Freezer Burn: A Maggie Mercer Mystery Page 3

  “Wow. Sounds like the MCPD.”

  “Yes indeed,” she cackled, “except you’re the skeleton.”

  “I am at that. Go get it, I’ll wait. No sense making two trips.”

  She went to the back of the building and came out with a handful of letters bundled with a rubber band. “There’s one here for the chief needs to be signed for.”

  “You sure I can have it now? It’s not in Brick’s bag, or Lemon’s?”

  She looked like she wanted to smack me. “Just sign the form and shut up.”

  I chuckled while scrawling my John Hancock in the designated rectangle. “Okay, then. Take care, Miz McIntyre.”

  “Oh, for Christmas sake, girl. How many times I gotta tell you to call me by my first name?”

  I grinned and grabbed the bag she’d pulled from beneath the counter, stuffing the mail inside it. “Sorry. Ingrained habit. Respect for my elders, and all that. Tootle-loo.”

  With her eyes shooting sharp little pins, she shooed me out with a wave, then disappeared once more into the bowels of the post office.

  Out in the cold, again, I forgot about the mystery man and his postage slip, setting a brisk pace to the office.

  CHAPTER 7

  ANOTHER SURPRISE

  ALMOST FINISHED with the DAILY REPORTS, I looked up at the squelch of the door.

  “Magdalena.” A shivery, breathy, excited voice preceded the angular physique of my favorite former English teacher.

  Well, well.

  “Miz Wellington. What are you doing out on such a cold day? Why, you look— You’re positively glowing.”

  It wasn’t the cold weather that’d given her those rosy cheeks.

  “Had to come by and share my news.”

  “Sit down and tell me all about it.” Pulling out both the guest chairs, I gestured her to one and sat on the other.

  “I’m just beside myself.” She paused a moment before … perching, on the edge of her seat, like a bird ready to fly off at the least provocation. “I’m sure you’re aware of the vacancy at the library.”

  “Yes, since Jonas Talbot, um, retired.” Now, was that ironic, or what? “I was just thinking about that this morning.”

  “You are correct. The Borough Council— I just spoke with Elias Heckman. As you know, he’s the council president and acting mayor. He said the council voted unanimously to have me appointed head librarian! ME!” Eyes bright, she clapped and giggled like a five-year-old let loose in a toy store. “Can you imagine?”

  “Of course I can. You’re the perfect choice.” Apparently, today was the day for surprise announcements. I was over-joyed for her. “No one’s better qualified. You know Helen’s going to be jumping for joy. She’s been real antsy about the council’s delay in hiring a permanent replacement. When do you start?”

  “Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I do know. I’ve talked to Helen at length about how slow they were to fill that position. Oh, I’m all aflutter.” She paused to fan herself. “I’m to start next Monday morning. Oh, my heavens, this is so com-PLETE-ly unexpected. There are mountains of things to do, lists of people to tell. I’m so overwhelmed I can hardly think straight. I would never in a million years have considered working again once I’d retired from teaching, but this is— I’m just exhilarated, ecstatic. Getting into the routine of doing something worthwhile, every day again, is going to be very rewarding.”

  I’d never seen her so animated. Well, maybe, though in a different way, when Forsythia printed that ugly article in The Mossy Creek Gazette last summer. Our Miss Vera-Mae was pretty steamed, and I got both barrels of that verbal double-ought buck when she thought I’d been the one who blabbed about her Mint Juleps.

  But, I really wanted to tell her to take it easy. She wasn’t as.… Hmm. Her golden years.… Well, shoot. She was old, and frail, and I was a little worried about hyperventilation, or worse. But my comments on that would not be voiced. No way was I going to dampen her enthusiasm.

  “I’m really happy for you, Miz Wellington. I don’t think I’ve seen you this excited since, um, well, for quite some time.”

  “Oh, I know you’re right, Magdalena, but there’s just all this … energy, inside me.” She fairly bounced in her seat. “Would you mind telling Chief Madison the news?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather tell him yourself?”

