Maggie and the Inconvenient Corpse Read online

  And then she'd spent the next decade learning the truth. That being a trophy wife was really a life of parties (where everyone jockeyed to get close to powerful people), wealth (where everyone spent money obsessively to alleviate the boredom), and fun people (who would turn on a dime when you no longer had anything they wanted).

  Now she was free of it. She could own her own business. Have her own friends. Eat chocolate cake without worrying that her designer gowns wouldn't fit. Live her own life free of the demands of being the dutiful wife of a rich man.

  So no. Honestly. She really didn't miss it at all.

  Except when her husband's new girlfriend drove by and waved cheerily, forcing Maggie to wave back just as cheerily, to prove how much she didn't care.

  "Ego," she said aloud, watching the tail of the Beemer disappear around the next corner.

  "Ego?" said someone behind her.

  She turned and saw Reese standing in the doorway of her house.

  "Ego," she repeated. "Yup. It's hard to let go of my ego."

  He had seen Virginia, too. But his expression was bland as he said, "I wouldn't know about that." He ran a hand through his perfect blond hair, raised his perfect eyebrows above his perfect blue eyes, and smiled that perfect smile that had broken a million hearts onscreen. "Letting go of my ego is not something I've ever faced."

  She laughed, and he winked at her. She actually knew him well enough to know he was lying, but appreciated him teasing her out of her funk.

  He got into his silver monster of a sports car and drove away with a friendly wave, one she was far more happy to return.

  Then she headed downtown on foot, reminding herself that she was really happy with the decisions she'd made, and loved her new life just the way it was.

  Carita's main drag was a picturesque little boulevard with perpetually filled parking spots on both sides of the street. There was a row of ancient palm trees marching down the grass-filled center divider, and the buildings lining the street held every kind of shop to tempt the most upscale tourist.

  Maggie walked past a gourmet chocolate maker, a store that sold nothing but men's silk ties, two financial services companies and three interior designers, and then she came to the end of Main Street, where it intersected with State Beach Drive, which, not surprisingly, led down to the state beach.

  On one corner stood an old brick warehouse. The exterior had been painted dark gray, and it had large windows that flashed every time a car drove by, the glare off the windshields reflecting in the plate glass. Above the windows, O'Riley's Coffee Shop was painted on the brick.

  Directly opposite stood a narrow storefront with a five-foot-tall barber pole outside.

  She jaywalked across to the barber shop. Former barber shop, actually. It had stood empty and forlorn on this spot for the last year after the old barber had passed away. But last month she'd finally gotten the money together and bought the building. It was all hers, from the barber pole in front to the alley entrance in back, and she was slowly transforming it into her dream.

  Now the old sign for Carita Barber Shop had been scraped off the front window, and a newly painted sign, in purple of course, read Carita Beads: Supplies & Classes.

  The front door had been painted purple, too, and she discovered two boxes sitting right in front of it.

  Packages were supposed to be delivered by the alley entrance, but this was a new UPS guy, and he just couldn't seem to grasp that.

  He also wasn't supposed to leave packages without getting a signature, but he'd just dumped them on the street. One more thing to take care of.

  She picked up the two boxes.

  She hadn't realized how much of running a business was business—not playing with beads while hordes of customers streamed in the door to buy her wares.

  She juggled the boxes while she pulled her keys out from her jeans pocket and tried to unlock the door.

  "Here," said a young dude with a hipster mustache and a manbun. He took the boxes from her and then stood patiently while she got the door unlocked and went inside.

  He followed, and she gestured for him to put the boxes on the counter while she turned the Out To Lunch sign on the door back to Open. Then she flipped a switch and the interior lit up. The barber pole out front, on the same circuit, started spinning.

  "Can I help you?" she asked.

  "Isn't this the barber shop?" he asked.

  "Not anymore," she said. She opened the first delivery box. It was the shipment of glass Euro beads she'd been waiting for, and she began pulling out the plastic bags of big glossy beads, fascinated by the variety of colors and shapes.

