by Tegan Maher
When he looked up and saw me, he grinned and waved said meat cleaver.
"Hey, Noe! You hear to steal my help?"
Justin stopped in his tracks when he heard that. "Aww, do I have to go, Noelle?"
Where's the love? "Geez, brat, nice to see you, too. And yeah, you've gotta get to the farm and get your homework done. You have a spelling test tomorrow, too. Besides, Earl and Bobbie are gonna be slam-busy tonight because Sarah's off."
Truth be told, I was glad he was bummed to have to leave. That meant he was happy with them, which meant all was going as I planned. I reminded myself of that before I let it hurt my feelings that he didn't want to come with me.
"Git your butt on outta here," Earl said, but there wasn't any bite to it. "Can't have no delinquents runnin' around here. Get your learnin' done. If you get an A on your test tomorrow, we'll go muddin' Thursday night when I'm off."
Justin's face lit up like he'd just won the lottery. "Can I drive?"
Earl pretended to consider for a minute. "You can steer. You gotta be able to reach the pedal and see out the windshield at the same time afore ya can take clear over."
"Deal!" He started to run to the back to get his stuff but slowed down when Earl cleared his throat and raised a brow.
I smiled. "You've about got him trained. Be careful or he'll be running the place."
Earl was gruff when he said, "That's the plan, girlie. He's a good boy. Things go the way we hope, the place'll be his someday. Reckon he may as well start learnin' the ropes now."
Neither of us was much for sentiment, but for Earl to even think about somebody else running his baby, he was already in deep. I crossed my mental fingers that it all went off without a hitch.
Instead of embarrassing us both by saying something mushy, I shook my head. "I see how you are. I work here for almost five years and all I get is a hard time. He floats in here and within three months, he's inheriting the place. Great job not playin' favorites."
He snorted. "Shee-it. If I left this place to you, you and Rae'd turn it into another frou-frou place that sells fancy coffee. Why you'd prolly use my baby out back to make some kinda cupcake or somethin'. Can't be turnin' my smoker over to nobody that don't appreciate the craft."
Hmm. Barbecued cupcakes ... bacon cupcakes! That was so gonna be a thing the next time I baked.
"Yeah, yeah," I said. "Where's Bobbie Sue?"
"She ran Coralee and Alyse up some lunch. You may as well hang out and wait for her. You eat yet today?" He frowned and gave me the once-over. "You're gettin' skinny. I knew it. You slow down workin' here and I ain't feedin' ya, so you ain't eatin' enough. I'll make you a plate."
I laughed. "I just ate a whole cheeseburger up at the Cat. And all the fries, too." I did preen a little about the skinny comment even though he didn't mean it as a positive thing.
"Still," he grumbled, "I'll send ya home with some ribs and the fixin's for y'all’s supper."
Arguing with him would be like arguing with a post, and it would hurt his feelings, so I said thank you. Besides, his ribs were the bomb-diggity and I didn't feel like cooking. I'd take it.
I walked back to catch Justin before he gathered all his stuff to let him know we weren't quite ready to leave, then went up front to start setting up for the dinner rush for Bobbie and Louise, the other waitress. She'd started a month or so before when Max—her dad—was murdered, and she and her husband had moved back home from Atlanta to be closer to her mom. Louise's story is another long one that, hopefully, you've already read.
I was slicing lemons and Justin had gone back to helping Earl after he'd brought all his stuff up front so it was handy when Bobbie Sue rushed through the door, her cheeks flushed.
"Hey Bobbie—"
"You ain't gonna believe what just happened," she said, cutting me off. "Roberta just got busted stealin’ the collection-plate kitty!"
My jaw about hit the floor. Roberta was a rotund woman in her sixties, and was one of the most pious women I knew. That also meant that she was occasionally—read always—self-righteous, but she prided herself on the time and money she donated to the church and various other charities around town.
Not that I'd say her actions didn't come from the heart, but I did believe the added gossip she managed to pick up between the various places was a bonus for her. She was a major contributor to the Clip N Curl presses and spent at least a little bit of time there nearly every day. Surely she was talking about another Roberta.
