by Misty Simon
“It was something for my friend.”
“The bustier? Because that should be in on Friday. They didn’t have it in stock at the moment, but they told me it would be available soon.”
He shook his head. “No, not the bustier. I was aware of that. This was something that was supposed to come in the box.”
I handed over the list of inventory numbers with the abbreviated stock names behind them. “Well, we don’t want your friend to be disappointed. If you could point at the missing thing, I’ll see if I can trace it.”
He ran his thick finger down the list, stopping on the entry marked CRNG. “I believe it’s this.”
“And this is for your friend?” I said as I pulled out the company’s catalog, then flipped to the back to look up the page the product was listed on alphabetically.
It only took a moment to locate the C-section, so I flipped to page 126. Once there, I nearly swallowed my tongue while still trying to keep the pleasant smile on my face.
It was a page filled with cock rings.
I cleared my throat. “And you’re sure this item isn’t in the package.” Gah! I just said package when talking about jewelry for his, um, package. Now I felt my face taking on the hue of a tomato. Quick exit, stage left.
“I’ll go make a call to see what happened to the, ah, item. Hang out here a second, and I’ll be right back.” Hang out? I didn’t think it could get worse. And for once it didn’t.
I ran back to the office, leaving Charlie to fend for himself. Many of the customers left in the store appeared to be only browsing, not yet ready to check out. Hopefully I would be back with answers about the missing cock ring before then.
After locking myself inside the office and being placed on hold, where I listened to Squirrel Nut Zippers (fantastic!), I flipped through the rest of the pages for the discerning man. There weren’t many, since most of the merchandise was geared more toward women, but there were several things I wouldn’t mind carrying. And a few things I wouldn’t mind seeing on Ben. Ahem!
Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense for me to start discreetly letting the male population know I would be happy to accommodate their needs, too. Maybe I could ask Charlie for his opinion on what was the best way to go about my new plan.
When the customer service representative answered, I almost asked to be put back on hold because one of my favorite songs was on. Instead I found out the ring had not been in stock on the day the order was put together. It should have followed the original box about two days later in a smaller package.
I thanked her for being so clinical about the whole thing and she laughed, saying that, more than anything, was her job.
And now I was off to hunt up the elusive cock ring that should have been in the shop somewhere. I really hoped someone hadn’t taken it.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to ask Charlie if he had seen it, nor did I have to wonder if Ben had come in at some point and rummaged through the shop looking for something, and absconded (fabulous word!) with the ring.
No, it was right on the shelf next to where I had taken the original box down.
I went back to the counter, breathing a sigh of relief. Now if I could only get Mr. Hanks out of the shop without letting him try it on, that would be fantastic. Obviously, if he went back into the dressing room, there was only one thing he was trying on. I didn’t think I could handle that, no matter how much I had grown up in the last year.
So I rang him up before I let him breathe a word, simply handing over the smaller box with a smile and without letting my gaze drop. “Enjoy,” I said, taking his money while thinking about him calling his penis his friend and expecting me to understand what the hell he was talking about. Jeez.
“I will,” that cheeky monkey said.
I snickered.
“I forgot to mention.” Oh, man, what could he have to say that would have been prompted by my saying “enjoy”? This could be bad.
I braced myself.
“When you next talk to Martha, can you make sure to mention I need her at the Barn thirty minutes before the dessert contest to give instructions?”
Whoa, talk about an abrupt subject change. “Yeah, sure, but what dessert contest?” And why hadn’t I been invited?
“We’re starting something new this year. We’re having the harvest party next week, and we’re going to have a dessert contest. I asked Martha and your father to be judges.”
“And not me?”
Chuckling, he said, “No, sweetie, not you. You know, and love, too many of the contestants for me to think you would be able to remain objective. The other half of the contestants are the very women who have yet to stop talking behind your back.”
He patted my arm as I grumbled.
“I promise to let you have any leftover pie, okay?”
That brightened my day. “Promise?”
“Yeah, but I hope you can figure out Aaron’s murder by the time the festival rolls around.”
“Why is that?”
“Because we need to have something to celebrate there instead of being worried someone else might end up dead. Surely you remember last year’s Halloween Ball? We don’t want a repeat. Plus, Jerry won’t be able to think to bake or cook right if this is hanging over his head.”
“Nothing like a little pressure, right?”
Mr. Jovial laughed. “Right. And if you find yourself needing any help, you know where to find me, though I don’t know what I could really do this time, unless you’ve found more hidden books I need to decipher, like last time.” He sounded very eager.
I almost felt bad having to tell him I had a whole lot of nothing to show for myself.
But at that moment a commotion started at the front of the store. Once I saw the big helmet of hair, I knew I was in for an even wilder afternoon. After almost six months of being Jackie-Sturder-free, it looked like my good fortune had dried up and blown away in the wind that wouldn’t move her hair an inch.
Chapter Twenty
“Get her out of here quickly, please,” Charlie said under his breath within seconds of seeing Jackie.
