Deadly Greetings (Book 2 in the Cardmaking Mysteries) (8 page)

As Bradford headed for the door, I grabbed
his shoulder. “Wait a second. We’re not through here.”

“
Jennifer, I have real work
to do.”

I waved the card under his nose. “So you’re
going to completely ignore the message Maggie sent me?”

He nodded. “You might not like it, but I
don’t have much choice. It was a bad joke, and even worse timing.
I’m sorry she’s gone, Jen, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
It really was an accident.” He left before I could say another
word. I hated when he did that. It was Bradford’s way of fighting
without raising his voice.

I was still fuming about my brother’s
reaction when Lillian walked in two hours later. As promised, she
had two bags from The Lunch Box with her, but for the second time
in two days, I was in no mood to eat.

When I refused the bag, she said, “My dear,
I’m sorry I’m so late. I hope you can forgive me.”

“
Lillian, I’m not angry with
you. I got a card in the mail today you should see.”

As she read the note from Maggie, I
discreetly pulled her note from the night before off the board,
hoping she hadn’t noticed it. I didn’t really want to tease her
anymore.

After she read it, Lillian handed it back to
me and said, “Jennifer, you’ve got to call Bradford and show this
to him.”

“
I already did. He wasn’t
all that impressed with it. In fact, he assumed it was just another
one of Maggie’s joke cards gone bad.”

Lillian pursed her lips. “That’s absolutely
ridiculous.

Couldn’t he see that the tone is deadly
serious? It’s perfectly clear that this is no joke.”

“
We know that, but he
doesn’t. The question is, what do we do about it?”

Lillian smiled grimly. “I think it’s time to
get out our whiteboard and make some notes about what we know and
what we suspect. We can work while we eat.”

It felt good having my aunt on my side. My
brother was a pragmatist by nature, but sometimes it absolutely
drove me crazy. He might need more proof that Maggie had been
murdered, but that card was enough to convince Lillian and me that
something very real had happened to her.

Chapter 5

“
Should we close the shop
while we eat and work this out?” Lillian asked.

“
I’d rather we didn’t,” I
said as I retrieved the marker board and set it up near our window
workstation. The table where we made cards with our customers often
served as our lunch table as well. In a shop as limited in space as
Custom Card Creations, we were big on multitasking. “We’re not
really in the position to turn people away.”

As Lillian cleared the table for our lunch,
she said, “Now, Jennifer, the business is building, and you know
it.”

“
I know,” I said as I put
placemats down. “I just wish it would build a little
faster.”

She looked at me critically, then said, “You
need some food, young lady. I picked up your favorite burger.”

I took the offered bag and saw that Lillian
had added an order of onion rings. If it could be fried, Pete could
do it with an artistry that brought in customers from halfway
around the state. “You’re spoiling me,” I said. “These are going
straight to my hips.”

“
Pooh, you deserve to
splurge a little every now and then. If you’re feeling guilty, you
can always walk them off later.”

“
How far do you think I
would have to go, Canada?”

As Lillian retrieved two Cokes from the
refrigerator in back, she said, “Jennifer, if you don’t want to eat
them, set them aside.”

“
Like there’s a chance of
that ever happening,” I said as I bit into one. Hot and fresh on
the plate at The Lunch Box, Pete’s onion rings were a clear ten.
Half an hour sitting in the bag, and they’d dropped to a nine,
still better than anything else I could find in our part of
Virginia. I had a twinge of guilt just before I took the first
bite, but after that, it was pure pleasure. I nearly forgot about
my hamburger, but as soon as the onion rings were gone, I suddenly
remembered it. The Lunch Box couldn’t touch the ambience of
Hurley’s, but their hamburgers were in a dead heat, at least in my
opinion.

I looked over at Lillian, who was smiling
broadly at me. Before she could add her own little commentary on my
eating habits, I said, “It’s okay if you think it, but I don’t want
to hear a word, okay?”

