Paws and Effect

by Scarlett English

  My shoulders slumped. “They banned me. Well, not actually banned me, but Morris Man asked me not to come. He was worried about injuries and getting sued.”

  Her eyes crinkled in sudden humor. “You can’t be good at everything, Garrett.”

  “I’m never good at the things Ella wants me to do.” The last eight months had been one disaster after another.

  “Well,” Nan wiped her floury hands on the apron. “If I were you, I’d go around next door and ask her to go to Katie’s with you. Blame me,” she said airily.

  I jumped up and hugged her, then rushed out of the door with Watson on my heels. It was a good thing I hadn’t waited, because Ella was just starting her car, and I jogged over. “Garrett?” She greeted me and lowered her window. “Don’t tell me you changed your mind and decided to come.” But I could hear the teasing in her voice.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think assaulting someone would look good on my resume.” She grinned. “Actually, Nan has just told me about the dance next Saturday, and I wondered if you would like to come with me?”

  She paused and her face fell…along with my optimism.

  “I’m sorry,” I rushed out. “I totally understand if you’re going with…”

  “No,” Ella blurted out. “It’s not that at all. It’s just I heard…”

  Comprehension dawned. “Let me guess? A certain someone we both love as much as we would like to strangle sometimes told you that not only was I an expert, but that I was doing a demonstration to open the dance?”

  Ella chuckled. I loved her throaty laugh. “Maybe.”

  “Then I need to come clean and admit I have never uttered the word, ‘YeeHaw” in my life.” I hesitated. There was that one night in college…

  “So, you’re not an expert?” Ella brightened.

  “Ella,” I said in exasperation. “You’ve seen me dance.” She chuckled again. “Nan just told me to call Katie for some tips.”

  Ella nodded. “That’s a really good idea.”

  “But you would have to come with me. Please?” I pleaded.

  “Okay, if we’re going to do this, then we’d better team up,” she said.

  What an excellent idea.

  ****

  The next evening we arrived promptly at Katie’s mom’s at six-thirty. I had seen Katie a number of times, but to my shame, I didn’t know that much about her. Ella had told me on the way over Katie Jones had been a promising dancer, won a ton of awards, but then had given it up when her dad died to come home and look after her mom who had multiple sclerosis. She had a younger sister who was seventeen, and they both hoped she was going to medical school.

  Mrs. Jones greeted us and said she was going to watch TV in the bedroom, so we had the lounge to ourselves.

  “I can’t dance,” I said immediately.

  Katie nodded. “Can you walk?”

  I blinked. “Well…” I felt silly saying of course I could walk, but Katie took pity on me.

  “Line dancing is simple. I’m going to show you the basic ‘round’ steps so you can adapt them to anything, and then we’ll work on your demo.” She glanced at me. “Do you have a Stetson?”

  I might have gaped. “Umm.”

  “It’s okay. My mum has one that my dad wore for a fancy dress competition—costume party,” she added in case I didn’t know what she meant.

  “I’ve got an outfit I borrowed from Maisie,” Ella said.

  “Great,” Katie smiled. “Ella come here. Garrett, I’m going to be you. Watch and then it’s your turn.” She pressed a remote and Shania Twain came through the speakers.

  It didn’t look too difficult and I managed fine. I didn’t trip anyone up or break anything either, so I called it a win. “That’s not so bad.” I was actually quite pleased with myself.

  “Now we’re going to do the Cotton-Eyed Joe.”

  ”You mean those aren’t the same steps?” She shook her head. “No, those are just the basic line dance steps. If you’re going to open the dance, you need to make more of a statement.” I closed my eyes in defeat. I’d already made quite a statement in this village, and I wasn’t sure they were ready for anymore.

  “Now for this one I want you to stand together.” Ella stood beside me, both of us facing front.

  “Have you removed all the breakables?” I joked, but then Katie paused and moved a little ceramic dog off the corner table and put it on the windowsill. She turned her back to us.

  “Okay, hands in your pockets. Now stomp. Side kick to the right, back kick to the left. Triple step.”

