Chapter Twenty-Five

Still holding the discarded rapier at my side, I watched Detectives Jameson and Bartley cuff a screaming Kitty and shove her into the back of their unmarked car. With a deep satisfaction and a feeling of having finally won, I turned to Ben and Bella and smiled at them.

“Glad that’s over,” I said, wiping my sweating forehead with the scarf dangling from my arm.

Ben swept me up in a huge hug and kissed me so hard I thought my toes not only curled up but would fall off. When the kiss ended and my head stopped revolving like a disco ball at a high school dance, he whispered in my ear, “We are definitely finishing what we started. Tonight.” Then he let me go long enough for Bella to hug me to her.

“You were so brave,” Bella said, releasing me. She hit me in the arm. “Don’t ever scare me like that again. Who was the one who said Kitty would go docilely once you told her the jig was up? Who said it would be a piece of cake? You. And I, for one, will never believe you again about stuff like that. She could have killed you!” This was punctuated by another jab to the arm Kitty had smacked with her plastic sword.

“Watch it,” I said and rubbed my arm where Bella had managed to hit me twice in the same spot. “I’m sorry, okay? I thought she would give up once she figured out we knew everything. I mean, I wanted her desperate, but I still thought she’d retain some smarts. I guess I was wrong.”

The car holding the detectives and Kitty slowly pulled away from the curb. Several spectators came out to see what the commotion was all about. She raised her cuffed hands and very deliberately gave me the finger through the back window. I told all the gawking people to look for Ben’s byline tomorrow in the Martha Herald, which reminded me. “How was your first assignment?” I asked him.

“Uh, all right. I don’t really want to talk about it right now.”

“What do mean you don’t want to talk about it?” Bella asked, and I gave him my version of the bewildered look on her face.

“Well, it, um, wasn’t quite what I thought.” He pulled at the collar of his T-shirt and looked distinctly uncomfortable.

“Spill,” I said. “What was it, then?”

“Remember that story I told you about the man trying to find the owner of that stray dog?”

Bella and I looked at each other, remembering the story of the guy who came in to fill out an advertisement for a lost dog. The poor animal’s only defining characteristics were sticking his nose in any female crotch and humping hedges. We both snickered and looked back at Ben. “Yes,” we said in unison.

“Well I guess Rudder, which is what the old guy decided to name the dog when nobody came to claim the stupid thing, trapped the next door neighbor’s poodle behind a shed and got on her. When the neighbor heard her dog’s shrill barking, she went out and found them. She ran next door and grabbed this guy and was screaming about pedigree and stuff, demanding he get his mangy dog off her purebred. They tried everything, but the humper was not letting go. They finally had to call a veterinarian to get them to separate, and Marty put me on the story because he wanted to make sure I was committed to being a part of the team. Nice intro, huh? Not quite a burglary in progress. More like a humping gone wrong.”

About halfway through the story I started snorting with laughter. Even after he was done telling it I still couldn’t stop myself. Cocky, self-confident Ben Fallon, doing a story on perpetually humping dogs. Life was rich.

That evening, Ben came over as I was finishing up cleaning my home for my dad’s arrival. Dad never had called to tell me how long he was staying, so somehow I had to tell Ben that sex was going to be a difficult thing to do as long as my dad was here.

I knew Ben was disappointed, but I did tell him maybe we could figure something out between us. Then he got right into the reason he’d stopped by, other than to see the lovely yours truly.

“I was down at the station trying to get facts for my story about Kitty and her arrest. While I was there, I picked up two very good pieces of information.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” I asked as I grabbed him around his waist and snuggled under his chin in “my place.”

“Well, first of all, Kitty is in a shitload of trouble. She’ll get time for killing Janice and the attempt on your life. But she’s also going to get time for forging a doctor’s signature to get the prescription she used to poison Janice and dropped in your cup to get you.”

“Really?” I was laughing. “That is wonderful.”

“I thought you’d also like to know that when she was put in her cell, she had a neighbor. You’ll never guess who it was.”

“Who?” Oh, I could think of many people I wouldn’t mind Kitty being next to. How about Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy?

“Charlie.”

“Oh, man, that guy cannot catch a break.” I laughed again because it was too good. I really thought Charlie had given himself up in hopes of getting away from his mother, and now she was in the cell right next to his. He had to be screaming his head off.

“And...”

“There’s more?”

“Yes, there’s more.” Ben put his chin on top of my head, and I could feel his jaw working as he said the rest of his great news. “Samuel Hedlund was being blackmailed by his own wife, if you can believe it. Pretty smart woman. She took those pictures and then mailed them from the next town over. She wanted to bleed him dry before she divorced him. So she attached the photos as a virus to every file in his hard drive and they would piggyback onto the files he sent or downloaded to disk, like the ones he gave to Janice for his annual reports.”

I was impressed. “That is clever. I’ll have to remember that one.”

“You won’t need it, Ivy. I may have had a wandering...eye.” That’s not what I would have called it, I thought. “But that’s over now. I want you,” he said, backing me up against the arm of the couch. “Every single creamy inch of you.” I fell backward and he followed me down, his mouth fastening to the place right behind my ear that drove me mad. “This couch is comfy. Let’s give it a try.”

At that moment, with Ben kissing me into oblivion, the doorbell rang. I looked out the stained glass panels and could see the top of my dad’s bald head as he looked down at something I couldn’t see. Blasted bad timing, I thought.

Ben bent so his forehead rested on mine. “We’ll pick up where we left off next time,” he said.

Next time couldn’t come soon enough.