Official Town Business (Fox & Oakby Murder Mysteries Book I)

Legs and Bags

Imogen realised she was now scrutinising the Scot's lower half. Thankfully, the kilt was sufficiently long to cover the parts Imogen just didn't want to think about - but the picture had brought Imogen's mind onto the subject she'd never even imagined to consider - that of male legs. The Scot's legs were hairy, and muscles bulged on the calves and thighs. It's not that Imogen had never seen male legs, she hadn't been living in a nunnery! She'd just never actually looked. But were all male legs like that? Were the Mayor's? And more importantly, why was Imogen suddenly profoundly excited at the thought that perhaps the Mayor's legs were as sculpted and hairy as those of the dimwitted looking Scot?

"Would you like me to put this one aside for you as well?" Ms. Sanders tone was sarcastic, and Imogen jumped up.

"No! No, no... I don't particularly— I don't read romance, well, except for Olivia Dane, maybe." Imogen cowardly stuffed the Scot and the dizzy maiden back onto the shelf.

"They are all rubbish," said Ms. Sanders grumpily. "As if a man would feel and do a half of what they describe there. All they do is come home, drop their backside on the sofa, and watch telly. Even at the beginning, all they want from you is a cooked meal."

Ms. Sanders, it was known and of course discussed incessantly by the gossip of the town, had been once in a relationship with Mr. Buck, the organic butcher. Imogen could quite easily imagine why Ms. Sanders had found the experience disappointing. Mr. Buck did strike Imogen as a backside dropping, telly watching type. And then Imogen thought that she wouldn't mind cooking a meal for someone, if she were in a relationship. If say, said someone was tired after work, and sat down on the sofa, and asked politely - and on any other day, said someone would make no less effort to support and accommodate Imogen - she would gladly go to the kitchen and cook the hypothetical someone's favourite spaghetti bolognese.

Imogen relocated her sleuthing self to the shelf even closer to the counter. Sadly, the books here were of even less comforting nature - the glossy spines of volumes on pregnancy and childcare made Imogen uneasily shift her weight between her feet. As loved up and generally daft as Imogen was, even she wasn't that far gone as to start imagining holding a dark haired, blue eyed, chubby baby, that would have round cheeks and smell like vanilla. Oh wait.

Imogen decided that flipping through Cooking with Your Toddler would be least suspicious, considering the age of her nephew, and she picked up the heavy book off the wall.

"Oh by the way, Ms. Sanders, your renovation permits have been signed yesterday," Imogen ventured into her snooping around in a horribly unnatural voice.

Ms. Sanders displayed a shocking amount of emotion on her normally blasé face.

"Oh that is... lovely," Ms. Sanders choked out, and peered at Imogen with her buggy eyes. "There were no issues with them, then?"

"No, no, no issues at all. They have received the preservation committee's approval last month, and the council sent them to the Mayor, and he signed them. All set to sell now." 

Imogen looked up at Ms. Sanders from the photo of cat shaped sarnies with eyes made of olives. The shop owner was pale, and not her usual 'unhealthy lifestyle pale.' It was more a stressed out paleness now.

"It will be such a pity to see you sell the shop, Ms. Sanders," Imogen drew out. "You've always been so generous to me, always giving me a discount, and putting my books aside, although I can afford so few of them."

Ms. Sanders' left eye twitched behind the glasses.

"You know, with my minuscule pay," Imogen continued rambling, while trying to see if Ms. Sanders were to get spun out by the discussion of the sale. The answer to the question was a definite 'yes.'

"I mean, I work and work, pushing all those papers around, filling all those forms in, and looking at all those regulations..." 

Imogen was running out of things to say, when suddenly Ms. Sanders made a strange gurgling noise, rushed from around the counter, past Imogen, and to the shelf with the romance novels. She then jerked the volume decorated with the Scot with remarkable legs out of the row, and plopped it on top of the open cookbook in Imogen's hands.

"Would you like anything else?" Ms. Sanders rasped out, and Imogen gave her a confused look.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Anything else you like here? As a gift, I mean. To our... loyal customer," Ms. Sanders bleated, shaking and twitching.

Imogen just couldn't quite grasp what was happening. "But— I don't—"

"Perhaps, one of those Sayers that you've put aside? Or all four of them?!" 

Ms. Sanders was growing hysterical, and then she jolted, and flailed her arms in a strange gesture, as if pointing at three directions at the same time. She then lunged behind the counter again, and pulled out the very four Lord Wimsey novels that Imogen had been hoping to bestow herself with before she'd become a primary caretaker of two children. The books were mercilessly shoved into a violently rustling paper bag, the Scot and the cookbook were jerked out of Imogen's hands and followed suit.

"And some biscuits for the children, perhaps?" Ms. Sanders offered in a high pitched voice. 

Imogen found that the most alarming part of the overall bizarre experience was the strange glassy-eyed, twisted smile on Ms. Sanders' face, who looked like the character Joker from the American comic books.

The book shop had a small corner where people could have tea and biscuits and pastries that Mrs. Sanders, the mother of the currently mad behaving woman, baked. Her baking was rather dull, but people tended to buy the sweets, just to support the failing business.

A box of biscuits travelled into the bag as well, it was thrust into Imogen's hands and somehow Imogen was suddenly outside, insistently pushed out by a pair of shaking hands. The door closed behind her with a deafening bang and a mournful clank of the bell, the curtains were hastily drawn, and the sign flipped, saying a very decisive 'closed' now.

Imogen blinked, and then looked down into the paper bag. She could have been wrong, but it seemed that she had just accepted a bribe.