Murder of the Month

by Tegan Maher

  She found several nice rings, a necklace, and a set of Amish end tables. One of the last items we looked at before the auction started was a jewelry box, and for some reason it called to me. I first noticed it when we walked past the jewelry case, then again when the auctioneer's assistant set it down right in front of me when we were looking through a box of old clothes that were near his table.

  Since it had a tag with a three on it, I assumed it was going to be one of the first ones to go. He was organizing the items to get ready to start.

  The light glinted off it and I couldn't help but think of Rae. It had a unicorn made of some type of deep pink crystal shot through with black standing on the lid, and it was obviously a quality piece. It didn't look tacky—just the opposite. The unicorn had such detailed features that you could almost feel the animal's innate pride in the curve of his neck, the swish of his tail—which the artist had detailed perfectly—and the glitter of his onyx eyes.

  I reached over and opened the lid. The black velvet inside was in perfect condition, and there were a couple rows of rolled padding in the corner to hold rings. Rae’s birthday was coming up, and for once, I was sure I'd managed to find the perfect gift.

  Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one who fell in love with it. As I set the lid carefully back in place, a chubby, whiney girl of about ten nudged the well-dressed woman she was with.

  "I want that," she demanded, jabbing a finger toward the box. I sighed. I could tell from the Prada handbag and Louboutin shoes that there was no way I was going to be able to outbid that woman. So, I did the one thing I could think of and nudged her.

  "That's a gorgeous piece, except the stones are all fake."

  "What?" she said, turning to take a closer look at the box. "Are you sure?"

  I nodded like a bobblehead doll. "Positive. My father's a jeweler. They were probably real once upon a time, but at some point, somebody had them replaced with paste." Hey, at an auction, it’s every woman for herself, and I wanted that piece for Rae. From the looks of her, the kid would probably forget about it the minute she was home, anyway, or break it before they got there.

  The woman’s nose curled a little at the thought of buying anything fake, and she turned away. Still, if the kid was as spoiled as I thought she was, she'd probably end up with it anyway. If so, I'd tried.

  The auction started, and sure enough, once the box came up for bid, the woman started flinging her paddle in the air. Once she realized I was serious, she threw out a bid that was a couple hundred higher than I'd bid, and I just couldn't justify it no matter how much I loved Rae. I glowered at her, dying to give her an enema with that paddle as she fanned herself and gloated.

  "Don't worry, sugar," Anna Mae said, patting my hand. "It just wasn't meant to be. You'll find something that's exactly perfect. Poo on her."

  The auction continued and we won most of the other items we were interested in, and for reasonable prices as well. We were standing in line waiting to pay at the end of the auction when I heard the nasally whine of the kid who stole my jewelry box. They were standing right in front of us and I resisted the juvenile urge to put my gum in her hair. Barely.

  She went on and on non-stop for the next ten minutes, and that demanding, high-pitched voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard. I know I shouldn't have, but I uttered a few words under my breath and took the kid's voice. It would wear off in the next twenty minutes or so, but until then, anything above a whisper would elude her.

  "Oh, thank the stars," Anna Mae said with relief. "If you admit to doing that, I'll buy dinner. It's cheaper than my bail would have been because I was about to choke her."

  I gave her a wink and a cluck.

  The woman didn't seem to notice that the kid was tugging on her sleeve and holding her throat. She did hear the whisper, though, and said without taking her gaze off the head of the guy in front of her, "Good job using your inside voice, Charice."

  Good lord. No wonder the kid was a mess. That wasn't an excuse, but it was a reason. Kids needed raisin'.

  Finally, the woman stepped up to the window and gave the man her number, sighing and shifting her weight from one three-hundred-dollar shoe to the other while he flipped through the sheets to find all the items with her number beside them.

  "Don't you just have everything on a computer?" she snapped, drumming her fingers on the counter. “My husband owns the biggest antiques store in the state; surely you have a list for people like us.”

