by Jennie Marts
Zoey laughed. “My favorite game as a kid was Duck, Duck, Goose. Gram would call over all the kids in the neighborhood to play with me. I knew what game she meant, and when she said ‘now,’ I was pretty sure she didn’t want me to ‘goose.’”
“You always were my smartest grandchild.”
“I’m your only grandchild.”
Edna affectionately pulled on a lock of her hair. “See how smart you are.”
“I wish somebody would have been smart enough to call me,” Mac said, shaking his head. “What the hell happened here?”
The sound of sirens could be heard in the distance, and Donna began to stir. Mac stepped around Edna and hooked on a set of handcuffs, connecting Donna’s wrist to her walker.
He reached down and helped John to his feet, guiding him over to a spot on the sofa. “I’ve called an ambulance. We can have somebody check on you when they get here.”
John waved him away. “I’m fine. They need to check on Eddy. She took a pretty hard hit to the noggin.”
Mac reached over and lifted Edna’s curly bangs.
Zoey gasped at the purple bruise surrounding the big knot on her grandmother’s forehead. “Oh, Gram.”
Edna pushed Mac’s hand away. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. But how did you know to come in when you did?”
“I got a call about Zoey’s threatening text message, and I wanted to tell her about it. I went to Sunny’s first, thinking she would be there setting up for the reception. They said they hadn’t seen her in a while, but thought she’d come over here. I walked up to the door and saw Halloran through the window with a gun at Zoey’s head. I snuck around the back and slipped in through the kitchen door. I just waited for the best time to take a shot.” He flashed a grin at Edna. “But you and your purse beat me to it.”
“What can I say? My purse is a good shot.”
The ambulance pulled into the driveway, followed by two police cars. It seemed the whole Pleasant Valley police force showed up when shots were fired.
Mac opened the front door, and the room was flooded with paramedics and police officers. The Page Turners were right on their heels, and Sunny, Cassie, Maggie, and Piper rushed into the crowded living room and ran straight to Edna’s side.
“Are you all right?” Sunny asked, pulling Edna into a hug.
Maggie looked around the room. “What the hell happened in here?”
The paramedics were assessing Donna, and they waited while one of the police officers unlocked the handcuffs connecting her to the walker.
Warren Jr. was cussing as they loaded him onto a stretcher and wheeled him from the room. A large red stain covered the carpet where he had fallen.
Cassie made a face at the blood-soaked rug. “You’re going to have a heck of a time getting that stain out. Do you want me to start pre-treating it now?”
Edna waved her hand in dismissal. “Don’t bother. I needed new carpet anyway.”
Zoey grinned at her grandmother. “I guess you can afford it with all that money you’ve got stashed at the bank. Do you really have fifty thousand dollars just sitting in a checking account?”
“Heck no. I’m lucky if that account has fifty dollars in it.”
“You were bluffing?” John asked. “Are you crazy, woman? What if he would have taken that check to the bank?”
“That was the idea. For one thing, it would have gotten the lunatic out of here, and if the three of us couldn’t have overpowered one old lady with a walker and nursing pneumonia, then we deserved to be shot. Besides, this is a small town and everyone at the bank knows me. If he would have shown up wanting to cash a check from me for fifty grand, it would have raised all sorts of red flags and hopefully someone would have called in the police.”
“That’s an awful lot of presumptions on your part,” John said.
“Well, it was all I had, and I didn’t see anybody else coming up with a plan. And really, I just needed an excuse to get into my purse. I knew I had a gun in there, and I was ready to use it if I could just get a chance.”
Edna watched through the open front door as the paramedics led Donna from the room and loaded her into the ambulance with her son. “I feel sorry for her. Nursing that grudge all these years. You should have seen her. I think she really had herself convinced that John was the one who shot Weasel, and not her.”
She looked around the room at her friends and her new husband and clapped her hands together. “Well, now that they’ve taken the trash out, I think we’ve got a party to get to.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“You never told us what happened with the threatening messages on Zoey’s phone,” Edna said to Mac. She sat on the sofa in Sunny’s living room, her hand resting on John’s good leg as he sat beside her, his casted leg propped up on the coffee table.
It had been two hours since the ambulance had taken Donna and her son away, and the barbecue/wedding reception was winding to a close. Only a few guests remained. The book club, along with Moon, Zoey, and Mac now sat in her living room eating the wedding cake.
Jake, Jeremy, and Maggie’s sons were cleaning up after the party and restoring the backyard.
Zoey sat on the floor, a worn-out Havoc snoozing in her lap. Edna’s vet friend had stopped by to check on the dog. But by the time he arrived, Havoc had eaten half a hotdog and a watermelon rind, and was chasing a squirrel around Sunny’s backyard.
The vet gave him a quick check-up, declared that the dog didn’t seem any worse for wear, and left instructions to call him if they noticed anything unusual. Sunny sent him home with a big piece of wedding cake for his trouble.
Havoc raised his eyes, following the motion of Zoey’s cake-filled fork as she lifted it to her mouth to take a bite. “Oh yeah, do you know who sent them?”