  She glanced up at him, noticing his confused expression. "It used to be a barber shop. Until last year."

  She looked back at the beads. Euro beads were big focal beads with large holes, perfect for stringing on thick chain or rustic cords. They were pretty on their own, but she wanted to find a way to display them so they wouldn't be overlooked by customers. She had an idea: she could divide the 100-packs into sets of maybe five beads, and thread them onto coordinating silk cords with metal spacer beads. Then customers could buy just the colors they wanted, enough for a bracelet or necklace.

  "Why's there a barber pole out front if this isn't a barber shop?" the guy asked, getting annoyed.

  "Because there's always been a barber pole," she said patiently. She glanced out the front window at the spinning red-and-white striped pole next to the open door. "Like I said, this used to be a barber shop."

  And she'd kept the pole because she hadn't been able to figure out how to disconnect it from the circuit that ran the interior lights. So she would have had to pay an electrician to remove it.

  An electrician didn't fit into her budget. So she'd decided she'd live with the pole for a while.

  And anyway, the optical illusion of the stripes seeming to travel up the glass pole made her smile every time she looked at it. So she turned it on each morning, figuring it was free advertising to catch the eyes of passersby.

  And really, who couldn't read the big sign on the front glass?

  But the dude looked disappointed, so she set the beads on the counter, and said, "there's a hairstylist down on the wharf. You might try there."

  "The old man did my hair just right," he said sadly.

  She didn't point out that "just right" was apparently to look like he had a dead rat on his head. But the stuff on his head went with the oversized waxed mustache, so she just looked sympathetic and went back to her sorting.

  She held up a set of five of the large-hole beads. The glass was rose gold in the sunlight, with flecks of bronze that would be set off nicely with some dark wooden beads she had.

  "Those are real retro," the guy said. "I'll take them." He whipped out a credit card and handed it to her. "They'll look great in my beard."

  She thought of the bracelet she had pictured, with its delicate bronze chain and chunky wooden spacers setting off the coppery tones of the beads.

  She sighed. "Yeah. They'll look great in your beard."

  Chapter 3

  Kira Menendez came in about half an hour later.

  "Hi, Maggie," she said brightly, and Maggie said hello back.

  Kira was the eighteen-year-old daughter of a tech billionaire and looked every inch of it, from her flawless tanning-bed glow to her pink Stella McCartney yoga outfit.

  "What can I do for you?" Maggie asked.

  Kira pulled out a flyer.

  Maggie recognized the lavender paper. "Oh. You're interested in taking one of my classes?"

  "Yup," the girl said.

  "Which one?" Maggie asked, perking up. This would be great for her business. If the rich teens in town got interested in beadwork, the shop would be in the black in no time. "We're offering beginning loom weaving, basic pearl stringing, and a one-hour bracelet class."

  "Oh, no, none of that stuff." Kira waved one hand in the air dismissively. "That sounds like work."

  Maggie paused, then said mildly, "cr
afts take time, but a lot of people enjoy making something with their own hands."

  She picked up the flyer, which Kira had set on the counter. "So what were you looking at?"

  "This one." Kira pointed to the bottom of the page.

  "Um," Maggie said, at a loss. She looked at the teenager. "The Bridal Party Jewelry Making Experience?"

  Kira nodded, a blissful look on her face. She had been dating Patrick Queen for about a year. He was a good-looking boy and a talented surfer. That made him a bit of a catch among the younger set. But still, he and Kira seemed awfully young to get married. Of course, given Maggie's own disastrous divorce, she was hardly one to give advice. So she quickly congratulated Kira on the new development. "Wow. I had no idea."

  "Nobody knows yet. I need to break it to my dad slowly, so we're not announcing the engagement until I bring him around. But I want to start getting things set up. I plan to do a whole sponsored bash, and thought I'd do you the favor of booking you early."

  "A sponsored bash?" Maggie asked.

