Deadly Greetings (Book 2 in the Cardmaking Mysteries) (10 page)

She was ready to unload on Barrett when she
saw me standing just behind him. “Who’s this? Don’t tell me you’ve
replaced me already.”

“
Penny, this is Jennifer.
She just moved into Frances’s apartment.”

The girl frowned. “It didn’t take you long
to move in on this one, did it?” She turned to me and chilled my
blood with her glare. “Don’t waste your time. You don’t have a
chance with him.”

Barrett snapped, “Penny, that’s enough. Why
are you here?”

“
You’re going to talk to me,
and I’m not leaving until you do.”

Barrett barely glanced at me as he told her,
“I’ve got company.”

“
She can stay if she wants
to,” Penny said as she brushed past us both and came in uninvited.
“In fact, she probably should. It will give her some idea of what
kind of man she’s dealing with.”

Barrett turned to me and said, “Jennifer,
I’m sorry about this.”

As I slipped out the door, I said, “No,
that’s fine. We were finished here anyway. Good night.”

He whispered, “I’ll come up later and
explain.”

“
It’s really not necessary.
Listen, I’ve had a long day.” I hurried up the stairs to my
apartment, for the moment not caring if Wayne was still lurking
around or not. As I tried my key in the lock, I realized why I
hadn’t been able to get in when Wayne had been there. In my rush to
get inside, I’d been trying to use the key to the shop instead. I
took a deep breath, found the right key on my ring and opened my
apartment door. Once I was inside, I threw the deadbolt in place,
happy that Bradford had arranged to have my lock changed. I’d
actually found myself intrigued by Barrett’s pale green eyes and
his dark good looks. Maybe I should make Penny a thank-you card for
getting there before I could make a fool of myself. If he’d tried
just a little harder, it was difficult to say what might have
happened.

I turned on a light and finally looked
around the apartment. It appeared that someone had done his level
best to wreck the place. If I hadn’t just had the locks changed, I
would have sworn that I’d had a visitor.

Then I found both the cats curled up on my
pillow, sound asleep, no doubt from their energetic day. “Time to
get up,” I said, but neither one of them budged. I knew the wrecked
apartment was their sincerest form of protest over our relocation,
and I decided that they’d been at least partially justified in
their display of disapproval. There wasn’t anything else I could
do, so I started cleaning up after my insane roommates.

After an hour, I had most of it straightened
up and just about everything put away except my carton of books.
Oddly enough, there weren’t any bookshelves in the apartment. I
knew space was at a premium in my would-be loft, but that was going
to have to be corrected immediately. I don’t just love to read
books—though I do desperately—but I also like to see them out in
the open with their spines reminding me of stories I treasured. I’d
pick up a few boards and some bricks tomorrow to make a temporary
bookshelf until I could manage something better. I’d done it in
college, and it didn’t make a bad-looking display, though I doubted
it would fit in with the furniture I had. That was too bad. It was
my apartment now, and just because Frances hadn’t enjoyed reading
didn’t mean that I was going to shove my books back into a box and
jam them all under my bed. It was barely past ten when I opened two
cans of food for Oggie and Nash. The rascals came running at the
sound of the opener, and I chatted with them as they ate. It was
too early for bed but too late to do much of anything else. I
grabbed one of my favorite books out of the box—a well-read copy of
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie—and started to
read, but it couldn’t hold my attention. After ten minutes, I
decided to give up the battle and go to bed.

There was someone waiting for me the next
morning when I opened the shop. I was surprised to find Hilda
Bunting there, my inaugural member of the Crafty Cut-Ups Club, and
the woman responsible for recruiting most of the rest of our group.
I started to offer her a hug, and Hilda, in her usual stern manner,
stepped back and said, “Yes, I know, it’s a terrible thing.
Jennifer, we need to talk.”

“
Of course,” I said as I
unlocked the front door.

She watched me go from lock to lock with a
curious expression on her face. “Security is important to you,
isn’t it?”