She smiled and shrugged all at once, but I
had to give her credit: she didn’t say a word. We’d planned to work
on Maggie’s murder as we ate, but Lillian and I were both so hungry
that we barely managed some small talk until both bags were
empty.

“
That was outstanding,” I
said as I cleared away the debris. “Thank you.”

“
It was my pleasure. That
lunch was excellent. And a fine breakfast as well,” she
said.

I looked askance at her. “Lillian, are you
trying to tell me you just woke up? Who is this mysterious
stranger, anyway?”

Lillian hiked her eyebrows. “Now how
ladylike would I be sharing that information? Suffice it to say
that I’ve found another admirer.”

“
In a long line of them,” I
added.

She stared at me a moment, then asked,
“Jennifer, is that a hint of jealousy in your voice? Don’t worry,
my dear; your time will come.”

Discussing my love life—or more accurately
the lack of it—with my aunt was about the last item on my list of
things I wanted to do. I took a note from her style and waved the
statement away with my hand. “Now let’s see what we can come up
with about what really happened to Maggie Blake.”

I picked up a black marker and wrote her
name across the top. “I’m not even sure where we should start. What
questions do we need to ask?”

“
Who killed her?’ is a good
place to begin,” Lillian said.

I raised an eyebrow toward her as I replied,
“That’s kind of the point of the whole exercise, isn’t it? We need
to be serious if we’re going to do this.”

Lillian looked suitably chastened. “Very
well. The first question has to be, who wanted her dead?”

“
That’s a fair question,” I
said as I wrote it on the board, then added, “Who were her friends?
Did she have any enemies?”

“
Jennifer, Maggie said she
didn’t have enemies in her card to you, remember?”

I kept that question on the board. “Lillian,
everybody has people who don’t like them.”

She couldn’t hide her smile as she asked,
“So who wants to kill you?”

I really wished my aunt would take the whole
thing more seriously. “Come on, you know what I mean. Who knows
what someone else might take as an affront? I’m willing to bet both
of us have people who wouldn’t mind seeing us go.”

Lillian nodded reluctantly. “I suppose
you’re right. Go ahead and put it down, but I’d be shocked if we
found anyone that fit that description for Maggie Blake.”

I thought about Maggie’s death, and that led
to another line of questioning. As quickly as I could, I wrote,
“Where exactly was she when her car went off the road? Where was
she going? Where had she been?”

Lillian must have been reading over my
shoulder. As soon as I finished, she said, “How about who saw her
last?”

“
That’s good,” I said, “but
we’re missing something, a really important question.”

“
What might that
be?”

Instead of answering her, I wrote it down:
“Who had the most to gain from her death?”

Lillian nodded. “That is the most important
question, isn’t it? Motive is critical here.”

“
So how do we determine
that?” I asked.

“
Probably by answering all
of the other questions first,” Lillian said.

As she finished, the front door chimed. To
my delight, it wasn’t my brother, my sister or anyone else there to
hound me. It appeared that we had an actual customer visiting us at
Custom Card Creations. “I’m here to spend some serious money,” the
woman in her early forties announced as she waved a credit card in
the air. “Can one of you two help me?”

“
Absolutely,” I said as I
turned to my aunt. “Lillian, why don’t you put the marker board in
back and we’ll work on it more later.”

“
What about Maggie?” my aunt
asked as she reluctantly picked up the board.

“
First and foremost, we have
to make a living,” I said.

Our customer said, “If this is a bad time, I
can always go somewhere else.”

“
Not at all,” I said as I
hurried to her. “Now what can I help you with?”

“
I love greeting cards, and
I’ve got over a thousand dollars to spend today.” There was an
inescapable grin on her face as she said it, and for a moment she
looked more like she was nine years old.

“
That sounds like you’re
exactly where you need to be, then,” I said. “Do you mind if I ask
if you won the lottery?”

The woman’s smile was infectious. “Oh, no,
it’s much better than that. I just discovered that my husband spent
that much on a new set of golf clubs after promising me he wouldn’t
buy anything else this year. But he just had to have them, and the
bill came in this morning. Can you imagine that? Somehow he forgot
that I’m the one who writes the checks. Now he’s going to pay,
though.”

