I stayed for another half hour, watching Betty from afar as she turned my $20 into $100 at least, before exhaustion took its toll. My eyelids were heavy. I wasn't much of a night person anymore. Domesticity had definitely changed me.
But there was no way I could leave Betty here by herself, especially when I'd been warned that something might happen to her.
"Go to bed." Riley appeared at my side, making me jump. "I'll watch over things and walk her back to the tent when she's done."
"You think this is okay?" I shook my head. "Watching a little girl gamble?"
"I figure she got the money from you." Riley grinned. "I know about the marbles."
I thought about protesting, but what was the point?
"Fine. Make sure nothing happens to her, or else I'm going to take pieces off of you," I warned.
Riley laughed and returned to his post. And I went back to bed.
"She did what?" Kelly stared as we made hash browns, fried eggs, and bacon the next morning.
"Yup. Juliette's officially plotting against me." I shook my head.
"Not that! The thing with Betty gambling with a bunch of strange men!"
"Oh, that. Um, yeah. So she's getting a little intel for me. Riley watched her all night. It's okay."
"Mrs. Wrath gave me $20." Betty appeared at my elbow and scowled at the food. "Can you burn mine?"
Kelly narrowed her eyes at me.
"For the investigation," I protested. "She said it would help."
"Helped me make $400 last night." The girl stretched and yawned.
We turned to look at her. "What?" we said in unison, which would've been cool had Kelly not been angry with me.
"You're out of control." Kelly pointed a wooden spoon at me. "You have to forget about all of this idiocy and help me these next two days."
I threw my arms up in the air. "Idiocy? There's some guy missing a leg and probably dying out there," I said in an attempt to appeal to her nursey side.
She shook her head. "Not our problem. Let Soo Jin and Eddie handle it."
"They can't find the leg!"
"And you can?"
"Well, not so far, but they need me!"
Kelly closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. After ordering Betty to wake the other girls, she said, "They don't need you. This isn't your case. You know why? Because you aren't a police officer. You're also not a county deputy, a state trooper, or a coroner. But you know who is?"
I slumped. "Yeah, I know who is."
"Even Riley outranks you in this case because he's a private investigator. Are you a private investigator?"
I started to say that I kind of was, but she cut me off.
"No, you aren't. For the last two days, you've been running around, chasing a ghost leg, and leaving me with all the work."
I looked at the ground. "You're right."
"We're halfway through this event, with two more days to go, and you're spending all your time on your own or with just one of the ten girls we brought with us."
"Okay, but—" I started to protest.
"But nothing. We are here to have an educational bonding experience with our troop. That is our first and only priority." She pointed the wooden spoon at me.
I toyed with disarming her but realized she had a point.
"Now, as far as Juliette is concerned, we will stick together and deal with whatever she does. But as for the other stuff, you're out of the investigation."
Betty appeared behind Kelly and mouthed, I've got your back.
"And when Betty comes back, I'm going to lay down the law. Her poker days are over." Kelly turned her attention back to our breakfast, and I noticed that Betty was gone. That kid was smart. She wasn't going to be left alone with Kelly from here on out.
Kelly had a point. I was involving myself in something I had no business being involved in. I did this every time. And while, in some cases, I had a stake in what was happening—because it was my house robbed or my fiancé kidnapped on the eve of our wedding—other than the bizarre warning from Ralph and the questionable reference to me by the provost, I really didn't have a dog in this hunt.
But I knew someone who did…
"I'm sorry, hon," Rex apologized on the phone. "I'd love to help, but besides that missing government employee, we broke up a teen kegger last night, and I'm up to my neck in cranky parents. Have you talked to Carnack?"
"Not since," I grumbled. "He said he can't do anything about it because we don't actually have the leg."
His voice was sympathetic. "I know it's tough, but Kelly's right. This isn't your problem. You have a medical examiner and state trooper there. This is their problem."
"Kelly called you, didn't she?"
"Ten minutes ago," my husband admitted. "But she isn't wrong. As to the stuff with Juliette, what can she actually do? You're a former CIA agent. She can't possibly get the jump on you."
I heard some people yelling in the background. The word lawsuit was being tossed around.
"Hey, babe, more parents just walked in. I've got to go. Love you, bye!" He hung up.
While it was nice to hear that he had so much faith in me, it was cold comfort.
Maybe everyone was right. I had nine other little girls who were hoping to have some fun that didn't include whatever cheating tricks Betty was employing. Besides, maybe there wasn't really a leg. Maybe the guy who warned me really did have heat exhaustion and didn't know what he'd said. Maybe Provost Stumpy meant the word wrath and not my name. And what could Juliette possibly do to me?
These thoughts were depressing me, but they had merit. Was I always going to run headlong into any investigation? My troop was in fourth grade. In a few years, they'd be in middle school and might not even want to be in Girl Scouts anymore. That thought was even more depressing.
No, Rex and Kelly were right. I had to enjoy my time with them while I could. So I pasted a smile on my face and went back to our tent and helped with breakfast.
"Why do you look like that?" Inez asked.
"Look like what?" I asked.
