Let Loose (15 page)

“I know I said I had to work—”

I widened my eyes like I had no idea what he
was talking about.

“And I did, but Shelia’s mother had an
accident, nothing serious, but Shelia needed to drive her to the
doctor and couldn’t bring Jeremy along. So I did.”

I glanced around. “Brought him along
snowmobile shopping?” It was, in my opinion, a pretty quick and
easy change in plans. A change he hadn’t been able to make for
me.

“Uh.” Peter’s mouth stayed open for a second
with nothing coming out. “Yes. Shopping. I heard about the Expo and
thought it would entertain him for a while.”

And since he’d already told me he was
working... I frowned. Maybe his excuse made sense, but it didn’t
make me feel particularly wanted either.

He stepped closer. “I like your hat,” he
said.

Remembering the green atrocity, I reached up
to pull it off, but then I remembered what lay beneath it.

Blue. Lots and lots of blue.

“But...” He leaned closer until his lips
brushed my ear. “I really like your hair. It’s unexpected and just
the right amount of startling. Just like you.”

He brushed his lips over mine, promised to
call me the next day and jogged off to gather up his son.

Leaving me there staring after him like a big
love-struck dope.

The next morning, my phone rang way earlier
than any human had a reason to be up. I, of course, thanks to my
furry guests, had been up for hours.

I recognized Ethel’s voice immediately.
“Lucy, Carol and I want to invite you to brunch.”

I glanced at my clock and calculated the time
it would take to turn my hair into something not in the rat-nest
family.

“At Carol’s.” She pulled in a breath. “Bring
that detective friend of yours if he’s available. We didn’t get the
chance to talk to him as much as we would have liked at the
Swap.”

“I’m sure he has to work,” I replied, more
than a little wary of what she and Carol might be planning to say
to him.

“Oh, but you could call him.”

I could... “Who else will be there?” I
asked.

Ethel listed off the names of the women who
had been at the poker party they hosted at my shop. “We’ve also
invited Frank Kelly, his son, Allen, Craig Ryan and a couple of
other... friends.”

I hadn’t realized any of the men she’d listed
also qualified as her friends, but then Ethel was known for her
generosity.

“If I can’t bring Peter, is it alright if I
bring Rhonda instead?” I owed my friend for coming to my rescue
yesterday morning. I’d come home to a team of suspiciously content
dogs, a load of clean towels in my dryer and two loaves of homemade
bread inside my oven.

There had also been two extra plates and
coffee mugs in my dishwasher. Which was a little strange since my
environmentally conscious friend was all about reuse. I couldn’t
imagine her getting a clean mug for herself over such a short
visit.

It was definitely a mystery I wanted to
investigate.

Reluctantly, Ethel agreed and we hung up,
giving me two solid hours to get the dogs settled and my hair tamed
before I had to leave.

Two hours and thirty minutes later, I arrived
at Carol’s. I had called Peter, but I’d gotten his voice mail. I
was not upset by this. I was not
going to be
upset by
this. I said both to myself a few times until I thought I could go
through the “He’s busy.” “He’s a police officer after all.” “Yes,
it is great how great he is.” routine that I’d gotten used to over
the year or so that we’d been dating.

Anyway, I had left a message and, as I
assured Ethel, I was sure he would stop by if at all possible. He
had said he would call me today.

Ethel’s gang was already in place when I got
there, all seated around a round table that was covered with a dark
cloth. The sight of them gathered like that, hands on the table,
faces expectant, made me more than a little uncomfortable. I stood
uncertainly, half expecting a crystal ball or Ouija board to make
an appearance.

Instead, Carol came through the swinging door
carrying a casserole. Plates appeared and soon the ladies were
eating and chatting and I wondered why I’d ever felt unsure.

Rhonda arrived with a dish of her own,
something vegetarian and healthy I was sure. Frank and his son
arrived next. Carol said her husband was watching TV in the
basement, and Frank seemed happy enough to disappear down there,
almost as quickly as he’d arrived. Allen made a move as if to
follow, but Carol cut him off with the ease and skill of a border
collie separating a sheep from the herd. She held out a platter of
muffins. He took four. I grimaced. I hadn’t realized there was
going to be a run on the muffins.