  I copied and nearly tripped Ella up, but I got the hang of it. We had to do four beats of that plus another four shuffle steps which seemed simple. I heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Now we need to change it up,” Katie announced, and proceeded to teach us both variations of the touch and cross instead of stomping. Everything was going really well until I got a little enthusiastic and kicked Ella.

  I was mortified.

  She forgave me on the condition that we go to The Duck for a pint, which I was very happy to do. Not that I was drinking, but I’d be glad to take them. Katie joined us, which was nice. Maisie wasn’t there, and Eric was talking to a couple standing at the bar.

  “How’s Maisie?” Katie asked Ella. “I haven’t seen her all week.”

  Ella sipped her wine. “We’ll all be better when this is over.”

  “I’m surprised you and Lily haven’t got it solved,” Katie teased shooting me an apologetic look.

  “So am I,” I muttered and took a swallow of my Coke.

  “Who are your suspects?”

  I listened, mentally agreeing or disagreeing, as Ella repeated the list she and Lily had worked on the other day.

  “Teenage gangs are on your list?” Katie said doubtfully.

  “Roger told everyone he was investigating something to do with organized crime for a story. He mentioned in a journal he kept that he might be the targets for a gang.”

  “Well, the only teenager Roger hated was a boy named Matthew Greer, according to what Maisie told me.”

  My ears pricked up. “Any relation to Callum Greer?” Roberta had gone to see them about the gnome decapitation, and reported that Callum was very polite and both he and his brother denied going anywhere near “the witch’s garden.”

  “His younger brother. It’s so sad.”

  “What is?”

  “Old Mr. Greer took both the boys in when his daughter took an overdose. He’s just been in hospital having a hip replacement, but there’s complications I heard. Callum’s a sweetheart, but Matthew can be a bit wild.”

  “How did Roger know them?” Immediately knowing I would have to pass this on.

  “He did an exposé about the crisis in the NHS.” Katie glanced my way, but I nodded knowing the NHS stood for National Health Service or the UK’s health system. “He accused a doctor of falsifying records, or maybe it was someone on the orthopedics team. Everything was a right mess. One doctor was fired and two resigned in protest. It played havoc with the surgical lists, and Callum’s grandad had his surgery cancelled twice, and that’s what has caused his complications. Pneumonia, poor man.”

  “Poor Callum,” Ella sympathized. “I know Christopher Greer. He has a large business.”

  “What sort of business?” I wondered if having the hip replaced was affecting him financially.

  Katie grinned. “No, he keeps ferrets.”

  “And ‘business’ is the collective name,” Ella explained with a laugh. “He has a ‘business’ of ferrets. He brings them in to me for treatment at the clinic occasionally.”

  “It’s like a ‘pickle’ of hedgehogs.” I joined in. I think Mom had told me that one.

  “Or a ‘romp’ of otters,” Katie added.

  “So, Matthew Greer blamed Roger for his granddad’s ill health?” I took a drink of my Coke but my words had killed the mood a little. They both shrugged, but Katie and Ella knew I would have to report this, and Ella had a new name
to put on her whiteboard list.

  I toasted them both with my Coke. “Well, ladies, let’s drink up. It’s almost show time.”

  ****

  There had been plenty of times in my life when I had wished I was somewhere else. This was nowhere in the same class as some of the murder scenes I’d attended or my first post mortem as a rookie, but it was definitely up there with the hazing I got at college and having to find my way home after being driven ten miles away from the frat house and dumped.

  Naked.

  It was made a hundred times worse because nearly everyone who had seen last week’s humiliation was here again. Eric greeted me with a huge grin. The Duck was providing cheap wine and beer, but I’d already told Ella I was driving.

  We joined a table with Barry Hislop—a local farmer who bred Llamas—and his wife Mary. “No wine tonight, Sergeant?” he inquired innocently, and I chuckled along with everyone else.

  “I’m never drinking again,” I pronounced, clutching my bottle of Coke.

