50% Off Murder (Good Buy Girls) (2 page)

Maggie hadn’t seen much of Summer over the past few years, but now here she was, horning in on one of Maggie’s ultimate joys, a sale. Well, she was darned if she was going to let this big-busted, bleached blonde bubblehead ruin one of the highlights of her summer.

Shaking Summer’s presence off like a bad case of fleas, Maggie glanced at her watch and began the count down: “Seven, six, five…”

She could feel her crew take their mark.

“Three, two, one!”

The automatic doors slid open, and the crowd pressed forward. The professionals walked swiftly, but in an orderly fashion. Shoulder to shoulder, the Good Buy Girls veered to the left as planned and headed straight for the eights and nines.

The amateurs, like Summer, bolted into the store, throwing elbows and body slamming people out of the way until what would have been a fine day of shopping turned into an Ultimate Fighting cage match.

“Focus!” Maggie ordered. “Eyes on the prize.”

The four of them strode to the shoes. They fanned out by size, Claire and Joanne in the eights and Maggie and Ginger in the nines. Working in teams, they started on the end of the row and worked their way to the middle, stuffing their canvas bags full of the shoes that met their criteria.

Maggie was a third of the way in when Summer, looking disheveled, stumbled into her row. As Maggie went to pick up a pair of Jimmy Choo ankle boots, Summer snatched them from her hand.

“Hey!” Maggie snapped. “That’s rude!”

“I got them first,” Summer argued.

“Maggie, focus!” Ginger’s voice ordered from behind her. Maggie glanced up. Other shoppers were beginning to crowd into the aisle. She had to work fast.

“Fine,” she said and turned her back on Summer. She reached for a pair of Alberto Fermani’s, and Summer snatched those, too. “What is your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem!” Summer said. “What’s yours?”

“What are you, twelve?” Maggie asked. The crowd was pressing inward. She reached blindly for a pair of plastic pumps, thinking she might hit Summer over the head with them, but Summer grabbed those, too.

It was obvious that Summer’s sole purpose was to ruin Maggie’s shopping expedition. Well, Maggie had played this game with other amateurs. Summer was going to lose.

Maggie reached for a pair of cheap knockoffs, but Summer snatched them away. While she juggled the four pairs of shoes in her arms, Maggie grabbed a pair of Seychelles. And so it went, Maggie faking out Summer with lousy shoes and using her distraction to grab the good ones, until she met Ginger in the middle.

“We’re good?” Maggie asked.

“Good,” Ginger confirmed. “Let’s meet the others.”

They wound their way past the throng—through a sea of handbags, during which Ginger kept her eyes on the floor—to the corner where they always met up.

Now, it was time to unload their bags and finalize their decisions.

They each had managed to snag seven to ten pairs of shoes in the correct sizes. Now they would try them on, check the prices and figure out which ones they would actually buy. If the deal was good enough and no one wanted the shoes, Maggie would buy them anyway and sell them online. She had discovered she could make a tidy monthly income selling items she picked up at sales.

She and Ginger went through the size nines. They each picked two pairs of shoes to buy for themselves and then debated the rest. When you were looking at a three-hundred-dollar pair of shoes that had been marked down to thirty, many things had to be taken into consideration.

Fit, practicality and style were of the utmost consideration. But then this was why they came here. There was no substitute for quality. A good pair of Weitzmans could last ten to fifteen years, wear well and never look out of date. Poorly made shoes would cost the same and last one season. Not only that, but they’d probably cause foot damage before they ended up in a landfill.

“There she is! I demand that you throw her out!”

The Good Buy Girls glanced up from their pile of shoes as one.

There, looking indignant and pointing a bony, red talon–tipped finger at Maggie, stood Summer Phillips. Beside her was Stegners’ manager, Barney Comstock.

He broke into a grin at the sight of them. “Hey, it’s the GBGs. Great to see you!”

“Hi, Barney,” they all said together.

“GBGs?” Summer asked, looking disgusted.