“Ethel and I were hoping you could help us
with something in the kitchen,” she said.

He muttered and stared at the basement door,
looking like a sullen teenager rather than the twenty-something I
guessed him to be.

“It’s Carlyle,” Carol announced. “He needs
his toenails cut.”

Carlyle, I knew from my earlier visit to
Carol’s, was her ten-year-old shepherd mix. I hadn’t noticed that
his toenails were out of control, but I wasn’t all that observant
about such things. One look at Kiska’s pedicure, or lack of one,
would prove that.

Allen’s demeanor changed completely.
“Already? Did you get the powder?” Looking close to eager, he
followed the older women into the kitchen

Allen seemed happy enough, but with word that
there was dog work to be done, I naturally moved to help, or
watch... or see if Allen would want to come to my house next and
wrestle a certain malamute into the pedicure chair.

Rhonda, however, stopped me with a hand on my
arm. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

Usually when Rhonda needed to talk to me it
had to do with some piece of juicy gossip or another, but this time
her expression was more serious. I grabbed two of the remaining
muffins before someone else could clear them out and prepared to
listen. The muffin was good... not blueberry as I’d thought, but
huckleberry. Even better.

Martin walked into the room, and right behind
him came Peter.

I coughed, shooting a berry onto Rhonda’s
hand-knitted sweater.

Martin walked toward us, a smile on his face
and little jog in his step. Peter stood behind him, his gaze
settling on me for only a moment. He gave me a brief nod before
sweeping over the rest of the room.

It didn’t take a border collie, with their
annoying smarts, to figure out that he was not in the mood to share
muffins and gossip.

I took a drink of juice and tried to look
unconcerned. So, Peter had given me only the briefest of greetings,
and he had just
happened
to walk in right behind Martin. I
hadn’t invited Martin. I hadn’t even known Martin was coming. Peter
had to know I wouldn’t invite them both. Even if I were a cheater,
I would never be that bold.

I was way too big of a weenie for that.

While Martin and Rhonda made small talk, I
kept my attention on Peter. He stopped briefly at the table where
Ethel’s crew still sat enjoying their eggs and muffins, and then
headed into the kitchen.

Rhonda, always on the alert for potential
gossip, glanced after him. “That was interesting.”

I agreed. I also now suspected that, shocking
as the idea was, I was not the focus of Peter’s day, at least right
now.

Which meant I really wanted to know what
was.

Wiggling my now empty juice glass, I walked
past the crew and through the swinging door.

Just in time to see my boyfriend slap
handcuffs on one of our octogenarian hostesses.

o0o

I caught up with Peter outside of Carol’s,
after he’d handed Ethel off to my buddy Chuck.

“Stay out of this,” he told me.

“You put Ethel in handcuffs.” I couldn’t
believe he didn’t see the problem with this.

“I have my reasons.”

I was a fair person. I was willing to listen
to reason. “They are...?”

“Not your concern.” He shoved his hat up
higher on his head and stared over my shoulder at Carol’s front
porch, where most of the guests now stood. The exceptions were
Carol’s husband, Frank, and Allen. And Craig, but my neighbor
hadn’t even made an appearance yet.

I guessed Carol’s husband and Frank hadn’t
gotten word yet of what had happened right above their heads. And
Allen, well, he was young and probably not all that civically
minded. He was basically still a kid. At the first sign of drama,
he’d probably high-tailed it out the back door.

“She’s a well known philanthropist and over
80 years old. What possible justification could there be for
putting her in cuffs and shoving her into the back of a police
car?”

He inhaled in that way that told me I was
trying his patience. “She was not shoved. The cuffs are
protocol.”

“Protocol. For what?”

He gaze met mine, steady, solid, unwavering.
“Not your concern.”

I’d forgotten how frustrating he could be. I
balled my fist and counted in my head. I got all the way to five
before I couldn’t contain myself. “She’s—”

“Not your concern,” he said again. Then he
tipped his hat and strode to his truck.

