On Pins and Needles

by Victoria Pade

  “Then we shouldn’t keep her waiting anymore, should we?”

  “No, I guess we shouldn’t.”

  Was she mistaken or did he sound reluctant to get on their way?

  “Don’t you want to go?”

  “It’s not that. I’ve just had another long day already and I’m feeling the urge to play hooky with a pretty girl. I’ll get over it. Come on.”

  Megan wasn’t altogether certain that she was the pretty girl he was referring to but the offhand comment still managed to re-light that flicker in her.

  Up and down again. Why was it that she couldn’t be with him without riding an emotional teeter-totter?

  But Megan didn’t have an answer for that as she followed Josh’s lead to the front door he held open for her. He repeated the courtesy at the passenger side of his patrol car, then got behind the wheel himself.

  “So you still didn’t tell me how old Mabel Murphy is,” Megan said as they headed for the main road.

  “Ninety-three, I believe.”

  “And she lives on her own?”

  “Sturdy stock is what she attributes it to. The farm has all gone fallow now, she can’t work it of course. But she seems to do a pretty good job of taking care of herself.”

  The Murphy place was Megan’s nearest neighbor so that was about all the time they had for conversation before Josh pulled up in front of a farm house similar to Megan’s. The white paint was peeling here and there, but otherwise it was in better repair than hers.

  The front door opened as Megan and Josh got out of the car, telling them that Mabel had been watching for them the same way Megan had been watching for Josh just shortly before.

  “Is that you, Megan?” a strong voice called from the doorway.

  Apparently Josh had told her he wasn’t coming alone.

  “It’s me,” Megan confirmed, preceding Josh up the porch steps to the door.

  Mabel Murphy seemed to have shrunk since the last time Megan had seen her. She’d never been a large woman but now she was so tiny and so frail that, even at barely five feet four inches herself, Megan towered over her.

  “Oh, let me get a good look at you,” the elderly woman ordered once Megan and Josh were in the entryway with the door closed behind them. “Didn’t you grow up to be beautiful!”

  Megan thanked her for the compliment, taking in her neighbor’s sparse, cottony white hair curled into a round bubble and the tissuey skin of her map-lined face. But Mabel’s brown eyes were still spark ling with life in spite of it all and that was what made Megan say, “You’re looking good.”

  Mabel flapped a fragile hand in the air to shoo away the very thought. Then she said, “I hope you still like pot roast, Josh. And, Megan, if memory serves, you loved my potato patties and the snicker doodles I made for dessert,” she ended in a whisper, as if Megan’s parents might be lurking around the corner to forbid her the sweets.

  Megan shot Josh a glance that said I didn’t know we were eating here.

  But apparently neither did he because from behind the elderly woman he shrugged elaborately and held both hands out—palms upward—to relay that this was news to him, too.

  Then he said, “I didn’t mean for you to cook for us, Mabel. If I hadn’t been held up we would have been here this morning.”

  “Oh I know, I know. But after your second phone call to let me know you wouldn’t be here until late afternoon I thought, gotcha! Now I can rope ’em into stayin’ to eat with an old woman.”

  They all laughed at her candor.

  Then she added, “Unless you can’t and then don’t worry about it. I’ll just have leftovers.”

  But it was clear she was lonely and eager for the company.

  Josh must have seen it, too, because he was quick to say, “I know I don’t have any other plans. If Megan does I can take her home and come back.”

  Megan liked him all the more for that and for not so much as hesitating to accept the invitation as if it pleased him no end. But she tried not to let it show.

  “I can stay, too,” she informed them. “As long as you’re sure it’s no trouble.”

  Mabel waved away that notion, too. “Let’s go into the kitchen and have a glass of wine while I get things ready. You know, they’re saying wine’s good for you now. But I’ve known it all along. It’s what got me where I am today. And don’t go tellin’ me you’re on duty, Josh. Dinner time means work’s done.”

