Driven to Distraction (Silhouette Desire S.)

by Dixie Browning; Sheri Whitefeather

  “You’ve met him?”

  “He came to our house once last spring trying to get my father to donate a prize.”

  “A prize for what?”

  “You know—different businesses donate prize money for the advertising. The more prizes, the more entries—the more entries, the more entry fees are collected and the more our guy Perry takes home after expenses. He’s a genius when it comes to boosting sponsors.”

  Which was precisely how he had come to meet Mary Rose, Maggie reminded herself. “Sounds like you’re not exactly his biggest fan. You sure you wouldn’t rather work for your father?”

  “No way. I give him two weeks every summer while his secretary goes to Myrtle Beach, but that’s it. You don’t meet guys like Texas in a lumberyard office.” She nodded toward the table where Ben Hunter was seated and smacked her lips. “I wonder what he’s doing here.”

  “Same thing we are. Trying to learn how to paint.”

  “Uh-uh. I bet he’s ATF. I’ve heard there’s still some white liquor being produced around here.”

  “Alcohol, tobacco and firearms? How is studying art supposed to help him locate a hidden still?” Maggie sipped her coffee. It was cold and weak.

  “Who knows? Maybe he just needed an excuse to hang around in the area. There’s nothing much around these parts but this place, and you know what? I wouldn’t be surprised if whoever built the place back in the twenties made his fortune in moonshine whiskey.” Elbows on the table, Suzy was getting into the conspiracy thing.

  “Maybe, but who makes the stuff anymore when you can buy whiskey in any ABC store?”

  “White lightning, my de-ah, is an acquired taste. Once you’ve acquired it, Jack Daniel’s pales by comparison.”

  Maggie hooted with laughter. From the corner of her eye she saw Ben Hunter turn and look her way. Feeling her cheeks burn, she studiously applied herself to the stewed chicken and overcooked vegetables.

  “Don’t look now, but here comes the maestro now,” Suzy whispered a few minutes later. “I’ve heard he makes the rounds introducing himself, so smile and be sweet. You might even get a passing grade.”

  Maggie looked up into a pair of turquoise eyes that had to be—simply had to be—contacts. God didn’t make eyes like that.

  “Ah, we meet again, Miss James.” Perry Silver smiled at Suzy, then turned to Maggie. “Let me guess. This would be Miss Riley, right? Margaret L. Riley, the journalist? I’m honored, my dear. May I join you for a few minutes?”

  From the far side of the dining room, Ben frowned as he watched Silver make his way across the room to the table by the kitchen door. The slick jackass was hanging all over the Riley woman, ignoring the bleached blonde.

  Conversation continued around him. One of the women said, “I remember thinking at the time that ten thousand was a fortune. Nowadays it wouldn’t even last six months, not at today’s prices.”

  “What? Oh, right,” someone else said. “GI Insurance.”

  Ben had been gently sounding out his dinner partners, trying to squeeze in a subtle hint about a few of the scams that targeted senior citizens. New ones cropped up every day, and for any seniors who went online, the dangers tripled. On his left sat Janie Burger, whose husband, a World War II veteran, had died a couple of years ago, leaving her with an eighty-six Plymouth van, a house in need of reroofing and a ten-thousand dollar GI life insurance policy. Her daughter had treated her to Silver’s workshop in order to—as Janie put it—haul her up from the slough of despond, which Ben interpreted as depression. Although the lady didn’t strike him as depressed. Far from it.

  “I’ll certainly never get rich as an artist,” she said with a self-deprecating chuckle, “but at least I won’t have to worry about buying Christmas gifts this year. They’ll all get bad watercolors and won’t have the nerve to tell me what they think of my talent. Works every time.”

  Pulling his attention away from the table by the kitchen door, Ben made an ambiguous, hopefully appropriate comment. He admired the lady’s spunk, as well as her unlikely pink hair.

  “We’re supposed to be intermediates, aren’t we? Didn’t it say so on the brochure?” That from Charlie Spainhour. The two men had been assigned a room together. “I took a few courses some years back, but haven’t done any painting since my late wife decided the bathroom needed a pink ceiling.”

