Misalignment and Murder

by Cathy Tully

  Picking up a rubber bat from the display, Bitsy flapped its wings in Susannah’s face. “‘’Cause she’s batty?”

  “Suzie.” Angie drew near, a hay bale snagging her Princess Leia robes. “Where ya been?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” Susannah fingered the zipper on her backpack as she watched Angie tug her robes free. The flowing fabric had dirt and hay stuck to the hem. Caden’s trousers had also suffered a couple of stains. “Let’s help Bitsy find Apollo and get out of here.”

  “Go look under that table for Apollo,” Angie told Caden, pointing at the display the coffee shop had set up, a scarecrow sitting at a table holding a huge wooden fork and spoon. Susannah had seen an identical fork and spoon set decorating the wall of her nana’s kitchen. Otis, Maggie’s cat, sat on the hay bale next to the scarecrow licking his paw.

  “We looked under there already,” Caden said.

  “Look again.” As Caden walked away, Angie whispered, “I was worried about you.”

  “I’m okay. I’ll tell you everything later. We have to find the dog and get out of here.” Susannah knew she should tell Angie the whole story, but she didn’t want to frighten her or Caden. They would be okay for now, out in the open with other people strolling down Main Street. At least she knew that Crystal wasn’t hiding under a hay bale ready to attack her with a gigantic wooden spoon. She walked over to Caden.

  “Come on, Caden, I’ll help you.” She extended her hand to Caden, and they walked to the table and searched under it. “I don’t see any Sherlock Hound,” Susannah said.

  “Sherlock Hound.” Giggling, Caden capered over to Bitsy. “Did you hear that, Miss Bitsy? Aunt Suzie called Apollo ‘Sherlock Hound.’ That’s funny.”

  “I heard her,” Bitsy huffed.

  “How come you’re not laughing?”

  “’Cause I wish I had thought of it first.” Bitsy winked at Caden. “Let’s keep looking. By the way.” Bitsy turned to Angie, who was picking straw out of her Princess Leia buns. “Where are Jamal and Andrea?”

  “Andrea took Jamal to his game.”

  Susannah felt relieved—Crystal didn’t know Andrea and Jamal, so Susannah didn’t have to worry about their safety. As she scanned the second row of scarecrows, her gaze settled on a hay bale; she jabbed Caden in the ribs and he giggled. “Hey.” She touched his shoulder and gently turned him. “I think that hay bale is moving.”

  Together they walked over, a jerky snore now audible. Susannah peeked over the bale. One of Apollo’s ears was visible.

  Caden laughed. “Apollo, it’s Apollo!” He stamped his feet and pointed. “Hey, boy.”

  Apollo woke with a growl and a woof, and Otis the cat looked up, paw raised mid-groom. Apollo sat up, sniffed the air and barked, deerstalker still on his head. Launching off the coffee shop display, Otis dislodged the spoon, which fell into the scarecrow, knocking it over. Otis shot up in the air, his fur looking like every caricature of a Halloween black cat Susannah had ever seen. Caden laughed and pointed as Otis flew down the street.

  Apollo charged the cat at warp speed. As he passed Bitsy, she reached out, missing the dog but snagging his cape. The deerstalker remained steadfast as he continued through the Scarecrow Village and down the street. Otis sprinted across the railroad tracks toward Cutz & Curlz.

  Caden tried to follow Apollo, but Susannah stopped him. “No,” she told him, “you stay with your mom.” She walked him over to Angie. “Do me a favor, go wait with Caden at Peachy Things.” Angie gave her a look, but Susannah squeezed Angie’s arm. “Please. I will explain once we get this dog. I don’t want Caden running around where he might get away from us.”

  Taking Caden by the shoulders, Angie muttered, “Okay.”

  Susannah watched them cross the street and then followed Bitsy, who was hustling across the railroad tracks after Apollo. When she’d finally caught up, Susannah joined Bitsy in front of Cutz & Curlz, huffing. “Where did they go?”

  Bent over, Apollo’s cape hanging from her wrist, Bitsy made a motion with her head and straightened. “Over. There.” Apollo had made it up the stairs onto the wraparound porch but had apparently pooped out and was lying with his head on his paws, panting. Susannah climbed the stairs, gave the pooch a pat, and then planted herself next to him. Bitsy followed suit and perched on the porch on the other side of the dog. Throwing his rumpled cape over her shoulder, she grasped his collar. “I got you now, you little scoundrel.”

