50% Off Murder (Good Buy Girls) (10 page)

“Hi, Maggie!” Michael Claramotta, Joanne’s husband, waved to her from behind the deli counter at the back of the small restaurant.

If there was such a thing as a perfect couple, Maggie thought Michael and Joanne Claramotta were it. They’d been childhood sweethearts since the second grade, when Michael had given Joanne a cheesy paper valentine with a honeybee on it that asked, “Will you bee mine?” Joanne
said she knew when she opened it that she was going to marry him.

Michael was the perfect other half for Joanne. He complimented her slender build with a muscular physique, and he stood a half foot taller than she was. Ginger often joked that they could be models for the bride and groom statues on the tops of wedding cakes, they were such a perfect-looking couple.

“Hi!” She waved back and turned to Joanne, “Yes, it’s true, and she’s okay, but I don’t have much more information than that.”

Michael came around the deli counter with a frosty glass of sweet tea that he handed to Maggie. Michael was always the perfect host; it was exactly what she needed.

“Thank you,” she said, and took a long drink.

“The rumors have been flying fast and furious all afternoon,” he said. “Was the man really naked except for a pair of women’s high heels?”

Maggie almost had tea come out her nose.

“Ew, no!” she said as she coughed.

“Oh.” Michael looked disappointed.

“I told you that you can’t trust anything Summer Phillips has to say,” Joanne chided her husband in a gentle tone.

“I know,” he said. “Still, you have to admit…”

“No, I don’t. That is a disturbing mental picture that only someone as vile as Summer could think up,” Joanne said.

“Well, in all fairness, she’s not the only one,” he said. “How about Tyler Fawkes saying that the body had been dismembered with a rusty hacksaw?”

“Oh, ick,” Maggie said.

“Oh, yeah, and Jamie Singleton said the body was decapitated, and the head was missing,” Joanne said.

“Oh, double ick,” Maggie said.

“Yeah, it’s been a long day,” Joanne said.

“Well, I saw the body, and I can tell you, it was clothed, no high heels, all body parts were attached, including the head,” she said.

Joanne reached out and put an arm around Maggie’s shoulders. “That must have been rough.”

“I thought I’d seen some gnarly things while working for Dr. Franklin,” Maggie said. “You know, we get the occasional goiter or festering chancre, but this was…well, I’m good with never seeing a dead man with a knife through his chest ever again.”

The bells chimed on the door, and Michael left them, giving Maggie’s shoulder a squeeze as he went to wait on the deli customer.

“So, Ginger said we’re having an emergency meeting of the GBGs,” Joanne said. “I’m in.”

“Seven o’clock at Claire’s,” Maggie confirmed.

“I’ll meet you there, and I’ll bring a deli platter,” Joanne said. “We have to make sure she keeps up her strength, and nothing says you care like a plate full of cold cuts.”

Maggie had to agree.

Maggie knocked on Claire’s front door. She lived in a small bungalow in an older neighborhood that surrounded the town’s abandoned wire factory. The factory had been closed long before Maggie was born, and the small houses in the neighborhood that surrounded it, which had once been the factory workers’ homes, had become an artists’ haven.

In her non-library spare time, Claire painted small still lifes in oil, so she fit right in with her glass-blowing, steel-sculpting neighbors. Twice a year the artists had a weekend-long art show on the town green. Maggie loved it because she always found new and unusual gifts for people at the show, and she had noticed that if she waited until the last day, the prices dropped dramatically because the artists were looking to unload some inventory.

A movement in the window caught Maggie’s attention,
and she glanced over to see Claire’s cat, Mr. Tumnus, watching her from his bay window perch.

“Maybe she’s not home,” Ginger said. She was carrying an orange pound cake with vanilla glaze that she had made that afternoon, while Maggie had two bottles of wine tucked in the crook of her arm.

“She has to be home,” Maggie said. “Where else could she be? On a hot date?”

The door was yanked open, and Claire poked her head out. “Who’s on a hot date?”