I shrugged. “What can I say? My brother’s
the sheriff, and he believes in preventative measures.”

Hilda smiled slightly. “Are there attack
dogs roaming around inside as well?”

I laughed. “No, but I have a couple of
insane cats back at my apartment. I’d bring them with me, but they
both love to shred paper, and I don’t have to tell you what a
disaster that would be.” I locked the door back behind us and put
my things down on the crafting table in the window.

“
Then perhaps it’s better
you leave them right where they are.”

It was pretty obvious she had something she
wanted to say, but Hilda was having a tough time getting it out,
something that was completely out of character for her. Finally I
couldn’t stand it anymore. “You mentioned there was something you
wanted to talk about.”

Instead of speaking, she nodded and handed
me an envelope. I didn’t have to look at the return address to see
who it was from. It appeared that Maggie had chosen to speak to
someone else beyond the grave besides me.

I pulled the card out and saw a clock on the
front with its lightning-bolt hands set to seven thirty. In jagged
letters, the message read, “You Are Cordially Invited to My Wake.”
Inside, Maggie had written,

Hilda, don’t cancel the next meeting for the
Crafty Cut-Ups Club. Instead, do it in my memory.

Love, Maggie.

Hilda met my gaze as I looked up, and she
said, “You see why we’ve got to convene, don’t you? It was Maggie’s
last request.”

Maggie’s last requests were becoming more
common than falling leaves in October, but I could hardly say no.
“If you can get everyone here, we’ll do as she asks.”

Hilda nodded firmly. “They’ll be here, all
right.” She took a breath, then said, “All but Dot.”

Now that was interesting. “Why won’t she be
here?”

“
Her daughter’s having a
baby in North Carolina, and she went to visit her.”

It was difficult to imagine Dot killing
anyone, but I had to pursue it. That woman dearly loved all ten of
her grandchildren, and it was a ritual at every meeting we’d had so
far that she’d pass a new collection of photos around. “Did she
leave today?”

“
No, she left right after
one of our meetings last month. I expect her back in a few weeks,
but I don’t have any way to contact her now. She’ll be sorry she
missed it.”

“
She’ll understand,” I said,
striking Dot off my list of suspects. “But everyone else will be
here, right?” I’d been dreading interviewing my witnesses away from
the store, and Maggie had unwittingly helped me in trying to solve
her murder. Or was it accidental? Knowing Maggie, she’d probably
planned this foray to allow me access to everyone in the club
without going door-to-door. If that were true, then it meant that
she suspected a member herself.

Hilda nodded. “If I have to hog-tie each and
every one of them myself, the club members will all be here
tonight.”

I held on to the card. “May I keep
this?”

“
I guess you could until
tonight, but I want it back after the meeting.”

“
That’s fine,” I said,
wondering why Hilda would want to keep it. She didn’t strike me as
all that sentimental, but who really knows what goes on in someone
else’s heart?

Lillian showed up ten minutes after Hilda
was gone. She was breezing in later and later to work, but I
couldn’t say anything, especially since we rarely had customers
that early. It would also be indelicate of me to say anything,
since Lillian wasn’t exactly being paid, though she was using card
stock at a prodigious pace.

“
Sorry I’m late; I slept
in,” she offered as she walked in. “I trust I didn’t miss
anything.”

“
Just another message from
Maggie,” I said casually.

As Lillian took off her jacket, she said,
“Jennifer, while I normally appreciate your sense of humor, that’s
a little over the line, even by my standards.”

I walked over to the card corner where we
sold Lillian’s creations. “That’s coming from the woman who made
this card?”

I pushed one on her, and she studied it a
moment before commenting. The card in question had a tombstone with
an “RIP” engraved on it. The tombstone was on a spring and would
dance at the slightest provocation. That wasn’t the worst part,
though. Inside, she’d inscribed, “Wish you were there instead of
here.”

“
Tell me it’s a sentiment
you’ve never entertained. I’d considered another greeting for this
one. Would you like to hear it?”

“
Do I have a choice?” I
asked.

