by Misty Simon
“Did you find out what happened this evening?” I tried to sound casual as I dunked my cheese bread in parmesan white sauce. Nothing better in the world than Jerry’s cooking. But really I needed to shove something in my mouth to not grill Bartley on what they had found at the scene. And to stop myself from asking if Mrs. Crandall really had killed the poor judge. But why would she have done that? Unless she wanted to win so badly that she was bribing people and maybe Mac wouldn’t take her bribe? I almost got up from the table to share my theory with Ben when I wrangled myself back. Not the time and not the place. Plus, I wasn’t getting involved. Right? Right!
“I really am going to need Ben to come to the station tomorrow to fill out a report. For some reason I cannot get Rukey to back down. He’s calling for Ben’s head on a platter. I don’t want him to make too much noise, or Ben’s PI license could be up for review.”
I groaned, then managed to swallow the next bite of cheese bread. “I’ll ask him to be down there tomorrow morning. After we sleep in, of course.” I smiled a cat-and-canary smile, with me as the cat.
“Sure, whatever,” she said. “I guess I can’t ask for more, since the kidlets are away. You probably never get to actually sleep in anymore when they’re around, do you? That’s got to be a pain in the ass, and quite the relief now.”
I stared at her with my mouth open, but Charlie was quicker.
“Honey, Ivy gets plenty of sleep, and she loves having her kids around. I’m sure she doesn’t mind having them wake her up. I won’t have any problem letting you sleep in when we have kids.”
She abruptly got off his lap, jumping to her feet and making some excuse about the bathroom that left me baffled.
“Did I miss something?” I swirled my bread in the creamy sauce again, looking down in case Charlie wasn’t inclined to answer.
He sighed a big sigh.
“I thought after being married for all this time that it might be okay to discuss kids. You know, having them?” He sighed again. “I said all the right things—that I’d definitely help with everything and I’d be the best dad ever and the best partner, helping with feedings and diapers. The whole shebang. But she said she had to think about it and then left the room, just like she did now, and hasn’t let me talk about it since then.” He looked after Bartley’s retreating form with something akin to sorrow in his eyes. My heart broke for him.
“Buck up. Maybe she just wants to make sure it’s the right thing to do. Not everyone grew up wanting kids.” I said it laughingly, since I had certainly never expected to have two of my own gene pools running around. I thought I’d be forever single, living in my pink room from when I was ten. But look at me now.
But Charlie didn’t laugh.
“Yes, well, I guess we just have a few things to work out.” He switched gears faster than I could blink. “I’ll open for you tomorrow, if you want, so you can go to the station with Ben.”
My eyes sought out the object of our discussion, and I jumped to my feet. What the hell was he doing here?
While I had said previously that Rukey was a crappy shot and good at ducking, it looked like I could add nimble and sneaky to his list of talents. There was just no other way he could have managed to get Ben’s arms handcuffed behind his back and have him lying face down on one of Jerry’s expensive cream tablecloths without a single shout or even grunt.
“I’ll go get Debbie,” Charlie said quietly as he slunk away.
“Good idea.” I, however, was going to get my man from the stupid idiot who thought he could arrest him.
“Can I help you?” I asked, using my considerable girth to get between Rukey and Ben’s behind. Sometimes it totally comes in handy not to be built like a twig.
“Step aside, Mrs. Fallon. This has nothing to do with you.”
All these years later, it still threw me whenever someone called me that. I instinctively would look over my shoulder to make sure Ben’s mother wasn’t breathing down my neck.
This time, though, I locked eyes with Rukey. He was not taking Ben without involving Bartley. Who knew where he might take him? I wasn’t totally sure it would be the station. Somehow the look in his eyes made me think he’d be taking Ben to an empty warehouse armed with rubber hoses.
I puffed up my chest, almost spilling out of the rose fabric. “This has everything to do with me. Let me see your arrest warrant. Ben and I are having dinner, and he did nothing wrong. You can’t just burst in here and handcuff him.”
