Good Buy Girls 05 - All Sales Final (14 page)

Maggie felt her chest constrict like she was a diver with decompression sickness, aka the bends. She could not have heard what she thought she heard. Could she? She put her finger in her ear to make sure a wax ball wasn’t impairing her hearing.

“Repeat that again,” Maggie said.

Summer leaned close and spoke loudly in Maggie’s ear. “I’m a Good Buy Girl.”

Maggie glanced at the others. They looked as flummoxed as she felt and the baby was beginning to fuss. She mouthed the words
Help me
to the others but they all glanced away. Clearly, no one was up for another bout of Summer’s tears.

The baby began to wail and Joanne looked overjoyed. “Oh dear, time to feed the baby. Excuse me.”

She hustled out of the shop with Claire right behind her, exclaiming, “Look at the time. My break is definitely over, way over, in fact, I’m sure I’m late for the desk.”

Ginger tried to sidle to the door but Maggie locked her fingers around Ginger’s wrist in a grip that would require a sharp blade to be severed.

“Where are you going?” Maggie asked.

“Client?” Ginger guessed.

“No,” Maggie said.

“Okay,” Ginger sighed.

“Come on, guys, it’ll be great,” Summer said. “We can shop together and have coffee at the Daily Grind.”

“Yeah, here’s the problem,” Maggie said. “The Good Buy Girls look out for one another. We share sale and bargain information and clip coupons together. It’s a more cooperative relationship, which we all know is not really your forte.”

“What does that mean?” Summer asked. She looked truly perplexed.

“Sharing is not your gift,” Ginger said.

“Oh, I know,” Summer said. “I’ll work on it. I don’t like sharing my clothes, jewelry or men, but I can share other things.”

“Such as?” Maggie asked.

“Knowledge,” Summer said.

Maggie and Ginger exchanged a glance.

“Explain,” Maggie said.

“This Andy woman is not just here to help Sam with
a case,” Summer said. “She’s working an angle. I saw them together at the Daily Grind and I heard them—”

“Wait, they were at the coffee shop?” Ginger clarified.

“Oh yeah, and she was talking about this old case they’d worked on together and that old case they’d solved together,” Summer said. “It was a regular jog down memory lane for the two of them.”

Maggie felt a sludgy icky twist in her insides. She was not a jealous person, generally speaking, as she had realized long ago, thanks to Summer, that it was a largely useless emotion. But she had just gotten Sam back in her life and there was a huge chunk of time that they had been apart, and while she loved him and felt like she knew him, she clearly didn’t know every single detail of the twenty years they’d spent apart and Andy seemed like she might be a big detail.

“Now listen,” Summer said. “I can advise you on how to handle this.”

Maggie was tempted, oh, was she tempted, to take Summer up on her offer. She let go of Ginger and took up her coffee mug. She took a long bracing sip.

“Thanks for the offer, Summer,” she said. “But I’m okay.”

“Oh, good grief,” Summer said with a shake of her blond hair. “You’re not going to listen to me, are you?”

“I trust Sam,” Maggie said.

“You are an idiot,” Summer said.

“Hey!” Maggie snapped.

“Now, now ladies, let’s keep it cordial.” Ginger stepped in between them. “There’s no need to lose our tempers.”

She gave Maggie a pointed look and Maggie turned away. She was not going to be lectured about how to talk to Summer.

“You’re right,” Summer said. She shook her hair out and forced a smile. “There, I’ve forgiven you already.”

“You’ve forgiven me?” Maggie sputtered. “I don’t need your—”

“I don’t know why I get so upset,” Summer interrupted. “It’s just a misunderstanding.”

“No, it’s not,” Maggie protested. “You and I have nothing in common. Friendships have to have common ground. We have nothing.”

“Not true,” Summer said. She stepped away from the counter and began to look through Maggie’s shop. “We were both born and raised here in St. Stanley.”

