3 Loosey Goosey (2 page)

I jerked.

She held tight.

I scowled.

She smiled.

“HA!” Ben announced.

Thinking I’d missed out on some joke, I turned.

He pointed to Rhonda, who I now realized was sporting a HA! shirt of her own over jeans, of all things. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her in jeans instead of something made of hemp or rope or whatever was safe for the world and all of God’s creatures.

She wasn’t just a man addict. She was a man addict with skills.

She swept a length of red hair over her shoulder and gestured to the giant HA! on her chest. “Are you a member? They do such great work.”

My normally mono-syllabic brother, completely clueless to the redhead’s evil plan, erupted into a monologue on how the survival of every species outside of man was dependent on HA! and their groundbreaking demonstrations. Rhonda, dedicated man hunter that she was, nodded and smiled and in general managed to make my brother think he was the lone light bulb in a forest of unlit Christmas trees.

Like my mother’s adoration wasn’t enough Ben adoration in this world.

I groaned, rolled my eyes, and reverted to being 12 for a good 60 seconds.

Then Rhonda uttered five words that blew me out of my stupor. “Are you staying with Lucy?”

“What? No.” I moved forward again, this time managing to capture the tray from Betty’s grasp. So armed, I squared my shoulders and took a stand. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid Pauline...” I motioned to the beady-eyed beast who had been disturbingly quiet since Ben’s appearance. “...and Kiska do not get along. Staying in my small house would not be a good idea.”

I gave them a moment for that idea to sink in. Then, before Rhonda could pop up with another suggestion, I continued, “And with the convention being in town and the holiday weekend... there won’t be any hotel rooms for a hundred miles either.” I shook my head, exhibiting my great disappointment over this surely true fact. “Perhaps next time. Maybe in the spring. Surely HA! will be coming through again. Bear season is in the spring. It’s a terrible thing. Just terrible.” I allowed sadness to pull at my features.

Betty’s eyebrows rose, and her gaze shifted pointedly toward the large bearskin rug that I’d purchased the week before at an auction.

I narrowed my eyes at her and grabbed my brother by the upper arm to steer him away from the rug and toward the door.

“Good idea, Lucy Belle.”

Rhonda’s eyes widened at the use of my first and second names. I graced her with a warning glare and, brother and goose in tow, took a step toward the door.

“But there’s no need to worry about a room. I brought my own.”

I stopped. “Your own?”

“You have to see it.” Beaming like a six year old who’d just received his first bike, he trotted out the door and onto the busy street of Last Chance Gulch.

Resisting the urge to lock the door behind him and call it a day, I followed. It was, unfortunately, a short trip.

Parked directly in front of my shop, taking up three spaces of potentially cash-spending customer parking, was a circa 1990s American-made minivan painted retina-burning yellow. And as if that wasn’t horrid enough, there was a comically small egg-shaped travel trailer hitched behind it.

Betty fluttered her boa in front of her face. “Oh my. I’m sure that’s the bomb to someone, and it does makes a statement.”

Betty’s comment was true both figuratively and literally. Scrawled all over the van were loving messages such as: “Lemon!,” “Drew’s Used Cars Suck and so does this van!,” “Life doesn’t give you lemons, Drew’s does!”

“The Lemon,” I stuttered. “You still have the Lemon.”

“And now it has an egg!” my brother announced with enough pride to make the most obnoxious of soccer moms blush.

“An egg.” I closed my eyes and re-opened them.

To my horror, both Lemon and Egg remained.

Chapter 2

An hour later, I admitted defeat, both at sending my brother packing and at keeping Rhonda away from him, at least for today.

She’d oohed and aahed over Lemon and Egg. Then insisted on tours of both and hearing the history of both. Having lived through the time when my brother discovered his “slightly used” minivan came with more issues than
Readers Digest,
I was not interested in hearing the tale again.

I left them standing in front of the shop and just prayed at some point they would come out of the fog of Ben love and move the eyesore that was my brother’s vehicle somewhere, anywhere, that was not in front of my store.

Back inside Dusty Deals, I eyed the phone. “Do you think George has connections with parking?”

