Loose Lips (27 page)

This Rachel, this gun–toting Cutie was much
more down to business and brusque than any I had met before.

“Well, we’ll have to make the best of it I
guess,” she said with only a shade of regret. “Would have been so
much cleaner with just the two of them here.” She stared at me with
obvious disappointment. “I thought one of those
WIL
ers
would be the problem, but I guess there’s a reason you keep finding
bodies. You really might want to rethink your nosiness. Not that
that will be much of an issue after tonight.”

I grimaced.

“Hmm,” she continued. “Who kills who? Kristi
kills Cindy, don’t you think? And then, driven mad by all that
Christian guilt, shoots herself in the head? Then what... no.
Kristi kills you
and
Cindy, then kills herself.”

She seemed to mull this over a second. “I’ll
have to think about why you’re here. Would you rather be a hero or
a co–conspirator? Trying to talk Cindy out of her life of crime or
jumping in on it yourself?”

Since my goal was to be around to tell my
own tales, I didn’t voice an opinion. Instead, I felt around for
something I could use to create a diversion. My fingers brushed
Kiska’s fur. Briefly I considered stepping on his foot or
completing some other outrage that would be sure to send him
shrieking in objection, but I worried that this would only get him
shot first, and that I could not risk.

My next thought was how I could get him out
of the mansion safe and sound.

The nearest exit was in the butler’s pantry,
which was right next door, but for practical use right now, a
million miles away.

“Well, we might as well get on with it.”
Rachel pulled a bag off her shoulder and waved it at Cindy. “I
think this is what you were looking for.”

Without warning, Rachel let the bag fly.
Cindy, apparently even more flummoxed by the situation than I was,
did nothing. As in nothing. As in let the bag smack her full force
in the face.

She dropped her flashlight, the bag dropped
to the floor, and Kiska lunged toward her and whatever forbidden
treat he thought might be inside the bag, pretty much all at the
same time.

Chaos ensued.

Driven by instinct, honed by years of owning
an eat–anything dog, I charged after him, tripping over Kristi in
the process. She screamed. Cindy cursed and Rachel fired the gun.
At what or who, I had no idea.

I wasn’t bleeding or in pain, or maybe I was
just so hyped up on adrenaline that I didn’t realize that I’d been
hit. Either way, I kept going, crawling across Kristi and then
using the kitchen cabinet to pull myself back to my feet.

Ahead of me, there was the sound of someone
running and knocking things aside. Cindy, probably, leaving us all
behind as she made her way back to the butler’s pantry and
freedom.

I could only hope my dog followed.

Rachel cursed.

Let her. I had a bag to retrieve. I slogged
forward, blindly knocking things off the kitchen cabinets and
kicking things in my path. My foot hit the bag.

Relief
.

Behind me, something clicked. My world
froze.
The gun
.

I dropped to the ground as silently as I
could and prayed Rachel would think I was still standing.

She yelled, “Stop it. You’re messing
everything up.”

“Well, fancy that!” A new voice
proclaimed.

Something boinged, like a cartoon coyote
running smack dab into a giant gong.

o0o

As it turns out, the coyote/gong metaphor
wasn’t all that off. When the lights came on, they showed Betty
wearing a feather–trimmed nightie and holding the top of the
Moroccan brass tray table that had held perfume bottles on my first
visit.

Rachel was on the floor, and Phoebe was
standing over her with the gun.

Laura, outfitted in night vision goggles,
was on the phone, calling 911, I hoped.

I was done keeping things from Peter. No
matter what the cost.

For now.

The police arrived within seconds. As it
turned out, Phoebe had shown some sense that the rest of us hadn’t
and had called them as soon as she heard the shot. Before Betty and
Laura had rushed inside to the rescue.

Now we were all, minus Cindy, who had gotten
outside before the police arrived, standing around the front yard,
which was lit up as bright as noon, thanks to headlights and
spotlights and every other kind of light that the Helena P.D. had
on hand.

