had and a stylish clutch in one hand and a boisterous smile of happiness on her face. Megan hadn’t seen any other paintings there for the walls of her café but thought something with a flower, a pastry, a tea, or anything café related would be a good thing. She was still thinking of using one side of the café for local art that people could walk around to checkout if they wanted. Either that or she was going to need to order a lot more tables and hire a lot more people to help keep them cleaned.

  Megan’s mind was lost in her own business because the business plan, and even her tidy to do list, was going chaos since the combination of using her free spa day for a break turned into an unsolved murder. The chaos of trying to keep the who she was quiet had gone from fairly easy to complicated. Keeping the past asleep was getting increasingly difficult every single day. Humans she didn’t know were now asking her about the murder when she walked in her district area. She figured go over to the highly rick district for art and lunch because those people there were too busy playing in the water fountains with quarters, getting hair cut, shoes shined, midday orchestra serenades and for those in the Fortune 500 offices, working sealing deals and winning in the stock market.

  Had she picked the wrong side of the line for her café? No. She liked the middle class peace with the right amount of evening out mixed with active fitness life and less snooty humans badgering those who weren’t ever so perfect. That was not to say the women and men in her district weren’t walking around old school stylish but very few of them were walking around in four hundred dollar a shoe shoes either.

  She had to admit, though, she liked the retro clothing store and dropping half of her shop for the café money on dresses, like a dress that was totally Audrey Hepburn, and more, just had to be so crazy but so right. The lower heels that matched the ones in style that she was already parading around Glam Street in were a definite must. Of course there were two beautiful high class night gowns made like dresses with matching house shoes with a one inch heel and a hint of faux fur on some and satin with a jewel on others. No dress was good without a clutch and no clutch was good without sunglasses. By the time Megan tallied what she had just spent this morning lunch was out of the equation. She could cook at home. The money she had left had to go for the café decorations.

  Fortunately they had stylish rolling covered carts and she rented one so she could carry her unimportant shopping with it because it was too many bags to handle walking back to her tricycle alone.

  “I cannot believe you are on that trike in that dress, those shoes and that 60’s hat.” Willa Heist sauntered up beside her. Megan inwardly groaned, she wasn’t supposed to run into anybody from the spa that was there on the day of the murder. She was leaving the park after checking her numbers and making sure she had all the purchases in her ledger.

  “How are you, Willa?”

  Willa shrugged her shoulders. “Not as good as you it would seem.” Her eyes raked up and down her body from a side angle look. Willa groaned. “Sterling being murdered with some of my stuff that had been stolen just ruins things for me. With so many of the women there sleeping with the man people think I was one of them, too.” She babbled on about how bad the other women had made her life. Megan rolled her eyes. Life sucks. Live with it. She tried not to mumble her thoughts out loud.

  Had Merck told the ladies what Sterling was killed with? She doubted that he had because good cops knew how to keep their mouth shut while investigating a crime. If Merck didn’t say anything to the other ladies then how did Willa know how Sterling was killed?

  “Can you just believe how his murder messed up my day?”

  How did Willa think she felt? It was her first time at the spa. She had used her won free day ticket at the spa and nothing other than paperwork and a dead body came with that ticket.

  “I wasn’t even into that guy. I work for a doctor and one of the nurses there, outside of the doctor’s office I work for and the patients I work with, is in an area I pass through every single day. The nurse in that area is gorgeous. He is tall. He’s German, blond hair, blue eyes and a great body. You know what I mean?”

  Megan nodded. “You want a German with blond hair, a great body, blue eyes and giant height.”

  Willa nodded. “Exactly. My crush is a nurse. What do I want with this guy cleaning up behind everybody else, and screwing everybody else, too?”

  Megan got the feeling that Willa knew what her type wasn’t and wanted to make sure she made it clear she didn’t have a reason to kill the man.

  “Maybe you could ask you German man out. Then the world will know you already have a man.” Why was she playing matchmaker here? Oh right, she couldn’t pull her rolling crate behind her any faster than she was and Willa was keeping up just
fine.

  “Oh. Well he is German by lineage but he was born in Portland, Oregon. Nice man, but I haven’t asked him out. I am waiting on him to ask me out.”

  Megan nodded. She liked to be a lady who had a gentleman ask her out too. Of course, Willa was like twenty-five with a great many years of wait to see around her while Megan had just turned forty and was still single. Being honest with herself even if she had stayed in Venice she didn’t think she would be married. Romero was a great kisser and he was patient with waiting on her to want sex, but she never wanted to give him that part of herself. She was still in her thirties then but now she was a Hollywood comedy drama about a forty year old virgin. Somehow she didn’t care about that. When the time was right with the right man maybe it would happen for her. She always said to herself that she was born a virgin and she would be okay if she died one, too. But, she wondered if her thinking would change when somebody who intoxicated her mind loved her. Somebody other than Regal Detective Merck Holmes. The man was tall, hot with a great body, which she could see when he pulled his suit jacket off or came into view in a t-shirt that fit his angles without suffocating them.

  “I wish the cops would solve the murder already. It’s been like nearly three days. Why are they so slow? Cops solve crimes faster than this.”

  She might want to go look at all the decades old cold case files to see how untrue her thoughts were. Could this whining and digging for information woman get to her work already?

  “What do you think? You could try to solve it. I’ve heard about you. My grandma told me about you. She didn’t know you were back here though. She said you are the Greek Gift Giver.”

  Megan rolled her eyes and dug her nails into the hand pulling the rolling cart behind her. Why couldn’t people see how condescending and derogatory those words were? It was the cliché beware of Greek’s bearing gifts taunt she had dealt with most of her life in Forest Springs. She wasn’t even Greek. She was Iberian, Finish, American by birth and Native American, too. She was a mix but she was not Greek. She might want to leave out the fact that she lived in Greece for seven months once upon a time. If anybody knew that they would find another bow to shoot at her.