Wife for Hire

  A car pulled up behind them. Everyone turned around to squint into the headlights.

  “Probably Hank,” Maggie said. “You’d better watch out. He’ll break every bone in your body when he gets hold of you.”

  “Nah,” Ed said. “It’s not Hank. Hank drives a pickup, and these headlights are too low. Besides, Hank’s a good guy. He’d understand about us needing the money.”

  The lights blinked off and several figures got out of the car. One of the men had a body slung over his shoulder. They approached Ed Kritch and looked in the window.

  “It’s Spike,” Ed said, rolling down his window. “Hey, Spike, what are you doing here?”

  “We got a hostage,” Spike said. “We come for the diary and we got someone who knows where it is!”

  Ed opened the door and Spike dumped Elsie into the backseat alongside Maggie.

  “I’ll never tell,” Elsie said. “Not in a million years. You could torture me, and I won’t tell you.”

  “We don’t know any torture,” Spike said. “We were counting on you just helping out.”

  “They had me trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey,” Elsie said. “Brought me here in a flour sack. Can you imagine that? After I paid sixteen dollars to have my hair done too.”

  “It looks okay,” Spike said. “And we washed the flour sack out last night so it wouldn’t ruin your dress. We tried to think of everything.”

  “You’d need a brain transplant before you could think of anything,” Elsie said.

  Spike and Ed exchanged worried looks.

  “What do we do now?” Spike asked. “How’re we gonna get the diary?”

  Ed ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Vern, you were in the army. You know any torture we could do on ladies?”

  “I never learned how to torture ladies,” Vern said. “You had to be in special forces to learn stuff like that.”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to terrorize a couple of defenseless women,” Elsie said.

  “Defenseless, hah!” Spike said. “You just about broke Melvin Nielsen’s knee when he tried to help me jam you into the car. And you got a mean mouth on you too. Shame on you for even knowing those words.”

  Elsie smoothed her skirt over her knees and set her black patent leather purse primly on her lap. “This has all been very upsetting,” she said. “You don’t mind if I get a hankie from my purse, do you?”

  “No, ma’am,” Ed said. “You go right ahead and get your hankie.”

  Elsie reached into her purse and pulled out the forty-five.

  “Holy cow!” Ed Kritch said. “What the hell are you doing with a gun in your pocketbook? It isn’t loaded, is it?’

  Elsie squinted down the barrel at him. “Of course it’s loaded, you ninny. And just because I’m an old lady, don’t think I won’t use this baby. I could shoot the eyelashes off a groundhog at forty feet.”

  Ed had his hand on the door handle. “Maybe you should put the gun away. You wouldn’t want to hurt anybody.”

  “Justifiable homocide,” Elsie said, pointing the gun at Spike. “You can’t go around kidnapping old ladies and planning to steal personal property without paying the price. And besides that, you ruined my evening. I probably missed the hokeypokey. Looks to me like you deserve what ever happens.”

  Ed Kritch lunged for Elsie, knocking her arm aside, and the gun accidentally discharged in the scuffle. The noise rocked the car, and the bullet blew a gaping hole in the roof.

  Ed Kritch, Vern, Ox, and Spike sat in stunned silence for a split second before letting out simultaneous screams and running for their lives. They all piled into Spike’s car and took off down the driveway.

  “Bunch of wimps,” Elsie said. “I wasn’t really going to shoot any of them.”

  Maggie pushed the hair back from her forehead with a shaky hand. “I knew that. I knew you were just putting a scare into them.”

  She took a deep breath and put her hand to her chest to make sure her heart had resumed beating. “What do you think we should do about the men in the house?”

  Elsie put the gun back in her pocketbook and snapped it closed. “They won’t find the diaries in a hundred years. We hid them real good. I say we go back to the dance, and if any of those guys makes a mess of the house, we get them to come back tomorrow and clean it up.”