Lauren spoke up. "Like Betty when she's planning a hostile takeover of the school."
"She only did that once," Caterina insisted.
"Wait." My thoughts collected. "Betty did what?"
"It doesn't matter," one of the Kaitlyns said. "You look like my daddy when my mom says he's constipated."
"I'm fine." I brushed them off and pasted on a grin. "I'm smiling because I'm happy to be here with you guys."
"It doesn't look like that," Ava pointed out. "It looks like you sat on a thistle. My cousin did that once. She had prickles all over her…"
I held my hands up to stop her. "I get it. Really, I'm fine."
I looked to Kelly for help, but she was busy wiping down the cast iron skillet.
Since I wasn't forthcoming, the girls turned to each other.
"Maybe she's having a bad day?" another Kaitlyn suggested.
"Or it's mano paws," Hannah said. "My mom has that. I thought she was going crazy, but she said it's just hore moans."
"I can hear you," I sighed
"Do you think something's wrong with Philby?" Lauren asked.
A huge gasp went up, and they turned to me. The thought of anything happening to my obese Hitler cat was terrifying to them. She'd been the troop's unofficial mascot for years.
"Philby's fine. And so am I." I made an attempt at a friendly grin, but my lips kind of curdled under the weight of responsibility.
"She's losing it!" Ava shrieked.
"If I was losing it, you'd know it," I grumbled.
When you graduated from CIA training at the Farm, the teachers predicted what would make each student eventually snap. While most trainees got scenarios like naked in the bell tower or driving a vanload of plastique into a railway tunnel in Uruguay, my instructors believed that when it happened to me, I'd jump out of a plane without a parachute over a clown convention in Reno. I never should've told them that clowns freak me out.
Kelly began doling out breakfast. Her eyes darted over each girl. "Where's Betty?"
The girls began to show an unnatural interest in their bacon.
"Girls?" I asked. "Where's Betty?" Though this was probably the question I asked more than any other, it never failed to spike adrenaline and the fight-or-flight defensive mechanism in my brain.
"She, um…" Caterina made it a point not to look at any of the girls, who were now staring at her. "Said she had to pick up a few things in the store."
I spun on my heel and headed for the sutlery. I was met in the doorway by a man with his hand on Betty's shoulder.
"Is she one of yours?" the man asked.
Betty shrugged the man's hand off of her shoulder and straightened her dress.
I sighed. "Yes. What happened?"
"She tried to buy a bayonet with a credit card," he said. "I'm the sutler."
The man was maybe fifty-five, athletic, taller than me. He was dressed in period clothing.
"You're the guy who runs this store?" I asked like an idiot.
"The sutler. Yes, ma'am." He gave me a wink.
"Oh. Right. Sorry. I should've stayed in character," I apologized. "Hey, we met your son."
"He helped me out for the first day," he said. "But he had to make a delivery, so he won't be back. You'll just have to settle for me, I'm afraid. Name's Tom Branson." He gave a sweeping bow. "At your service."
"I'm Merry, with the Ladies Aid Society. And sorry about Betty." I glared at the kid, who ignored me. "She gets a little carried away."
Tom waved me off. "Not a problem. It's nice to see young people show enthusiasm for these events."
"Oh, right. Yay history." I pumped my arm in the air awkwardly. Yeesh. This was all getting to me. Maybe Ava was right, and I was losing it.
"Your young ladies are welcome in my sutlery any time. But you must be 18 to buy bladed weaponry or guns."
Betty narrowed her eyes. "There were boys who fought in the war. Kids not much older than me got to fire guns and stuff."
Tom bent down to Betty's level. "Yes, but they didn't have laws against that back then." He straightened up and smiled at me. "I should get back inside." He touched the tip of his cap. "Ma'am."
"Betty…" I started.
She threw up her arms. "I just wanted to see the bayonets. I wasn't really going to buy them!"
"Not buying it." I shook my head. "You used a credit card." Something pinged in my head. "Hey! Did you take my credit card?"
With a heavy sigh signaling temporary defeat, Betty offered up my card.
"Stop buying stuff with my money!" I insisted as I shoved the card into my skirt pocket.
She rolled her eyes. "It's okay if it's educational." And with that, she ran off.
Kelly was right. She did need my help. Her hands were full with these girls. And here I was chasing a ghost limb that would probably turn out to be nothing more than some sort of prank. Besides, who needed to chase a mystery leg when one had a Betty to corral?
From here on out, I resolved, I was sticking to what I was supposed to do. As I made my way back to my troop, I tripped over something lying in the road.
It's really hard to see stuff near your feet when you have a three-foot diameter of skirts to deal with. Backing up, I saw the problem. It was a man's brown shoe.
Since bending over with a corset was impossible, I grabbed a long stick that had been leaning against a tent. Carefully, I used the stick to nab the shoe and brought it up to my level. How did someone lose a shoe and not notice?
And that's when I spotted it. A rolled-up piece of brown cloth. Unfurling it, I sucked in a breath, which was difficult considering the corset.
It was a brown pant leg. With a ragged cut at one end. I'd seen this piece of fabric and the shoe before.
They'd both been on the missing leg.