He didn’t look away and seemed very determined to not let me talk our way out of this one. Damn.
“I did not burst in here. For the record, you are about to cross the line into obstructing justice. Now, you’d better step back before I give you a matching set of restraints.”
I caught Charlie waving to me out of the corner of my eye. He lifted his hands and shoulders in a helpless gesture. Obviously he hadn’t found Debbie. Shit.
“Ben, I’ll come down to the station right after you.” I patted him on the shoulder as if that would reassure him, then turned to the irritating officer. “I will be right behind you, so don’t try anything funny. Got it?”
We had a stare-down with everyone in the restaurant whispering behind their hands. Rukey looked away first, which was good for me because I was pretty sure my eyeballs were about to dry out.
Being the fantastic assistant that he is, Charlie deposited my purse in my hands without having to be asked. I stalked out the front door after Ben and Rukey, so very sad to leave my dinner behind and so pissed that this imbecile was arresting Ben with no one to stop him, and for nothing. Bartley was going to hear about this, and so was anyone else within shouting distance. In the meantime, I was going to get this straightened out.
I asked Charlie to call Bartley as I walked out. Some people went right back to their meals, but the judge Ben had been schmoozing zeroed in on me and nodded his head.
What the heck did that mean? The man had barely even looked at me. In fact, he often dealt with Charlie instead of me when he had a costume party every summer. I appreciated the business, but he’d never given me more than the cold shoulder. So why was he appearing to give me some kind of secret sign?
I had to put that aside for right now to hustle out the door. Rukey already had Ben in his sedan—not the squad car this time. That made me even more nervous. The guy didn’t have his uniform on and wasn’t on duty. How on earth could he make an arrest without a warrant? And did he just randomly have handcuffs hanging from his rearview mirror?
Something else I did not want to think about at the moment.
If we hadn’t arrived at the restaurant in a limo, I would have run for my trusty brown Santa Fe, the same one I came to town in all those years ago. It was the last brown thing I owned, and I wasn’t giving it up just because I had a backbone now. She’d served me well over the years. It wasn’t her fault I’d sworn off brown.
As it was, I found the limo driver and got him to his vehicle way earlier than he expected, and told him to follow Officer Rukey’s car. That was not a difficult request to fulfill, since Rukey followed every posted speed limit and was even two miles under in several areas. If this had been any other day, I would have been tamping down my inner need to tell him the gas was the one on the right.
But hopefully his obedience to the rules would make it so I didn’t have to worry about him doing anything illegal to Ben. I was the only one who could do illegal things to him, darn it!
We pulled up in front of the old brick building that housed the police station, but then he pulled around back as soon as I got out of the limo. Little creep. I’d beat him inside, though, as soon as I asked the driver to wait, and make sure they knew he was out back with Ben. No funny business.
Chapter Five
It was absolutely ridiculous that this rookie guy was going to try to press charges against Ben when he was the one who had stepped out in front of Ben’s golf cart. Not that Ben had been all brains when he had decided to drive the thing over.
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br /> And this was yet one more delay to us having fun on our week without kids. I swear the universe was conspiring against us.
Booking it into the police station (as fast as these damn shoes would let me), I waited at the front counter for someone to notice me. I didn’t see Marge, who never before had seemed to leave her post as gatekeeper at the front desk. Strange. She hadn’t died, that I’d heard of, so she must be around here somewhere. I knew without a doubt that she wouldn’t willingly ever leave her post while she was still breathing. Forty-five years and counting, she was proud of saying.
“Hello?” I said after about ten minutes. No, it wasn’t really ten minutes, probably more like thirty seconds, but I really wanted to get back home. At this point we’d just get something to eat there. I was never so thankful that I’d eaten all that cheesy bread. All those high hopes I’d had for this week with Ben…and I saw it all slipping through my fingers.
I called out again, rapping my knuckles on the counter for emphasis. Finally I heard what I thought was someone coming up to help me. I eagerly called out a hello. Of course, the noise stopped and turned around and sounded like it was moving away. Are you kidding me? What had I done to get the silent and ignoring treatment?