  He looked up at her from under his dealer's hat and made a point of licking his finger and flipping through more pages, then rattled the pages at her. "Yeah, lady. I have all you special people in this computer right here, along with everybody else. Then I'm gonna use that computer"—he pointed toward the adding machine to his right—"to figure out how much you owe me. Oh, and see that sign?" He tapped his finger on a piece of paper that read a 10% surcharge will be added if you're cranky, miserable, or downright mean taped on the glass between them. "That ain't no joke, and it looks like that'd be a hefty amount based on what you bought."

  While he tallied, she stood there tapping her toe but didn't say another word. The kid, on the other hand, had given up on trying to get her attention and fallen silent. I felt kinda bad, but not bad enough to undo the curse.

  "That'll be $11,403. Will that be cash or credit card?"

  "Credit card," she said, unzipping her purse and digging for her wallet because, you know, she'd only had fifteen minutes to get her card out while he was counting. She dug through her purse, then opened it up wider and went through it again. Her face flushed with embarrassment.

  "I seem to have forgotten my wallet," she said. "I do have my checkbook though. Will that do?"

  He pointed to another sign that said In God we trust. All others pay cash. “We're already makin' an exception taking credit cards," he grunted in his gravelly voice. "Now, if you don't have one of those two, please step to the side so I can help the next in line. My wife's waitin' at home and she made meatloaf, so I'd like to get out of here sometime today."

  The woman drew herself up to her full, Louboutin-escalated height. "Do you know who I am?"

  He referred her to the sign again. "Unless you're God Almighty himself, it don't matter who you are," he said, looking around her at me. “Next.”

  I stepped around her to stand in front of the window and gave him my number. She stood there for a minute, obviously not used to being dismissed, then huffed off. The kid's face was red as a beet, and I was so glad I'd left the spell in place. As soon as they were almost to the door, I released it and cringed when I heard her piercing squeal of protest.

  The door swung closed behind them, and it occurred to me that the jewelry box may still be up for grabs.

  "Excuse me, but that woman won a unicorn jewelry box. It was number three in the auction. Can you tell me, is it available for sale again? I bid on it, but she outbid me."

  "She didn't pay for it, so according to the rules, it sure is." He looked it up and told me I could have it for my final bid, and I grinned.

  "Deal," I said, and paid for it along with the rest of my stuff.

  After Anna Mae paid her tab, we collected our finds and headed out the back door. The woman was sitting in the traffic waiting to exit the auction lot, and when we pulled up beside her to turn the other direction, I held up the box, grinned, and gave her a thumbs-up. That is not the digit she gave me back, but I let it go. I'd won.

  CHAPTER 27

  AFTER WE MADE IT OUT of the traffic tangle in the parking lot and were back on the highway, I checked my phone. "We have plenty of time to stop for something to eat real quick," I said. "I'm starving."

  We'd had a pretzel before the auction, but that's the only thing that had looked trustworthy enough to eat. I'd drunk arsenic-laden wine a few nights before and lived through it, so I figured it was stupid to push my luck twice in the same week by eating mystery meat of questionable age and proper holding temperature.

  "Me too," she said,
then giggled. "I love to see Karma in action, and I just did. Ohmugawd. That woman ... and the kid. I'm not sure which was worse."

  I shrugged and held up my hands in the weighing gesture. "Apple, tree. That one didn't fall far from it. I’m glad I got the box though. Rae's gonna love it."

  We gabbed about a little bit of everything on the way home after running through an Arby's. Those curly fries got me every time, and this was the only one in a twenty-mile radius. There was no way I was passing it up, and it still left us plenty of time to get home and get dressed for the viewing.

  When we pulled into my place, Hunter came to help us unload the big stuff, then I dug through the rest of what we bought to find the jewelry box and the couple other items I'd found over the course of the day. Once we had them separated, I gave Anna Mae a quick hug and told her I'd see her in a bit.

  Shelby’s car was there, and so was Cody's bike. I didn't imagine they were going to the funeral home, so I wasn't surprised to hear voices coming from the pool. I dropped the box inside and went out the back door. Cody, Shelby, and Emma—Camille's daughter—were in the pool. Becky, the fourth member of their core group, was out fetching the escaped beach ball.

