A Gift for Murder

by Capri Montgomery

  Megan told the captain everything in detail from start to finish. Things Jake didn’t know because he wasn’t there from the beginning dredged up the vile taste of that man’s smell in her throat. Alcohol and musk of too many hours sitting in filth and not enough hours sitting in a shower with a bar of soap, a rag and running water. She would never be able to forget the stink of it.

  “I don’t know who he was. I don’t know why he was hiding in the hidden areas of the brush and mini trees before the bike and workout lane from city to the park of nature area. I don’t know but I am still afraid he will be back.” She knew Jake was sure the guy wouldn’t be back but she knew she had a feeling he would.

  “Not to worry, Meg.” He nodded with a seriously protective smile on his face. “There isn’t a fire escape up to the top floor of your building, of which I and the local fire department agree you need to have since your flat is on the top floor, but I will still have two officers sitting out in front of your building tonight to keep watch on you.”

  Megan nodded. Those men were still being paid even if they were in a boring state of working under the half dollar moon and the city street lights.

  “Thanks.” She could sleep a little easier at least. She doubted the wheels turning in her mind trying to sort out this attack and the attacker’s words would allow her to slow down for rest now but at least she had some safety.

  “No worries. Detective Holmes said he’s investigating the murders in that ritzy area—the spa murder—murders, now, I guess. He said he’ll come here and stay the night with you.” Eduardo answered the knock on the door with a boisterous “come in” before the door rattled open.

  “Ah. He’s here. I knew I liked this man. He doesn’t waste time and he protects his woman.” Eduardo nodded with surety while Megan drank in the one man she was seeing too much of now.

  “We’re not…”

  “Good to have you here, Holmes. She went through the ringer of fear provoking events tonight. When we get more daylight hours she won’t need to worry about much but I am glad she didn’t have her trike, back or Jake wouldn’t have been able to see what was happening to help her.”

  The Captain cut her off so she couldn’t explain to him that he was wrong because she and the detective were not dating. They weren’t really friends either. She appreciated his being willing to camp out but she was in a one bedroom flat.

  “I only have one bed.”

  Merck shrugged his shoulders. “I know how to sleep on floors, Megan. No worries.” He winked at her. He actually winked at her. Then he returned his attention to Eduardo and finalized actions needed for her safety here.

  Something perplexed her. Why did she go from shaking from the attack, still, after all this time, to having jittery butterflies in her stomach because of a wink? Not a wink, a wink from Merck. No way was she eager to let a woman’s hormones fluctuate her mind the way they fluctuated her body. She could not start to like him in anyway other than professional. He was a cop investigating not one, but two murders, which was why they always kept running into each other. It was the case for him and being the woman stuck at a spa of death—twice. This was life in his crime solving world and life in her bad day, bad time, kind of world. Like a book where not even the turning of the page could change the outcome. But this was work for him and stuck in chaos for her. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  All her trying to tame the fluttering butterflies weren’t helping her. The man was standing nearly a solid six feet. Tonight he had on dusted midnight blue jeans with a white perfectly fit to be toned polo, shined boots that looked dark like the night and ready to cowboy off. Then he had to shift sideways giving her a view of his beautifully tight and toned behind. This view was a thousand times different than the view of him in the designer business suit he had on when she saw him at the first murder. That view, all of the views before, was handsomely created but tonight’s view was hitting her in ways she did not wish to be hit. It could never work out for them. It had been decades since school years, but he was still that boy who sided with the bullies.

  Megan mentally slapped herself. He was not that boy anymore. If he could drop it and move forward she would need to get over it, let it go forever and not just for a day, and then move on. They were working around each other, or walking around each other, in this world since the murder and she had no right at all to dredge up the past just to make the butterflies in her stomach decide to stop trying to wake her up. The traitors they were wouldn’t listen to her. Butterflies were traitors. But her eyes were betraying her, too, because her eyes kept looking over at him and she didn’t want to break contact with the gorgeous view in front of her. Naturally sun kissed ivory never looked so good.

  Stop thinking of the man. He’s laid claim like Caesar to a night in your flat and if you keep it up you are going to pull a Cleopatra on him. Let it go. Get over it. Move on. No liking the good detective, standing confident, and strong, over there as anything more than just another Forest Springs dweller.

  And if she kept mentally chastising herself she just might be able to kick Holmes out of her mind tonight.

  The ritzy area of the city was only ten minutes away. She was in the middle class area and that suited her life and her checkbook just fine. Plus she had fewer sign restrictions over here. The captain lived on this side of the line like the others. He was in a two floor home with a walk lined with the tulips his ex-wife put in before she left him; the bulbs still came back every year. The officers over here were either renting a two family home, a slot in the one level thirty apartments building or owned their own homes in the line, or on the line, of average and comfortable economic class level. Nobody in this district put much into how much a person had and how little they had.

  The children played outside riding bikes, using skateboards or just running around being loud and having fun on the weekends. When the school season was in they had their study groups and Friday movie and pizza nights. There weren’t a plethora of children in town at the younger ages or the getting to graduate age level but there was a nice balance and it really did keep the area alive.