“I know you’re in here somewhere! I need to get my husband and go. Please come up here.” I tried to sing-song the words, but it didn’t quite work out that way. Honestly, it sounded more like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Still no one came. I was seriously on the verge of completely losing my patience.
“Debbie!” I yelled into the back of the small building. Surely someone would hear me and come running.
Still nothing. So I whipped out my cell phone and called the detective. I wasn’t supposed to use her number for anything but getting together for an occasional glass of wine or a facial night, but right now I didn’t care about what I was and wasn’t supposed to do. I wanted my husband out of the pokey.
She didn’t pick up on her end, even after I called her a fourth time. Now I was starting to get worried. It was one thing to be ignored, which I was very used to, but it was another thing to have the police station be as silent as Morty’s Morgue and Mortuary down the road when I knew Ben was in here somewhere.
I took it upon myself to interpret the silence as an invitation to explore. In typical Ivy fashion I even called out very softly, “Okay, I’m coming back,” just to cover my bases in case someone asked, and then I could very truthfully say I had warned them.
I didn’t know what I expected when I went around the corner and used the ill-concealed latch behind the desk to let myself into the back. It certainly wasn’t Debbie polishing her fingernails and talking on the phone while I assumed Ben sat rotting in a jail cell.
Against my better judgment—and really when do I not act against my better judgment?—I smacked her feet to get her attention and nearly sent her launching out of her chair and face-planting on the not-so-clean floor. Not one of my best moments, but I did valiantly try not to laugh at the picture she made scrambling to avoid an upset.
I got a glare for my trouble. Ask me if I cared. The answer was a resounding no.
What in the world was going on that no one was making a peep in the station? I knew Ben was definitely back here, and Debbie was acting as if it was talk-to-her-husband time instead of processing mine. I was about to find out after she yelled at me. She stabbed her finger at the screen to end the call and glared even harder. But I had seen her with a chocolate and mud mask on before, with cucumbers on her eyes. I was no longer easily intimidated.
“How did you get back here, and what are you doing here?”
“Well, that’s kind of the same question, isn’t it?” Not always best to lead with the sass, and I was sassing this time, but I was fed up with the way the day was going. First gnomes in the house, then a myopic neighbor with a dead person in her shed, and then Ben with his kamikaze cart, a ruined dinner, and now this. I had plans, dammit, and I had wanted to go to dinner with my husband, not sit across the bars from him and eat on tin plates.
“So answer either or.” She laid her arms on the desk in front of her, clasping her fingers together until her knuckles turned white. Nice.
“Look, I’m just here to get Ben, and then we’ll get out of your hair. I want to go back to dinner, if my table hasn’t already been taken. We both agreed Ben had not intended to hit Rukey. Has that idiot brought him in, and why is there no one out front?”
“I’m here, Ivy!” I heard faintly from farther back, where the cells were located. Okay, after hearing Ben’s voice, that was at least one thing checked off my list of what-the-hell.
“I’ll ask the questions.” Debbie sat back in her chair with her legs crossed and her arms tight against her chest.
“Really?” I crossed my arms across my chest too. I couldn’t do the leg thing, obviously, but I did have the advantage of standing to her sitting, so I thought we could safely call it even. “Are we back to that? I could have sworn after all the times you’ve barbecued at our house and gone on trips with us that perhaps I wouldn’t get the ‘I am cop’ treatment from you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And I could have sworn that I wasn’t going to have another unexplained dead body when you were around.”
Ah, crap. “I wouldn’t have even discovered it if Myrt hadn’t dragged me over there thinking I was Ben. I don’t want any part of this, and you know it. I’m out of the sleuthing business, especially because I’m an amateur. I’ve let you all deal with anything else that has come up lately because I’ve been too busy taking care of my kids. I want no part of this. Now let me take Ben home so we can go on a date!”
She arched an eyebrow.