I stood where he’d left me, flabbergasted and
annoyed as hell.

Rhonda was by my side before Peter’s door had
a chance to shut. “What does he think she did?”

I shook my head. “He said it wasn’t my
concern.”

“Seriously? Of course it’s our concern. We
were here.”

Another good point.

“Maybe Carol knows. She was in the kitchen
when Peter came in. He has to say what he’s arresting you for,
right? Before he can put you in handcuffs?”

With that in mind, we went to search out
Carol, who had gone back inside, along with the rest of the gang.
They were sitting around the table again, drinking coffee and
talking in low conspiratorial voices. When we came in, they all
took a sudden interest in rearranging cups and stirring sugar into
their drinks.

I felt my palms begin to sweat. It was like
walking into a slumber party late in junior high. You knew
immediately you were either the topic of conversation or the weak
link that couldn’t be trusted with day’s hottest gossip.

This time, I didn’t think I was the first,
which meant...

“I didn’t know Peter had any intention of...”
I looked around at the expectant faces. “He isn’t usually... I
couldn’t get him...”

Rhonda grabbed me by the arm. “What happened?
Why did they take Ethel?”

Yeah... that.

The women exchanged glances, conducting an
unspoken vote on how much they were going to reveal.

Carol stepped up, with a piece of quiche in
her hand. “Did you try Rose’s quiche? It’s eggless.”

Tempting as eggless quiche was, I knew when I
was being stonewalled. And so did Rhonda. We looked at each
other.

Martin, on the other hand, who had made his
way inside too, took the quiche and a refill on his coffee.

Oh the simplicity of being a man, and not
understanding that what women didn’t say was often much more
important than what they did.

And there was plenty not being said
today.

o0o

Two hours later, Rhonda and I had moved to
her shop to decipher what had happened.

“You could call George,” she suggested.

“I already tried. He’s off today.”

“Daniel?”

I rolled my eyes at my best friend for the
suggestion. “I will if I have to, but it really shouldn’t come to
that.” Information from Daniel came at a price. I needed to save it
for the really hard cases; an arrest that was made almost right in
front of me should not be one of those cases.

The problem was the “almost” and the fact
that Ethel’s crew seemed to have locked down any leaks quicker and
more completely than twenty plumbers armed with heavy duty
caulk.

“Carol’s husband?”

I shook my head. “You saw them sitting around
that table. Whatever happened, those women aren’t sharing it with
anyone, even their husbands.”

We sat in quiet for a minute, me staring out
the windows of Rhonda’s used bookstore at random pedestrians and
Rhonda thumbing through books looking for damage.

Our problem of what to do next was solved
when Daniel walked by the window and spotted me.

“Crap,” I said. “He’s coming in.”

With his normal smug look in place, he
stepped over a fallen stack of books and pulled out a notebook. “I
heard you were at Carol Kennedy’s when Ethel Monroe was
arrested.”

“Might have been.” I picked up a book and
followed Rhonda’s example, thumbing through it. “Someone wrote
notes in this one,” I commented, holding the book up.

“Put it in there.” She gestured to a
cardboard box already partially filled.

“Come on. I know you were there.” He looked
at Rhonda. “Both of you. I also know you’ve been driving Ethel
around a lot lately.” He looked back at me. “Which considering that
you were asking about Red’s murder...” He gave me a knowing
look.

Except I wasn’t knowing. I wasn’t knowing at
all.

“So?” Rhonda asked, obviously not being as
patient as I was.

Daniel looked at her as if her IQ was in the
single digits. “So... Frank Kelly was arrested for Red’s murder.
Frank was at Carol’s house yesterday and Ethel was too.”

I started to think Daniel was the one with
the one digit IQ. “Carol’s husband is friends with Frank
Kelly.”

“He might be, but what about Ethel? Now we
know how she pays for that expensive home and manages to keep up
her reputation as a charity maven.”

“Do we?” I asked, crossing my arms and trying
to look superior.

“If your boyfriend is to be trusted we
do.”

Would the reporter never quit talking in
riddles?

“Peter is very trustworthy.”