"You gotta be kidding. Roberta? You mean head-of-the-ladies'-auxiliary Roberta?"
"Yes, head-of-the-ladies'-auxiliary Roberta. Roberta Shipman. Pastor Gabriel stopped her on her way out to ask her a question and she dropped her wallet. It busted open—you know how much she crams in that thing—and all the money from yesterday's plate fell out!"
"Wait, how did he know it was the money from the plate?" Cash is cash, though I guess there'd probably be a lot of ones. Unless Old Lady Ostermeyer was there. She was ninety-two, and she never failed to drop in a fifty at the beginning of the month, then make the collection guys stand there while she made change.
"Because he'd just gone to the safe to get money to pay the lawn guys and it was gone. She hadn't made it out of the building yet, and when she dropped the wallet and all that cash went flying, she confessed!"
That made no sense whatsoever to me, and I said so.
"Sugar, this here's Keyhole Lake. It ain't gotta make sense to make it so."
Truer words.
CHAPTER TEN
Bobbie Sue hadn't gotten any more information than that. Apparently, the hens at the beauty parlor were clucking too fast to make much sense of it all. She did get that Roberta had confessed to the preacher, then claimed she didn't know what had happened, other than the devil must have made her do it.
Since that wasn't an acceptable legal defense even in Keyhole, she'd insisted on calling the police on herself.
The preacher tried to sit her down and talk some sense into her, but all she'd say was that she'd had these horrible thoughts all day long, and that's all she knew. She said she didn't even remember taking the money until she saw it tumble out of her wallet and she recognized her own pen mark on top of a fifty. People were starting to trickle in, so I called for Justin and we left. Louise was coming as we were going.
She said hey to Justin then turned to me. "Did you hear?"
I nodded. "I did. But just the basics."
"That's all I got, too." She replied. "Damned shame, though."
"That it is. I can't believe it. Have a good night," I told her as we pushed out the door.
"Girls are weird," Justin said as we stepped out into the chilly afternoon.
I scoffed. "Boys are weirder."
"Nuh-huh, girls are definitely weirder. You talk in code. How are we boys ever supposed to understand you?"
Thinking back over the last couple of minutes to figure out what he was talking about, I laughed. I guess from just about anybody other than a local woman's standpoint, the few words that Louise and I exchanged wouldn't have made any sense at all. I gave him a teasing shove. "Okay, I'll give it to you this time. That's a pretty weird girl-thing."
"Thank you," he said, then turned his attention toward the truck.
We stopped in at Brew to say goodbye to Rae. Okay, fine—maybe I wanted to tell her what I'd heard and see if she had any more details, too. What separated Rae and I from the rest of the town jaw-flappers was that we only talked amongst ourselves and we understood that we had to take everything we heard with a grain of salt. And we didn't even repeat what we knew was fact. Much.
Speaking of, I called Hunter to fact-check as soon as we got into the truck, after I'd loaded up the four bags of supper that Earl had insisted on making. Rae's was only a short distance away, but it was in the direction of home and I didn't want to leave the food for long. He didn't answer, but that wasn't unusual when he was working, so I shot him a text as I fired up the truck.
She was leaning aga
inst the counter tapping away on her phone when I walked in. Just as she looked up, my phone dinged with an incoming text and she grinned. "You can just ignore that; it was me. Did you hear about Roberta?"
I looked around to make sure nobody would overhear us, but the place was empty. She waved a hand. "It's almost four and it's been dead for the last hour. So, what did you hear? Have you talked to Hunter?"
As soon as she said it, my phone dinged again. As I fished it out of my pocket, I noticed Justin was fidgeting. I sighed; this was why I wasn't suited for parenthood. "Do you want a cookie, big guy?" I asked.
"No," he said, scuffing his shoe on the floor. "I wanna go ride like you said."
Guilt stabbed at me; I'd promised. "Okay, then. Let me grab an energy drink and we'll go." Rae had taken to keeping a pitcher of cold brew mixed with her energy blend. I pulled it out and held it up. "You want one?"