Betty set a copy of
Cattle Life
onto the counter. “George would probably cordon off the spot for him.”

She was right. My second-favorite police officer would probably want a Lemon/Egg combo of his own.

Mentioning George, however, reminded me of my favorite (most of the time) Helena police employee, Detective Peter Blake.

I had a date tonight. A real date: dinner at a fancy restaurant with tablecloths and napkins and waiters who didn’t roll up on wheels.

“I’m going to the Antlers tonight,” I announced with no small amount of pride. My morning had turned rough. I deserved a few minutes of gloating.

“That new place? I thought it wasn’t opening until Friday.” Betty flipped over today’s copy of the
Daily News
to show me an ad for Helena’s newest old restaurant.

Old, because it was inside an historic theater that had been closed for decades. Newest, because the restaurant and chef/owner were brand new to Helena.

Taking old buildings and converting them to restaurants wasn’t unheard of in Helena, but people had pretty much given up hope for Antlers Theater becoming anything more than a pile of bricks. The news that someone had finally invested in the old landmark and had plans for renovating the building had made quite a stir.

“The official opening is Friday, but the chef is having a ‘soft’ opening tonight.”

“Soft, huh? How many cats got the call?”

Right off her month of 24/7 jazz, Betty’s vocabulary was a bit... foreign. I took a minute to translate the question in my head.

“I don’t know. Peter got the tickets from the mayor, I think.” The Antlers reopening was a huge deal. I hadn’t thought about who else would be there, but now that I had... “Did those business cards you designed ever come in?”

Betty pointed toward the register. I went to stock up on cards while she walked to the front window and peered out.

“Carl Mack will be there for sure, don’t you think?” I asked, my head still inside the storage space beneath the counter.

“He’ll wig out if he isn’t.”

Mack was the head of the local historical association. He’d been working on a fund to buy and renovate the Antlers for three decades. When news came that someone else had beat him to the act, he’d made a big deal of how happy he was that the building wasn’t going to be razed, but he’d also supposedly sent the new owner a stack of documents and photographs with details of how the building had looked in its heyday.

He would want to be there to make sure every last finial was properly turned. If the Antlers had finials, that was. The only picture I’d seen of the inside was from an old postcard that I’d had in the shop for years.

Which reminded me—with the press the new restaurant was going to get, I needed to dig the thing out and set up some kind of display. Maybe even in the window... I had a beef poster there now, but I could tie in the Antlers postcard and some real antlers or something.

Cows had horns. Close enough. It would work.

I was busy musing over this and retrieving the postcard from its dusty box when Betty looked back at me.

“They’re gone,” she announced.

“Really?” I jerked to a stand. “Lemon and Egg?”

“And brother and friend,” Betty replied. “Rhonda was talking to him. Giving him directions, I think.”

Clutching the stack of business cards in one hand and the postcard in the other, I smiled. I knew it was too much to hope that Ben had decided to head back to Missouri after all, but he hadn’t come in asking for a key to my house either. Rhonda, good friend that she was, must have come out of her fog and realized friendship was thicker than broad shoulders.

“Rhonda probably sent him to Three Forks,” I suggested. “She used to camp there with Stanley.” Stanley Cox was Rhonda’s last relationship. A rich momma’s boy who’d loved fly fishing and being waited on. Rhonda had decided she wasn’t a big fan of either and had dumped him.

“Oh.” Betty’s lips curled. She didn’t know Stanley that I knew of, but she did know his mother. While Betty had been out on her jazz tour, Phyllis Cox had taken to working at my shop salary-free. She’d dropped in twice since Betty had returned.

Being in the room with the pair of them made me feel like I was walking through a tiger cage wearing a meat cape.

Eager to get her thoughts off Phyllis, I waved the Antlers postcard her direction. “You think you can work this into the window display? Maybe with those pronghorn pictures hanging by the back door and the antler-handled knife in the oak case?”

My ploy worked. Betty walked forward, a skeptical look on her face. “I thought you wanted to target the beef ranchers. Isn’t that why you put that salt lick out there?”

“It’s stoneware!” I defended.

