A Gift for Murder

by Capri Montgomery

  When Merck saw Megan Porter on the new arrivals line of the file he was looking at. She was midway the district where he lived but the name still intrigued him. How man Megan Porter’s could there be in the world? Not many. But then again there could be many women holding that name.

  He was never a sit on his butt man. When he was curious he investigated. He put his dress detective shoes back on and started up the vehicle. His idea was to just watch her house and see if he saw her in the window.

  Bad idea? Yes. He didn’t realize she was on the second floor of the building and that the downstairs seemed set up for an area that might be a commercial store. He could easily go in once she opened, unless it was a women’s clothing store he would have a hard time explaining why he was shopping there as a single man. The last thing he needed was for her to think that he was buying women’s clothing for himself.

  He sat in his car in a distance where and nobody would think weird of him and where she would not be able to see him. He sat there with the sun setting thinking of hell it was possible that maybe this was the Megan Porter who he had hurt decades ago and maybe he get just fix it all in the here and the now.

  He had never been a man who sat around and waited that this was different because the pain he had helped cause her would not be easy to erase.

  He had been sitting there so long that Ito themselves get out of the car in go see the woman. But the problem was when he saw her walking down the street she was walking with another gentleman and talking with him. Was he her boyfriend? Was he her husband? Women sometimes kept their own name when they got married and Megan seems like the woman who would do something like that. But how would he know? It had been too many years for him to say who she was, how she felt and what she believed.

  What he noticed about Megan that night was that she had a little bit of soul for an along chunk of care about an inch wide on one side of her hair. Of course that was the only side of her here that was helped sell for all he knew there could have been a matching one on the other side. He liked their view of her. Her body was toned, fit and beautiful. He wanted to talk to her but he also knew she might not want to talk to him.

  He stayed there watching her and thinking of how he never thought she would move back to Forest Springs that he was happy that she did.

  When demand that she was walking west stared off that’s a car behind the two of them Megan was pointing to him which way to go. He handed her back to her said that they click thank you and then waived by to her. That move alone told him they were not together. They didn’t know each other. And she was clearly very much single. When he saw her go in through the other door attached to the downstairs and the lights on the upstairs went on after a brief moment he had an idea of what was happening. She lived up there and he was sure she lived there alone.

  He drove away because now he knew that that Megan Porter on that file online was the same one he had gone to school where many many moons ago.

  As the point of recognition he realized that he the still worried about her heating and for what he did. Seeing her there was like a reflection in the lake but that gave him an image of the reality of her being there but at the same time didn’t give him an in-depth view of who she was now. Which she talked to them? Would she yell at him? No he did not think that she would yell at them because that was not the kind of woman she was. No matter what happened in school she never yelled at the people doing it to her. After what he did to her she didn’t yell at hand and either. Reconnecting with Megan was going to take a lot of work.

  Merck is due to some research without getting help from anybody, much anyway. He found out that she was opening the café not a clothing store and that she on the entire building which told him she planned to stay. If she wasn’t going to run away this time he had a chance to try to rekindle the good parts of what they had and not just the bad parts.

  He had been sitting around and thinking about it for a while and had never come up with the great way to meet her. Her café was not open yet and he did not know when it would be. He couldn’t just walk into the building when it wasn’t open yet without giving himself away like a stalker or something.

  Merck chuckled to himself as he set his office thinking about how much he wanted to see her again so he could talk to her the house. He wants to even approach her know.

  “It took a murder to connect mean to her.” Dare had to pay something so wickedly wrong with how happy he felt about finding the perfect way to connect with Megan. Walking into that spas and back to where the other customers were sitting while the other officers took information from the lady sitting up front by the entry way took his breath away. He had no idea she was sitting back there but when he found out he knew he did not want to let her walk out of there just yet.

  He handled the investigation the way he should but he did not need to sit down in a chair in front of her to question her. No, scratch that, he did not have to pull a chair over to sit in front of her. He asks questions about her to find out more about who she was now and wanting to know everything she could take in on her. She was still fiery and spicy rolled into one. She had no plans to smile and simply forget their past, but she didn’t try to make him look bad in front of the other couple officers who had came back to the sitting room with him.

  Now off as he sat here looking at his notes of everything she had said it hurt his heart to the alliance that she still can feel the pain that she underwent in school. Maybe it hurt her more because he had actually contributed to some of the pain any current change that no matter how much he wished he could.

  Merck shifted the page to when he was talking with one of the other ladies sitting in the back. They all have some serious issues of which she could tell just by looking at them but none of them gave him the impression that the book one to kill Sterling. Of course he had seen women supposedly in love kill a man who cheated on them before. These women, however, seemed like they would kill each other over him. He was what they all seemed to want but none of them really ever had.

  He would say that women were strange creatures but men would act the same way sometimes. For a human to want something so desperately they were more likely to kill then to let go and walk up away. All of the women that he talked with, other than Megan, seemed to be the type who would fight to keep their wanted object, human or otherwise, but while they started to bicker nobody threw a punch.

