The next morning, my phone rang way earlier than any human had a reason to be up. I, of course, thanks to my furry guests, had been up for hours.
I recognized Ethel’s voice immediately. “Lucy, Carol and I want to invite you to brunch.”
I glanced at my clock and calculated the time it would take to turn my hair into something not in the rat-nest family.
“At Carol’s.” She pulled in a breath. “Bring that detective friend of yours if he’s available. We didn’t get the chance to talk to him as much as we would have liked at the Swap.”
“I’m sure he has to work,” I replied, more than a little wary of what she and Carol might be planning to say to him.
“Oh, but you could call him.”
I could... “Who else will be there?” I asked.
Ethel listed off the names of the women who had been at the poker party they hosted at my shop. “We’ve also invited Frank Kelly, his son, Allen, Craig Ryan and a couple of other... friends.”
I hadn’t realized any of the men she’d listed also qualified as her friends, but then Ethel was known for her generosity.
“If I can’t bring Peter, is it alright if I bring Rhonda instead?” I owed my friend for coming to my rescue yesterday morning. I’d come home to a team of suspiciously content dogs, a load of clean towels in my dryer and two loaves of homemade bread inside my oven.
There had also been two extra plates and coffee mugs in my dishwasher. Which was a little strange since my environmentally conscious friend was all about reuse. I couldn’t imagine her getting a clean mug for herself over such a short visit.
It was definitely a mystery I wanted to investigate.
Reluctantly, Ethel agreed and we hung up, giving me two solid hours to get the dogs settled and my hair tamed before I had to leave.
Two hours and thirty minutes later, I arrived at Carol’s. I had called Peter, but I’d gotten his voice mail. I was not upset by this. I was not going to be upset by this. I said both to myself a few times until I thought I could go through the “He’s busy.” “He’s a police officer after all.” “Yes, it is great how great he is.” routine that I’d gotten used to over the year or so that we’d been dating.
Anyway, I had left a message and, as I assured Ethel, I was sure he would stop by if at all possible. He had said he would call me today.
Ethel’s gang was already in place when I got there, all seated around a round table that was covered with a dark cloth. The sight of them gathered like that, hands on the table, faces expectant, made me more than a little uncomfortable. I stood uncertainly, half expecting a crystal ball or Ouija board to make an appearance.
Instead, Carol came through the swinging door carrying a casserole. Plates appeared and soon the ladies were eating and chatting and I wondered why I’d ever felt unsure.
Rhonda arrived with a dish of her own, something vegetarian and healthy I was sure. Frank and his son arrived next. Carol said her husband was watching TV in the basement, and Frank seemed happy enough to disappear down there, almost as quickly as he’d arrived. Allen made a move as if to follow, but Carol cut him off with the ease and skill of a border collie separating a sheep from the herd. She held out a platter of muffins. He took four. I grimaced. I hadn’t realized there was going to be a run on the muffins.
“Ethel and I were hoping you could help us with something in the kitchen,” she said.
He muttered and stared at the basement door, looking like a sullen teenager rather than the twenty-something I guessed him to be.
“It’s Carlyle,” Carol announced. “He needs his toenails cut.”
Carlyle, I knew from my earlier visit to Carol’s, was her ten-year-old shepherd mix. I hadn’t noticed that his toenails were out of control, but I wasn’t all that observant about such things. One look at Kiska’s pedicure, or lack of one, would prove that.
Allen’s demeanor changed completely. “Already? Did you get the powder?” Looking close to eager, he followed the older women into the kitchen
Allen seemed happy enough, but with word that there was dog work to be done, I naturally moved to help, or watch... or see if Allen would want to come to my house next and wrestle a certain malamute into the pedicure chair.
Rhonda, however, stopped me with a hand on my arm. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Usually when Rhonda needed to talk to me it had to do with some piece of juicy gossip or another, but this time her expression was more serious. I grabbed two of the remaining muffins before someone else could clear them out and prepared to listen. The muffin was good... not blueberry as I’d thought, but huckleberry. Even better.
Martin walked into the room, and right behind him came Peter.
I coughed, shooting a berry onto Rhonda’s hand-knitted sweater.
Martin walked toward us, a smile on his face and little jog in his step. Peter stood behind him, his gaze settling on me for only a moment. He gave me a brief nod before sweeping over the rest of the room.
It didn’t take a border collie, with their annoying smarts, to figure out that he was not in the mood to share muffins and gossip.
I took a drink of juice and tried to look unconcerned. So, Peter had given me only the briefest of greetings, and he had just happened to walk in right behind Martin. I hadn’t invited Martin. I hadn’t even known Martin was coming. Peter had to know I wouldn’t invite them both. Even if I were a cheater, I would never be that bold.