  “When did I get so out of shape?” Susannah panted along with Apollo.

  “I think we’ve been over this before. Angie. Muffins. Lasagna.” Bitsy plopped her bag onto the porch and began rummaging through it. The porch creaked, and Susannah searched for the black cat, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for his leash.” Bitsy glanced at Susannah and then back into her bag. “I know it’s in here.”

  “Well, why did you take it off him?”

  “It clashed with his cape.”

  “Of course,” Susannah replied, trying not to voice the exasperation she felt with her friend. They needed to get back to Main Street. For some reason, the deserted shop was giving her the willies. As Apollo yawned, Susannah grasped Apollo’s collar. “I’ve got him. Maybe you should dump that thing out.”

  Bitsy gave Susannah a nod and dug deeper into her bag. Suddenly, Apollo’s ears came to attention and he began to emit a low whine. Gooseflesh rose on Susannah’s arms, and she turned to check behind her. Maggie Hibbard stood at the corner of the house, looking tentatively around the corner.

  “Maggie?” Susannah asked. Maggie beckoned with one hand but shook her head almost imperceptibly. A look of pain crossed her face.

  “Ah-ha,” Bitsy said, removing the leash and holding it up. Susannah nudged her. “What?”

  Maggie stepped around the corner. Crystal Keene held a gun to her head.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Blasted Bits & Batting Cleanup

  Apollo cleaned Susannah’s hand of blasted bits of his doggie treats, which had exploded from Bitsy’s concealed-carry purse along with the bullet. Her ears were still ringing, but she had no problem seeing the blue flashing lights of Randy Laughton’s Peach Grove Police Department squad car. She watched with satisfaction as Crystal was perp-walked down the front path and shoved into the back door of the patrol car.

  Maggie appeared at the salon door carrying two mugs. “Coffee?” she shouted.

  “Thanks.” The mug was decorated with different-colored scissors, and Susannah raised it to Maggie, then sipped. Maggie sat down next to her on the porch. Together, they watched Randy pull into the street and drive toward downtown Peach Grove. Apollo sighed and lay down on his side, apparently exhausted by his performance as an attack hound. Covering the pooch with the Sherlock Holmes cape, Maggie chuckled. Susannah remembered her opinion of Maggie from the camp-out. A lot had changed in a short period of time, and a lot more probably would.

  Suddenly she felt homesick for Angie and Caden.

  On the lawn, Bitsy’s cousins, Tiffany Long Roberts and her husband, Terrell Roberts, were speaking with Detective Withers. Despite being at the epicenter of the eardrum-injuring blast, Bitsy had her arms around both of them, nodding and encouraging them as if she could hear everything they said. Susannah doubted that she could.

  Terrell Roberts’s shotgun had appeared through the spindles of Maggie’s porch, taking the last bit of fight out of Crystal. Tiffany had already dialed 911, and they both kept watch over Crystal while Susannah, Maggie, and Bitsy calmed Apollo and each other.

  Apollo whined in his sleep, and Susannah appraised him, nudging Maggie at the same time. “You hear that?” Susannah pointed at Apollo.

  “I did.” Maggie leaned in. “I don’t think my hearing was damaged as much as yours.”

  On the lawn, the detective flipped her notebook closed, an action Susannah had noted on other occasions and knew meant she was finished asking questions. Taking her cousins by the
hand, Bitsy walked them to their house as Detective Withers turned and faced Cutz & Curlz before asking, “You want to go first?”

  Staring into her cup, Maggie didn’t look up. Susannah tapped her hand, and Maggie gave her a side-eye glance, tears spilling down her cheek.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” said Susannah.

  Maggie nodded and scampered down the wooden steps—now in a pair of white sneakers. Susannah watched her lean toward Detective Withers, cupping her ear with her hand.

  “This is going to be fun to watch,” Susannah said as Bitsy sat down in Maggie’s place.

  “What?” Bitsy asked, cupping her ear with her hand.

  Susannah shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “Speak up, I can’t hear you.”

  Susannah wrapped her arm around Bitsy’s shoulder. “I know.”

