50% Off Murder (Good Buy Girls) (22 page)

“Congratulations,” she said.

Mrs. Shoemaker gave her a pleased smile and then waved at Rich as he went on to the next house.

Maggie glanced over Mrs. Shoemaker’s head at the house behind her. Built in the 1920s, it was small and compact like Maggie’s. But where Maggie’s contained manageable clutter, Mrs. Shoemaker’s was out of control.

When her husband died ten years ago, she had begun
collecting things. Silly things, like the cookie cutters, but as her children had hooked her up with a computer to keep in touch when they moved out of state, Mrs. Shoemaker had discovered the joy of online shopping and bargain sites. Maggie had frequently debated having an intervention for her, but the little things brought Mrs. Shoemaker such joy that Maggie was loath to stop her.

“So, are you going to be making cookies today, Mrs. Shoemaker?” Maggie asked.

“No, these are too precious to use,” she said. “But if you go to see Claire today, tell her I have a cake knife she can have. I used to collect those, too, but really how many cake knives can a girl use?”

Maggie felt her breath stall in her lungs. “Mrs. Shoemaker, do you think Claire killed John Templeton?”

“Oh, goodness no,” Mrs. Shoemaker said. “Not Claire. She’s such a lovely woman. She’s always loaning me her personal books, because with my eyes not being what they used to be, I am such a slow reader. I can never finish a book before it’s due back at the library, so she gives me hers.”

“Yeah, that’s our Claire.”

“But someone did take her knife and use it,” Mrs. Shoemaker said. “So you tell her I have one for her when she’s back from her trip.”

Maggie smiled.
Her trip
was, of course, Mrs. Shoe-maker’s euphemism for Claire’s time spent in jail.

“I’ll let her know,” Maggie said. “Bye, Mrs. Shoemaker.”

“Bye, dear.” Mrs. Shoemaker headed to her house with a renewed spring in her step that Maggie knew was because she now had more stuff to add to her collection.

Whatever gets you through the day
, Maggie thought.

She remembered that after Charlie died, getting out of bed had been so difficult. Even with her daughter, Laura, there to prod her up, Maggie had struggled. She found that if she could just get Laura into the stroller and get her shoes on, then Maggie could get herself outside and start moving.

She’d jog around the neighborhood as if she could outrun her grief, and then, when she was out of breath and too weak to cry, she would treat herself to a sticky bun from the old bakery. It took about six months of this routine, but it got her through the worst of it.

Maggie continued her walk, thinking about how much the loss of a loved one impacted those left behind. She wondered whom John Templeton had left behind. There had to be someone, some family, and yet she hadn’t heard anything about mourners. His body had been shipped to the medical examiner’s office, and that was that.

She wondered if Sam would tell her anything if she asked, and she wondered how she could ask him so that he would tell her without thinking she was overstepping her boundaries. Nothing brilliant leaped to mind.

She turned onto Main Street and noted that last night’s howling wind had done some damage to the usually picturesque square. The dogwoods had lost some limbs, and leaves were scattered. A few of the town’s maintenance trucks were parked along the curb as the workers cleaned up the mess.

Maggie headed straight for the Perk Up. She hoped it was having the same afternoon lull as yesterday. She pulled the door wide and entered to find there was a group of customers at a table and a lone man sitting at the counter. Jay was manning the coffee bar. Maggie glanced about for Gwen, but there was no sign of her.

“Hey there, Maggie,” Jay said. He was on the tall side of medium in height, with an inner tube of forty-something paunch around his middle. The only hair he had left was a fringe to remind him of what used to be. But his smile was wide and welcoming, and it occurred to Maggie that the Perk Up might do better if Jay worked the front counter more often than the somber Gwen.

“What can I get for you today?” Jay asked.

“A big cup of go juice straight up,” she said.

“That’s what I like to see, a woman who does not sissify her beverage. For here or to go?”

“Here,” she said. She slid onto a bar stool and watched while Jay fussed with her coffee.

