Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder: Special Edition

1. In Which Juniper Defeats Inertia

IN WHICH JUNIPER DEFEATS INERTIA

A t some point I have to stop killing people.? *

I can’t very well carry on like this. Here I am, backed into a corner yet again, with no conceivable way out—another body to bury, another alibi to invent, and absolutely no relevant knowledge to speak of.

What’s the best way to dismember a corpse?

Who knows. How long before a body starts to stink?

Beats me. So why do I keep doing this to myself?

And what does it say about me, anyway, that my main characters keep finding creative ways to die?

This work in progress is supposed to be a romance novel.

It should have swooning and longing, summer afternoons and strawberry sunsets and reckless love.

And to be fair, it does have all of those things—right up until my heroine gets poisoned by her friend-turned-lover.

So…her friend-turned-lover…turned-murd erer? Is there a market for a romance novel where the female lead dies in chapter nine?

No. Probably not.? *

This is better than the last manuscript I attempted, I guess, where the hero didn’t make it three chapters before revealing himself to be a villain who bludgeoned his personal trainer to death with a Shake Weight.

That particular storyline was fueled heavily by caffeine and the discovery that I’d be unable to cancel my gym membership, since I (wildly optimistically) paid six months in advance.

Maybe I’m secretly a serial killer. Is that possible?

Maybe I’m a serial killer, and this is my subconscious’s way of getting me to see the light.

I figure I’d probably know if I were a mass murderer, and it probably would’ve manifested in other, less-benign ways—a Shake-Weight-bludgeoned body rotting in my garage, for instance—but then again, does anyone ever really know themselves?

No. I submit that they do not.

I certainly don’t. Just yesterday, for example, I would have sworn up and down that I’d never go on another date while living in this little Wyoming town. I’ve met too many man-children masquerading as adults to have any hope left for this particular dating pool.

And yet here I am, parked in the town’s fanciest coffee shop, waiting with my friend Matilda for her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s friend, so that we can double—something I only agreed to because I haven’t seen Matilda in months.

We keep in touch, but after we graduated college seven years ago, she moved to the city and got a real big- girl job in a legal office.

I, meanwhile, stayed in our little college town, partly because my brother was attending school here too, and he’s some of the only family I’ve got left.

Now that he’s graduated, we rent an apartment together on University Street.

There’s nothing keeping us here, I guess, but two Bean siblings at rest will stay at rest until acted on by an outside force—and so far we’ve been outside-force-free. Inertia is a tricky thing to overcome.

So when Matilda called last week and said she and her boyfriend would be passing through on their way to the West Coast, of course I said I wanted to see her.

And when she called this morning to tell me her boyfriend has a friend in town and can we pretty please double date —well, what was I supposed to say?

It’s not like I’m swamped, and this way Matilda’s boyfriend will get to meet up with his friend too.

I was a good friend. I said yes.

“Juniper.”

I jump as her voice, loud and slightly nasally, yanks me from my thoughts. “Yeah,” I say.

She points to my phone with one finger. “Put that away,” she says as the fingers on her other hand drum restlessly against the tabletop, her manicured nails making little click-click-click sounds. “They’ll be here soon.”

I close out of Google docs on my phone; my dying main characters are going to have to wait. “Do I look okay?” I say, turning in my chair to look at Matilda.

I guess it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if my date didn’t like how I look; he might bow out and leave early, and then I could go home and eat chips and guac in my sweats.

But my atrocious dating record hasn’t beaten all of my pride out of me; I do have some left, so at the very least I want to look put together.

“Of course you do,” Matilda says, rolling her eyes. “You have the legs of a yoga instructor. I’ve never met this guy in person, but I doubt he’ll object.”

I frown as I register her words. “I thought you’d met him—Daniel?” I say, checking.

Matilda nods and takes a sip of her nine-dollar latte. “Daniel. And no; he and Ned were roommates Ned’s freshman year. I didn’t know Ned then.”

“But you said he was cute!”

“I’ve seen a picture,” she says, laying a reassuring hand on my arm. “And he is. He’s a total hottie. Muscular, but not too muscular. Like, he probably couldn’t bench press three hundred pounds, but he could for sure bench press you .”? *

Well. When she puts it like that…

“I have some breath mints. Want one? In case you get a goodnight kiss?” Matilda says, patting her purse. It’s Louis Vuitton, sleek taupe lambskin embossed with the trademark initials, and easily several thousand dollars.