Mac nodded. “The Denver police picked up one of the Cavelli brothers and he had the phone on him. He admitted to leaving the messages, but claimed he was just trying to scare you.” Mac balanced a plate full of cake on one knee and a purple cup of iced tea on the other. “The Denver PD is trying to get him on bigger charges, so they’re using the harassment charge to hold him for a bit.”
Mac took another bite of cake. “That’s not the only thing my guys found out. We called the Coopersville PD back in Kansas and had them take a look at the house where Donna and her son live. They found the remains of Butch Halloran frozen solid in a freezer in the basement.”
“What?” Zoey said, her shoulders shaking in an involuntary shudder. “Those people are crazy.”
“Yes, they are. But they’re not going to be bothering anyone else for a long time.”
“That makes me feel a little better. I hope the press doesn’t find out about my involvement in this case as well, or I’ll never be able to return to my apartment.”
“What a mess,” Edna said to Zoey. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. In fact, it would be great if you stuck around a couple of days to watch my house and the dog while John and I sneak off for a quick honeymoon.”
“Honeymoon?” Maggie asked. “Where are you going? Niagara Falls? You do realize he can barely walk, and you probably have a concussion? You’re not going to be able to do a lot of sightseeing.”
Edna looked at John and gave him a quick eye-brow wiggle. “Who said anything about sightseeing? This man’s face is the only sight I want to see.” She turned to Maggie and winked. “Besides, who said anything about leaving the room? There’s still plenty of zippety left in this old doo-dah.”
Maggie wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Ew. Don’t ever say that again. I think I just threw up in my mouth.”
Zoey laughed. “I’d be glad to stay at your house and keep an eye on Havoc. I’m not ready to head back to Denver yet.”
“I can check in on you,” Mac said. “I mean, if you want, just to make sure you’re okay.”
A hint of blush colored Zoey’s cheeks as she smiled at the handsome police officer. “I’d like that.”
Cassie threw a las
t handful of plates in the trash and wiped down the counters. “I still can’t believe you’re married.”
“Me either.” Piper was curled into the recliner, working on her second piece of cake. “But I’m happy for you.”
“I am too,” Sunny said, dropping onto the loveseat across from Edna and John. “Does it feel strange to have him here after all this time?”
“And after thinking he was dead?” Cassie asked.
“Yes,” Edna replied, picking up John’s hand and holding it in hers. “To both of those things. It is strange. And wonderful, at the same time. I was in shock when I first saw him, but so happy. And everything was so crazy right after he got here. It wasn’t until later, I think when I was sitting in the hospital waiting for him to wake up, that I also realized how angry I was at him.”
“Angry?” Moon asked. “What for?”
Edna sighed. “For everything. For the hurt he caused me by faking his own death. By not trusting me enough to tell me sooner that he was still alive. For not taking me with him when he left. And even now, when he came back and made me fall in love with him again I was angry that I finally let my heart feel again, and then he was going to die and leave me once more.”
John lifted their joined hands to his lips and laid a kiss on her fingers. “I’m sorry, Eddy. I know that I hurt you.”
“You did hurt me,” Edna said, tears building in her eyes. “And I had to face that hurt and choose to forgive you. Life is full of choices and we’re all human. We make good choices and bad ones, and we can either choose to hold on to the pain and mistakes of yesterday or let go of the past and focus on the joy of today. Having you back in my life brings me great joy. Life is too short to waste by dwelling on the past when the present holds so much happiness.”
She turned to the Page Turners and looked at each in turn. To Sunny and Maggie and Cassie and Piper. “I’ve lived a long life, and I’ve made my share of mistakes, but what I’ve learned is that keeping your heart sealed off only causes it to suffocate and shrivel up like a raisin. You’ve got to put yourself out there. Fall in love and give your heart freely. That’s what will bring you true happiness. Loving and being loved.
“Time is misleading. All we ever have is the now. We can’t go back and relive the past, and though we can hope for a future, there’s no guarantee of one. So we just go. We live today, and we go back to normal.”
Sunny laughed. “As normal as the Page Turners can be.”
Edna nodded, enjoying the role of sage advice-giver. “You’re right. Normal is just a setting on the dryer. Instead, we choose to be happy. We live our lives. We do what we need to do. Piper needs to get enrolled in school. Cassie can go back to clipping coupons and entering contests. Sunny can finish summer break and fondle Jake’s muscles. And Maggie can do whatever that thing is that she and her nerdy boyfriend do on the computer.”
Maggie laughed. “And what about you, Edna? You’ve never been normal a day in your life. What will you go back to doing?”
Edna grinned as if she were the cat that had just eaten the canary. “I tried normal. It was boring. A few weeks ago, I was having a normal Monday morning, then a ghost showed up on
my doorstep and love walked back into my life. This Monday, I’m forgetting normal and I’m going for spectacular.”
She winked at her new husband. “And I can’t wait to see what happens on Tuesday.”
THE END
***
Click here to purchase Tangled Up In Tuesday- Book 4 in the Page Turners series
and start reading right away!
–
This one begins with Zoey’s organized life going from calm to chaotic when she finds a dead body in her apartment. Good thing she has Mac, the hunky cop, and the Page Turners book club to help her solve the case.