Peter arrived, looking fresh, as if he’d
expected a wake–up call at 4 a.m. to once again ride herd for his
girlfriend.

And maybe he had.

He walked toward me, blanket in hand,
wrapped it around me with a reassuring slight squeeze and kept
moving to where Klein was busy looking bored as ever while
questioning an elated–looking Betty.

Cindy reappeared, walking around the outside
of the lights and obviously trying to appear as if she hadn’t been
an integral part of everything that had just transpired. When she
spotted me, she strode as quickly as she could to my side.

“What happened to the bag?” she mumbled.

My hand resting on Kiska’s ruff, I didn’t
answer.

“I dropped my flashlight too. It has my
prints on it, but I can probably explain that. With it being in the
mansion, I could have used it at any point in the past.”

I wasn’t sure if she was trying to reassure
me or herself. Either way, it didn’t matter.

I was done with the Deeres for a while.

She babbled on some more, but I was in my
happy place where modern–day Deeres didn’t exist.

Finally, she made it so I couldn’t ignore
her. “Are you listening? Did they bring the bag out yet? Do you
know what happened to it?”

George walked by and, apparently hearing her
less–than–controlled tone, stopped. “Is there a problem?” he
asked.

Cindy paled and took a step back.

I stepped forward. “Cindy forgot something
in the house that she wants retrieved. It’s a bag—”

Cindy gasped and turned, ready to bolt.

George glanced at me. I raised my brows.
“It’s
important
to her.”

With a nod, George took my clue and moved
with a grace I wouldn’t have expected from someone of his build,
cutting off Cindy’s exit. “Well, then, let’s just go see if we can
find it.”

Cindy’s mouth snapped shut and her eyes
gleamed. I was pretty sure if she could reach me, the police would
easily have something much more serious to charge her with than
whatever petty drug charge went along with baking and selling pot
brownies.

Eventually, the police got around to me. I
told my story, my whole story, even the part about being with Cindy
when she broke into the mansion the first time. Peter stood by,
listening and looking enigmatic as ever.

When I was done, and Klein had moved on,
Peter grabbed the front of the blanket and pulled the edges closer
together, over my chest. Then he leaned down and pressed a kiss to
my forehead. “When are your parents getting here?” he asked.

Surprised by his question, I hesitated.
“July. Why?”

“I’m trying to decide if having them here
will help keep you busy and out of trouble, or if having more of
you here means I need to tell the department to defer all vacation
requests until after they’re gone.”

Then, deadpan as ever, he walked off.

o0o

Three weeks later, life was just about back
to normal, or as normal as my life gets. Rhonda, Betty, Phyllis,
the
WIL
ers (except Kristi) and I were at Cuppa Joe’s
waiting to hear word on who had won the window display contest. The
judging had been two hours earlier, and I was feeling good about
it.

Cindy had tried to get back all the things
that she or Darrell had loaned me, but Darrell had gotten back in
town and said a deal was a deal. I wasn’t completely sure what deal
he meant and was suspicious it had more to do with what I now knew
about his
hobbies
than honor among friends or frenemies,
but I didn’t argue. The Deeres had put me through enough. I figured
I’d earned the loan of Ruby’s painting and other items.

The timing had been good too. With the news
of the prostitution ring that had been run out of the Caffeine
Cartel hitting local, state, and even some national news, I’d had a
lot of people come to the store specifically to see my ode to the
oldest profession.
And
to meet Betty, who’d been built up
as some kind of folk hero with her brass tray of justice.

“Too bad Kristi didn’t come,” Betty offered.
“Having a real life madam in the display would have really been
something.”

As if the two of us, looking like extras
from Miss Kitty’s saloon in
Gunsmoke
, wasn’t enough. I
glanced down at my naked cleavage and took a sip of my latte.

“So, she was running the prostitution ring?”
Rhonda asked. “What about the pot? Was she part of that too?”

I shook my head. I’d worked a trade with
Bev, the reporter, and managed to get what information I didn’t
have filled in. “The prostitution was all Kristi and Rachel. Missy
had wanted to keep things more in the R rating... pot brownies and
Mardi Gras beads.”