I didn’t want to take advantage of this
woman, but I couldn’t afford to turn down a sale that large,
either. I knew I should keep my mouth shut, let her have her spree,
and celebrate the sale, but I couldn’t do it. “I’m thrilled to help
you, but all sales are final here, and I’m afraid you’ll regret
doing this later. Are you absolutely certain you want to do
this?”

She laughed heartily. “My dear, thank you
for your thoughtfulness, but this is exactly what I want to do.
Don’t worry; we can afford it, trust me. Last week I bought a
hundred dollars’ worth of material for curtains and you’d have
thought I’d shot my husband when I told him. All the while, his new
clubs were in the garage, hidden safely away. We can afford it, and
I’ve always wanted to make my own cards. So can you help me or
not?”

I grabbed a nearby buggy, one customers
rarely used but something I found helpful when I restocked the
shelves. “Oh yes, I can easily help you spend a thousand dollars
here.”

The woman nodded. “Now don’t hold back. If
we happen to go over by a few hundred dollars, well, that will be
just dandy. You can explain to me what I’m buying as we go along.
Don’t be afraid to use your imagination; just help me put together
a perfect kit.”

She was the kind of customer most
shopkeepers only dreamed about, and I planned to enjoy every second
of her spree.

Her purchases ultimately took two buggies. I
set her up with card stocks, papers, expensive die cutters,
embellishments, accessories, envelopes, specialty scissors, rubber
stamps, cutouts, stickers, stencils, pressed flowers and more. I’d
also included a good selection of books, and the store’s phone
number. “Call me if you have any trouble, and I’ll walk you through
whatever you’re doing,” I said as I handed her one of my business
cards. I’d made them myself, shunning the printers and creating
each one individually. I couldn’t give out a lot of them, but so
far their creation had more than kept up with the demand. She took
the card, then asked, “Now, is there anything else we’re
missing?”

“
I can’t imagine what it
might be,” I said in complete and utter honesty.

“
Neither can I. This looks
perfect.” She glanced at the clock over the register. “Is that
right? Is it really that late?”

I checked and saw that we’d been shopping
together over two hours. Time truly did fly with fun. “I’m sorry
I’ve kept you so long.”

“
No, that’s fine—this has
been absolutely joyous— but I’ve got to get home so I can set
things up before Lee gets there. I can’t wait to see the expression
on his face.”

“
Sybil, don’t give him a
heart attack.” We’d gone to first names early on, and not just
because of how much money she was spending. Sybil was my kind of
gal, a free spirit who embraced life.

“
Jennifer, he’s as stout as
a horse. Besides, he could use a good shock to his
system.”

She signed the credit card charge slip with
a flourish, then said, “I feel like I should tip you; you’ve been
so helpful.”

“
Nonsense,” I said as I slid
the deposit in the drawer. “It’s been great fun.”

“
It has, hasn’t it? I may
come back for more later.”

“
I’ll be here.” If she
created and sent cards to everyone in the state of Virginia, then
she might need more supplies, but I couldn’t imagine her running
out until then. “Come by and tell me how you’re doing.”

“
I will,” she said. “Now how
am I going to ever get this all to my car?”

“
I’ll help. Lillian, could
you watch the front? I’m going to help Sybil with her
bags.”

My aunt looked up from the worktable where
she’d been brainstorming on new card ideas for her own section of
the store. I’d given her an area to display and sell her acerbic
cards, and she’d reveled in the opportunity. Her cards were full of
zingers, put-downs, sarcasms and innuendos, perfect for the cynical
souls who walked among us. “I’d be delighted,” she said. “Hurry
back, though. It’s nearly closing time.”

“
Do you have another big
date tonight?” I asked. Where did the woman get her energy? I knew
I couldn’t keep up with her if I was aided by a quart of coffee and
a dozen PowerBars.