“We were wondering if you were,” Ginger said. “Open up. We come bearing food.”

“Is that your famous pound cake?” Claire asked.

“The one and only blue ribbon–winning pound cake in all of St. Stanley, yes, it is,” Ginger said.

Claire stepped back, opening the door wide.

Pound cake will get you in every time
, Maggie thought.

She trooped in, with Ginger bringing up the rear. Just before Claire shut the door, Joanne arrived with her tray of deli goodies.

“Wait for me!” she cried, and followed them into the small house.

“Have you eaten?” Ginger asked, looking Claire over with her best “don’t even try to lie to me” mother look.

“I forgot,” Claire admitted. She gestured to the shirt she was wearing, an oversize blue T-shirt covered in paint splotches in a rainbow of colors. “I was trying to do some art therapy to see if it would help.”

“And?” Maggie asked.

“It didn’t,” Claire said.

The house consisted of one large front room, which Claire used as a living room. It was cozy with wood floors, overstuffed bookcases, a fireplace and a large TV in the corner. They trooped through the arched door at the end of it into the kitchen, which had been recently renovated.

A large granite breakfast counter that seated four separated the eating area from the rest of the kitchen, and the ladies placed their food on the counter and each took a stool, while Claire passed out plates and glasses.

“This is so nice of you,” she said to the others. She looked a little misty, and Maggie suspected she wasn’t used to having others do for her.

“Nah, this is nothing,” Ginger said, making light of it. “It’s just what GBGs do when one of us needs a boost.”

“I need more than a boost,” Claire said. “I need an alibi.”

“You don’t have one?” Joanne asked. Two worry lines formed a V between her eyebrows, and she nibbled on a piece of Swiss cheese with tiny little bites. Joanne was an emotional eater.

“Not unless you count Mr. Tumnus,” Claire said. They all turned to look at the chubby gray tabby, who began to lick his chest hair as if priming himself to be the center of attention.

“That’s ridiculous,” Ginger said. “Anyone who knows you knows that you’re not capable of murder. The whole thing is just silly.”

“Well, that’s the problem,” Claire said. “Sheriff Collins doesn’t know me. The only thing he knows is that I used to date John Templeton, the deceased, and the sheriff thinks it’s mighty suspicious that he was found dead in my library
with my cake knife sticking out of his chest and with one of the books from my personal library lying beside him.”

Maggie, Ginger and Joanne sat staring at her, utterly gobsmacked.

“Oh, you didn’t know all that?” Claire asked faintly. “I just assumed with St. Stanley being so small—well, if it makes any difference, I loaned that book out so long ago, I can’t even remember who I lent it to…”

“No, we didn’t know all of that,” Maggie said. “In fact, the St. Stanley rumor machine is such that we’ve heard all sorts of things, but not that.”

“Like what?” Claire asked, looking worried. “What are people saying about me?”

“No, no, not about you,” Joanne assured her. “More about the body.”

Claire, looking in need of fortification, handed Maggie the corkscrew. “Explain.”

“Well, I heard that the body was dressed in a clown suit,” Ginger said. “But that came from one of my boys, so I didn’t believe it.”

Claire’s mouth formed a small O, and she blinked, obviously dumbfounded. Maggie took pity on her and gave her the first glass of wine.

“Oh, that’s the mildest of the rumors,” Joanne said. “You let Summer Phillips loose with some gossip, and it goes all kinds of sideways, like the body was naked…”

“Except for a pair of high heels,” Maggie added.

Claire cringed at the distasteful mental picture. “What is wrong with people?”

Maggie filled the rest of the glasses and passed them out.
The ladies filled their plates and nibbled at their food while they talked.

“Speaking of Summer Phillips,” Joanne said. “Did you know she used to date the new sheriff, Sam Collins, back when he lived here?”

“We knew,” Ginger said. She waved a hand to indicate herself and Maggie.

Maggie felt her fingers tighten on the stem of her wineglass, but she bit into a slice of salami in an attempt to seem nonchalant.