She nodded, so I pulled out our to-go cups and scooped in some ice. "What did you hear?" I asked while I was mixing them.
"Nothing much. Just that her wallet busted open and she spilled her guts as soon as the preacher asked her about it. Oh, and that she called the bank and cancelled checks that she'd written for the veterans memorial and to the animal shelter."
"Shut the front door!" I said. "No way did she do that. She prides herself on those donations. Shoot, she tells everybody about how she donates so much because the causes are so important to her."
"I know," Rae said. "I just talked to her this afternoon while I was getting my nails done and she was going on and on about how the memorial was going to look great with the extra benches around the area she was funding."
I finished our coffees and snapped the lids on, then checked my phone, hoping that last text had been from Hunter. It was, but he didn't have anything else to add that we didn't already know.
Saying as much, I called to Justin, who'd plopped down at one of the tables and pulled out his game. "C'mon brat," I said, grabbing a Coke out of the cooler for him. "I did promise we'd ride, so I'm sorry. Let's go get it done before it gets any colder."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The temperature was dropping like a stone and it was supposed to be in the forties that night, so the horses were fresh. In the couple of months Justin had been with us, he'd become quite the rider and was pestering me to move up from Ben, our old roping horse. That evening, though, even Ben was feeling his oats and threw in a couple of crow-hops when we galloped them out in one of the back pastures.
Since there was no running back to the barn allowed, we had time to talk once we were close to home again.
"So what do you think about living with Bobbie Sue and Earl?"
He shrugged one shoulder. "I don't know. Can I stay here when I want?"
"I think we can work something out, but we gotta get you settled, too. You're always welcome here, but you know as well as I do they're better suited to be parents than I am."
I kneed Missy, my paint horse, closer to Ben and touched Justin on the knee. He looked up at me and I was glad to see that his expression was thoughtful rather than sad. "Dad'd like 'em. Earl's a lot like Dad, really." He smiled. "He used to take me muddin' on his weekends off, but only if I did good in school."
"Did well," I said, correcting him.
"Did well," he repeated, smiling. "Dad used to do that, too."
We rode side by side for a while, each of us lost in our own heads. The sun was setting and it was getting downright cold; the horses' breaths plumed from their nostrils and they picked up the pace when the barn came in sight.
Justin glanced at me. "I reckon livin' with Earl and Bobbie Sue'd be okay, as long as I can still hang out here, too."
I reached over and chucked him on the shoulder. "You're not gettin' rid of us that easy! But it's up to Bobbie Sue and Earl when you come. If you're in trouble and they say no, then it's no."
He nodded. "Fair enough. And Noe?"
"Yeah, brat?"
"Thanks."
I crinkled my nose and smiled at him. "You're welcome."
Having that settled made me feel a ton better. I was 98 percent sure before then that he was okay with it, but I'd needed to hear him say it.
When we rode back into the yard, there was a blue car parked in front of the barn and Nikki, one of my boarders, was grooming Chuckles, her big gray gelding, in the aisle.
There was a hitching post on either side of the barn entrance, so Justin claimed one and I took the other. Once we had the saddles put away and Missy and Ben brushed down, Justin headed inside and I plopped down on an overturned bucket to talk to Nikki. We'd known each other since grade school and had gotten to be friends since she'd bought Chuckles.
"So did you hear all the crazy that went on today?" she asked.
"I did, and it's a shame. I can't say I saw that one coming."
Nikki dropped the brush and spritzed his tail with conditioner. "Me neither. Bless her heart. I mean, she's always ramblin' on about how much time and money she donates. Who'da thought she'd decide to take it all back?"
That was an odd way to look at it, but it made sense in a weird way. We shot the breeze about trivial personal happenings, then Hunter's truck rumbled up the driveway. Nikki's eyes sparkled. "Ooh. Sheriff's here. Somebody gettin' cuffed?"
I grinned at her and winked as he pulled beside the barn and climbed out. "Ladies don't kiss and tell."
She snorted. "Yeah, okay."