  She lowered her chin and fluttered her lashes. “Oh. Well. I suppose, yes. But I thought he and Officer Anderson were out chopping ice.”

  “They are. And, although they won’t come into the office, they’ll be back tonight.”

  “As much as I’d like to tell him in person, I think I’d rather you did it.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Mainly because I’m sure you’ll be seeing him later on.”

  “As a matter of fact, I will. You know, you could call him. Your phone’s been in for a while now.”

  “Oh, no.” She waved off my suggestion, face blushing. “I wouldn’t want to bother him.”

  “He wouldn’t think it a bother.”

  She licked her lips. “No?”

  “Of course not. He’ll be flattered you told him in person, just like everyone else you’re going to tell.”

  A smile spread over her face, so big it moved her shoulders. “All right, then. I will. But you’ll have to give me his phone number.” She may be old, but she’s still female. “Do you know the most surprising aspect in all this, even more so than being chosen?”

  I waited.

  “Jonas Talbot recommended me.”

  My eyebrows lifted. Surprise upon surprise. “Really?” That sly devil.

  She nodded. “I was speechless.”

  “I’ll bet. He was just in here this morning.”

  “Yes, I passed him as I came out of Annetta’s Diner. He thanked me again for carrying.… Oh, dear, how did he put it?” She waved a hand in my direction. “It had to do with carrying the torch, and that we seniors had to look out for each other. Rambling, mostly, actually. He’s an odd duck, but in a rather charming sort of way.”

  Hmm. He wasn’t the only one rambling, actually. And, I can’t say I agreed with her romanticism of Councilman Talbot. But then she’d had some exhilarating news, so in her case it was understandable. Apparently, grammar goes out the window when she’s all wound up, too. Jonas Talbot was like that all the time.

  “I must be getting along.” She rose. “I’m so glad you were here to tell.”

  “I’m very glad you stopped in.” I stood, and helped her maneuver around the chairs. “Make sure you bundle up, now. It’s cold out there.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I intend to. Layers, you know.” She adjusted her scarf and re-buttoned her wool coat. “It’s all about the layers.” Gloves were last.

  “Absolutely.” We walked to the door. “Be careful of those slippery spots.”

  “I will, yes.” She nodded, patting my arm. “Have a wonderful day, Magdalena.”

  “And you, Miz Wellington.”

  I watched her traverse the few steps to the sidewalk—holding fast to the wrought-iron railing—and disappear around the corner of the building.

  The wind was picking up. Wet leaves swept down the ice-covered street, loose snow blew and drifted into every nook and cranny. The gray gloom had changed in the last hour, gotten deeper, heavier. More snow would be falling soon. How much we’d get this time, only Mother Nature knew for certain.

  Silently sending up a prayer of a safe journey home for my fragile friend, I went back to my desk and grabbed my mug for a refill.

  It wasn’t even close to noon yet, and the day was shaping up as very busy, and a lot interesting.

  Everything up to this point put me in mind of crossword puzzles.

  I wondered.

  Just before 11, I got more visitors.

  CHAPTER 8

  THEY JUST KEEP COMING

  FORSYTHIA MORGAN TOOK a few steps inside the door, and stood shivering in her faux-fox fur. Gladiola McIntyre, just behind, looked bug-snug in he
r fleece-lined sheepskin jacket.

  “Ladies, this is a surprise. What can I do for you?”

  “Get out of the way, Sythie.” Gladiola looked annoyed as she elbowed Forsythia forward, in order to shut the door. “I was minding my own business over at the post office, and my sister came to me with a concern,” the post mistress began. “Now, it makes no never mind to me how other people run their business, but as this involves kin, I suggested she bring it to the attention of our fine upstanding police department.”

  Round and round the mulberry bush.

  As Sherlock Holmes likes to say, ‘The game is afoot.’ “Oh?” I could only imagine what Forsythia was upset about. For her to come to us, it must be something big.

  “Yes.” The older woman appeared uncomfortable, but resigned. “There’s something fishy going on at Hidden Treasures.”

