Good Buy Girls 05 - All Sales Final (13 page)

Well, at least things seemed to be very balanced. She couldn’t argue with the distribution of good and bad but she sure wished the timing were different.

At the stop sign she pulled out her phone to check and see if there was a voice message from Sam. She always kept the volume off on her phone, since she didn’t like to hear messages coming in as she then felt compelled to answer them, which would be awkward when she was with a customer. No, it was much easier to wait until she had a minute and then listen to them all at once.

There was no voice mail from Sam nor was there a text message. She put her phone away and continued driving through town. Near the police station she instinctively glanced at the squat redbrick building to see if she could get a glimpse of her man. Sam-watching, sort of like bird-watching, was her new favorite hobby.

She saw his familiar head of dark brown hair and looked more closely to confirm that it was him striding up the walkway toward the station. He wasn’t alone. She assumed that his friend from the Richmond PD was the person in the official-looking slacks and dress shirt
walking beside him. Somehow she had not expected the man she had pictured as Andy to have curves like that.

As Maggie watched, Andy tossed her long, glossy black hair over her shoulder and tipped her head back to show a delicate profile and a flawless smile as she laughed at something Sam said. Hmm.

Maggie felt her right front tire skim the curb and she jerked the wheel to the left to keep from running off the road. She continued on to her shop, mulling over this alarming turn of events in her mind. To her credit she only glanced over her shoulder back at Sam and company twice—okay, three times but really that was it.

Chapter 13

Maggie thanked Mrs. Kellerman for her help and went to make a fresh pot of coffee. She had a feeling she was going to need it to get through the afternoon.

She had sent Sam a text asking about his friend Andy’s arrival and Sam had texted back that
she
had just gotten to town and he was taking her over to the house to inspect the scene.

Okaaaaaay, then. Maggie assured herself that she was okay with it. Completely 100% okay with the man she’d pictured in her head actually being a gorgeous woman. Yup, nothing to worry about here.

She was just taking her first bracing sip of coffee and repeating her “no worries” mantra when the front door opened and Joanne came in with baby Patience strapped
to her chest in one of those complicated wrap things that Maggie was quite glad was not in vogue when she’d had her daughter. One glance at the baby and she could feel her skin getting sweaty and sticky.

Although, she had to admit Patience looked to be the picture of contentment snuggled close to her mama. Maggie was hit with a pang of guilt. Had she damaged Laura and given her abandonment issues by not lashing her to her chest during her baby years? She shook her head. What was she thinking? Laura was a bright and beautiful confident young woman on an internship in New York City. She was totally fine. Apparently, mother’s guilt had no expiration date. Awesome.

“Okay, so Michael called me and told me that Pete told him that Sam told him that the two of you found a skeleton in your house last night. True?”

Maggie hadn’t thought Sam would let the story out so early. Then again, given how gossip moved at the speed of sound in St. Stanley, she was surprised it had taken this long for someone to come in and ask about it.

“True,” she said.

Joanne gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. Baby Patience stirred and Joanne cringed and began to rock from foot to foot in a soothing “rock-a-bye baby” motion. Once Patience settled, she looked up at Maggie.

“Details,” she whispered.

“There isn’t much,” Maggie said, keeping her voice soft. “We found it in the basement in a blocked-off root cellar, but we don’t know who it is—er, was. The clothes, well, the uniform looks to be from the forties.”

“This is unbelievable,” Joanne breathed.

The door opened again but this time it was Ginger. She was wearing one of her favorite broomstick skirts with the sparkles on the bottom. She saw Joanne rocking back and forth and gently closed the door behind her.

“Explain,” she hissed at Maggie.

There was no need to ask what Ginger was referring to, so Maggie told her the same thing that she had told Joanne. Ginger’s eyes went wide and she looked nervous.

“So there is a ghost in the Dixon house. Oh my god, in your house!”

“I think so,” Maggie said.

“Sam doesn’t?” Joanne asked.

“No, he is certain that all the banging doors, lights flickering and drafty breezes were just the house settling or the wind,” Maggie said.

“Even after finding the body?” Ginger asked.

“Skeleton,” Maggie corrected her. “There was no body, just bones.”

She gave an involuntary shudder and her friends did as well.

“What are you going to do?” Ginger asked. “What if the poor man was murdered there? You can’t live in a house where there was a murder.”

“I know,” Maggie said. “But both Sam and I think that if we can figure out what happened, we’ll feel better about it. I mean maybe there is a perfectly logical explanation for all of this.”

The door opened again and in strode Claire. She was
dressed for work at the library in a black skirt, green blouse and black pumps.

“I only have a few minutes until my break is over,” she said. “I have to be on the reference desk in fifteen minutes, so start talking.”

She glanced at her wristwatch and then at Maggie. Taking the hint, Maggie gave her the short version of the events of the past evening.

“I think Sam is right,” Claire said. She pushed her rectangular glasses up on her nose. “You may find that the poor man died of natural causes, which would make the house perfectly fine to live in.”

“Yeah, except for the moaning, door slamming and random lights going out,” Ginger said. “I say sell it, no matter what. Better yet, march over to Marcy Hayes’s office and tear that contract up right in her face.”

Maggie had thought about doing just that but with her luck, Marcy would have her arrested by her own fiancé. That was a thought too embarrassing to contemplate.

When the door opened again, Maggie was relieved. With all of the Good Buy Girls here it had to be a customer. She put on her best smile and turned to face the door. Her smile fell faster than a brick off a tall building when she realized who was standing in her shop, looking like she owned the place.