“Without the beads,” Laura added.

Betty adjusted her bustier, pulling her
“girls” higher. “Cash is a fair substitute.”

“Missy started the business, didn’t she?”
Rhonda asked.

“No, it was Kristi. They think she has
similar
interests
in other states. But then Missy had
second thoughts, on the prostitution part anyway. She thought
adding in the brownies would bring in enough money. Kristi and
Rachel didn’t agree. Plus, they were worried that Missy’s ventures
were bringing in too much attention.”

Rhonda posed a question to the group. “Do
you think Kristi was in on the murder?”

There was a wide variety of headshakes and
nods.

I wasn’t sure, but I was leaning toward
guilty, at least to some degree. “Missy was a problem for both
Rachel and Kristi, and I can’t really see Rachel doing that on her
own.” I also couldn’t see Kristi doing the deed. “My guess is she
put Rachel up to it and then tried to cover her tracks.” Which,
obviously, Rachel didn’t appreciate.

“Well,” Betty said. “Kristi isn’t being
charged with it. At least not yet.”

She also hadn’t been released on bail. Her
possible
interests
in other states had been listed as a
reason for the denial, at least for now.

“What about the stocking and all the phone
calls trying to frame you?”

“I think Rachel did a lot of that. Some
under Kristi’s guidance. Some not. She must have found the pill
bottle when she killed Missy and put it in my Jeep that day when I
saw her outside the B&B. The stocking had to be her too. She’s
the one who was
seeing
Darrell. So she must have put them
in the box and called the police once she thought they would have
been delivered.”

“She did come by that day,” Betty added.

“But Kristi came by too and took the
stocking back,” Phoebe insisted. “She had to know it was
there.”

Phyllis spoke for the first time. “She took
it back. Maybe she was trying to stop Rachel from framing Lucy.”
She took a sip of her coffee, and then set her hands primly onto
her lap. The revelation that her fellow
WIL
er had been
behind the prostitution ring had not set well with my partner. I
didn’t think the prostitution part bothered her as much as feeling
that she’d been taken in by Kristi’s act. Which probably explained
why she, at least, was a fan of giving Kristi a break.

Another snort from Laura. “But that means
she had to know that Rachel left the stocking, which means she had
to know that Rachel killed Missy.
At the very least
.”

With that, an unsettled silence fell over
us. None of us, with the possible exception of Betty, seemed all
that happy with the outcome of our recent adventures.

Joe stepped into the middle of the room and
waved a manila envelope, quieting the rest of the room too.

“First,” he said, looking around at the
packed room. “I want to thank everyone who stood by me. Who
believed in me and who fought to make things right. With that in
mind, I have an announcement of my own. A new drink. Full cream,
full sugar, and full caffeine. If this doesn’t loosen you up,
nothing will.”

He carried over a cup and set it down in
front of me. “Not,” he said with a smile. “That I think you need
loosening up.”

I flushed. I thought he had forgiven me, but
I hadn’t known for sure.

He paused for a moment, but then moved back
to center stage. “Now, for the winner!”

Someone in the crowd made the sound of a
drum roll.

“The winner is...”

I held my breath. I knew I was going to win.
The picture of Ruby had just been too great and too timely. And I
hadn’t dressed up in this gut–squeezing costume for nothing.

Joe cleared his throat.

“The Castle, for their live demonstration of
19th century sheep herding.”

My breath caught and not because of the
corset.

Sheep
?

“They serve food. Is that even legal?”
Rhonda asked.

I didn’t know. I was too busy processing two
hard–to–swallow facts: There would be no free B&B stay for my
parents, and Kiska and I had been beaten by sheep.

Again.

-The End-

Thanks so much for taking the time to read Loose
Lips! If you enjoyed it, I would really appreciate your help in
keeping the series going by posting a review online.

Lucy, Kiska, and I thank you!

And big thanks to The Write Friends who allowed me to
steal their names (and Abi's) for the WILers. All similarities stop
there.

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