  Ah. The antique store belonged to another of their sisters, Lavender Grayson, and her husband Thomas. It was one of my favorite places to shop, and made Wyatt grumpy when I did—mostly because I’d drag him along with me.

  I opened my mouth to voice a question, but Forsythia continued, “Oh, not with the store itself. Oh, no. I don’t mean that.”

  Gladiola patted her sister’s arm. “We’ve just come from there. Lavender’s all … discombooberated, and just so’s you know, she doesn’t agree with our assessment of her situation.”

  “Vandy opened that store all those years ago,” Forsythia took back control of the conversation, “to have something to do, because being in the house all day was driving her batty, and Thomas was being so pig-headed about her working outside the home. Do you remember, Glad?”

  “Yes, I do. Had a stick up his butt about it.”

  “Indeed he did.” Forsythia gave a laugh. “Anyway, it’s been doing … wonderfully well. For spite, I think. Lavender’s thrilled, of course. Who wouldn’t be? But apparently, for some time now, she’s been hiding a spot of annoyance that I think needs to be addressed. She may not consider it a serious problem, but she didn’t fuss much when we said we were coming over here.”

  I waved them toward the seats in front of my desk. “You both know Chief Madison isn’t in today.”

  “We do, yes.” The older woman angled out a chair and sat, primly. “However, we also know that you share everything with him. A good thing, most of the time. Therefore, Glad and I decided to come together, to see what, if anything, can be done to, er, to help our sister.”

  “I see.” Were those really cordial words coming out of her mouth? And, could it have been … a compliment? Though it might turn out to be a Trojan horse, I wasn’t going to complain.

  The woman had graciously, through half-clenched teeth, apologized publically for all the nastiness she’d instigated while we were investigating the hanging death of Miranda Richards—cheerleading captain and Wyatt’s goddaughter—this past summer.

  After Wyatt and Ricky arrested Miz Morgan, straight from her chair at the beauty parlor, and with her hair half up in rollers, she didn’t speak to us for months.

  Then, a miraculous change occurred. As more and more reporters stuck their microphones in her face, the angrier she became, haranguing Wyatt about how the media was ruining our town and why didn’t he do something about it. It took us a while to notice that eventually she stopped coming in.

  In reality, she didn’t leave her house, didn’t answer the phone, and quietly stepped down from her unofficial position as head of the grapevine. She never explained her behavior, nor the reasons for her decision. But if I had to guess, I think it finally dawned that those annoying reporters asking their inane repetitive none-of-your-business questions, was exactly what she had been doing to her fellow Mossy Creekians. Or, that she was worse because she didn’t ask questions, just spread whatever she heard to whomever would listen.

  She does still keep her thumb on the town’s jugular, and will, on occasion, pass along the juiciest of bits, but she hasn’t, to our knowledge, started any rumors of late.

  Vera-Mae Wellington has made mention that her old friend is trying to patch up their friendship.

  People are wary, moi in particular, and will be for quite a while. Our Miss Forsythia will need to be ‘gossip free’ for many months to come if she wants the town’s complete trust.

  Flipping to a clean sheet in my steno pad, I clicked and poised my pen. “Who wants to start, and where?”

  Gladiola stepped forward, but didn’t sit, bracing her hands on the back of her sister’s chair, instead. “After you left this morning, Sythie came by. She’d just been to Vandy’s shop, and was irritated.”

  Forsythia sniffed. “I wasn’t irritated.”

  “You were. And, as Rory’d come in early, I took a break, and my sister and I went over to Hidden Treasures.”

  Forsythia edged in. “Our Lavender tends to…. Well, in all honesty, I don’t see how she stays in business. Not that she’s a shoddy businesswoman—heaven forbid if I gave that impression—but she doesn’t keep track as accurately, or as precisely, as she should. At least not that we can see.

  “She told us she believes there are a few small, but valuable items missing from her shop.”

  Gladiola stole the punch line. “But she can’t find the invoices to prove she ever had them. Nor can she take the time to do a full inventory. It would take months to catalog everything in that store.”

  “Someone needs to do something about that situation.”