  Kira gave her a patient look. "I forget sometimes how old you are," she said.

  And again, Maggie had to pause before saying, "Oh? Is that right?"

  "Yeah." Then she said very patiently and slowly, "I'm an Influencer. Do you know what that means?"

  "I'm not quite that old, Kira," Maggie said. "You're saying you have a social media following."

  "Yeah," Kira said. "I have almost a million followers."

  How many were real, and how many were fake followers her daddy had bought for her?

  Maggie decided not to say that aloud. Instead she said, "I see," as if this were fascinating news. "And why are they following you?"

  Again the patient look. "Because I show them lifestyle pics and talk to them about makeup trends and clothes and stuff. I show them what it's like to live in Carita and go surfing and buy stuff."

  "Mostly buy stuff."

  "Yeah. I get free stuff from companies."

  "And you convince your fans that the free stuff you get is the hottest thing, so they go buy it from the companies."

  "Of course. It's my business." Kira leaned in, all confidential. "So I had an idea. Weddings are super-popular. I decided I'm going to have sponcon for the whole thing."

  "I see," Maggie said, the light finally dawning. "You want me to give you the class and the jewelry in exchange for—?"

  "—A feature on my social media. I'll film you, and the shop—" She paused there, looking around at the little store. "Maybe we can fix this up a bit. Upscale it with some bling. And then you'll get lots of free publicity."

  "In exchange for giving you the class for free."

  Kira nodded. "Well, usually I get paid for sponcon. But in your case, I figured you're all poor now, and so when I saw the little pink bracelet…." She pointed to the bracelet pattern Maggie had photographed for the bottom of the flyer. "I thought maybe if you made them for my bridesmaids, I could give you a brief mention without charging you."

  Maggie paused again before answering, then said carefully, "how generous. And how many bridesmaids will you have?"

  "I'm thinking a dozen," Kira said. "I want an even number, because I have a plan for how they will do their entrance dance, and I need enough dress colors to make the choreography pop."

  Maggie handed back the flyer. She turned away for a minute to a stack of brochures on the back counter. It gave her time to school her face into neutrality before she turned back around and handed one of the brochures to Kira. "Here are the details on the bridal shower options," she said. "You can take a look at that, and we can talk more about it. I'll definitely give your offer some serious thought."

  "Okay," Kira said brightly. "But don't wait too long. I'm lining up a ton of sponsors already, and I wouldn't want you to miss out."

  Maggie pasted a grin on her face and smiled until Kira left the store.

  Then she put her head down on the counter and blew out a big raspberry. Sometimes she really hated Carita.

  Her assistant Abby showed up at 2:00 PM.

  "My Calculus class was a killer," she said, swinging in the door and dropping her backpack behind the counter before coming to stand next to Maggie at one of the work tables. "I may change my major from pre-med if this keeps up."

  Abby Xiong was a petite college kid with wide eyes behind black-framed glasses. She had never done any crafts before coming to work in the shop, but was quickly picking up all the details of beadwork.

  She looked around the shop, the black brick-stitch earrings she'd finished last week swinging as she turned her head. "What do you need me to do first?"

  Maggie pushed the delivery box across the table toward her. She explained how she was dividing the Euro beads into color-coordinated sets and hanging them on the pegboard next to the cash register, hoping to get some impulse buys. Abby quickly got to work on the project.

  "Had any customers?" she asked as her fingers flew through sorting and stringing the beads.

  "A few. But it's still slow. I do think the classes will help get customers into the store. After this, I want to set up some of the bridal shower kits so I can be ready to teach that class."

  "Do you really think anyone will sign up to do crafts for a bridal shower in Ritzville?" Abby asked. "The snobs want diamonds, don't they?"

  "The idea is for it to be an experience the bridal party can share. That's worth more than diamonds. And not everyone's a snob," she pointed out. "I've already had one person interested."

  "Who?" Abby asked.

  "Kira Menendez."