“Please,” I said more quietly than the full volume I had been at.
She sighed and uncrossed her arms. “I have to wait for Officer Rukey to get back before I can do anything. As soon as he dropped off Ben, he went chasing after some guy and his escaped cow like a bat out of hell. I can’t do anything until he comes back. Ben was just taking a rest and said he was fine with hanging for a little bit. I don’t know where Marge is. Regardless, you still shouldn’t be back here.”
I was not fooled by her stance or her attitude. What was she trying to pull by throwing me back six years to us being adversaries and her always getting mad at me for stepping in where I didn’t belong? Granted I had saved their tushes and solved quite a few mysteries when they were getting bupkus on their own. But I had stayed out of that once the girls were born. I didn’t need another shotgun aimed at my face, or another feather boa wrapped around my neck, much less a psycho bitch coming after me with a knife, to know that I wasn’t meant to interfere. I wanted to be alive to raise my kids.
Though when I thought more about it, I really hadn’t ever gotten to the point where I had been truly afraid I was going to die. I always managed to get myself out of whatever craziness surrounded me. But this time I wasn’t going to get involved in the first place, and that would save me from having to save myself at some later date. I had nothing at stake (no pun intended) in finding out what had happened to that judge. I planned on keeping it that way.
“Well, when is the rook getting back, and when can I expect Ben to be let go?”
“I’m here now,” he said from behind me. “And I don’t plan on letting Ben out until I find out why he killed one of the good men in this town over some tomato contest.”
Debbie groaned, and I turned to let that little pipsqueak have a piece of my mind, not that I had much left to squander (good word!) after the debacle (another one!) of today.
“Get my husband out of that cell right now, you idiot.” I growled the words, deep and guttural to the point where I almost scared myself. Who knew I could sound like that?
There was posturing, there was chest-puffing, there was shifting foot to foot—from him—as I continued to stare him down.
Debbie watched us like we were some kind of tennis match. A small smirk kept kicking up the corner of her mouth
, and I wasn’t sure if it was for me or for Rukey for having to deal with me.
“I want to see the warrant.” I put my purse down on Debbie’s desk and tapped the toe of my pointy shoe. The suckers were hurting, but I was not going to lose the four inches of extra height they gave me.
“It’s in process.” Rukey crossed his arms over his chest and widened his stance. If you asked me, he was setting himself up to get a swift kick in a boy place, and that would land me in jail, too.
Debbie clapped her hand over her eyes. “Did you at least have probable cause at the time you arrested him?” she asked in a voice far more weary than I’d ever heard before.
“I, um…”
“No,” I piped in. “Ben was calmly sitting at a table, speaking with the other two Tasty Tomato Tournament judges, when Rookie barged in and cuffed Ben. He didn’t do anything wrong earlier, and he certainly wasn’t doing anything wrong at the time this one slapped restraints on him.” We won’t talk about how it was wrong for my husband to leave me sitting at the table by myself to the point where I had to endure Charlie and Debbie being all handsy with each other while I ate cheesy bread. That might have been wrong in my book, but it wasn't against the law.
Debbie rose from her chair with a longsuffering sigh, pulled keys from her belt, and walked toward the back. Rukey made a move to step in front of her, and the death glare he got was beyond comparison to what I had thought was a good job of my own earlier. Whew! I would not want to be on the receiving end of that look.
“You can go home,” I heard her say from the next room. “But please come back tomorrow morning and file the report as I asked. I’m sorry you had to spend time in here.”
Rukey was fuming, his hands clenching and releasing like he was doing some kind of strengthening exercise. I had a very bad feeling things were not going to get better now that he’d been thwarted in his search for justice, even if he most certainly had the wrong man.
****
The drive home in the limo was quiet. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say to Ben, and he looked out the window as if his mind was somewhere else entirely. I felt for him. It couldn’t have been pleasant to be in a cell for any length of time, especially over something he didn’t do. I was a good wife, though, so I let him have his time and his space and put my own needs on the back burner.