  Of course they could all be the if I can’t have you nobody else will type too. He had his work cut out for him because the time of death was a mystery. He had approximates but no definite.

  The only definite he had was poison. The type of poison had yet to be figured out but the fact that there were no stab wounds, no choking remnants anywhere on the neck and nothings dark in his mouth to prohibit being able to breathe, or screamed for help seemed to make the medical examiner think please than was the only thing that has killed him. But Merck need it to take another look at that spa and see if they missed anything in the glasses, the juice or the fruits and vegetables but they kept because they brought them for their lunch or because it was fixed up already to give to some of the customers who were paying for today at the spa. Since nobody was there long enough to eat none of the women would have been exposed to the poison. He was so happy that he got there when he got there and that they were not able to sit around and snuck up on food. Or more likely he was happy that Megan and wasn’t able to snack on any food. He had asked her if she were hungry but he had also figured he could have one of the officers get their lunch out of their car for her. Thankful that she wasn’t hungry he didn’t disturb one of the officers to go get food they were waiting to eat for lunch later. Forest Springs had a great many private spots to take a break and settle in when off duty for lunch break so he knew most of these guys wanted something quieter than the sandwich shop.

  Merck thought about how inquisitive and protective getting up close and personal with Megan while he was investigating felt strange, yet welcome. If he could have sat t
here talking to her only for longer he would have.

  Putting his mind back on detective business and off Megan Porter was the best move to make right here and right now. He had a murder he had to solve and if he didn’t solve it soon Megan just might.

  He liked her still but this was his case to solve. Not hers.

  Chapter Four

  Speak No Evil

  Cleaning was the best way to keep a café fresh after a full day of use and Megan was used to constant cleans. Her café hadn’t opened yet but she still had to clean it. A fresh towel to clean the kitchen cabinets with and the oven cleaner to make sure the oven was clean enough to hold the heat chosen for whatever sweet treat she was baking and the range was free of stains made the kitchen look fresh and new. A hint of chamomile leaves and lemon boiling on the range so she could have a tea break brought a nice and relaxing smell to the kitchen which helped ease the smell of the cleaning materials she used to clean the room up again.

  Megan figured she was either bored or nervous about the pending opening since today wasn’t the first day she had done a thorough cleaning of her kitchen.

  She had cleaned the entire café from windows to floors, ceiling vents to countertops but she knew she would have to clean the eating area again simply because the boxes she had delivered had been left outside the door late night, later than they promised, and she hadn’t seen it to early morning. She had to drag the boxes in through the front door when they should have been delivered and stored in the pantry area. Her main concern that day was getting everything inside before the city awakened and had access to her boxes cluttering up the sidewalk. She had gotten everything in before she had to get to the spa that day but it took an entire night upon return to open boxes, empty contents to where they should have been placed while breaking down the boxes and taking them to the trash receptacle.

  Megan wanted to get a cleaning done again for the kitchen. She wasn’t sure why she had an urge to clean an already clean kitchen. Since it was still dark morning outside she wasn’t keen on leaving her front door open to sweep dirt brought in on the boxes out her café. People could call her paranoid but closed and locked doors were a better option that early in the morning. Three o’clock in the morning to be exact. Leaving the doors closed left the kitchen so she cleaned it again. The employee bathroom was already clean. Lucky for her she was not mandated to have a customer bathroom since the public bathroom facility was just across the street. She knew she was missing out on a little more comfort to café patrons but she could not afford to have walls knocked down, bathrooms installed with new plumbing lines, electric lines and toilet with sink pack ages purchase and put in as well.

  The strange thing to her was the fact that more than a decade and a half ago there used to be a coffee shop here and all the kitchen needs were there but only one bathroom was put in and that was behind the wall with the big ‘employees only’ sign on it. She figured that if anybody was in desperate need of the loo, the water closet, that they probably let them use the employee bathroom but really she could be wrong. Not everybody handled business the same way.

  Megan had been to many places in many worlds so she had seen eateries without a lavatory included anywhere. Her café would be okay as is. She also knew the art of cleaning so she could clean it all, but employees using the toilets would be responsible for cleaning behind themselves too. She had seen a great many toilets with urine puddles on the seat and the floors and she would not tolerate that. Being clean was a mandate for her always. Being dirty was forbidden in her book. A cleaner life and environment would help cut down on diseases spreading so rapidly.

  Megan’s mind floated around the murder while she sipped on her tea. There were so many options and since she had assured Merck, and herself, that she would stay out of it she needed to put the entire thing out of her mind.

  She couldn’t put the murder out her mind. The fact that there had been a murder in a place that was supposed to help relieve stress, bring pampered pleasure into a life didn’t seem the kind of place where a murder would be. Murder and peace were not really a match for each other but she would imagine murder jus might give somebody peace.