“Good Buy Girls,” Barney said. “Get it? Good
buy
girls! I didn’t see you come in. We had a bit of a ruckus at the opening today.”

He cast Summer an unhappy look, and Maggie was pleased that he knew exactly whose fault that was.

Summer’s face flushed. She did not like the way this was going. Maggie had to duck her head to keep from laughing. She and Barney went back more than twenty years. He’d helped her pick her wedding shoes, for Pete’s sake.

“So, Ms. Philbrick here says you have some shoes of hers,” Barney said.

“The name is Phillips,” Summer snapped.

“Oh, oops, sorry,” he said, not looking at all repentant.

Barney had managed Stegner’s for over forty years. His gray hair was just a fringe around his bald head, and both his jowls and his belly sagged as if gravity had a hold and wasn’t about to let go. Summer could throw whatever she wanted at him, but Maggie knew Barney had been dealing with obnoxious customers since the pillbox hat had gone the way of the dinosaur. Surely, he could handle Summer.

Summer stomped her stiletto into the industrial carpeting. “I want my shoes back.”

“Maggie.” Barney put his hand on the back of his neck and blew out a breath, as if he really hated this part of his job. “She seems to think you’ve got some of her shoes.”

Maggie gritted her teeth. “Really? Because she followed me into the aisle and snatched every pair I touched.”

Summer turned up her nose as if she smelled something bad, and said, “I never.”

“That’s obvious,” Joanne snapped. Joanne was Brooklyn born and bred, and she did not take insults to herself or her
friends well. She moved to stand behind Maggie in a show of support. Both Ginger and Claire moved in as well.

After all those years of being cornered in the locker room by Summer and her posse of chesty cheerleaders, Maggie had to acknowledge that she liked having her peeps at her back.

“Let’s all calm down,” she said. “Now, Summer, which shoes do you think I took from you?”

It was admittedly a trick question. Since they had all dumped their shoes into a pile, taking out only the ones for themselves so far, Summer had no way of knowing what shoes Maggie had gathered, nor could she tell which pairs Maggie had put aside for herself.

“Why, those!” Summer said, and she reached into the pile and pulled out a pink pair of pumps by Via Spiga.

Maggie almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.

The pumps were size eights, and had been picked up by Claire or Joanne. A quick glance at Summer’s stilettos and Maggie frowned.

“Really? You fit into size eights? Barney, don’t her boots look to be elevens?” Maggie asked.

“Hmm, I’d say twelves—wide,” he said. He rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. “You have some sturdy feet there, ma’am.”

Summer sucked in a breath as if she’d been slapped. The Via Spigas dropped from her hand and she growled, “How dare you?”

“Oh, we dare,” Joanne said. “Care to make it a double dare?”

Like any bully who finds herself outnumbered, Summer spun on her pointy heel and fled the store. Joanne led the
group in knuckle pounds and the women went back to their in-depth shoe analysis.

“Here you go, ladies,” Gwen Morgan said. She carried a tray with four coffees on it: two lattes, one espresso and a chai tea. “Your punch card is full, Maggie, so next time you get a freebie.”

“Excellent,” Maggie said. She took the card from Gwen and put it in her wallet.

The ladies were basking in their post-sale success, sitting on the front patio of the Perk Up, surrounded by their bags from Stegner’s. The drive back from the store had taken an hour. It was midday now, and they had a nice view of the goings-on in town from their spot on Main Street.

Gwen and her husband, Jay Morgan, owned the Perk Up, which they had opened five years before, during the coffee boom. They had a small bakery case in there as well and offered an assortment of baked goods to go with the coffee. A glance at the mostly empty coffeehouse made Maggie wonder how business was going. It was so close to lunch, she would have expected the tables to be full. Then again, it was the end of summer and people were trying to get in the last of their vacations and prepare for back-to-school, so maybe the slowness was just temporary.

Gwen served their coffee and tea, and said, “If you need anything else, let me know.”

“Think she knows where we can hire a hit on Summer Phillips?” Joanne whispered.

“I’m pretty sure husband number two tried that,” Ginger said. “The woman is like a cat with nine lives.”