I was way too big of a weenie for that.
While Martin and Rhonda made small talk, I kept my attention on Peter. He stopped briefly at the table where Ethel’s crew still sat enjoying their eggs and muffins, and then headed into the kitchen.
Rhonda, always on the alert for potential gossip, glanced after him. “That was interesting.”
I agreed. I also now suspected that, shocking as the idea was, I was not the focus of Peter’s day, at least right now.
Which meant I really wanted to know what was.
Wiggling my now empty juice glass, I walked past the crew and through the swinging door.
Just in time to see my boyfriend slap handcuffs on one of our octogenarian hostesses.
o0o
I caught up with Peter outside of Carol’s, after he’d handed Ethel off to my buddy Chuck.
“Stay out of this,” he told me.
“You put Ethel in handcuffs.” I couldn’t believe he didn’t see the problem with this.
“I have my reasons.”
I was a fair person. I was willing to listen to reason. “They are...?”
“Not your concern.” He shoved his hat up higher on his head and stared over my shoulder at Carol’s front porch, where most of the guests now stood. The exceptions were Carol’s husband, Frank, and Allen. And Craig, but my neighbor hadn’t even made an appearance yet.
I guessed Carol’s husband and Frank hadn’t gotten word yet of what had happened right above their heads. And Allen, well, he was young and probably not all that civically minded. He was basically still a kid. At the first sign of drama, he’d probably high-tailed it out the back door.
“She’s a well known philanthropist and over 80 years old. What possible justification could there be for putting her in cuffs and shoving her into the back of a police car?”
He inhaled in that way that told me I was trying his patience. “She was not shoved. The cuffs are protocol.”
“Protocol. For what?”
He gaze met mine, steady, solid, unwavering. “Not your concern.”
I’d forgotten how frustrating he could be. I balled my fist and counted in my head. I got all the way to five before I couldn’t contain myself. “She’s—”
“Not your concern,” he said again. Then he tipped his hat and strode to his truck.
I stood where he’d left me, flabbergasted and annoyed as hell.
Rhonda was by my side before Peter’s door had a chance to shut. “What does he think she did?”
I shook my head. “He said it wasn’t my concern.”
“Seriously? Of course it’s our concern. We were here.”
Another good point.
“Maybe Carol knows. She was in the kitchen when Peter came in. He has to say what he’s arresting you for, right? Before he can put you in handcuffs?”
With that in mind, we went to search out Carol, who had gone back inside, along with the rest of the gang. They were sitting around the table again, drinking coffee and talking in low conspiratorial voices. When we came in, they all took a sudden interest in rearranging cups and stirring sugar into their drinks.
I felt my palms begin to sweat. It was like walking into a slumber party late in junior high. You knew immediately you were either the topic of conversation or the weak link that couldn’t be trusted with day’s hottest gossip.
This time, I didn’t think I was the first, which meant...
“I didn’t know Peter had any intention of...” I looked around at the expectant faces. “He isn’t usually... I couldn’t get him...”
Rhonda grabbed me by the arm. “What happened? Why did they take Ethel?”
Yeah... that.
The women exchanged glances, conducting an unspoken vote on how much they were going to reveal.
Carol stepped up, with a piece of quiche in her hand. “Did you try Rose’s quiche? It’s eggless.”
Tempting as eggless quiche was, I knew when I was being stonewalled. And so did Rhonda. We looked at each other.
Martin, on the other hand, who had made his way inside too, took the quiche and a refill on his coffee.
Oh the simplicity of being a man, and not understanding that what women didn’t say was often much more important than what they did.
And there was plenty not being said today.
o0o
Two hours later, Rhonda and I had moved to her shop to decipher what had happened.
“You could call George,” she suggested.
“I already tried. He’s off today.”
“Daniel?”
I rolled my eyes at my best friend for the suggestion. “I will if I have to, but it really shouldn’t come to that.” Information from Daniel came at a price. I needed to save it for the really hard cases; an arrest that was made almost right in front of me should not be one of those cases.
The problem was the “almost” and the fact that Ethel’s crew seemed to have locked down any leaks quicker and more completely than twenty plumbers armed with heavy duty caulk.
“Carol’s husband?”
I shook my head. “You saw them sitting around that table. Whatever happened, those women aren’t sharing it with anyone, even their husbands.”
We sat in quiet for a minute, me staring out the windows of Rhonda’s used bookstore at random pedestrians and Rhonda thumbing through books looking for damage.
Our problem of what to do next was solved when Daniel walked by the window and spotted me.
“Crap,” I said. “He’s coming in.”