  They had said Sterling was high in the world of sharing women and that didn’t mean he shied away from married women. In fact she was fairly sure one of the women standing in back of the bickering women was married. She couldn’t say for sure because nobody had rings on their fingers and the only jewelry dumped out of bags were large earrings and long chains with beads and flash on one string. Merck would be able to tell her if any of the female suspects were married because if they were it could bring in a reason for Sterling’s murder. He wasn’t rich and if any of the women wanted to keep an affair with him a secret murder might be the only answer to saving blackmail payments.

  “Stay out of it, Meg.” She shook her head at all her thoughts.

  “There is a notepad and paper here so in order to get thoughts spinning around my mind writing things down might stop the thought process on sorting out the suspects.

  ❖ Owner: Heather Bishop. Short pixie cut brown hair, The Spiderman of the locker room. Was able to use the bottom under hang beneath the first row of cabinets to get one of the ladies’ bags out of her locker for her. Probably was the one to put it up there too.

  ❖ Symphony Frost. Short height, sloping breasts, green mask on her face. Kermit the Frog.

  ❖ Linda Piker. Medium height, slightly overweight. Had eyes she couldn’t stop using like razors as she looked at people.

  ❖ Bonnie Turlock. Woman hiding outside the room door as if she didn’t want to be seen

  ❖ Willa Heist. Nurse and the only woman not claiming to have been with sterling. She had something stolen from her bag or something like that as she had mentioned it to the detective that day. Rather loudly too.

  ❖ Georgia Schaefer. Possibly married. Rather quiet about Sterling.

  “That is all I have right now.” Megan jotted down the number of female employees Heather had bragged about while finishing the papers she had to fill out and turn in herself. She also, though not knowing her name, knew the woman who led her back to the lockers with direct warning that the bathroom for employees on the other side of the locker room was not to be used by paying customers. The woman had lemon blond hair in a poor excuse for a wig but thought she looked like the Aphrodite of the spa.

  What Megan really noticed was that there wasn’t a man in sight. It seemed like Sterling was her only male employee.

  “Either Sterling was a money making janitor for Heather or he was kept around because the women he was shagging came back more than twice a week. They paid and Heather Bishop kept him on even if he couldn’t clean snot out of his nose.” Of course he might have known how to use his hands to fix things other than satisfy the cravings of witches in heat. It would take more research to really know and since she said she was staying out of it making a list was a bad idea seeing as though her list gave her more question she needed to answer.

  Megan tucked her notepad in a drawer underneath a dish towel. While nobody ever came in the kitchen it didn’t hurt to keep her thoughts hidden. She pulled the broom out and started sweeping dirt and dust out the eatery area. An opened door would help put the dirt back where it came from. She would even sweep it off the sidewalk and back into the grass once she got it all out of her café.

  A busy morning was going productively well until a straggler freely walked into her café. Uninvited, unwanted and unneeded were the words floating through Megan’s mind. When did people think a closed, not yet opened business door gave rite of passage? It was kind of like her mother’s friend who had a thieving next door neighbor who tried to use a fence that she hadn’t put a penny into to sell her home as if that fence was hers because she was too cheap to have her fence install finished according to city law. Fortunately for her mom’s friend had a lawyer and a record that her fence was in long before the old neighbor got evicted and the new neighbor moved in and decided to put up a hal
f finished fence to try to steal the fence next door. The property line showed whose property held the fence and the judge sided with her mother’s friend, the owner of the fence. It was still a bad time, though. No honor amongst thieves might jus fit no honor amongst suspects for a murder too.

  Megan was not happy with the walk-in as she was bringing more brown and black dirt marks into her building on a floor she had just swept and was getting ready to mop.

  “This café isn’t open yet. Miss Frost; right?”

  She looked at her with bright deep brown with glitter eyes. “I know. I was just in the area. Since I read about your café opening…soon anyway…I thought I would come say hi.”

  Megan knew she was fibbing because there had not been news in any paper.

  “My name is symphony, by the way. My mother liked going to opera shows when she lived near Manhattan, New York.”

  Megan nodded. “Since I’m not open it might be best if you checked out some of the other businesses over in this area. They have clothing stores, shoe stores, hair salons just down on Ranger Street. You could really see more of the area over here and get a feel for it. There are quite a few trails with trees and flowers. The black walnut tree isn’t ready to pick yet. It’s fifteen feet high now and well over fourteen years old gut the trees don’t have nuts every year. They are pretty trees to look at and with the bench on the path underneath it you can feel a nice relaxing breeze while sitting under the tree. It’s good here for outdoor adventures.” Megan hoped Symphony would stride on out but she seemed to plant her feet. As a fitness friend had said, “you are not a tree. Relocate yourself.” Megan so wanted to utter those words now but since the woman wasn’t leaving she decided to bring a wooden chair over for her. The chair was not going to stay in the café but it helped while judging special distance before plotting to hang anything.