  The one thing they didn’t have on their side of the city was an art museum and Megan wanted to change that. Her building was wide enough to add a section for artist to create art, or to set up for a gallery. She was leaning toward the gallery because people could sit and have tea and maybe scones then walk through the open doors to see local art and buy a piece if they wanted to. All of this was a work in progress but she realized to extend her original idea would take more time and more employees than she could fit right now so she would start off with her original plan in progress and get it going. A few local pieces of art could just liven up the empty spaces before turning into something more.

  One of her best friends in the small Luxor, Oregon, had gone retro with her afternoon lunch restaurant and the waiters and waitresses were on skates like the 1919 A&W thing. That was before her time but all the old movies made me want to resurrect that food era.” She had told her the ins and the outs but Megan couldn’t imagine turning her café idea into that. The waitresses and waiters would need to be teens skating to the cars outside taking burgers, fries and milkshakes to waiting drivers at the drive-in restaurant. A carhop is what she was told it was called once upon a time and the clothes would be more 50s miniskirts and roller skates, not rollerblades. She vaguely remembered the 50s had women in sneakers designed for walking the food out but the other idea would keep people in fabulous shape so that would be good. It sounded magnificent but Megan had yet to make it to Luxor to see it in person. “They are talking putting in a drive-in movie metroplex, too,” she said. Megan was thinking it could be amazing if she wasn’t stuck in the mystery of the spa and wondering just why that pungent beast of a man attacked her.

  Right now, Megan needed to sort out if that guy tonight was related to the murder this morning or the dead frozen body in the steam room. She would spend time sorting it out to see how the pieces lined up and what pic
ture the puzzle formed when the pieces were put together. Tonight’s attacked and this morning’s dead body in the spa had to be connected and somehow she knew all of it had to be related to the first murder. Somebody probably put two and two together and came up with who she was in the past of this city. Somebody opened an old box of papers and realized she was once upon a time that little girl they said had a gift for solving anything involving crime. Given the fact that she was in that spa the day the first murder was found out somebody had to think she would keep going until she solved this crime. She knew a couple suspects had figured out who she was.

  The thing is that she wasn’t Nancy Drew and every previous crime she solved had been things she fell into not something she signed up for. She left town, grew a fraction taller, went back to her natural red, grew her hair and changed her pixie girl style. Perhaps her flaw was she thought after all this time that nobody would remember the little girl she was so long ago.

  Whoever sent somebody after her they should have read all those annoying boxed up papers to know she was far away from little miss damsel in distress and she was not a woman with Tarzan ready to swing from trees to save her at every step she took.

  If somebody didn’t want her to solve the murders before, then, they shouldn’t have had her attacked outside her front door.

  Meg and Merck left the Trustful Avenue precinct behind and he opened every door, including the car, just like a gentleman. She never saw him that way really. Every time they interacted lately he was business rough. He was a man worth running from then, but she had to admit she saw him, now, because of every murder tearing through the town. She did try her best to put the past behind her so anything done before she left this place had to fall away. She would have to welcome some of these people into her café when it opened anyway.

  Looking over his pristinely clean SUV with the black seat wrapped in ivory clean doors inside a black steal frame body was amazing. The man had style that was for sure.

  When they got back to her place she showered the dirt of the attack off her, baked a sweet southern potato and filled a bowl with a mixed green leaf salad. She hadn’t eaten before she went for the whipping cream and she was hungry now. Megan offered Merck food but he wanted to pay attention to the outside and make sure the officers sitting out there in their vehicles were seeing everything around them and not sleeping on the job. Clearly, Merck was all business and locked on the task so deep she doubted he would sleep much until she tucked herself into her room for the night.

  If she had to have a protector she couldn’t say she was sorry it the good detective Holmes. The man knew how to get his job done all the way through.

  “Merck, how did you get your name?” Nobody had a name like that and he owned it well.

  “My mother,” he laughed across the room. “She hated the name Rick, Scott, John, Adam, Mark.” Merck shook his head. “She said she certainly couldn’t call me Sherlock given my last name.” He laughed. “That would have sucked if she had. She couldn’t name me Sherlock but she had me watch all of the Sherlock Holmes old shows and movies. I can thank her for my love of the English and other world detectives. I never went to those places until I graduated. All the trouble I helped people gave you for your gift was probably jealousy because I couldn’t sort it out after all my reading the fiction world.” He shrugged his shoulders.

  “What changed that? You are like world renowned now.”

  “I got real-life training from a real-life world. I was planning to stay in Red Hill, London and anywhere else, but I landed in Germany for eight months when I saw my mother off on her cruise.”

  “Did she love it? I haven’t done a real cruise before.”

  “She died on that ship.”

  “How?” Her heart broke for him. It was never easy to lose somebody you loved.