  Except that it was barely dinner time by anyone’s standards. But he didn’t point that out. He merely said, “Yes, ma’am,” and winked at Megan over the other woman’s head.

  Mabel led them down a hall that ran beside the staircase but she stopped short a few feet from the archway that connected the kitchen up ahead.

  “Remember this, Megan?” she asked, pointing to an old-fashioned, seated hall-tree built like a wooden throne with an etched, oval mirror in the upper half, ornate hooks on either side of it, and arms that were curved into loops that held umbrellas in one and antique walking sticks in the other.

  “I do remember it,” Megan admitted. “My dad made it for you.”

  “Fine crafts man, your dad.” Mabel bent over and raised the lid on the seat. “Even has a little hiding place here. It’s where I keep the love letters my Horace sent me when I was a girl,” she confided as if it were a great secret.

  Then she set the lid back down and adjusted the needle point cushion on it. “Is your dad still doing woodwork like this?”

  “Not a lot. He left all his big tools here when we left and we were never in one place long enough for him to start up another workshop.”

  “That’s a shame,” Mabel said as they went the rest of the way down the hall to the kitchen.

  Once they were there the smells of pot roast and potatoes greeted them as Mabel poured three jelly glasses full of wine and ordered Megan and Josh to sit at the already set table while she sliced the meat.

  It wasn’t until they were eating—Megan quietly by passing the meat and dining on salad, potatoes and bread—that Mabel’s questions about Megan’s family dwindled. When they did she angled a glance toward Josh.

  “So you have some things you want to ask me, do you?” the elderly woman said straight out.

  “Great meal,” Josh complimented rather than immediately answering, pointing his fork at his plate and sounding as if he’d never tasted anything so good.

  Then he took another bite of the succulent roast, chewed and swallowed and made a con tented cat face before he finally explained the discovery in Megan’s backyard. “A skeleton, did you say? Just next door?”

  “Don’t get alarmed,” Josh was quick to tell her. “This isn’t some thing that just happened. It’s been there for the past eighteen years. We’re thinking the man’s name was Pete Chaney, that he might have been a drifter who passed through here.”

  “A drifter named Pete Chaney,” Mabel repeated, obviously thinking about it.

  “I need to know if you recognize the name or if you remember anything about someone who might have been around then. Anything at all.”

  “There’ve been a lot of drifters through Elk Creek over the years. Farm hands. Ranch hands. And eighteen years ago is a long time.”

  “Buzz Mar tin dale thought he recalled somebody being around about then who bragged that he owned some kind of valuable coins. Does that help?”

  Mabel scratched her wattled neck with one arthritic finger. “What kind of coins?”

  “I don’t know. That’s all Buzz remembered—the rumor of them. He never saw them and they didn’t turn up with the rest of Pete Chaney’s things. I called Buzz again today with the name of the man. He said it was vaguely familiar but he couldn’t even be sure if that was the name that went with the coin story.”

  After another moment of what appeared to be Mabel scanning her memory, she finally shook her head. “I’m sorry, Josh. I thought my brain cells were in better shape than the rest of me, but I’m drawing a blank. But then you can’t really go by me too
much. I never had a lot of contact with anybody just passing through. Even when we hired a stranger to work here it was only for a day or two and Horace dealt with them, I didn’t. He kept them away from me and the house just in case they were up to no good somehow, so I never really got to know any of them.”

  “What about somebody around the Bailey place next door? Do you remember anything about Megan’s family having someone around just before they left town? Maybe he was one of the people they took in or a friend or relative?”

  “The Baileys were always taking in somebody.” Mabel cast an apologetic glance at Megan and then added, “Horace and I thought the world of the Baileys them selves, but Horace was as leery of those folks they’d take in as he was of any strangers he had to hire around here. He always had me keep my distance from them, too. The strangers, I mean, not the Baileys. So I never got to know who was over there, either.” Mabel made it sound as if she might have liked to.