With his normal smug look in place, he stepped over a fallen stack of books and pulled out a notebook. “I heard you were at Carol Kennedy’s when Ethel Monroe was arrested.”
“Might have been.” I picked up a book and followed Rhonda’s example, thumbing through it. “Someone wrote notes in this one,” I commented, holding the book up.
“Put it in there.” She gestured to a cardboard box already partially filled.
“Come on. I know you were there.” He looked at Rhonda. “Both of you. I also know you’ve been driving Ethel around a lot lately.” He looked back at me. “Which considering that you were asking about Red’s murder...” He gave me a knowing look.
Except I wasn’t knowing. I wasn’t knowing at all.
“So?” Rhonda asked, obviously not being as patient as I was.
Daniel looked at her as if her IQ was in the single digits. “So... Frank Kelly was arrested for Red’s murder. Frank was at Carol’s house yesterday and Ethel was too.”
I started to think Daniel was the one with the one digit IQ. “Carol’s husband is friends with Frank Kelly.”
“He might be, but what about Ethel? Now we know how she pays for that expensive home and manages to keep up her reputation as a charity maven.”
“Do we?” I asked, crossing my arms and trying to look superior.
“If your boyfriend is to be trusted we do.”
Would the reporter never quit talking in riddles?
“Peter is very trustworthy.”
Daniel’s pen moved to hover above his notepad. “So you think Ethel is guilty? What exactly has she said to you that makes you think that?”
I stood with my arms crossed and my toes tapping for five seconds before I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Guilty of what? We don’t know why she was arrested!”
The outburst was embarrassing, but it got results. After Daniel got done grinning at his superior knowledge, he spilled the beans. “Ethel is a snowmobile thief.”
He had to be kidding. “Ethel Monroe?” I held my hand out to my side. “So big? Eighty something?”
Still grinning, Daniel nodded. “That’s her. From what I’ve heard, it started with her friends and then she expanded.”
“Her friends? Like Carol?”
“Yes. There were others.” He flipped back a page in his notebook. “Susan Olgivy. Looks like in her case it was a son-in-law, and a neighbor of Rose Pritzer. Then there was a Fitz McGowan, nephew to a Molly and Milly McGowan. All three times, Ethel had been at the house or near the house right before the sleds were taken.”
“But I took her and Carol snowmobile shopping at the Swap in Bozeman.”
“Interesting.” He scribbled something down. “Maybe she was thinking of going for a bigger target. Did she talk to anyone there?”
Like I’d tell him who Ethel had talked to.
I, of course, did not believe for a second that the do-good goddess, Ethel Monroe, was a thief.
“You don’t seriously believe that Ethel did this, do you? How could she?”
He grunted out a laugh. “Have you met her? She’s tough. She didn’t like a story I did last year and she rapped me on the head with that cane of hers. Hard.”
Yet one more example of Ethel’s magnanimous ways, putting Daniel in his place, a.k.a. looking out for what was best for all of us.
Rhonda set down the book she was holding and walked around the counter so she was standing beside me. “Have you ever ridden a snowmobile? Ethel may be tough in attitude, but she doesn’t even drive herself around anymore. That’s how Lucy met her. And if Carol’s husband’s snowmobiles were stolen from his house, someone would have to have hauled them off in a trailer.”
“So she has an accomplice. Would you like to confess to that?” He, of course, looked at me.
I lifted my lip in my best imitation of Fluff putting Zef in his place. It didn’t have quite the same effect on Daniel as it did on Zef, but it made me feel better.
“Should I take that as a yes?” he asked.
Rhonda, reading my mood, slipped her arm through Daniel’s and led him to the door. “Have you ever considered yoga?” she asked him. “And a dairy-free diet? Both of those might help to clear your mind so you can see the answers to your problem more clearly.”
Obviously confused by Rhonda’s holistic approach to getting rid of him, Daniel glanced back over his shoulder at me. I, however, was done with him. He’d told me what I needed to know. Until, of course, the next time, but I’d worry about that then.
I turned my back and stared at the wall until I heard the chimes signal that the door had closed behind him.
Rhonda and I spun toward each other. “Ethel a snowmobile thief?” we both exclaimed, then stood shaking our heads and sharing our mutual disbelief.
After a moment, we both sat down.
“So?” Rhonda asked. “What should we do?”
I loved that she knew me well enough to know that I would need to do something.
“I could call Peter, but you know he won’t listen to me.”
She nodded. “I wonder...”
“What?”
“Well, gossip had the snowmobile thefts tied to Red’s murder. You don’t think the police think Ethel was involved with that, do you?”
“They couldn’t.” But I couldn’t see how they could think she was out stealing snowmobiles either. “They might. She’s over 80,” I said.