  "Hey guys," I called, and they looked up.

  "Hey," I got in return.

  "Camille had to go out of town on an emergency," Shelby said, swimming in my direction until she reached the edge closest to me. "Is it okay if Emma stays here while she's gone?" she asked, shading her eyes with her hand as she squinted up at me.

  "Of course," I said, then noticed how pink her shoulders were. "You may wanna put some sunscreen on. You're shoulders are already burned."

  She heaved a sigh and looked at her shoulder, pushing into her flesh with her finger. Sure enough, it left behind a big white dot in the middle of red skin. "We're mostly Irish and Cherokee,” she whined. “Why couldn't we have been blessed with the nice skin that tans rather than fries?"

  "That question's above my pay grade," I told her. "But I'm right there with you."

  I headed back inside to get dressed and was surprised to see the jewelry box sitting on the coffee table. Hunter must have taken it out to look at it. I took it up to my room and tucked it in my closet so Rae wouldn't see it before her birthday, then got ready to go.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were on our way.

  "I hate viewings," Hunter muttered. "They give me the creeps."

  Screwing up my face, I said, "You were a homicide detective in Indianapolis and as bad as I hate to say it, you've seen a few dead bodies here, too. Are you seriously telling me they give you the heebie-jeebies?"

  "No," he said, appalled. "I'm fine with dead bodies. It's the living ones that creep me out. Everybody stands around with their hands in their pockets either trying to look sad or trying not to look sad. A third of them are there for the free food. Another big percentage are there because they're wondering what they're going to get from the dead person, and then you have the perverse ones who just like to see drama. Oh, and the little old ladies who check all the flower cards just so they can tut over who didn't send any or who sent the smallest or gaudiest displays."

  I laughed. "I never put that much thought into it, but you're right."

  Addy popped in right then. "Stop talkin' ill of the dead," she snapped.

  "We're not talking ill of the dead," I said, scowling. "We're talking ill of the living."

  "Oh," she said. "Then in that case, you're probably right. Funerals are strange. I always hated goin' to one."

  She was dressed all snappy. "I assume you're attending?" I asked.

  "I am," she said. "Belle's not takin' this well, and I want to be there for her. She seems to have some notion this woman could have been different or better than she was."

  "Yeah," I replied. "I talked to her a couple days ago. She was all out of sorts about it."

  "I can understand her bein' sad about a life wasted," Addy mused, looking out the window. "Especially since she cared about this woman when she was little. It's gotta be tough seein' them turn out so bitter and miserable when you knew 'em to be different."

  That was a little different way to look at it I supposed, but she was right. Hunter turned on his signal to turn into the funeral-home side of the lot. It was full, so we had to park way down on the other end. Two brothers owned the building and had the funeral home on one end and a shop that sold monuments, headstones, and marble countertops on the other. They had it covered from all directions.

  Rose's car was, of course already there. I wondered how her daddy and his wife were dealing with the situation. If he had a lick of sense, he’d left her at home so he could be there for Rose, regardless of how he felt about his ex. Now wasn't the time for drama and theatrics.

  Oh, who was I kidding? The only other time most people figured was better for either of those behaviors was a wedding.

  CHAPTER 28

  ONCE INSIDE, I WAS a little irritated at Hunter for voicing his observations about viewings because all I could concentrate on was putting each person in one of his categories. Danged if he wasn’t right.

  Daddy Dearest had made yet another bad life decision and brought Millie with him. Those two were obviously in the what’s in it for me category, though if the way Millie was sucking down cheese crackers and cocktail olives was any indication, she also fell into the there for the food category. Or would that technically be a sub-category?

  Anyway, several of the ladies from the auxiliary were doing their best to look sad, and as he predicted, a couple of the ladies were also checking out the flower cards, flicking knowing, judgmental glances at one another.