“A feral cat,” Maggie said.

“Still, you got her good with the size eights,” Claire said. “She outed herself. That was classic.”

“Yeah, but what I can’t figure is why she was even at Stegner’s,” Maggie said. “I mean she’s loaded. Why is she bargain hunting, and why do I get the feeling it was mostly to mess with me?”

“I don’t know, but if I were you, I’d watch my back,” Ginger said. “And we’ll help.”

“Absolutely,” Claire said.

Joanne lifted her espresso and said, “To the Good Buy Girls. We came, we saw, we scored.”

“Maggie!” Ginger Lancaster burst through Maggie Gerber’s front door like a bargain hunter on Black Friday. “Maggie, did you hear the news?”

Maggie met Ginger in the living room and stared at her wild-eyed friend. She held up her hand and said, “Don’t tell me, let me guess.”

Ginger looked like she would burst with the news, but she nodded for Maggie to go ahead while she caught her breath.

“Summer Phillips’s Spanx gave out from exhaustion, and she busted out all over the country club?” Maggie asked.

“No! Did they?” Ginger asked, her eyes getting even wider.

“Nah, but that would be great, wouldn’t it?” Maggie asked.

“Oh, girlfriend, you had me going!” Ginger waved a hand at her.

“Sorry,” Maggie said. “I have a rich fantasy life.”

Ginger shook her head, and said, “If Summer packs on much more baggage in her caboose, you may be forecasting the future.”

“Well, then I hope they send out a warning to all low-lying areas,” Maggie said.

Maggie hadn’t seen Summer since the incident at Stegner’s the week before. Still, it did not change the fact that Summer seemed to have decided to don her mean-girl mantle and go out of her way to make Maggie’s life difficult—again.

Ginger chuckled. She had a contagious
heh-heh-heh
sort of laugh that reached out and tickled Maggie’s ribs, making it impossible not to laugh in return.

“Nice shoes,” Maggie said, stepping around her longtime friend to close the front door behind her.

“I saw them in the window of My Sister’s Closet, you know, the thrift store on Main Street, and had to have them,” Ginger said. “Eight dollars, and I got Trudi to throw in the matching handbag.”

Maggie tucked her shoulder-length auburn hair, inherited along with her pale skin and freckles from the strong O’Brien gene pool of her father’s side of the family, behind her ears as she bent down to get a closer look. The short heeled, brown Ferragamo pumps were exquisite. “Eight dollars and the handbag? You managed to score a handbag? Are you kidding me?”

“Excuse me, I am one of the original Good Buy Girls,” Ginger said with her hands on her hips. “If there is one thing I do not kid about, it’s a bargain.”

Maggie grinned and hugged her oldest friend. The two women had grown up over on Hardy Street near the center of St. Stanley, a small town in southern Virginia. Both had come from large families in which getting by meant doing without or being creative with the spending. Now that they were older and had families of their own to care for, being creative had become their social outlet as well as a method of survival.

They had formed the Good Buy Girls, a club that shared coupons, discounts and bargain tips, twenty years before, when they were both newly married with babies on board.

The club membership had shifted and changed over the years except for Ginger and Maggie. Maggie liked to think they were lifers in the Good Buy Girls.

Ginger was the same age as Maggie, and they shared the same dress and shoe sizes, both being on the tall side of medium in height, but somehow Maggie always felt washed out when she stood next to Ginger, with her latte-colored skin, velvet brown eyes and boisterous laugh. Ginger was outspoken and funny and never engaged in a conversation in which she did not have the last word.

But then, maybe that was why they’d remained close friends all these years. Maggie was more of a watcher, quietly studying the world around her, while Ginger was more a doer. They balanced each other.

“So, what’s your news?” Maggie asked.

“Oh, you got me so distracted, I forgot,” Ginger said. “You may want to sit down.”

“Why? Is it bad?” Maggie settled onto the armrest of the couch, feeling a nervous flutter in her chest. She hated—absolutely
hated
—bad news.