“That’s a circumstance of geography,” Maggie argued. She heard a funny sound coming from Ginger and when she glanced at her she was pretty sure Ginger was trying not to laugh.

“We both own secondhand stores,” Summer said.

Maggie wanted to point out that it was because Summer had copied her but she refrained. Instead, she stated the obvious, “Which makes us each other’s competition thus not friends.”

“We’ve both been in love with Sam Collins,” Summer said. Then she glanced at Maggie and grinned. “That’s three for three.”

“I’m not going to be able to get rid of you, am I?” Maggie asked. It was beginning to sink into her head that she was not going to be able to talk Summer out of this madness.

“No, you’re not,” Summer said. “I’m telling you, Mrs. Tyler Fawkes is a brand-new person, a better person. You’ll want me as a friend. You’ll see.”

With a swish of her long blond hair, she left the shop, leaving Maggie and Ginger gaping after her.

“Because I don’t have enough on my plate with a wedding to plan, a skeleton in my house, my mother in town and Andy being a good-looking woman instead of the beer-bellied, hairy-eared man I thought she was, I now have this?” Maggie asked.

Ginger nodded. “So it would seem.”

“Summer as a friend,” Maggie said. “It’s like quantum physics. I can’t even wrap my brain around the concept for more than a second before poof! It goes away.”

“Maybe it’s just a phase that will pass,” Ginger said.

“Like the moon?” Maggie asked.

“Don’t werewolves come out at the full moon? What phase is it in right now?”

“I think it’s full,” Maggie said. “So, Summer wanting to be our friend is like being stalked by a werewolf?”

“There are marked similarities,” Ginger said.

“I don’t know. She wasn’t looking very hairy.”

“That’s a myth.”

“So, werewolves aren’t hairy?”

“That one isn’t at any rate.”

“So, we like Summer as a werewolf more than we like the idea of her genuinely wanting to be our friend?” Maggie asked.

“Yup,” Ginger agreed, making a popping sound on the
P
.

“Okay, then,” Maggie said.

Ginger pulled Maggie in for a bracing hug. “Don’t fret. Everything is going to be just fine.”

“The wedding—” Maggie began but Ginger interrupted.

“Will be beautiful.”

“The skeleton—”

“Will be identified. As if you even need it to be, knowing you and Sam you’ve probably already named it.”

“Captain Bones,” Maggie said.

“See?”

“Andy the hottie who was supposed to be a man—”

“Will go back to Richmond sad and alone,” Ginger said.

Maggie let out a pent-up breath and felt her shoulders drop. “Thanks. I needed that.”

Her cell phone chimed from its holder on the counter. Maggie glanced at the display and frowned. “My mother.”

“On that note, I am out of here,” Ginger said. She blew Maggie a kiss from the door. “Good luck.”

She waved and tried not to have pouty voice when she answered the phone.

“Hi, Mom,” she answered.

“Sweetie, where are you?”

“At the shop,” she said.

“Excellent, I’ll be right there,” her mother said.

“Why? Is something wrong?” Maggie asked. Her first thought was for her daughter Laura and her second was her grand-nephew Josh. Had something happened to one of them?

“I’ll say,” her mother said. Her tone sounded irritated instead of alarmed, which should have been Maggie’s first clue. “We need to talk.”

“What about?”

“Your future mother-in-law,” her mother said. “I ran into her at the florist and she was actually picking your floral arrangements.”

“What?”

“I know,” her mother continued. “Can you imagine? Does she have no sense of propriety or boundaries? I am not certain what sort of family you are marrying into, Maggie.”

“Mom, you’ve known the Collins family for decades,” Maggie said. “They’re a lovely family as you’ve said yourself.”

“Be that as it may, she was picking your flowers,” her mother said.

Maggie was quiet for a moment. “Um, so what were you doing at the florist, Mom?”

“I, well, I was merely pricing them for you, you know, for your bouquet and boutonnieres,” she said.