  Ben glanced again at the table by the kitchen door, where little Ms. Riley was smirking up at Silver, batting her eyelashes like she’d caught a cinder and was trying to dislodge it. If she wanted to play teacher’s pet, it was no skin off his nose. Hell, she wasn’t even all that pretty.

  The conversation eddied around him while he watched the Riley woman’s reaction to whatever Silver was saying. Lapping it up with a spoon. He shook his head and forced his attention back to his own dinner companions.

  Charlie said, “I don’t know if it’ll come back to me or not. Like I said, it’s been a while.”

  “Don’t worry, if he’s as good a teacher as I’ve heard he is, he’ll fill in the gaps,” said the white-haired woman at the end of the table—Georgia something or other. “By the end of the week we’ll all be intermediates—some of us already are. I guess you can fake it that long.”

  Evidently, Ben was the only one present who had never tried his hand at painting before. He was beginning to feel more than ever like a fish out of water.

  Janie, Ben’s favorite so far, removed her red-framed bifocals and cleaned them with a napkin as her eyes crinkled in another smile. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a darn. I painted my first bad watercolor before that boy was even out of diapers. Been painting them ever since.”

  It garnered a few chuckles, including Ben’s. Not that it was all that funny, but who knew better than an undercover specialist how to fit in? So far it looked like a pretty decent group, ready to lighten up for a week instead of sitting home watching their IRAs bottom out while they waited for the monthly social security stipend. Maybe he should have brought Miss Emma along. So far as he knew, the only thing she’d ever painted was her kitchen chairs, but who was to say she wouldn’t discover a latent talent?

  The desultory conversation continued with only an occasional comment from Ben. It turned out that Georgia and Janie were friends; both widows, both retired teachers. Janie and Charlie had met before, evidently having taught at the same school.

  Placing his silverware on his plate, Ben angled his chair slightly for a better view of the other diners. He was beginning to see a pattern in the enrollment. Retirees took precedence, with just enough variety, such as himself and the pair across the room, to throw off suspicion.

  On the get-acquainted roster on the hall table, more than half the enrollees had listed Retired under occupation. Ben had put down Security, which wasn’t actually a lie. Not that he couldn’t lie with the best of them when the occasion demanded, but he preferred not to. Less to trip over.

  He glanced over at the Riley woman again. She had dressed for the occasion in a long button-front dress with a matching scarf. He couldn’t see her feet, but no doubt she was still wearing those same dumb platforms with the loop around her big toe, in spite of his good advice.

  At the moment, she was fussing about something. Now why did that not surprise him? He didn’t know much about her disposition, but it hadn’t taken him long to learn that she bristled with attitude. In a guy, he’d heard it referred to as a Napoleon complex—not necessarily a bad thing, depending on how it was used. It could turn a guy into an overachiever or make him a real pain.

  Where Riley was concerned, he had a feeling it might be the latter.

  With one last long look at her profile—short, straight nose, well-defined jaw, a tempting speck of a mole and full lips that at the moment were clamped tighter than a—

  Yeah, well…he was going to have to watch his similes, too. This place was filled with respectable grannies. His own had peeled the bark off him when he’d forgotten and let slip a few choice words the other day when a
damn-fool driver nearly shaved the paint off his front fender by cutting in front of him on the way to the grocery store.

  He might not be able to recover Miss Emma’s losses, but he could make damn sure the same thing didn’t happen to anyone else’s granny. Not on his watch.

  “Our resident genius seems mighty interested in that table over by the kitchen,” Charlie, high school biology teacher, murmured. He nodded toward where Silver was still hanging over the two younger women. The platinum blonde with the dark roots had tossed on a white shirt over the red bra, but hadn’t bothered to button it up.

  It was the other one that held Ben’s attention. Maggie Riley. According to the roster, she was from Clemmons which, if memory served, was less than a half hour’s drive from where his grandmother lived in Mocksville. Under occupation, she’d written journalist. Interesting, he mused.