“What do you want me to do?” I still wasn’t very good at confrontation, and the last time I had tried to get rid of Jackie, she had smacked my head into the counter I was currently standing behind. I didn’t want another red welt on my forehead, especially this close to my debut as a lounge singer from the twenties. I had the outfit all picked out. A large flaming circle on my head was not going to go very well with the way I planned on fixing my hair. Not to mention it had hurt like a bitch last time. I had no intention of letting her do it again.
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave, Ms. Sturder,” I said in my best professional voice. Man, I was pulling that thing out all over the place today.
“Don’t you ‘Ms. Sturder’ me, you bitch,” she yelled from across the room.
Everyone seemed to stop dead in their tracks. They turned as one to face her.
Everyone then turned to look at me. What was this, a tennis match? Were we going to trade insults with the peanut gallery watching? I wouldn’t lower myself to her level.
“This is your last warning. Please leave now, or I’m calling the police.”
“That seems to be your answer for everything lately, doesn’t it? You can’t fight your own battles? Gotta run to your whore cohorts every time something goes wrong in the perfect life of Ivy?”
Well, how completely off base could one person be? Yet I wasn’t arguing with her anymore. Hopefully the police would show up faster than they had the last two times I had called them. Then again, this wasn’t exactly an emergency, so I might as well have been bluffing. Just great.
Jackie came striding (more like steaming like a locomotive, but that wasn’t a very nice picture for her) over to the counter.
I happened to see Thelma Boden, the postmistress who pretty much despised me, out of the corner of my eye. I bet she would crow like a freaking cock while she watched Jackie knock me ar
ound. Because really, who was going to stop her?
I honestly didn’t want any of the men to do anything, though I knew Mr. Hanks might want to and Charlie would certainly think about it before he went scurrying for the back. But I didn’t want either of them to get into trouble for assault.
I personally could get in trouble for assault, too, if I tried to hit her back. See how I already thought of a hit as a foregone conclusion? Most likely, the trouble would be less if it was a cat fight between the two of us. And to be perfectly honest, given my frustration with this stupid case and the way my stomach had been acting up lately, maybe I could just puke on her. Ew! Gross! But perhaps effective, and certainly the most natural weapon I could have used in my history of thwarting crazies.
But as I braced for the blow, I was shocked and speechless when Thelma stuck out her foot while winking at me, and tripped Jackie.
The shellacked hair went first as Jackie fell directly on her perfectly made-up face.
Uh-oh.
Thelma went right back to talking to her friends.
Everyone else resumed their business, too, as if nothing had happened.
Jackie jumped up, looking like she could have gladly spit nails. “Who did that? Who would dare trip me?”
No one stepped forward.
Thelma looked as interested in finding the answer to the question as everyone else. Cheeky lady.
You know, it might not have been an invitation to brunch with the biddies in town, but I felt a little warm spot in my heart for the way Thelma had kind of stood up for me.
The glow grew when Sadie Hawkmeyer went right up to Jackie and grabbed her by the ear, braving the gallons of hairspray coating her hair. “You should go,” she said, all four foot ten of her marching to the front door, dragging Jackie with her whether she wanted to come or not.
I was speechless. Especially when Thelma walked up to Sadie’s left and Charlie stationed himself on her right.
That alone made my happy heart go pitter-pat. Every time Jackie had come around before, Charlie hadn’t said much. In fact, he usually ducked out before any kind of confrontation could happen.
And now they effectively made a wall between me and this person who had been my nemesis from nearly the day I had arrived in Martha’s Point.
But I couldn’t let them do it all by themselves. So I broke through the barricade to face off with the woman who had tried several times now to make my life a living hell. She’d given me the bruises to show for it, too. “What exactly is it that you think you can accomplish here? I don’t see why you would even want to step foot in this shop when you know I have no plans to allow you to buy anything, and I certainly don’t want your money.”
She tried to spit at me, but Sadie still had Jackie’s ear firmly in her grip and the spittle went wide, landing in front of Mr. Hanks’ leather-shod feet.
He eyed her up and down with pure disdain clear on his face. “You want to try that again?” he asked in a menacing voice I had never heard before.
She must have balls of steel and earlobes of titanium. Despite the fact that Sadie was hanging on, Jackie stood to her full height and jabbed a finger at me. “I can’t believe any of you is so incredibly blind. We never had any real trouble until her highness came waltzing into town and made room for herself by stepping all over everyone with her size-twelve heifer hooves.”
That was about enough. But then Bella came bursting through the door, smacking the wood into Jackie’s back and making her teeter off balance.
“Ivy!” she said excitedly. Then she paused, taking in the scene in a second. She sauntered the rest of the way into the room, where there was still an almost dead silence.
Jackie was breathing hard and someone coughed in the background, but those were the only sounds.
“So what exactly do we have going on here?” Bella asked, still sauntering and looking damn good doing it. She so did not look like she had been knocked out only the day before. Maybe there was something to her powers of recuperation. I certainly wasn’t going to go get myself hurt just to see if Ben could give me sexual healing. But still.
Jackie snarled something, but the animal noises echoing in her throat made it so I couldn’t hear any of the words.
“Calm down there, little kitty,” Bella responded. She circled Jackie and Sadie, forcing Jackie to wrench her head around to watch Bella’s progress.
