C.: Well, I'm on to chapter five of THE MAGRUDER MYSTERIES MURDER8:THE INERT INGREDIENT
CHAPTER FIVE: A MOCHA LATTE WITH FOAM
Magruder didn’t enjoy the coffee that the precinct’s coffee maker offered, and he had little time to spare. Because of these two factors, he invited Alice to join him at the coffee shop within walking distance of both his precinct and the nursing school Alice attended. It was this strategic location that allowed the independent coffee shop to compete with the leading national chains.
Since they both were pressed for time, this seemed to be the best place for the couple to get to know each other better. Magruder, like many of his coworkers, often visited this coffee shop. He needed the caffeine the bitter drink offered to stay awake during the long, arduous hours cops must sometimes work. Many of the nursing school students had the same need, so many were also regular customers of the coffee shop. This gave the store a dependable clientele base and source of revenue, and the owners catered to each populace.
The barista recognized Jay and Alice as two of his most loyal customers, so he gave them preferential treatment. The dating duo was served before customers who had arrived before them, much to the other customers' chagrin.
Alice was almost as familiar with the coffee shop and its menu as Magruder, so she only casually perused the offering before ordering. “A mocha latte with foam,” she said to the barista, as Magruder took out his wallet to pay for his black coffee and Alice’s tasteful drink.
“That looks delicious,” Magruder said, trying to distract Alice from asking about the subject of their last conversation. It was no use, though, because the nursing student again asked the detective about the corpse in question. Since she’d been seated in the front row at the morgue, Magruder worried that she and her companions had seen too much to forget the mysterious corpse. He was extremely upset by the question, as Alice quickly learned.
“Mr. Magruder, can you tell me anything more about the corpse that Mr. James was asking about? Please don’t kill me. I just want to know his name, or something about him. Anything you can tell me would be of great interest to me. Your insight might help me advance my nursing career more quickly if I decide to go into forensic nursing. My dad isn’t around much now. He’s working a lot of overtime because he wants to be debt free when my sister, Janine, and I graduate. Then, he says, he’ll retire! That will take him working a lot of overtime, since Janine wants to be a nurse practitioner.” Jay knew how much Ben adored his daughters, so he was surprised that he would leave them alone so much. Alice’s face showed her dissatisfaction with the situation.
As Magruder looked up from his steaming hot cup of joe, he took in a pleasant sight, despite Alice’s frown. Alice wasn’t so much unattractive as unadorned. She wore no makeup. Her hair looked as if it didn’t know what a brush was, but it didn’t detract from her high cheekbones and big, sparkling brown eyes. She didn’t wear any jewelry, in a clinical class- where this was a requirement- or on a date with an eligible young cop. On the surface, Alice Jones would seem to be as plain as the name she bore. However, her long, slender fingers caressed her coffee cup in a way that mesmerized Magruder, as her unrestrained mane pleasantly reflected the late afternoon sunlight onto the couple’s table, highlighting the damsel’s dazzling digits.
As far as Jay was concerned, though, her most attractive feature was her persistent personality, even though it may have been a detriment in the case of the cadaver in question at the Harris County Morgue.
Magruder liked the young lady's motivation to become a nurse. However, his preoccupation with the nursing profession had put the detective in an awkward position. He had asked his superiors for permission to let his hometown friend use the Harris County Morgue to teach his nursing students about preventable deaths. This decision almost met with disastrous results.
“Call me ‘Jay.’ We aren’t in a formal setting, and I’m not that much older than you are. The couple then began a pleasant but superficial conversation about the strange weather patterns that Southeast Texas had been experiencing lately. Unlike the class in the morgue, the date went well. Alice gave Jay a peck on the lips and her phone number at the end of it, which delighted the lonely detective.
***
One of the customers that was perturbed with the barista’s insistence to serve Jay and Alice before other customers who had ordered before them was the small man who was trying to gather information from the detective. It was fortunate for Jay and Alice that he had something else in mind for the detective besides revenge; at least for today. Magruder didn’t know that his habit exposed him to a dangerous man, one who would stop at nothing to learn the detective’s secret. He was oblivious to the fact that he was exposing his new friend to a dangerous situation as well.
Alice Jones was unaware that she was being stalked by the most wanted criminal on the face of the earth. The small man followed her at a safe distance. He’d seen how infatuated Jay Magruder was with the young lady. That gave him an idea. Taylor began to put his plan in place. He was a patient man who could wait as long as it took for his plan to pay off.
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