  “You should have spit it out,” Barry informed me knowledgably. “I can’t believe they didn’t tell you that.”

  “So, in a way, it wasn’t really your fault,” Mary sympathized.

  Yep, I thought, taking a gulp of my Coke, we’d just go with that.

  The room filled up steadily. Roberta and her sister were there. Henry was there and most of the rest of the village, it seemed. Nan had refused to make Ella promise no photographs, and then apparently Henry admitted he had agreed to record it on his phone.

  I couldn’t even find the words to express how grateful I was at that announcement. Not. Ella elbowed me, grinning. She could probably read my mind. “Not me this time.” I huffed. I still hadn’t forgiven her for the Morris dancing video.

  Eric was busy, and after a while I noticed Roberta helping him. I knew she’d “pulled a few pints in another life,” as she told me, so I wasn’t surprised. I went up to the bar to buy my round to find they’d run out of glasses. “I’ve got some in the van,” Eric said and Roberta held her hand up and caught the keys he tossed her.

  “I can get them,” I offered just as the background music stopped, and Yasmin stepped up to the microphone.

  “You’re on,” Roberta cackled evilly. “I’ll be two minutes. Don’t you dare start until I get back,” and she dashed away.

  I heaved a huge put upon sigh and walked back to my table listening to Yasmin thank everyone for coming to the event, and then adding dryly she was sure the evening’s entertainment was the reason why the tickets had sold out in days.

  I might have groaned, but I plastered on a smile and held my hand out to Ella when prompted, and we both walked to the center of the room.

  “Break a leg!” Someone shouted.

  “Don’t tempt me,” I muttered, but I smiled and prayed to any god listening to at least ensure I managed to stay upright.

  And that actually I liked both my legs—and Ella’s—undamaged.

  “You ready?” I whispered through gritted teeth.

  “Think of it as something you can tell your kids one day,” Ella whispered back. But that thought surprised me so much I nearly missed the first step and kicked when I should have stomped. Ella’s carefully angled elbow soon made me concentrate, and we had nearly completed the first full set to loud applause and without any incident when I saw Eric running back into the hall.

  “Garrett,” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Call an ambulance. It’s Roberta. Some idiot just ran her down!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Petronella

  The clouds were dark and heavy, promising rain as Sherlock and I went for our morning walk the next morning. It was not quite noon yet, and I had just sat down on the grass and taken off Sherlock’s lead to let him go for a run across the fields when I saw a familiar figure coming up the path. A sleek, black Lab was straining ahead and barking to run free, so Garrett bent over Watson to let him take off after Sherlock the way he wanted. Watson jumped and downed the big puppy with a flying tackle that made both of them roll around and then jump back to their feet to do it all over again. I laughed at their antics and then watched with appreciation as Garrett came toward me and lowered himself to the ground beside me. He looked tired and distracted though, and I touched his arm.

  “Roberta?” I asked softly, and he sighed. The scene at the W.I. the evening before had been chaotic, with Carmen jumping to her feet and giving a piercing shout of alarm after Eric’s startling interruption. There was a general rush toward the door, with everyone wanting to get outside and see what happened. Most everyone was greatly concerned about Roberta and not just wanting to ogle the scene, but see if they could somehow help. The young constable was a sweet young woman, and popular in the village. She always did her job efficiently and well, and was known by the children as a soft touch when it came to sweets. Her pockets were usually full of little wrapped ones, and after asking their mothers if it was all right, she was generous in handing out the bounty.

  It had come as a shock to find her in the parking lot, sitting up, but bent over in pain with her arm at an odd angle. She was pale, groaning softly, but still able to give Garrett a description of the car that had struck her, a silver sedan, with a driver who wore a dark, hooded sweatshirt. She had no idea if it had been a man or a woman driving, and no idea of a make or model. The paramedics arrived quickly and whisked her off to the hospital, while Garrett secured the scene and tried to find anyone who might have been a witness. Eric had arrived just in time to see Roberta violently struck and thrown over the hood of a “light-colored” vehicle. Roberta and the box of glasses she’d been carrying going straight up over the hood and bouncing off the windscreen, then slamming down on the road. But it was already twilight, and he had been too shocked and upset to notice much of anything else. He’d run over to check on her and found her conscious, bleeding from a few abrasions on her face and arm and already trying to sit up in the rubble of shattered plastic surrounding her. After wrapping his jacket around her and cautioning her to be still and not move any further, he’d come running back in to call for help.