Keep Reading for an excerpt to Tangled Up In Tuesday:
Chapter One
THUD!
Zoey Allen’s eyes popped open.
She waited for her vision to adjust to the dim light of her bedroom. Searching the room, she noted her bedside clock read one-thirty-eight AM.
Nothing seemed out of place, but something had woken her up.
Her heart raced as she pushed herself upright in the bed.
Something was off. She could feel a disturbance in the air. Her heart jumped to her throat as she detected movement, a shift in the darkness.
Her ears strained for the slightest noise, and the hairs stood up on her arms as she detected a whisper of fabric, followed by a footstep.
“Zoey.”
Her name, spoken in a man’s voice, breathy and deep, sent shivers racing up her spine.
She reached for her cell phone on the bedside table. Her fingers barely touched the edge of the phone before it was knocked to the ground as a huge bulk of a man fell across her bed.
She screamed.
Pushing against him, her nostrils filled with the scent of sweat and a metallic coppery scent. And Axe body spray.
Wait. She knew that smell.
“Zoey,” he said again. Just one word. Just her name.
But it was enough. She stopped struggling. She recognized the voice. The body spray. The frame of the large man that had just fallen on her. “Teddy?”
She reached for the bedside lamp, but his big hand clamped on her arm. “Don’t. They’re coming. I had to warn you.”
“Teddy, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?” Teddy Grimes was her coworker at Cavelli Commerce. Both accountants, they’d had neighboring cubicles for the past several years.
Teddy was a big guy. Tall, slightly overweight, always hurrying into work and out of breath as he sunk into his office chair, a light sheen of sweat often dampening his drab brown hair against his forehead. Fast food wrappers littered his messy desk, the complete opposite of Zoey’s meticulously organized cubicle.
Still, she liked him. He made her laugh, and they’d become friends. Like his name, he was gentle and kind like a big teddy bear.
She was used to Teddy offering her an extra donut or grabbing her a coffee on his way in to work. And she trusted him enough to give him a key to her apartment to water her plants and pick up her mail when she’d recently been out of town.
But she hadn’t heard from him in days, and his presence in her bedroom at one in the morning told her something was very wrong.
He’d landed across her when he fell, and she reached out to push him off her lap. Her hands met his solid girth, and his shirt was wet. She jerked her hands back, her fingers tacky and damp.
Her heart leapt to her throat. Oh no.
She reached out and touched the small lamp next to her bed, bathing the room in soft light. She didn’t care what he said. She needed to see what was going on.
Her fears were realized. The coppery scent, the sticky wetness.
Teddy’s eyes were closed, his chest heaved with effort, and his white shirt bloomed with a large wet circle of crimson blood. So much blood. The deep color looking almost black in the soft light.
Zoey looked down at her hands and almost gagged. They were covered in blood as well. A perfect red fingerprint showed on the side of the lamp where she’d touched it.
She swallowed her instinct to scream. “Teddy, you’re hurt. You’ve got to let me call 911.”
He should his head. “No, I’ll be okay.”
“You’re not okay. You’re bleeding. What happened?”
“Stabbed me. Tried to fight them.” His breathing was labored. He opened his eyes and looked at her. “I barely got away. I need to tell you something, then you need to run. Get somewhere safe. Before they find you.”
“Who?” She asked the question, but in her heart, she already knew.
“The Cavelli brothers. They know I have the final proof to put them away. Not just Carmine, but all of them.”
“What kind of proof?”
“Numbers. Data. Figures showing the money coming in and going out and who’s involved. I’ve been collecting the details of their m
oney laundering scheme. I’ve known something was wrong for a long time but didn’t want to say anything ‘til I had concrete evidence. Then you called them out in the audit.” He gave her a half-hearted grin. “You are one brave chick.”
She didn’t know if she was brave or stupid.
She hadn’t known the extent of the scheme when she’d first uncovered it a few weeks ago. She’d collected as much evidence as she could before she reported it, then they’d fired her.
After receiving threatening messages, and having reporters constantly hounding her doorstep, she’d fled to the safety of her grandmother’s house in Pleasant Valley, about a half an hour’s drive from her apartment in Denver.
It hadn’t been much of an escape. In fact, she’d found herself in more danger there, and she still had the cuts, bruises, and purplish knot on her forehead to prove it. But at least in Pleasant Valley, she’d had the protection of Officer McCarthy, a local cop.
She’d only been back in Denver for a few days and was already missing the handsome police officer. Especially now—with holding the weight of her friend as he bled onto her comforter. Yeah, she could use Mac right about now.
Gathering the corner of her sheet, she pressed a wad of fabric against Teddy’s side. “Listen, you can tell me all of this later. Right now we’ve got to get you to a hospital.”
He shook his head, fear in his brown eyes. “No. You listen. You need to get out of here. After you reported them, the bosses brought in some computer guys to figure out what all you’d dug up. All the heat’s been on you, so I thought I was flying under the radar. But they must have found out I’d been downloading the figures, because a guy broke into my apartment tonight.”
He grimaced in pain as she applied pressure to his wound. “He told me he knew I had the evidence and to give it to him or he’d kill me.”
“So, did you give it to them?”
