Read Online Deadly Greetings (Book 2 in the Cardmaking Mysteries) by Tim Myers - Free Book Online Page A

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,