“So, how was the storm out at your place?” Jay asked. “Any limbs down?”

“No, I got lucky,” Maggie said. “No damage at all. How about you?”

“We’re good,” Jay said. “We lost one shutter off of the house, but I can live with that.”

“It’s sure been a crazy week,” Maggie said.

“I’ll say,” Jay agreed. “First that guy gets murdered, then Claire is arrested and then we have a bad storm. Kind of makes you wonder what’s next?”

“Well, I think next they find the real killer,” Maggie said.

“You don’t think Claire did it?” he asked.

“Claire? Heck no,” Maggie said. Then she realized how perfect it was to have the owner of the coffee shop spread the word that Claire was innocent. He probably ran into people all day long.

“Wow. Gwen seems pretty sure it was her. Who do you think did it then?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I heard he spoke at your entrepreneur’s meeting. Did he strike you as someone who had a lot of enemies?”

“That was about a year ago,” Jay said. He rubbed his chin with the back of his hand while he thought about it. “He was full of himself. You know the type. He had a Rolex on his wrist, drove a Mercedes and had one of those walks, you know, like this.”

Jay stepped back from the counter and began to walk in a rolling swagger that looked like he was caught by a strong wind that was knocking him side to side like a badminton birdie.

Maggie couldn’t help but laugh. “Was he really that bad?”

“Ugh. And his cologne!” Jay said. “You could smell that guy coming when he was twenty feet away. It was like a bad diaper smell filling up the room. There was no ducking it.”

“Ooh,” Maggie said. “That’s bad.”

Jay put a full ceramic mug down in front of her with cream and sugar on the side.

“Honestly, I didn’t like the guy,” Jay said. “I got a bad vibe off of him.”

“Did his investment in the Perk Up work out for you?”

“Oh, we didn’t take the investment,” Jay said. “I saw those interest rates and I said no way, and now we’re doing all right. I told Gwen it would turn around.”

“Good for you,” Maggie said. She frowned. She wondered if Ginger’s information had been in error. Jay certainly seemed very clear that they hadn’t taken any of Templeton’s money, or maybe he just didn’t want to admit it.

Maggie studied his face. She thought again of Sam’s five tells for lying. Jay showed none of those. So, either he was
very good or he was telling her what he believed to be true, which meant that Gwen had lied to her when she told her that she had never met Templeton. One of the Morgans seemed to have done a deal with Templeton, and if it wasn’t Jay, then it had to have been Gwen.

Maggie glanced at her watch. It was just about time to reconvene with the others and see what they had learned. Her cell phone chimed, and she looked down to see the number for the Frosty Freeze. That would be Max.

“Hi, Max,” she said.

“Maggie, you need to come over here right now,” he said. His voice was higher than normal, almost girly high in fact. Maggie knew him well enough to know that this meant he was having a stress meltdown.

“Did you find something?” she asked.

“Get. Here. Now.”
Click.

Seriously? Maggie looked at the phone as if it were a live snake. What was happening to her pliable Max?

She paid for her coffee and left her tip on the counter. She waved to Jay, who had headed down the bar to talk to the lone guy who had finished his espresso and was holding up his tiny cup for a refill.

Okay, they had planned to meet up, but Max was on the other side of the town square from where she was, so she figured she would stop by the Clip and Snip and see how Joanne was doing. She had better be done with her mani pedi and then together they could head to the Frosty Freeze and ask Ginger to meet them there.

Maggie hurried down the sidewalk toward the salon. The brim of her hat flapped in the breeze, and she was forced to hold it down on her head. The Clip and Snip was the only
hair place in St. Stanley, so it did a steady business with everyone from the blue hairs, for their rinse and sets, all the way to the two-year-olds getting their first haircuts.

Eva Martinez owned the salon. She had bought it seven years ago from old man Zucker, who had been the town barber for fifty years before that. Being a smart (not to mention sultry) woman, Eva had the brains to hire an older man who gave the best straight-edge razor shave in the state, and she had redesigned the shop so that it was gender separated. So she had effectively opened up business to the entire town and, as far as Maggie could tell, was doing fabulously. Why she would have had anything to do with John Templeton was a mystery to Maggie.

