The Dead Files by Mary Bowers

Author:Mary Bowers [Bowers, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20 – My Favorite Spinster

My longtime, elderly store manager, Florence Purdy, has never been married. I’d like to say that doesn’t define her, but actually it does. She is the perfect stage-and-screen prototype of the sweet, innocent spinster, unworldly and unspoiled by Man. If she ever had a serious beau, he’s lost to the mists of time and as far as I can see, she never gives him a thought. At least, she doesn’t seem to feel she’s missed out on anything.

In spite of that, she takes an avid interest in the love lives (not the sex lives!) of everyone around her. Usually, that means somebody else’s love life, but that particular morning, it meant mine.

I could tell something was on her mind right away, because she was being really businesslike. Her “Hello, Taylor,” sounded generic, the kind of knee-jerk salutation you give a stranger. Even the shop cat, Abraham, was being aloof, but that was normal for him. He gave me one slow look from the countertop beside Florence where he was reposing himself, and I instantly bored him back to sleep.

A lady in a lavender jacket and bright red pants was looking at glassware, and she turned around to smile at me when I came in from the back room. It was the biggest rise I got out of anybody.

I’d noticed a new box of donations in the back room as I passed through, and I told Florence I’d be back there sorting through it unless she needed something else from me.

Her mild brown eyes focused sharply on me then, and I perceived a silent message being sent. I had no idea what it was.

I waited.

She slid her eyes toward the lavender jacket, then back to me, repeating the message, only more intensely.

I still didn’t get it.

It occurred to me that she might be trying to indicate she would talk to me about something when the customer left, but that couldn’t be it. It was only Tansy Billips in the lavender jacket and the eyewatering red pants. Tansy was in her eighties, hard of hearing, and I was willing to bet that by lunchtime she wouldn’t even remember having been in Girlfriend’s. If she wandered out of the shop clutching something she forgot to pay for, Florence wouldn’t even stop her. At least twenty years before she’d been one of my volunteers in the shop, and she’d been almost as wooly headed then. If she wanted a hobnail bud vase, she could have it for free. She’d probably donate it right back to us within the month.

Mystified, I went back into the storeroom and took a look at that new box.

Not five minutes later I heard the tinkle of the front door, and since Florence didn’t greet anybody, I figured that was Tansy leaving. I reentered the shop.

“Did she steal anything?” I asked.

“Tansy doesn’t steal,” Florence said, clipping her words. “She borrows.”

“Of course. I didn’t mean anything by it. Florence, my darling,” I began. Then I paused and I waited until she looked at me.

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