  I’d taken charge of Roberta’s sister and her niece and saw them home, while Carmen went to the hospital along with Roberta, so I missed a lot of the aftermath. Lily was back home by then and came over to tell me that the news from the hospital in Newberry was that Roberta had a mild concussion and a broken forearm, both the ulna and the radius, which answered the question of how hard she’d been struck. From what I knew, it took a great deal of force to break both bones in the forearm, which meant the car must have been speeding. The one thing both Roberta and Eric remembered clearly was that the car had seemed to come out of nowhere.

  Garrett stretched out beside me, holding himself up with an elbow and stared out at the dogs playing and rolling in the grass. “Poor Roberta,” he said in answer to my question. “Both bones in her forearm are fractured so that means surgery. Luckily there were no bone fragments to break through the skin and create lacerations, which the doctor said could lead to a bigger chance of infection. Still she was in a lot of pain. It was hard to see her that way.”

  I touched his shoulder in sympathy, and he gave me a slight smile. “They’re going to wait until some of the swelling goes down, so her surgery is probably tomorrow. Her doctor told us all to go home, as she’s pretty heavily sedated. We can’t really question her until after she recovers a bit more.”

  “Who could have done such a thing, Garrett? To run her down like that and just take off?”

  He shook his head. “I wish I knew. No CCTV in that car park or much at all in the village, for that matter. No one got any kind of tag number.” He glanced over at me. “Nan calls them number plates.”

  I nodded. “Was it deliberate, do you think?”

  “Eric says yes. He didn’t remember at first, but after further questioning he said he thought he’d noticed the car out of the corner of his eye parked at the end of a row of cars. He remembered it because it had the
motor running, and he wondered about it. Then later, when Roberta started to go inside and stepped out with her box of glasses, whoever was driving it must have gunned it and made a beeline for her.”

  I nodded. “But why?”

  “Who knows?” he replied, sounding a little bitter. “I think it must have been deliberate, of course. Somebody didn’t like her, or didn’t like some citation she gave them or the way she spoke to their kid or whatever. Sometimes it doesn’t take much. But I intend to find out.”

  I hadn’t seen this kind of quiet anger in him since he’d arrived in England, running from a stressful situation at his old job in Atlanta. I would never have used the word ‘running’ around Garrett, of course, but I suspected that stress had played a large part in his decision to emigrate to England. And even after his arrival, he’d kept it well hidden most of the time. It was only rarely, and growing increasingly rarer, that he gave into that bitterness, and I hated to see him that way. I was just trying to form a response when Watson and Sherlock came bounding over, and Watson jumped squarely onto his chest, knocking him flat to the ground and licking him enthusiastically in the face. He struggled to sit back up, but he was laughing too, and the moment of fury was gone almost as quickly as it had come.

  He turned toward me and smiled, and I gave him a huge grin back. Then I couldn’t help leaning over and kissing him. Just the barest brush of my lips over his, but it felt like I’d touched a live wire. Maybe it was only my imagination, but it felt like his lips literally gave me a tiny electric shock. He must have felt it too, because he put a hand up to his lips and gazed wonderingly into my eyes for a moment, until Sherlock decided he needed to be in my lap and happily plopped down his entire twenty kilograms there, or fifty pounds as Garrett would say. I gave the pup a good natured shove and a thorough head rub, and the moment was gone, but I had a feeling it was still there between us, hanging in the air like a promise neither of us was quite ready to acknowledge yet.

  He cleared his throat then and said, “Nan sent me to look for you. She wants you to come to dinner. She’s made a roast beef with Yorkshire Pudding. It’s my favorite thing she makes.”