Do you know how much chips and guac I could buy with several thousand dollars?

“Sure,” I say, glancing down at my own bag, which was not several thousand dollars and which does not contain breath mints.

It was seven-ninety-nine at the thrift store on Main, and it contains a pen, a notepad, and the napkin-wrapped croissant I shoved in earlier.

Maybe someday I’ll stop hoarding extra food, but old habits die hard.

I hold out my hand, and Matilda drops one tiny, heart-shaped breath mint into my waiting palm.

I pop the little white heart into my mouth and immediately feel that sense of regret that comes when you eat something horrible; this is no polite little wintergreen mint.

It’s one of those heavy-duty ones, the flavor as subtle as an oncoming semitruck.

But Matilda is looking at me expectantly, so I just smile and try not to feel sad about how different we are now, about how much better we jive virtually than in person.

It’s something I’ve known about us for a long time. We became friends because we were college roommates, but we have very little in common.

You can’t have everything in life, I guess, and maybe some friendships are just better long-distance.

“Oh,” Matilda says, sitting up straighter.

She smooths one hand over her sleek, dark hair, and I follow her gaze to the entrance of the coffee shop.

The little bell over the door jingles as I’m hit by a blast of crisp autumn air from outside.

I’ve never met the man who steps through the doors, but I’ve seen him all over her social media pages—her perpetual-suit-wearing boyfriend, Ned.

He’s younger than us by several years—surprising, considering Matilda’s preference for older men.

However, he comes from old money— not surprising, considering Matilda’s preference for Louis Vuitton purses and breath mints that strip the taste buds off your tongue.

“There they are,” she breathes, and suddenly I’m hit with the desire to sink down in my chair, hiding myself from view.

It’s an obnoxious impulse, because it’s borne primarily from the disparity between my outfit and Matilda’s.

She’s in a crisp blouse and pressed slacks, while I have on yellow overalls.

If Ned’s friend is anything like Ned, he’s probably also a suit-wearing, Rolex-buying corporate type who likes blouses and slacks?—

But that thought dies a swift death in my mind the second Ned’s friend steps through the door. It dies, holds its own funeral, and then decays gruesomely, oozing and rotting and dialing my ick factor up to eleven out of ten .

Because I recognize that man. Blond, five-foot-eleven, brown eyes, a bad habit of forgetting to put the toilet seat down after he pees.

“Roland?” I breathe, my jaw hanging all the way off my skull as his eyes find mine.

Roland stares at me.

I stare at him.

And then, as one, we react, erupting into chaos.

“Ew!” I say, jumping out of my seat. “Ew, ew, ew?—”

“Gross,” I hear him groan. “Oh, gross?—”

“ Gah ,” I say, spitting the breath mint out of my mouth like it’s cyanide. “I was going to kiss you?—”

“Gross, Juniper, I put on cologne for this?—”

“No!” I say, covering my ears and stomping one foot. “Do not tell me that! I don’t want to know anything?—”

“You put on makeup?!” he cuts me off, his face screwed up with disgust as he eyes me. “Gross, June— gross. You wanted me to think you were pretty ? — ”

“No. Don’t talk to me,” I say, flapping my hand at him.

“Don’t talk to me, don’t look at me—” But I break off when I remember Matilda’s description of Roland as a man who could bench press me, and my stomach twists unpleasantly all over again.

“Ew,” I groan, squeezing my eyes shut. “No, no, no, no?—”

People are staring at us; Matilda and Ned look completely scandalized. We’re absolutely making a scene in this fancy-pants cafe that smells like expensive cinnamon pumpkins, and I do not care.

Because the man Matilda set me up with? It’s none other than Roland Bean.

My. Little. Brother.

“Dude, that’s my sister,” I hear a disgusted Roland saying to Ned. “Oh, gross, you said she was hot ? — ”

My eyes pop open just in time to see Roland wave his hand, spin on his heel, and walk right out the front door again, his legs carrying him faster than I’ve ever seen him move.

“Oh. My. Goodness. Your brother,” Matilda whispers into the absolute silence as I slump back into my chair and chug my water like it can get rid of the bad taste in my mouth.

Only the bad taste is in my brain, not my mouth, and the water can’t do anything about it. It’s just going to make me have to pee. I’m going to have to use the restroom, at which point I will probably fall in the toilet because Roland never puts the seat down, and ew ew ew ? —