Maggie hurried into the Clip and Snip and found Joanne sitting with her nails under the little hand dryer. She had chosen to go with the French manicure and, luckily, Eva was the one sitting with her.

“Hello, Maggie,” Eva said. “Here to make an appointment?”

“No, just here to get Joanne,” she said.

“Pity,” Eva said. She looked at Maggie as if she were an ancient painting that could be magnificently restored if Eva could just get her sharp shears on her.

Maggie was afraid of Eva. She could admit it. Not to Eva, of course, but to herself. When she booked her very rare appointments at the salon for a trim, she always made sure she got a different hairdresser.

She wasn’t sure why, but Eva exuded sex appeal like a sun-ripened peach evoked summer. Maybe it was her long, thick, curly black hair, or the way she looked at customers from under heavily lidded brown eyes, or perhaps it was the
perfect ten she had for a body, which she dressed in tight-fitting tops, miniskirts and hoochie-mama shoes. The reality was that she made Maggie feel as dull as dishwater, and she was afraid that after spending an hour with her, she’d come out with horrid self-esteem. It was a gamble she was not yet prepared to take. That being said, she found Eva fascinating and could have spent hours just watching her walk around her salon, interacting with her customers.

“Eva, help!” A new hairdresser in a pink smock was standing by the dryers over the head of Mary Ellen Whitfield. She was biting her lip and looking stressed and Maggie had the feeling Mary Ellen was about to have a bad hair day.

While Eva bent down to examine the girl’s work, Joanne turned to face Maggie and hissed, “I got nothing.”

“What?”

“Bupkes, nada, zilch, zip, zero,” Joanne said. “I tried. I really tried, but every time I went to ask a question, I just panicked.”

“So, you didn’t ask her about Templeton?” Maggie asked.

“I’m telling you I panicked,” Joanne said. “She’s got some kind of witchy-woman voodoo power thing going.”

“But you’re the one who comes here the most,” Maggie said. “You have a rapport with her, or at least your wallet does.”

“So sorry, but it just doesn’t include asking your beautician if she’s a murderess!”

“Is something wrong?” Eva asked. She had resumed her seat behind the nail desk and was checking Joanne’s manicure. Afraid or not, Maggie figured she was just going to have to bluff her way out of this one.

“Joanne and I were just talking about John Templeton’s murder,” she said.

Eva’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows rose, and she pressed her ruby red lips together in an uncompromising line.

“What about it?” Eva asked. Although she had lived in the United States for years, her voice still had the faint flavor of Puerto Rico in it, adding to her exotic appeal.

“We were just wondering who did it.” Maggie said.

“The librarian did it,” Eva said. “And if I ever get my hands on her…” She switched over into a tirade in Spanish that Maggie could only get every other word of, but it was enough to know that Claire would not be getting her hair done at the Clip and Snip anytime soon.

“Whoa, the way she’s going on, you’d think Templeton was her husband,” Joanne whispered to Maggie.

Maggie studied Eva for a moment and had to concur that, yes, she looked like a jealous lover in the throes of a passionate tantrum.

“Eva, was there something going on between you and John Templeton?”

“What do you call this?” Eva asked, and held out a hand that had a diamond as big as a Fourth of July sparkler on it. “He gave that to me for our one-month anniversary.”

“Wow,” Joanne said. “I could get pregnant with triplets, and I don’t think I’d get a ring that big.”

“So, you two are…were a couple?” Maggie asked. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

Eva raised her hands in the air. “We broke up. That man, he broke my heart for her, the bookish one.”

“Claire?” Joanne and Maggie said together.

Eva turned and gazed into the mirror. “Look, my beauty is fading. I don’t have ‘it’ anymore.”

Maggie looked at the gorgeous woman before her. How could she possibly think that?