  * * *

  At Peachy Things, Bitsy slumped in her chair, one hand around a mug of hot cocoa. Angie and Caden were safe, and Andrea and Jamal had returned from his baseball game blissfully unaware of the trouble. Complaining about rumbling tummies, Angie and Andrea had piled into Bitsy’s SUV with the boys and left in search of food. Susannah hadn’t even nagged them about eating healthy.

  “Let’s get going.”

  Maggie, whose stylish tendrils now hung about her head like knotted ropes, had agreed to take Susannah to the city impound lot to retrieve the Jeep. Bitsy nudged Apollo with her foot. Apollo had been the least affected by the gunshots, snoozing happily on the porch while Detective Withers had questioned everyone involved. The only thing that seemed to energize the pooch, besides a hunk of bad guy thigh, was Otis the cat.

  “Fine.” Bitsy stood and stretched. “But only if you promise to take me to America’s Finest.”

  “Okay, okay.” Susannah had tried to talk Bitsy out of replacing her concealed-carry bag immediately, but she was not having it. She didn’t even care that Travis was behind all the chaos that had happened in the last week.

  “I’m not going anywhere without my friends Smith & Wesson.” Bitsy’s purse was in tatters, but her wallet had miraculously survived the live ammo test. She shook the purse in Susannah’s direction. “And If I learned anything today, it’s that a woman needs plenty of room in her handbag to rack a slide.”

  “I get it.” Susannah put a hand out to Maggie, who moved slowly.

  “I’m gonna feel this tomorrow.”

  “We all are.”

  Less than an hour later, Susannah found herself in the checkout line at America’s Finest with the conveyor belt piled high with Bitsy’s purchases. She gazed at the boxes of ammo stacked next to a new pair of sound-canceling earmuffs that must have weighed five pounds. Maggie waited patiently outside the store, Apollo’s leash in one hand, a brand-new wooden baseball bat in the other. She had also purchased a concealed-carry handbag—reserved, she said, for future use.

  “Apollo sure has taken a shine to Miss Maggie.” Bitsy waved at her through the plate glass. Apollo wagged his tail.

  “I think she may have fed him a few of Miss Shirleen’s cookies,” Susannah observed.

  “Well, he don’t seem none the worse for it.”

  “No—” Bumped from behind, Susannah was propelled closer to Bitsy. Over her shoulder, a Ghostface mask appeared. Bitsy gasped. The cashier raised her hands as Ghostface brandished a gun.

  “Give me all your cash,” he mumbled. The cashier was frozen in place. “Now!”

  As the cashier fumbled with the register, Susannah stared at the conveyor belt. The voice was familiar. She peeked up at him. The black robes and creepy mask sent a chill down her neck. Glancing down at his shoes, she noticed a small green leaf stuck to the robes. Bitsy had stiffened but now Susannah felt her relax.

  Nudging Bitsy gently, Susannah wanted to yell, Don’t do anything foolish. But she couldn’t and hoped BFF telepathy would work instead.

  Not one to mind verbal commands, let alone telepathic ones, Bitsy shifted her weight, ignoring Susannah’s extrasensory plea.

  As the Ghostface gunman reached for the cash, Susannah ducked, and Bitsy smashed his hand with one hundred rounds of nine-millimeter ammo. He cried out and dropped the gun. Susannah bashed him in the face with the sound-canceling earmuffs, which hit the plastic mask with a whap. There was a dull thwack, and he staggered back and crumpled.

  Maggie stood behind him, clutching her new Louisville Slugger. “I always liked batting cleanup.”

  As the sound of sirens rose in the distance, Susannah squatted and stripped the gunman of his mask.

  Owen Chaffin blinked, his face contorted in pain.

  * * *

  For the second time that day, Susannah found herself staring down the notepad of Detective Varina Withers. Still clutching her baseball bat, Maggie gave her statement to Randy. Outside the store, Bitsy waited on her cousin Kiara.

  “Are you certain you didn’t see Mr. Chaffin enter the store?”

  Susannah shook her head. “No, he was suddenly behind me.” As Detective Withers inked up her pad, Susannah bit her lip. “You don’t think he was following me, do you?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “There was someone in a Ghostface mask at the haunted house, when my purse was stolen. And outside the cemetery when we…” She glanced out the window where Bitsy’s cousin Kiara was cuddling Apollo. “When, uh, Apollo found the gun. He must have planted it there.”