“It’s a salt lick... for cattle... in a field.”

Which is why I’d thought it was the perfect find when I saw it at an auction last month. It had been a steal too. Only five dollars. I knew I could sell it for six times that.

I didn’t answer though. Betty was still touchy about Phyllis and as long as the window appealed to both cattle ranchers and Antlers enthusiasts I’d be happy.

I said as much to her and handed over the postcard. She flicked it against one magenta thumbnail and studied the window. I could tell by the crease between her brows she was already lost in what she could do with the display, which, considering I’d just remembered that Phyllis had mentioned coming in today, was a huge relief.

I took a step toward my office. “You know with Ben here and my date, maybe I’ll head out a bit early today. You don’t mind do you?” I took another step.

Betty’s boa fluttered in response.

Good enough for me. Still clutching the business cards, I grabbed my keys and my dog and trotted out the back door to the alley where I had parked my rig.

As I walked out the back door, the front bell sounded and Phyllis’ voice called my name.

I tugged on Kiska’s leash and, for once, he did as I asked, trotting by my side as we hurried to my Cherokee and then, once inside it, raced out of the alley.

My shop might not be standing when I returned in the morning, but for now, I’d escaped.

After leaving Dusty Deals, I thought about going by Rhonda’s to see if she knew where Ben had gone. I thought about calling her. I even thought about calling Ben.

But then I thought about my date and how many influential people would be at the restaurant opening and how important being my at my utmost would be. And I realized not knowing where Ben and his Egg-pulling Lemon were parked was probably for the best.

If you can’t fix something, deny, deny, deny.

I held my breath for the last half mile to my house. Ben hadn’t come in and asked for a key, but that didn’t mean Rhonda hadn’t directed him to my house.

However, the road in front of my house was empty and the gate that surrounded my acre still locked.

No Lemon. No Egg. No Ben. All good.

o0o

Despite my earlier relief, six hours later, a teeny crinkle of guilt for not hunting my brother down tickled at the back of my mind. I didn’t feel bad that I hadn’t extended an invitation to camp on my acre, but it occurred to me a good sister would at least want to know where her brother had landed.

And then there was my mother. I just knew she was going to call at any minute wanting to know how our visit was going. Ben might not have said that she knew he was here, but she had radar for such things. Plus, I hadn’t talked to her in three days. Her regular “how are things with that police detective going” call was way overdue.

When Peter arrived, I was sitting on my couch watching my phone as if it might rise up at any moment and attack. At his knock, I hurried forward. Freshly shaven, wearing a crisp shirt and carrying his best cowboy hat in his hand, he was looking more fine than usual, but I didn’t have time to acknowledge his efforts.

I stepped over the threshold and quickly pulled the door closed behind me.

He raised a brow.

“Don’t want to be late!” I declared and moved out ahead of him down the hill. Unfortunately, I forgot that for the occasion I’d pulled out my one and only pair of heels. The tiny spikes sank into the soft dirt of my unpaved path, causing me to teeter side to side.

Peter, always the gentleman, placed a firm hand on my elbow to stop my sideways swaying. “We have time for you to change,” he offered.

“Change?” I glanced down. I’d chosen my outfit carefully. Gray skirt that hid malamute hair well. Silky top that gathered at my waist to emphasize that I had one, while flowing forgivingly over my hips. It might not have been out of Vogue, but I thought I looked pretty darn nice.

“Shoes,” he explained with another raised brow.

“Oh.” I looked down at my feet and my sunk-in-the-dirt heels. “What else would I wear?” I asked, as if he might possibly have a reasonable solution.

“Something you can walk in?”

I stared at him with wide-eyed disbelief. Obviously, being a detective for the Helena Police Department did not come with even the tiniest speck of understanding into the female mind.

With a snort, I pulled my elbow free and pigeon-walked down to his truck.

The drive into town was short, but long enough for me to do some damage control on my heels. I was coyly scraping mud off my heels and onto the underside of the passenger seat when Peter slammed on his brakes and cursed.

I looked up, only to wish immediately that I hadn’t.

“Now I’ve seen everything,” he mumbled.