“Well, it seems Summer is eager to revisit their former relationship,” Joanne said. “At least, that’s what it looked like when we saw her draping herself all over his car this afternoon.”

“Do tell,” Ginger said. “I know Maggie would love to hear all about her favorite law enforcement officer.”

Maggie gave her a scorching blast of stink eye, but Ginger had known her for so many years that she had built up a powerful immunity. Unfortunately.

“That’s sarcasm, right?” Claire asked. “Because I’ve seen how you two look at each other, and Sheriff Collins doesn’t seem overly fond of you either.”

“Let’s just say that the sheriff and I have known each other since we were in diapers, and we get on about as well as a baby’s butt and a vicious case of diaper rash,” Maggie said. “I’ll leave it to you to figure out who is the butt in this scenario and who is the rash.”

Ginger hooted with laughter. “You just called Sam Collins a butt!”

The others laughed as well, and Maggie was pleased to
see Claire’s shoulders drop from their anxious perch around her ears for the first time that day.

As if by mutual agreement, they stopped talking about the murder, and instead talked about the upcoming Labor Day sales. They still had to do some planning if they were going to make the most of the back-to-school bargains.

It wasn’t until they were on the “coffee and pound cake” portion of the evening, that Maggie brought the conversation back to the matter at hand.

“Claire, I know you probably don’t want to talk about this, but if we’re going to help you, we need to know about you and John Templeton,” she said.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Claire said quickly, too quickly. She shrugged and tucked the right side of her blonde bob behind her ear. Without meeting anyone’s gaze, she took a sip of her coffee.

If Sam Collins was correct about the signs of lying, looking away and shrugging, then Claire was definitely being less than truthful. Maggie sighed. She didn’t want to push her friend too hard, but she didn’t know how to help her if Claire withheld information from them.

“So you haven’t had any contact with him at all since you left Baltimore?” Maggie asked.

Claire shook her head, but didn’t speak.

“Claire, you know I love you,” Ginger said. “But that
beep-beep-beep
we’re all hearing is the manure truck backing up and unloading a whole pile of sh—”

“What Ginger is trying to say,” Joanne interrupted, giving Ginger an exasperated look, “is that we were wondering about the missing slice of Ralph’s cake.”

“Huh?” Claire looked bewildered.

Maggie nodded. “Oh yeah, I forgot about that. That’s a good place to start. Yes, tell us about the cake.”

“What about the cake?” Claire asked exasperated.

“When you showed up at Maggie’s, it was missing a piece,” Ginger said. “Did you happen to give a piece to this Mr. Templeton before you joined us at Maggie’s house?”

“I…well, that’s just…”

Someone knocked on the door, cutting off whatever she had been about to say.

“I’d better get that,” she said.

The three women watched her go.

“She’s hiding something,” Ginger said. “She had the same look on her face that I’ve seen on each one of my boys when they’ve tried to keep something from me.”

“What do you think it is?” Joanne asked. “I mean, you don’t think…it couldn’t be…”

The three of them exchanged glances.

“Nah,” they all said together.

“Claire didn’t stab him,” Maggie said definitively. “But I do think she saw him, which for some reason she doesn’t want to talk about.”

They heard voices at the door. The low voice of a man and Claire’s rather shrill reply.

Maggie hopped off her stool and moved to stand in the arched doorway that separated the kitchen and the living room. She supposed it was terrible of her to eavesdrop, but she wondered who would be stopping by Claire’s house so late in the evening and why.

It only took her a moment to recognize the greasy black hair and red Converse sneakers. Max, the attorney, was here.

“Hi, Max,” she called out. “I thought you’d be here earlier. Come on in and grab some food.”

Max shifted to the side to peer around Claire. He gave Maggie a smile that didn’t meet his eyes but instead wobbled, as if trying to be brave.

“Hi, Maggie,” he said. “I’m afraid there’s no time to eat. Sheriff Collins is on his way over here with an arrest warrant for Claire.”