  None of your business, he reminded himself firmly. She could be a nuclear scientist and it still wouldn’t matter. It was the blue-haired ladies, including Janie, whose shoulder-length hair just happened to be pink, who were his real targets. Those were the ones Silver would go for if Ben’s predictions proved accurate. If he could wise them up in time, they could go forth and spread the word any way they chose to. Senior citizens’ groups, newsletters—whatever. This was at best a borderline case of fraud, but for individuals on fixed incomes, it could be devastating.

  “What? Oh, yeah—I’ll take natural hair over nylon any day,” he said as if he knew what the devil they were talking about. He figured at least half the women here weren’t wearing the hair color they were born with. Wigs or not, Georgia, with her white brush cut, and Riley with the attitude and the shaggy, straw-colored hair were probably among the very few who were wearing their natural color.

  “Some like a flat, but me, I prefer round.”

  It took him a moment, but he got it. They were talking about brushes, not wigs. He had one. Didn’t remember if it was flat or round, as it came with the set of paints he’d bought. He figured as long as you wet it, rubbed it on the paint and wiped it across the paper, one shape was as good as another.

  Although rice pudding was about six yards down on his list of favorites, he lingered over dessert while the others went out to watch the sunset. Technically, the sun had set about half an hour ago, but according to Janie, there was something special about the last rays of color that shot up from behind the mountains.

  When he saw the two at the back table rake back their chairs, he collected his dishes, stacked them with the others on the table, and headed toward the kitchen. The lady in the kitchen looked as if she could use a hand, and his were available. And if it happened to take him within a couple of feet of Ms. Riley and her haystack hair, so be it.

  She glanced up when he passed by with his hands full of dishes. “Oh, are we supposed to do that?” Rising, she started gathering up the dishes on her table.

  Suzy looked from Ben to Maggie and lifted a brow. “See you later, okay?” she said with what could only be called a smirk.

  Riley followed him out to the kitchen, where the cook was elbow deep in suds. Evidently, the place didn’t run to a dishwasher, mechanical or otherwise.

  “Here’s these,” he said.

  Without glancing around, the woman said, “Scrape ’em in the can, leave ’em on the counter.”

  Ben looked at Maggie. Maggie looked at Ben. That’s when he noticed that her eyes had almost as many different shades as her hair. By tomorrow, he might even be able to name a few, but for now he’d have to settle for brown, yellow and blue-green. The eyes, not the hair.

  “What, do I have dirt on my face?” The multicolored eyes flashed a warning.

  He forced himself to look away. “Sorry—just thinking about tomorrow.”

  “Oh. Well, sure. Me, too. That is, I’m really looking forward to, uh—wetting some paper.”

  “Gimme them cups,” the woman at the sink said, and they both reached for the thick white cups they’d just placed on the counter. Ben’s arm struck Maggie’s hand, which struck the stack of cups. They watched them bounce on the sagging linoleum floor. Fortunately, only one broke. They were the thick, white institutional kind.

  “Sorry,” he said. Quickly, he rounded up the unbroken cups while Maggie ripped off a handful of paper towels and moped up a splash of coffee. They ended up kneeling head to head, and he caught a faint whiff of apples and something else—maybe coconut—that hadn’t been on the menu tonight.

  And neither is she, he reminded himself.

  Fleeing before they could do any more damage, neither of them waited for the thanks that probably wouldn’t be forthcoming anyway, judging from the way the woman was scowling. Maggie said, “Oops.”

  Ben said, “Yeah,” and grinned.

  The others were beginning to straggle inside after watching the sunset. Janie with the pink hair was guffawing. She had a great laugh, apparently oblivious to the fact that her face crinkled up like used wrapping tissue. She probably had better sense than to invest in any of Silver’s junk anyway, but Ben would watch over her, just in case. He liked her.

  Her friend Georgia, too. Ben sized her up as a likely candidate. White hair, flowered dress, embroidered button-front sweater, support hose and cross trainers. Not to mention a rock the size of a golf ball on her third finger, left hand. With her swollen knuckles, she probably couldn’t get it off, poor woman. He’d keep a special eye out for her. First time he caught Silver spending an unusual amount of time with her, he’d follow up with a word of caution.