My own personal slice of tall, dark, and handsome was making his way toward us with a huge smile on his face. I knew I was wearing the same goofy expression, but I couldn't help it. He bent down and gave me a quick peck, then patted Chuckles and nodded to Nikki.
"You girls look like you were up to no good."
Nikki barked out a laugh and cocked her brow at me. "Now that's a good detective."
"We were just talkin' about Roberta," I said to him, expecting him to clam up like he usually did. I was surprised when he shook his head.
"I've never seen the like. By the time I got there, she was cryin' and sayin' the devil musta made her do it, but Gabriel said when she first spilled the wallet, she started spewing nonsense. Sayin' it was all hers and that she'd given way more than that over the years and wanted it back. According to her cell log, she called and cancelled the checks for the memorial and the animal shelter, then booked a cruise."
Nikki drew her brows together. "Like I said to Noelle a little bit ago—it's like she was doin' the exact opposite of what she loves to tell people about."
A little bell went off in the back of my mind. First Kirsten, who started doing what she really wanted, which was the exact opposite of what she wanted to do. Now Roberta, who did the opposite of what she claimed she loved to do.
Oh. My brain started tumbling the pieces around. Kirsten didn't eat because she was afraid of social punishment. She didn't care about being fat, per se. She didn't want to be called fat. So, when she grabbed the charm, it loosed her inhibitions and she did what she truly wanted.
Then there was Roberta. She donated a lot of money, then bragged about it, so what if she only did it to look good, too? What if what she really wanted to do was spend her money all on herself, but donated it so she could look good?
But where would Shelby have run into Roberta at? Holy crap on a cracker. If this was magical, we needed to slap a lid on it now.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ten minutes later, Shelby hadn't texted me back and I was starting to pace. I called for Addy, who'd taken to hanging out with some of the other post-geriatric crowd down at the movie theater on Sunday nights.
"What's got your knickers twisted this time, girl? They're showing Grownups in the oldies-but-goodies theater tonight and there's only ten minutes left. Can it wait or is somebody dyin'?"
I shook my head. "No, nobody's dyin', at least not right now."
"Well then, I'll be back in about fifteen minutes," she said, then winked out.
Hunter laughed. "You know she's right. There's nothing you can do a
bout it right now anyway, so you may as well sit down and eat. Shelby and Cody are closing the clinic for Will tonight so he could watch the game, so they're probably just hosing down the kennels or something."
Of course, he was right. The two of them burst through the front door five minutes later. To keep my mind and hands busy, I'd heated up the supper that Earl'd packed us, and Justin helped us set the table. Well, if you counted putting out paper plates and plastic cutlery as setting the table.
While they went and washed up, I opened a bottle of wine and poured a healthy glass. I'd called Rae and asked her to come help figure this out. Plus there was a ton of food that needed eaten.
She showed up right behind the kids and poured herself a glass of wine. Matt, a veteran I'd met a couple of months ago when I found him living in one of our cabins by the lake, wandered in. He'd moved into the apartment above the barn and helped out tremendously.
"I thought I smelled barbecue," he said, grabbing a beer from the fridge.
I grinned. "Typical man. You can smell smoked meat from a mile away. Pop a squat; there's enough here for an army.”
He raised a brow and glanced at the table as he pulled out a chair. "I can tell you from experience that you're stretchin' it, but not by far."
In two shakes, we were tearing up the ribs like a bunch of turkey vultures on roadkill.
After we'd taken the edge off and slowed down a little, I explained my theory, or at least my suspicion. "I don't know how, but it seems that they both acted on what they wanted to do most. Though I don't know for sure about Roberta until I've had a chance to talk to Coralee and the girls to see whether she makes all those donations for appearances or out of the goodness of her heart."
"I vote for appearances," Shelby said around a mouthful of garlic bread that she'd used to soak up the bean sauce. "We get donations in all the time at the clinic. Most of the time, it's either left on the porch or else folks just come in, drop it off, shoot the breeze a little, then leave. I never hear another word about it after that. She makes sure she comes when it’s likely to be the busiest and makes a point of talkin’ loud."