  "She's getting married?" Abby smirked. "Make sure you get paid up front."

  "Why? Her dad commutes to Silicon Valley by private jet."

  "Yeah, well," Abby said skeptically. "I heard her dad cut off her trust fund when she dropped out of college to become a social media influencer."

  "Oh," Maggie replied. "That explains a lot."

  "Like what?" Abby asked.

  "Like she didn't actually offer to pay."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "She said if I gave her the class, she'd feature it to her social media audience, and it could bring me a lot of business." Maggie caught a glimpse of Abby's expression. "Don't look at me like that. She has almost a million followers. If I get just a few new people interested in beadwork, I'll be able to pay the shop expenses for months."

  "What you really need are paying customers," Abby pointed out. "Not people who promise to help you if you give them free stuff."

  "Thanks for your sage advice. Get me some more paper for the printer, okay?"

  Abby headed for the back room. "You want the purple paper?" she called out.

  "Is there any other kind?"

  The bell on the door chimed. Maggie glanced over to see Virginia Foley standing there, looking around the shop like she had stepped onto an alien planet.

  But she marched over to Maggie and said hello.

  "Hello," Maggie said, trying not to sound wary. "Can I help you with something, Virginia?" She tried not to think of how the name Virginia was so inappropriate for the defiantly non-virginal person she'd caught making out with her husband.

  Virginia plopped down her Birkin bag and pulled out the class flyer. She pointed with one leopard-manicured fingertip that matched the tight dress she was wearing. "I want to sign up for this class."

  "The wedding jewelry class?" Maggie asked with a resigned sigh, wondering if that particular class was cursed or something.

  "Yeah," Virginia said. "I think it'll be fun."

  "You think so? Do you like doing crafts?"

  "Well, not really," Virginia said. "But we should get to know each other better. After the wedding next month, we're practically going to be family. And besides, your old friends should rally around you at this difficult time."

  "What difficult time?" Maggie asked.

  "I heard you don't even have a credit card." Virginia leaned in close and whispered it as if it were shameful.

  Maggie cleared he
r throat. "Well, you heard wrong." She had a credit card. With a huge balance. It wasn't a black AmEx card. It was the kind of card people got when they had lousy credit. But just the same, "I do have a card. You don't need to worry about me."

  Maggie stared at the voluptuous redhead and tried to figure out if Virginia was really as obliviously insensitive as she appeared, or if she was a conniving jerk who was after something.

  She decided Virginia was just stupid, and that enabled her to patiently smile and thank her for her concern.

  "I know Reese is renting your house to help you out," the younger woman continued, "but surely that isn't enough money to live on, is it?"

  Maggie bit her tongue to keep from snapping at Virginia.

  "I'm doing just fine," she said mildly.

  "I don't blame Reese for feeling sorry for you. I suppose I would feel guilty, too, if I broke up someone's marriage." She said it without a trace of self-awareness, and Maggie just stared back at the guileless green eyes.

  So Big Mac was still spreading his fake story around, claiming his faithless trophy wife had slept with the studio's biggest star, and poor Mac had been forced to cut Maggie loose and move on to his much-younger and coincidentally available secretary.

  It was obvious Mac had never told Virginia that Maggie knew the truth. She had accidentally walked in on her husband and his secretary en flagrante delicto, and had personally seen every inch of Virginia's assets, right down to the funny-looking dolphin tattoo she sported on her ample rear end.

  There was no point rubbing Virginia's nose in it now. Or in trying to defend herself against Big Mac's very effective slander. The divorce was final. She'd signed the papers. Who cared what anyone thought? She wasn't going to fight it anymore.

  But just the same….

  Abby cleared her throat and they both turned to look in her direction.

  "Sorry to interrupt," said her snarky assistant, acting like a meek and apologetic little lamb. "I need your help with this inventory, Mrs. McJasper." She waved an important-looking paper that Maggie knew darned well was a lunch order form from O'Riley's coffee shop across the street.