  Okay, Janie and Georgia and who else? There were at least a dozen candidates, not counting the two blondes and the two guys, including Charlie and himself.

  Maybe he should hold an impromptu seminar on how not to be drawn into a sucker’s trap. He had yet to work out a plan for getting the goods on Silver, but he was used to going in without an ironclad plan. A good cop left plenty of maneuvering room; he’d learned that his first year on the job when he’d walked in on a convenience store robbery and got a face full of Reddi-wip. Since then he’d at least had sense enough to work the perp around to the bagged goods before trying to cuff him. A face full of corn chips couldn’t do a whole lot of damage.

  “Wanna join the others out on the porch?” he asked.

  Riley looked at him a full thirty seconds before shaking her head. “No thanks,” she said, and walked off.

  Nice going, Hunter. From now on, keep your mind on the job you’re supposed to be doing.

  Three

  It was a good hour earlier than her usual bedtime when Maggie headed for her assigned quarters. Beginning tomorrow the students would be responsible for meals. They were to work out a plan among themselves. Suzy, seated in the middle of her cot, was painting her toenails. She suggested that some of the older women would naturally want to take charge.

  “Why?”

  “Well…because, I mean, most of them have been married, so they’re used to cooking.”

  So was Maggie, not that she intended to advertise it. Her mother had left home when Maggie was eleven, after announcing that life was a fleeting thing. Several weeks later she’d written from a commune out in Idaho, something about being free to become herself. She still came home occasionally, never staying more than a few days. Actually, she hadn’t been home in several years, but at least she still wrote when she remembered to. Handmade postcards for the most part, filled with colored drawings of moons and stars and rainbows and elves.

  So maybe, Maggie mused, she had inherited some artistic talent after all.

  She considered unpacking her laptop to record a few first impressions to work into a special column once the week was over. With any luck, her editor might accept it—might even spring for a small bonus. If she earned enough to pay income taxes she could write off this whole horribly expensive week as research—but first she would have to write about it.

  She found a place to set up her laptop by shifting Suzy’s array of cosmetics, then looked around for an outlet within r
each. Her batteries were probably dead. Since she rarely used them, she rarely remembered to check them. Why didn’t someone invent a computer that plugged into a cell phone? Or maybe they already had. Technology wasn’t her thing, but that would bear checking out.

  She might even get a column about that, too. Technology for the technophobe. Not that she was really phobic, she was simply too busy to keep up with the stuff.

  “I still don’t think he’s an artist,” Suzy announced out of the blue.

  “Who?” As if she didn’t know. “All the famous artists have been men.” Maggie continued checking the pockets of her computer case to see if she’d brought along any batteries. If so, they were too old to have any juice left in them.

  “They say that about chefs, too, but what about Julia Child?”

  “What about that Western artist, whatsisname?”

  “You’re asking me?” Suzy was using Crayolas to hold her toes apart to keep the polish from smearing.

  “You know who I mean—he’s named something to do with guns. Colt? Browning? Oh, yeah—Remington.”

  “He probably carries one. A gun, I mean. He said he was in security.” Carefully, Suzy began pulling out the Crayolas. “Man, I wouldn’t mind a taste of that kind of security.”

  “Maybe he’s a model,” Maggie suggested.

  “In that case, I’m devoting the rest of my life to art.”

  Maggie said, “How did we get off on this subject, anyway?” As if she didn’t know. “I need to take some notes in case I want to write about it.”

  “Okay, first note—your heroine’s name is Suzy and your hero’s name is Ben. Is that a virile name, or what?”

  Maggie threw a small instruction leaflet, which she’d never bothered to read, across the room. It landed among the shoes near the bed. Four pairs of Suzy’s, one pair of hers.

  “I’m going to grab a shower while everybody’s still out on the porch.” Collecting soap, shampoo and a loose cotton shift that doubled as a robe, Maggie headed upstairs where one of the larger rooms had been turned into a communal bathroom. There was a single claw-foot tub, three lavatories, three commodes and three shower stalls. The men evidently had a tiny bathroom down the hall, which was a rough indication of the usual ratio between men and women.