“And so small,” Rhonda added.
We stared at each other another few minutes.
“We need to get her out,” I said.
“Definitely.”
We grabbed our bags and headed to the police station.
o0o
The police station was crowded. Ethel’s crew sat on the benches surrounding the waiting area, knitting, reading and murmuring among themselves, while Stone, Peter, and George went about looking official. Daniel hovered somewhere in between the two groups, ears perked for a dropped secret from either.
Rhonda and I boldly tromped to the desk. Ignoring Stone and Peter, I addressed George. “We’re here to see Ethel Monroe.”
Stone snickered. Maybe it was a grunt, but it came across as a snicker.
George shifted his eyes to the side, reminding me that the two detectives were behind him - as if I couldn’t see them for myself. “Inmate visitation is processed downstairs.”
I turned to look at the women lining the walls. “Then why are they here?”
“Inmate visitation is processed downstairs,” he replied, widening his eyes as if I didn’t get that he purposely wasn’t telling me anything of use.
“Then why—” I started again.
Stone interrupted. “This isn’t the Hilton. If someone is brought in, they get processed, get to meet with their attorney and maybe one other person.” He motioned to Ethel’s friends. “We don’t do coffee klatches.”
Susan, who had appeared to be reading, carefully placed her ereader into her patchwork tote and stood. “We don’t do coffee klatches either, Detective.”
Molly and Milly looked up from their knitting, eyes wide, while Carol hurried over to stand next to Susan and whisper something in her ear.
I wasn’t sure what Carol said to her, but it seemed to calm the other woman down, at least enough that she took her seat. She didn’t, however, pull her ereader back out or take her distrustful gaze off of Stone.
I knew I’d liked these ladies for a reason.
Peter, obviously more in tune to impending trouble than his fellow detective, stepped from behind the desk and grabbed me by the elbow. “You need to go home,” he said. “You’re stirring up the...”
“What?” I asked, daring him to say something he’d regret.
He sighed. “Ladies.”
“Well, the ladies and I want to see Ethel.”
“You can’t. Her case is being processed.”
“And then?”
“And then she’ll go before a judge, bail will be set... You know how it works.”
I did, but Ethel was a special case. “At her age...” I argued.
“There is no ‘at her age’ with Ethel Monroe,” Peter informed me. “The woman is tougher than a microwaved steak.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not leaving until Ethel’s released.”
Shaking his head, he motioned toward an empty bench. “Then join the rest of them.”
o0o
Four hours later, I knew I was going to have to give up and leave. The dogs had been shut up and alone in my house too long. It wasn’t an “accident” I was worried about so much as intentional mischief.
Rhonda, sensing my dilemma, leaned toward me. “No one will judge you. The dogs come first.”
She was right, of course, and Ethel for sure would understand. I moved to my feet and reached in my pocket for my keys.
As I did, Stone walked through the lobby. “I see the herd has thinned.”
Daniel had left first, but then no one had expected him to stay. Besides, first word that Ethel was getting out and he’d be back.
Carol had left too, but I didn’t think it was from lack of loyalty. My guess was that she had something in the works to help her friend, an attorney or money for bail, or maybe some kind of evidence to prove Ethel’s innocence.
And then there was me... Under Stone’s perusal, I lifted the hand holding my keys and stretched. “Benches are a bit hard,” I said. Then I stretched the other side too. Then I sat down.
“Can’t do it,” I muttered to Rhonda. “He’ll think he’s won.”
She nodded and reached for her bag. “Then we’ll just have to call in the troops.”
Half an hour later, Betty waltzed into the station wearing purple fur and carrying a cardboard box. With the box tucked under one arm, she handed each of Ethel’s friends what appeared to be a paper-wrapped sandwich.
When she reached me, I could see the box was still full of sandwiches. “You might want to go back for a few more,” I said, ever the smart ass.
“You think?” She frowned. “Maybe you’re right.”
The front door opened again. Phyllis walked in, carrying a second box and leading a stream of people behind her.
Old, young, male, female, white, native American. There were even dogs wearing service vests and three cats in carriers.
“Ethel has helped a lot of people and a lot of people believe in Ethel,” Betty said before hurrying toward the growing crowd to finish her sandwich giveaway.
After that, the “processing” Ethel was going through seemed to move faster, and somehow the need for her to go before a judge was waved. Although I suspected it was more over-ruled by the need to clear the station of her waiting visitors.
It was dark when George escorted her out to her awaiting fans, but Ethel looked none the worse for her time in the clinker. She waved her cane and murmured what looked like a reprimand in George’s ear before patting him on the arm and toddling to the waiting arms of her crew.