“What?” Summer asked. “Can’t a gal be neighborly?”

Yeah, the last time Summer had tried to be neighborly, she’d been pushed by her mother to try and steal Sam away from Maggie with every trick in the book, including
having Maggie walk in on them in a seedy motel on the outskirts of town. Since Summer had married Tyler Fawkes, she had seemed to turn over a new leaf, but still, a lifetime of enmity was a hard thing to shake off.

“What can I do for you, Summer?” Maggie asked. She was pleased that her voice came out cordial instead of filled with hostility and suspicion.

Summer tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder and smoothed the front of her sundress. Marriage had also toned down Summer’s usual woman-on-the-prowl look a notch or two and it occurred to Maggie that if she was meeting Summer for the first time she wouldn’t consider her a she-devil. At least not right away.

“It’s not what you can do for me, but what I can do for you,” Summer said.

Maggie gave her a sideways look and noticed that Ginger, Joanne and Claire were doing the same.

“How do you figure?” Maggie asked.

“I saw that woman with Sam,” Summer said. “She’s trouble.”

“No, she isn’t,” Maggie said.

“Excuse me?” Summer gaped. “Did you
see
her?”

“Yes, I did,” Maggie said. “So what?”

She knew she sounded defensive but she couldn’t help it. Summer was putting voice to her own worries about Andy and she didn’t like it.

“What woman with Sam?” Ginger asked Maggie with one hand on her hip as if she was all put out that Maggie had been withholding information.

“Andy Lowenstein,” Maggie said. “She’s a colleague of Sam’s from the Richmond PD. She’s in forensics and is here to help identify the skeleton.”

“And she’s hot,” Summer said. “And young. Young and hot is not your friend, especially when he has yet to put a ring on it.”

“Gee, thanks for coming in today, Summer,” Maggie said. “As usual you’re doing wonders for my self-esteem.”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Summer said. “I’m here to help.”

“Please,” Claire said.

“Honestly,” Joanne added.

“Do we look that dumb?” Ginger asked.

“No, I’m serious,” Summer said. “Running off competing women is a particular gift of mine.”

“She does have a knack,” Joanne conceded.

“But why would you want to help me? If we can twist this situation enough to think that running a forensic investigator off of an assignment is helpful, that is,” Maggie said.

Summer studied the pretty coral-colored polish on her fingernails. She seemed embarrassed and Maggie wondered what could make the blonde bombshell look so self-conscious.

“Tyler, well, he has a lot of friends,” Summer said.

“It’s true,” Ginger said. “He’s always the first one to help when someone needs a hand and he has a great sense of humor.”

“He was a dear helping us get the baby’s furniture into
the nursery,” Joanne said. “I don’t know what we would have done without him.”

“And he always helps out at the annual book sale for the library. He dresses up in our dragon costume and dances on the corner drawing people into the sale. The kids love him,” Claire added. “He’s a huge Frank Herbert fan.”

“That’s an author, right?” Summer asked.

Claire nodded. To her credit, she didn’t make a “duh” face.

“What does Tyler being well liked have to do with you being here now?” Maggie asked.

“Because Tyler is popular and has loads of friends, and I . . . I don’t have any,” Summer wailed.

She lowered her head and sobbed into her open hands. If Maggie hadn’t already been having the weirdest week of her life, this moment surely would have taken the blue ribbon for bizarre. Summer in her shop, sobbing, looking for friends: It just didn’t get any more odd.

Ginger and the others looked at her and Maggie realized that since she and Summer had been enemies, oh, since they’d first spied each other in pigtails and kneesocks, they were waiting for her to give a sign as to what to do.

Maggie studied Summer and a sigh welled up inside of her. She would have to have a shriveled-up prune for a heart to ignore the big gushing sobs that were wracking Summer’s busty frame.

“There, there,” she said. She snatched a tissue out of the box nearby and handed it to Summer. “Don’t cry.”

Ginger raised her eyebrows, giving Maggie the signal that she sounded about as sincere as a sinner with a hangover on Sunday.

Maggie rolled her eyes and Ginger made a shooing gesture with her hands in Summer’s direction. Maggie would have stomped her foot in protest but she didn’t want to wake the baby.

She stepped forward and looped an arm around Summer’s shoulders. Summer lifted her head and used the tissue Maggie gave her to dab at her eyes. She had the big raccoon mascara circles going, so at least her tears had been genuine.

“How can I not cry?” Summer asked. “Tyler is everything that is good and I’m, well, I’m just a horrible person.”

“No one is all bad,” Claire said. She looked sympathetic and Maggie knew it was because of her own checkered past. “Everyone has their good points.”

Maggie frantically scanned her brain trying to come up with Summer’s good points. She was drawing a blank. She was sure if she was a man, she could have started with her knockout figure and ended with her propensity for dressing like a slut, but she wasn’t a dude and she and Summer had been enemies for a very long time.

“Yeah, I’m sure you have many fine qualities,” Joanne agreed. Maggie didn’t think she was the only one who heard the lack of conviction in Joanne’s voice.

“Do you mean it?” Summer asked.

She looked so vulnerable that all of Maggie’s friends moved forward as one to pat her on the back and give her a kind word of encouragement. Even Maggie found
herself muttering something that sounded, well, not like an insult, so that was encouraging.

“So, you mean it?” Summer asked. Her face lit up and she clapped her hands together. “I’m in?”

“In what?” Maggie asked suspiciously.

“Your group, stu . . . er . . . silly,” Summer said with a grin. “I’m a Good Buy Girl.”

Chapter 14