Jared came in at that point. We might have been reaching the maximum population allowed in the room.
Screaming bloody murder, Jackie went for him with a gusto I had only seen before when I was anywhere near a cheesecake buffet. Wow.
But a multitude of hands were there immediately, holding her back away from poor Jared, who was still a little wan from his ordeal. I guess the recuperative sweaty sex must not have been as restorative for him as for Bella.
“You need to go now, Jackie,” Charlie said, his arms crossed over his chest as he walked up to stand toe to toe with Jackie, right up in her space.
“Yeah, bi-atch, get your big ass moving on out the door.” As improbable as it seemed, that actually came from Thelma Boden. Holy schnikeys.
Something about the way Thelma said the words, and the way everyone else stepped forward when she did, must have translated to Jackie’s little brain. She turned tail and ran faster than I thought possible.
There was only one thing to say after all that. “Free panties for everyone!”
****
“I don’t know what happened after that because it was like a big huge blur, with panties going left and right, and more people than I ever thought to see handing over their money for the rest of their purchases. But I can tell you Jackie was on a mission to take out Jared’s eyes if she could. I couldn’t believe it.” I shoved another bite of pie into my mouth, then munched happily, pleased I wasn’t trying to eat through a swollen mouth or bruised jaw. Both of which I was told Jackie was currently suffering from. And she was not a happy camper at all.
I chewed a little more vigorously, then delicately wiped my mouth with a napkin from the dispenser on the table at Mad Martha’s Milk and Munchies. Martha wasn’t here, but I had heard she and Dad were doing something by themselves this evening, so I didn’t want to interrupt.
I have to admit I was a little surprised that my dad hadn’t bugged me more about solving the murder this time around. Normally, he was all over me with his Perry Masonisms and police codes, but I had barely heard from him. I hoped nothing was wrong. I don’t know why that particular thought intruded, because certainly he would tell me if something was wrong. Instead of worrying about it, I should definitely enjoy this reprieve. I was contrary, but I wasn’t that contrary.
So I decided to let it go and enjoy the very sexy man across from me, along with my pie. I dropped one of my flats under the table, happy for once not to have worn sneakers, and wiggled my toes at Ben’s ankle.
He, too, was eating pie. I laughed as he choked a little on it when he jumped. And I hadn’t even gotten to the good place, yet. Snicker, again.
“Behave yourself,” he said, most likely knowing where me and my toes were going.
He might growl at me, but I knew he liked it. How could he not? It was me, after all.
I was happily making my way up from his calf to his thigh when Jennifer came over to refill our coffee cups. And when she came back over to see if we needed anything else, my toes were merrily trailing over his inner thigh, heading for the homeland.
He yelped when I hit the homeland, though. I went in a little too hard, and Bella slapped the tabletop at the same time, startling me.
“Remember where you are, girl. This place doesn’t have long tablecloths like Jerry’s restaurant.”
“Ha.” But I did remove my foot to let Ben breathe again.
“What’s up?” I took another bite of pie to soothe myself. I waited through a whole chewing cycle before Bella said anything. I swallowed, and she finally spoke.
“I think I might have made a mistake about
the identity of our slut-o-licious girl.”
Well, this was news to me. “And how did you come to this conclusion?”
“Didn’t you see Jackie go after Jared? And the body is about the same. Maybe I was so focused on Heather that I didn’t think it all the way through.”
Normally I would have accepted her at face value, except it put us in a very bad position and back at square one as far as suspects went. It also gave us no reason to pull in Heather. This was not good.
I could see Ben getting a mad on, and tried to head it off. It wasn’t really solely Bella’s fault. We had gone along with it, too. Though this did change everything if it really had been Jackie. I couldn’t think of a single reason why the woman would want to kill Aaron, though. In all the information I’d gathered (which might not have been a ton, but at least I had some), her name had never come up.
As far as I knew, she hadn’t had anything to do with Aaron or his family at all. In my mind, it still made sense to think Heather had wanted all the money to be inherited for herself, and had offed her brother to get it. Or maybe Penny, the fiancée, had done it so she could do all the shopping without any of the messy relationship stuff. That left the mistress. I didn’t really believe a pregnant woman would kill her lover, but then again, who knew what those kind of crazy hormones could do to the brain?
Basically, like I said, back to square one. And we still didn’t even know how exactly Aaron had died, only that he was ultimately a crispy critter of the highest caliber in a kitchen which hadn’t burned down. But he’d taken a good portion of Jerry’s recipes with him.
Yeah, I had a whole lot of questions, but few, if any, answers that were right. I also had no real idea where to go for the right ones. Time to start all over again.
“I am not happy about this,” I said to Ben’s back as we went to yet another source we had already mined and asked the same questions we had already asked. This was actually pretty darn boring, if you asked me.
I was much more used to flopping around and then coming up on the right person without all this endless talking. I wanted this solved now. Not only so I could maybe wreak some justice on the jerk who decided they could end a life, but also because I felt a killer period coming on. There was no telling what I would do if in that state and faced with a killer. Not to mention the fact that Jerry was up my rear end about the murder.