  “Yes, you’re right, Sythie. I’ll be talking to Ivy. It’ll be a very tight fit, though. All we have to do is get Vandy to agree to let my baby girl look over the books. Lavender’s adamant there’s nothing wrong with them. And eventually, no matter how long it takes or how belligerent she gets, my big sister’s going to have to do an inventory. However, although it’s connected, in a roundabout way, to the problem, that isn’t precisely why we’re here.”

  I was still processing the fact that Gladiola was going to ask her youngest child to take on the antique shop’s books. Poor Ivy was going to be a very busy young lady, what with already handling the accounts at Bussy’s Books—her late father’s bookstore—and helping her brother, Quince, run the place. And, on top of all that, after four years of marriage, she was due to give birth to her first child in a couple months.

  “I, we, are of the opinion that our sister’s establishment has been robbed, but we need proof.”

  “Robbed may be too strong a word,” Gladiola countered. “Sister says there’s been a stranger, a man, coming into the shop almost every day, sometimes more than once. He doesn’t buy anything, but does browse rather fixedly. He asks the oddest of questions about her business methods, too.”

  “I realize we don’t know every single person who lives in this town, but Vandy says she’s never seen him before.”

  Hmm. A possible theft, and a stranger in town.

  Double hmm.

  Had I met him this morning?

  Or, maybe….

  No, Miss Lavender’s stranger was a he, couldn’t possibly be Bruce’s Sybil.

  “You think this man has something to do with the missing pieces?”

  Both women shrugged and shook their heads.

  “Our sister’s in a dither about it. She won’t show it, but I can tell. And the stubborn mule won’t raise a ruckus, or get the chief involved, either. She thinks it would be a waste of his time.”

  The unspoken but hung in the air like a cold fog.

  “We think it’s a very big deal.”

  I bounced the pen on the pad. “Why?”

  “That man at the post office today, Maggie. You saw him.”

  Aha. “The one in the windbreaker?”

  Gladiola nodded. “The very one.”

  “What about him?”

  “I’d bet my left upper bicuspid he’s the one harassing V.”

  After one encounter with the guy? That’s a pretty flimsy sure bet, if you ask me.

  You hush, I didn’t give him all that much thought.

  “Browsi
ng through a store and asking questions isn’t harassment.”

  “That’s true, but the fact that that man started coming around last week, and the man this morning has only been in town for about the same amount of time…. Well, suspicions are aroused.”

  Forsythia harrumphed. “You and your hypothesis-sses.”

  “I’ve spoken to Mr. Blackwell myself, and notated his address change in the computer.” Gladiola frowned at her sister. “Haven’t seen the bozo in her store with my own two eyes, in point of fact.”

  “But you think he’s the same man?”

  I put the question to Gladiola, but Forsythia sighed out, “Well, yes.”

  We both stared at her.

  “I do tend to agree with Gladiola, though not entirely.” The older woman shifted in the chair. “We don’t know this … stranger. He’s an unknown quantity, if you will.”

  “Vandy is very knowledgeable about her customers. She knows who they are, how many times they’ve been in, what they buy, and can recite their addresses from memory. When she says she’s never seen this man before, I tend to take her word. From the way she describes his visits, I’d say he was casing the joint, er, place.” Gladiola scowled and crossed her arms. “She accused me of watching too many cop shows. BAH.”

  Yes, well. Don’t we all?

  I leaned back. “You might be right to be suspicious, but you still need proof.”

  Gladiola pounded the top of the chair, making her sister flinch. “Yes. Dang it all, we do.”

  Forsythia folded her hands in her lap and huffed.

  I was thinking about crossword puzzles, again. “You are aware that this is an open town, and near a freeway. We get visitors all the time. What is it about this one that’s bugging you?”

  The sisters exchanged a look.

  “As we said, it’s just us two,” Gladiola admitted. “Lavender, not so much. We haven’t mentioned anything to Hyacinth, or Pansy, or Magnolia yet, but I’m sure they’ll agree with us. There’s just something about this guy that doesn’t quite seem on the up and up. Whatever he’s got going on—shifty or not—doesn’t sit well.”