  “The man who got stabbed through his back with the long fire poker fell forward off the balcony of his top room and down onto my mother. The fire poker seared through her heart.” He shook his head. “My father was angry because he won that trip for her and she wouldn’t have been there alone. She wouldn’t have been there to die. Nobody ever found the murderer of the guy who fell down, but it went cold case when the room that supposedly was occupied against the hall from him was empty. Bare empty. I wish I could have investigated but it wasn’t through an area where anybody I worked for had authority to work so I couldn’t get anything other than ‘sorry for your loss’ on a cruise line postcard.” He shook his head. “I know how she died. I know who was responsible for her loss but knowing who went after that guy would be a lot better than just knowing what killed her.”

  She had never heard about this and she was sure nobody else had either. The cruise line would want to silence it and the country she was in territory wouldn’t want to have to deal with American politics either.

  “I am sorry, Merck.”

  “I wish you were with her.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You would have solved it. You could have got justice.”

  That reason sounded better than her mind thinking he would have preferred the guy fell on her instead of his mother.

  “Anyway, you need rest. Finish up and get ready for bed already.” Merck winked at her, breaking the solemn mood with some manly unexpected flirting.

  Megan had a feeling she and the hot detective would end up learning more about each other than she would have ever expected. She looked forward to getting to know him. When she opened her café she knew he was on the right side of the district to stop by any and every time the café was open. The fact that she looked forward to it was really something she should analyze for herself. Why was she getting more comfortable with Merck Holmes? Megan shrugged her shoulders. One mystery at a time, Meg.

  Chapter Eleven

  Opened Doors

  Megan was happy the new officers were still keeping an eye on her area because she needed to be able to keep the front door open to air out the bleach from her morning of cleaning. Leaving her door open, however, was not an invitation for visitors. Of course, common sense did not belong to anybody at all.

  She had heard from Portia early that morning and Megan was still shaking her head.

  “I added the sugar and it flew all over the place when I put it in the bowl. Meg, why didn’t you warn me.”

  Megan had laughed. “I did tell you, Portia. I wrote it right next to it in the directions right next to the line about the sugar, and in the section right under the word direction in all caps.”

  Portia groaned. “I missed that. I decided to do that one because I couldn’t figure out the one I asked you about and after you told me about the attack I couldn’t beg you to go back to the store for more ingredients.”

  Megan had sighed. She really wanted to help her. “What happened?”

  Portia laughed. “Well, sharing is caring. My guy was there with me and it all flew all over his uniform.”

  Megan laughed hard. She could just imagine how the uniform looked.

  “And he had to go meet with his commanding officer or something. His uniform was a disaster. When he went out to get in the car with his friend because they both had to go in. His friend laughed harder than I’m laughing now. He told him to next time come after work, not before. Disaster is an understatement. But I guess I made his friend laugh. That has to count for something.”

  Megan had smiled. “Yeah. Being in with the friends is great even as an adult.”

  Megan shook her head. “You might want to just not send her any recipes that involve using the oven. She might burn the place down.” She liked her friends, but some of them were gifted in other ways far outside being in the kitchen. That was her specialty. She was proud of that.

  Megan was so locked in her world of good thoughts that she had zoned out. She hadn’t even realized somebody was heading in before it was too late to close and lock the door.

  Bonnie Turlock had skipped-walked into the café with deep brown eyes shining brightly. If the spa w
as a beacon for murder the way a lighthouse brought the sailors home, then she, herself, seemed to be the honey in a flower that had a scent of a strong come pollinate my café and me with your crazy. No, she did not want to know who was creating their own Forest Springs soap opera here. They should go pollinate the precinct and maybe Merck could whiff out the murder’s pheromones, arrest them, cage them and life could go on. Go on without the murder side of life, that is.

  “I’m not open yet, Bonnie.” Megan forced a smile to her lips knowing that once the café opened she would have to fake smiles with some people in here all the time.

  Bonnie nodded. “I just wanted to see you. I was at the spa when Sterling was murdered but I was in the corner hall. I knew who you were anytime I saw you around but the way you watched the situation in the room with you and the others. You seemed to be figuring out everything on your own.”

  Megan rolled her eyes. She had seen Bonnie out the corner of her eye but she was talking with one of the officers and had a feeling she knew him well. She thought of who he was after a few minutes. The southern twang in his tone was Justin Michaels, the bully who helped corrupt all the other bullies to increase the taunting. She remembered that his father was a Navy higher up and he could have moved elsewhere but they gave him a chance to move where he wanted that time. She remembered her father saying that Justin’s father wanted a peaceful town for his kids; four boys, no girls. They staggered each other close in age. She remembered wishing they had moved elsewhere. The past wasn’t forgettable when things were so far bad. Seeing Justin Michaels in uniform made her think of how evil he was and made her wonder if he was as evil in uniform now as he was out of uniform as a child.

  Megan knew she was wrong for sizing the present up with the past, but she couldn’t forget it all and her mind circled back to the pain she felt back then. Justin didn’t recognize her as he sat there instructing her on how to stay put until the detective got to her. He was dimples, smiles and flirtatious like he didn’t care about yesteryear while she couldn’t forget it.