  “I couldn’t say,” the detective said, but the way her eye twitched gave Susannah the response she needed.

  “I knew I was right about him.” Susannah glared at the detective. “When I came to you for help, you treated me like I was crazy.”

  “We took your complaint about Mrs. Keene very seriously.” The twitch was gone. Under her breath, but loud enough for Susannah to hear, the detective said, “We can never comment on an ongoing investigation.”

  “I—”

  “That will be all, Doctor.” The detective clicked her pen, but this time she didn’t flip her pad closed. “I’ll be in touch.”

  As the detective walked away, Maggie approached, her interview with Randy complete. Susannah took her arm. “What was all that about how Owen got in the store?”

  “He came out of the storeroom.”

  “What?” Susannah studied the parking lot, realizing that none of the vehicles belonged to Owen.

  “You were right.” Maggie raised her voice so it would carry, and Randy glanced at Susannah with a sheepish expression. Maggie huffed out of the store, and Susannah followed. “About Owen and Travis, I mean. Owen must have a key to the employee entrance. It’s lucky I saw him come out of the storeroom, or they would be blaming us again.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Hmmph. I don’t think the Peach Grove PD has handled this situation well,” Maggie continued. “You had it all figured out, but they let cray-cray Crystal and immoral Owen roam the streets. But I never thought Owen would stick up Travis’s store,” Maggie spat. “Band of brothers, my foot.”

  Randy approached. “Now, Maggie, we do what we can with the evidence we have.”

  “Well,” Bitsy interjected, “I hope all y’all agree the evidence says Keith can come home.”

  “No comment.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Stuffed Shells and Bombshells

  Susannah pulled a tray of Angie’s pepperoni lasagna out of the oven, closing the oven door with her hip. Steam escaped from under the aluminum foil. She placed the tray on the stove and pulled back the foil. Mozzarella cheese resisted the unveiling, sticking to the foil and making dancing strings of cheese. Applause broke out from the kitchen table where Keith, Tina, Bitsy, and Larraine sat. After centering several trivets in the middle of the table, Angie took a bow as her creation took center stage.

  “Mangia!” Angie said.

  Keith stood, his six-foot-five frame towering over the table, and gave Susannah a hug. “I don’t know how to thank you, Dr. Shine.”

  “Leave some for the rest of us.” Susan
nah smiled as Tina got out of her seat and joined in the hug.

  “I’m serious,” Keith said. “This is the second time you’ve saved my family. I might need to hire you as a nanny so you can protect the baby.”

  The doorbell rang, and Angie left the table to answer it.

  “You don’t really think that detective would have pressed charges against you, do you?” Larraine asked. “Didn’t they have evidence against Owen?”

  Keith’s face fell. “They had evidence, but nothing directly linking Owen to the thefts from the evidence room.” He took Tina’s hand and kissed her on the forehead. “He managed to disable the security camera every time there was a theft. When I reported that my off-duty weapon had gone missing after the Halloween party, they thought I was building some sort of cover.”

  Tina paled a bit, her brown eyes losing their sparkle. She smacked Keith’s arm. “Why didn’t you tell me about that?”

  Keith ushered his wife into her chair, giving her belly a gentle pat and pushing her chair in. “I didn’t want you to worry.” He sat and looked across the table. “I never thought after my years on the force that Randy would think I was capable of something like that.”

  “Without evidence, Randy didn’t want to accuse anyone of breaking into Keith’s gun safe,” Tina offered, picking up a piece of Italian bread and buttering it. “And Owen flew under the radar because he’d been in Peach Grove less than a year. And because of how young he is. But he’s a lowlife scum.”

  “No, that lying dog Travis Keene is the real scum.” Maggie Hibbard clopped into the kitchen behind Angie, wearing leather pants and stiletto heels with tiny spikey studs on them. Maggie hugged Susannah. “Thanks for the invite. Sorry I’m late. That annoying detective paid me a visit again. I’m glad the boys are with their dad this weekend. I’d hate for them to hear all her questions.”

  “I know. Thank goodness for Bitsy’s niece, Andrea. She’s a lifesaver.” Angie took Maggie’s studded purse and stared at it. “She took Caden and Jamal for an afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese’s.”