  Then she shrugged a bony shoulder and said, “I’m not being much help, am I?”

  “That’s all right,” Josh assured her. “Just keep thinking about it. Maybe some thing will come to you later on. A comment Horace might have made. Some thing.”

  “I’ll do that. I’ll even go through Horace’s old papers, see if I can find that Pete Chaney name in any of it. Maybe there’ll be some kind of clue there.”

  The elderly woman seemed intrigued by the mystery now and it made both Josh and Megan smile.

  “Every little bit helps, Miss Marple,” Josh said, teasing her.

  “Maybe you should make me your deputy,” she joked in return.

  From there conversation centered on people and events around town, finishing out the meal and taking them through cleanup—a chore Josh and Megan insisted on doing while Mabel had a cup of tea at the table.

  Then, with a promise from Josh to come back for a game of gin rummy when he was out from under this case, he and Megan said good-night and left.

  “Is pot roast and gin rummy with little old ladies in your job description?” Megan asked as Josh drove away from the Murphy place.

  “Perks, those are the perks,” he said as if he meant it. “It’s nice of you.”

  “It’s no big deal,” he demurred gruffly, obviously un comfortable with the praise. “I’d rather do that than have my only contact with people be writing them traffic tickets or arresting them.”

  “I thought cops liked to give traffic tickets and arrest people,” she joked to give him a hard time.

  “Not this cop,” he said with a hard stare out of the corner of his eye.

  “Is that why you don’t wear a gun? So you can be the friendly cop rather than the intimidating cop?”

  “That and that I don’t really have a need for one most of the time.”

  “Why did you want to be sheriff?” Megan asked, drinking in the sight of a profile so striking it could have adorned Roman coins.

  “There were financial reasons, for one. You know my family’s spread is not the biggest in the county. All but Devon work the place—”

  “What does Devon do?”

  “He became a veterinarian and stayed away.”

  “Ah. Sorry to interrupt. Go on with what you were saying.”

  “I was saying that the rest of my brothers and I work the ranch but we all do other things to supplement the income and to save so we can expand. When the sheriff’s job opened up I thought, why don’t I do that? It’s full-time pay but hardly full-time work hours.”

  “You’ve seemed to put in full-time work hours since I met you.”

  “Sure, but when I’m not tracking down eighteen-year-old crimes I generally have at least part of every day free to work the ranch. As long as I keep my pager and my cellular phone handy so Millie can reach me if the need arises there’s no reason for me to be in town all the time.”

  “Okay, so you wanted to be sheriff for the money and short hours. But that was only for starters. Why else did you want to do it?” she prompted.

  “I like being involved, helping out, really participating in the community and making a difference. Protecting and serving—if that doesn’t sound too hokey. I know from the activist tree-hugger perspective I’m the Man and that’s a bad thing, but around here that’s not how I’m looked at,” he said, getting in a jab of his own.

  He was right, though. Frequently her parents referred to the police in the negative and viewed them as champions of the environmental of fenders who hauled the protestors off to jail for the smallest infraction.

  But Megan didn’t want to confirm Josh’s presumption of what her family thought of law enforcement so she didn’t say anything at all.

  She didn’t fool Josh, though. When the short drive from Mabel’s house came to an end and he pulled up in front of Megan’s house, he turned off the engine, swiveled in his seat so he was angled in her direction and said, “I hit the nail on the head, didn’t I? I’m the big, bad Man.”

  He was a big man all right, but Megan had difficulty seeing anything bad in him.

  Not that she’d let him know that.

  “Any protests or demonstrations that I’ve ever been a part of were peaceful and orderly. But I have had occasion to think that the cops watching us with an eagle eye instead of going after the real of fenders were on the wrong side.”

  “Um-hmm. Well, here I’m generally considered to be on the right side. Nobody wants cars speeding through town or shop keepers ripped off or homes broken into or—”

  “Or bodies buried in the backyard,” she added for him.