  Felix and Rose were the only people in the receiving line, and Felix at least had the decency to be standing with Rose sans Millie. That would have been more than awkward; it would have been downright tacky. Especially considering Millie was wearing one of the most garish ensembles I’d ever seen in my life. Seriously, a blind person could have reached into a strange circus clown’s closet and done better. The neon-green lycra pants had yellow polka dots and the buttercup-yellow peasant shirt was just ... well, I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t good.

  We waited patiently while a couple folks Rose and I had gone to high school with expressed their condolences, then stepped forward. I gave Rose a big hug and asked how she was doing while I was close enough to her ear to whisper in it.

  “Okay, I suppose,” she whispered back, “given the fact nobody here is really grieving besides me. Oh, and that my dad’s bimbo is standing over there like the refreshment table is an all-you-can-eat buffet, blinding anybody who looks that direction. What on earth is she wearing?”

  I covered a laugh with a cough as I pulled away. “I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure the color-blind clowns are gonna be calling wanting their clothes back,” I muttered, giving her hand a squeeze.

  Hunter gave her a hug, then Rose introduced us to her father, who actually seemed like the decent guy I remembered. After meeting him again, I had no idea what he was doing with Millie unless she was much different on the inside than she was on the outside. So far, I wasn’t seeing any evidence of that.

  Finally, it was time for the most awkward part of the occasion as far as I was concerned—viewing the body. Hunter and I went up together.

  Old Ms. Marple from the church auxiliary toddled up to us, her wispy hair still a little blue from her weekly rinse, and touched Ida’s hand, tilting her head like a bird while gazing at the body. “Doesn’t she look just lovely? Coralee did such a good job with her.”

  Hunter had his list of things he found weird, but that was mine. No. She did not look lovely. She looked—

  I gasped and almost stumbled back when my ears popped and an irritated Ida popped in right over her casket. “No I don’t. I look like shit. First off, I look dead. Nobody looks good dead. Second of all, Coralee’s a pain in the ass. For years, she’s been tryin’ to convince me that purple lipstick would look good on me, and I keep tellin’ her I don’t like it. She w
aited ’til I was dead and smeared it on me anyway. Makes me look washed out.”

  Given the way Hunter sucked in a breath and stepped on my toe when he started, I assumed he’d seen her. I glanced at Ms. Marple, but she was still stroking Ida’s hand—the corporeal one, that is. She had no clue Ida wasn’t quite as departed as she thought.

  “Tell her to quit doin’ that,” Ida snapped. “It’s weird.”

  I couldn’t disagree. It was pretty weird, but I couldn’t hardly tell the little old lady that. It wouldn’t be seemly. Or rational.

  Ida was glaring at me and tapping her foot midair. Keeping my eyes on her, I said to Hunter, “Why don’t we go outside for a breath of fresh air, honey?”

  “What? Oh,” he stuttered, struggling to take his eyes off Ida’s shimmering form. “Yeah, I think that’s a great idea.”

  I raised my brows at Ida.

  She rolled her eyes. “All right already. I’m dead, not dense. I’m right behind you. Or above you, or whatever.”

  Belle had gotten there before we did and was eavesdropping on what Millie was saying. Thankfully, they were gathered right next to the hall that led to the back door. I looked around but didn’t see hide nor hair of Addy.

  “Hey,” Ida exclaimed. “Is that Belle Dickerson? Why, she’s been dead twenty years or more! And I woulda swore I saw your Aunt Adelaide over in the other viewin’ room.”

  I, of course, couldn’t answer until we were out of earshot of others, so I just moved faster, at least as much as I could without drawing attention to myself.

  Belle glanced up and saw us, then her translucent, semi-shimmery brows shot into her beehive. I didn’t have to say a word to get her to follow.

  Once outside, we all turned to Ida.

  “How long have you been back?” Belle asked.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Ida replied, looking down her nose at her.

  “I never left,” Belle said, narrowing her eyes at her. “And now’s not the time to get all huffy. I’ve knowed you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, so I know where you come from. Don’t get high and mighty with me.”