She ignored my comment and said, “Perhaps I
should make another one that says, ‘Do us all a favor and make the
world a better place.’ What do you think?”

“
I think you’re a sick
puppy.”

Lillian frowned. “I’m not the one claiming
actual dead people are communicating from beyond the grave.”

“
I’m not making it up,” I
said as I showed her Maggie’s card.

She read it, then said, “Jennifer, I
apologize. Maggie is certainly trying to make our quest easier,
isn’t she?”

“
So you agree that she
thinks one of our group killed her?”

Lillian said, “No, I believe she wants us to
eliminate her friends first before we start our search in
earnest.”

That was an approach I hadn’t even
considered. “Either way, we need to interview them at the meeting
tonight. But how are we going to do it without making them
suspicious?”

Lillian paced around the room. “I don’t have
a clue, but there’s got to be some way to approach them.”

While it was bad for business, our lack of
customers did give us time to think. Lillian took up the seat at
our display worktable facing the window, while I paced through the
aisles of the shop. Custom Card Creations was a fine size for
selling cards, but it didn’t leave a lot of room to pace. I was
straightening cards as I walked, just because I had a tough time
seeing any of my creations askew, when my glance caught the title
of the section I was working in. I’d created the most sympathetic
sympathy cards I could manage. Staring at the heading gave me a
sudden idea. “I’ve got it.”

“
What is it?” Lillian asked.
Had she been dozing off? It didn’t matter, but I could swear she’d
been taking a catnap instead of brainstorming with me.

“
We make a sympathy book for
Maggie’s long lost cousin, sharing her life with him.”

Lillian said, “Everyone knows Maggie didn’t
have any family, Jennifer.”

“
That’s where we get
creative. He was a black sheep, so Maggie never talked about him,
but they’d reconciled recently.”

Lillian frowned a moment, then said, “I
suppose it could work, but where is this mystery man?”

“
Let me think.” I considered
the possibilities, then said, “Okay, here’s what we’ll say. Maggie
wanted to meet him again at a neutral place, so she rendezvoused
with him here at the card shop a few weeks ago. I called to tell
him about Maggie and he asked me to gather this information for
him, since he couldn’t get back in time for her funeral. Do you
think they’ll buy it?”

She grinned. “And why not? After all, she
was his last living relative.”

“
Lillian, you know we’re
making him up, don’t you?”

My aunt favored me with one of her driest
looks and said, “I’m not batty yet, child, but we need to give them
some excuse why he’s not here.”

“
Well, why don’t we say he’s
burying his wife in England, and he can’t show up.”

Lillian eyed me carefully before saying,
“And you claim I’m the one with the dark side. Jennifer, I’d hate
to visit one of your nightmares.”

I brushed that off. “But would it work?”

“
Yes, I think it will.
Double tragedies would explain his absence and still garner
sympathy. By the way, what’s his name?”

“
Again, we’re making him up.
What would you like his name to be?”

Lillian stroked her nose, then said, “I’ve
always been partial to ‘Timothy.’”

“
Then ‘Timothy’ it is,” I
said. “Now we need to make a booklet for their
memories.”

“
Oh, let me. It sounds like
fun.”

I looked askance at my aunt, then said, “You
do remember why we’re doing this, don’t you?”

“
Jennifer, if anyone in this
world or the next would want us to get some joy out of this, it
would be Maggie herself. Wouldn’t you agree?”

I chose a blank memory book for my aunt. “I
can’t disagree with that. Just keep it in good taste, will
you?”

“
I can be tasteful when the
situation calls for it,” she said with a sniff.

“
I know you can, but will
you?”

Lillian said, “Dear girl, I promise you,
you’ll be I amazed.”

And I would be if my aunt actually did what
she I said she was going to do. I could always throw something
together later if Lillian’s efforts weren’t up to my standards. I
couldn’t wait until the meeting so I could start digging into
Maggie’s murder, but I had no choice. In the meantime, I had a shop
to run, and bills to pay.