  “Or bodies buried in the backyard. And I’m here to take care of it if it does happen.”

  “Along with eating pot roast and playing gin rummy with little old ladies,” Megan repeated. “I still think that’s above and beyond the call of duty and nice of you.”

  And he was no more comfortable with the comment now than he had been a few moments earlier.

  “Mabel’s a good ol’ girl,” was his only response.

  “And you’re a good man,” Megan said, realizing in that instant how true it was. She’d been raised with a be-kind-to-everyone-and-everything philosophy and it wasn’t always easy to find that attitude in other people. She appreciated it when she did. And she was pretty sure she just had. In Josh.

  But still he looked skeptical of her opinion of him. “Tell me what a good guy I am if it turns out I have to arrest your parents.”

  “You won’t,” Megan responded confidently. “They didn’t do anything.”

  Josh didn’t argue the point. He just arched a brow at her.

  Then he said, “I will give you a heads-up, though, if you’re interested.”

  “I am.”

  “I have orders to inter view your folks ASAP no matter what. That means if you don’t get through to them to tell them to call me for a phone inter view within the next twenty-four hours I’m to set the wheels into motion for Peruvian officials to take them off that ship you say they’re on and turn them over for extradition.”

  Megan rolled her eyes at that, unfazed by the threat. “I can put in another call but it won’t change anything. They still have to be contacted and then arrange to get back to me. And even if that takes longer than the next twenty-four hours they’re still bound to do that before you make it all the way through channels and red tape to have them extradited just for questioning. It’s a waste of your time.”

  “My superior doesn’t think so,” Josh said, his tone letting her know he agreed with her rather than with the higher-up. “Look, just between you and me, I wouldn’t be threatening extradition until I was one hundred percent sure I had a murder on my hands here. But like I said, I have orders. So do me a favor and spend tomorrow trying to get hold of your parents again.”

  “You don’t have to follow the orders, you know.”

  “Are you trying to incite in subordination?” he asked as if she amused him.

  “How’m I doing?”

  “You’re failing miserably.”

&nbs
p; “Even with all my charms at full force?” she joked.

  “Even with all your charms at full force,” he confirmed, but his smile and the heat coming from his eyes let her know he didn’t take her charms lightly.

  It occurred to Megan then that they were still sitting in his car, that she should either invite him in or say good-night.

  Of course she knew which of those she should do. But even so, she heard herself say, “Would you like to come in?”

  His gaze went from her to the house and back again as if he were tempted.

  But then he said, “I don’t think so. I’d better slip into my office while I can do it without drawing any attention and see if there’s anything I should take care of other than this case. I’ll walk you to the door, though.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said in a hurry, thinking that fate was offering her a reprieve from her own misdirected inclinations and that she should take it.

  But it didn’t matter because Josh opened his car door and got out as he said, “I want to.”

  Megan didn’t wait for him to come around to her side of the car. She got out on her own and headed for her front porch with Josh trailing behind her.

  “What will you be doing tomorrow while I’m trying to reach my parents again?” she asked then.

  “Why, will you miss me?” he teased.

  “No, I’m watch-dogging you to make sure you pay close enough attention to other leads, remember?”

  “I remembered, I was just hoping for more,” he said, feigning disappointment that she hadn’t played along. But since she hadn’t he conceded and answered her question about what he would be doing the next day. “My full agenda is to review and organize all the notes I took during yesterday’s inter views to make sure I didn’t overlook anything. I’ll be calling the people who actually made some sense to ask if they remember the name Pete Chaney. Plus I’m going to make copies of everything to give to my superior just to let him see that I’m as much on top of this as I can be. And I’m doing it all from home to avoid being distracted by drop-ins at the office. You won’t be missing anything.”

  Except being with him.

  But she didn’t say that either. She knew she shouldn’t have even thought it.