“Oh, and what were you thinking for my bouquet?” Maggie asked.

“Well, I thought an armful of Gerber daisies would be colorful but she was picking out lavender roses,” her mother complained and followed it up with a retching noise.

Maggie rubbed her temples with the fingers of her available hand. She inhaled through her nose, held it and slowly exhaled. Everything was going to be fine.
She and Sam were getting married. Everything else was just details.

“Hey, I’m pulling up in front of the shop,” her mother said. “Now about your dress, I had some ideas . . .”

Her mother kept talking but Maggie slowly lowered her phone to the counter. All she could think when she reviewed the insanity of her day was, What next?

Chapter 15

She shouldn’t have asked. Maggie listened to her mother rattle on about her plans for the wedding. How they were supposed to pull off what her mother wanted to be the social event of the season in less than three weeks Maggie had no idea.

When her mother finally exited the shop, Maggie sagged against the counter in relief. Her anxiety was spiking and she was pretty sure the only cure would be to down an entire bottle of wine. Somehow, she didn’t think that would go over too well the next morning, but it was still oh so tempting.

Since there seemed to be a lull in customers, Maggie decided it was as good a time as any to crack open the books Ruth had lent her and study up on the Dixons.
Surely, given that they were one of the older families in St. Stanley, if there was any gossip, it would be chronicled in the books.

She started with the prominent families of St. Stanley book. It showed the most promise, with an entire chapter devoted to the Dixons.

Neil Dixon arrived in St. Stanley when it was just a tiny crossroads, a small farming town in southern Virginia.

Maggie wondered what Neil would think of it if he could see it now. It wasn’t much bigger than that long-ago crossroads, but they did have a town green, schools and a small hospital. St. Stanley had gone through wars, depressions, recessions, and it was still here. She thought Neil would approve.

The text was dry, written by a local historian who, while well meaning, had prose that was overblown and flouncy and as dry as dirt. She always thought fiction writers would be the best ones to write history textbooks for the very reason that they could make them come to life.

She plodded through several generations, relieved when she finally got to names that she knew. There was mention of when the house was built, long before the Civil War, but mostly the chapter was about the people who made up the Dixon clan.

There was a long line of inventors and scientists, followed by local politicians; a Dixon had been the town mayor back in the early nineteen-hundreds. Post–Depression era Dixons were more involved in economics and banking, clearly not trusting their money to any
unknown institutions ever again. Ida and Imogene Dixon made up the last chapter. At the time the book was published, both sisters were still alive and residing on their own in the family estate.

Ida Dixon was the more creative of the twins. She loved theater and painting, and her family supported her interests in the arts. Imogene was the more pragmatic of the two and preferred a good book to the company of people. Maggie thought the author sounded as if he were writing from personal experience and she wondered if Imogene had rebuffed queries for an interview.

Apparently, Imogene had been very civic-minded and had overseen the library as well as the historical society at one time. Maggie had only known the sisters in their later years and only from a distance. Ida had always dressed feminine in big floppy sun hats with gloves and flouncy dresses. Imogene, on the other hand, wore tailored slacks with crisp blouses. Maggie had always gotten the feeling that Imogene could have been the CEO of a major company with her snappy duds and sharp mind and, now that she was learning more about her, she knew her impression had been correct.

The book made no mention of either sister ever marrying or having children. The author mentioned one poignant moment during his interview with Ida, who was seventy-five at the time, when her eyes grew misty and she glanced away when asked why she had never married. After she composed herself, she said, “My one true love found another more to his liking and left me to pine. I never found another quite like him and so I stayed alone.”

Maggie felt her throat get tight at the thought of a woman missing out on her one true love and spending her days longing for him. She closed the book and glanced up to find Sam smiling at her.

“Ah!” she cried. Then she put her hand over her heart. “Give a girl a little warning, why don’t you?”

The crinkles around Sam’s eyes deepened. “The bells jangled, I coughed, I called your name, and you heard none of it.”