  It seemed like a better solution than sending Elsie in there with her six-shooter blazing, so Maggie agreed. She slid behind the wheel and turned the key to the ignition. Now she had to decide what to tell Hank. He’d been ready to duke it out with Henry Gooley over a wink. He wasn’t going to take news of a kidnapping calmly.

  “I think I’ll wait awhile to tell Hank about this,” Maggie said to Elsie. “Maybe I’ll tell him on the ride home.”

  “Good idea. I don’t want nothing to ruin the rest of my evening. I’ve got a lot of dancing to catch up on, and I hear they serve coffee and cake at twelve o’clock.”

  Hank was waiting for them when they drove into the grange parking lot. “Where have you been?” he asked. “And what were you doing in Vern’s car?”

  Maggie just stared at him. She hadn’t had the foresight to come up with a story.

  Elsie shifted her weight from foot to foot. “It was me,” she said. “I wasn’t feeling so good.”

  Maggie nodded. “Yeah, Elsie wasn’t feeling so good. So I took her home. We couldn’t find you, so we borrowed Vern’s car.”

  “But then when we got there I was feeling better, so we came back to the dance. Did I miss the hokeypokey?”

  “Yeah,” Hank said. “You missed the hokeypokey.”

  “Dang. What time is it? I didn’t miss the coffee and cake, did I?”

  “No. It’s early yet. Coffee and cake isn’t served until twelve.” He watched Elsie hurry off to the hall before turning to Maggie. “Now, you want to tell me what really happened?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I want to dance. You in the mood for a little cheek-to-cheek scuffling around?”

  “I’m in the mood for an explanation.”

  “I can’t tell you,” Maggie said.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Why not? What’s going on?”

  “If I tell you, you’ll go beserk and spoil the dance. Elsie wouldn’t like that because she’s been waiting for the hokeypokey and the cake, I wouldn’t like it because I’m not into violence, and then there’s your new image to consider. Stable members of the community do not start brawls and trash grange halls.”

  “Why are you so sure I’d trash the grange hall?”

  “Trust me on this one.”

  “I assume Vern plays a part in this. Not only did you come back in his car, but he’s in the bar right now belting down booze like there’s no tomorrow. Maybe I’ll just go in and ask old Vern about this big mystery.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to get violent.”

  “No way.”

  Maggie tipped her nose up a fraction of an inch and stuck her chin out. “Then I’m not telling you.”

  He looked down at the toe of his boot and swore vigorously. “You can really try a man’s patience.”

  “You have to promise.”

  “I promise. But I’m not happy.”

  “It turns out half the town is after the diary. Someone has offered a million dollars for it.”

  “Get out.”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “It has to be someone from New Jersey,” Hank said. “No one around here has that kind of money.”

  Maggie wasn’t sure. There was something about the way Vern wouldn’t tell her the name of the person offering the million dollars. She felt certain Hank could coax all sorts of information from Vern. And she was just as certain she didn’t want to be around to witness the persuasion.

  “Tomorrow you can do some sleuthing,” Maggie said. “To night you have to dance with me.”

  Chapter 9

  Maggie took her shoes off on the way
home and tried to wiggle her toes. “They’re dead,” she said. “They’ll never be the same.”

  Hank sat in a relaxed slouch behind the wheel. “It’s your own fault. You insisted I dance with you.”

  “I was trying to keep you occupied so you wouldn’t misbehave.”

  “I think you just wanted me to hold you in my arms.”

  There was some truth to that, Maggie admitted. He really hadn’t stepped on her toes all that much, and he’d felt wonderful swaying against her in time to the music. In fact, she might have gotten downright carried away if it hadn’t been so obvious that the entire town was watching their every move.

  “So, what do you think of the good people of Skogen?” Hank asked.

  “I’m not too impressed,” she answered truthfully. “The men are all intent on stealing my diary, and at least half of the women are intent on stealing my husband. Big Irma warned me not to mess with your apple pie recipe. Mrs. Farnsworth told me I’d have a life of eternal damnation if I didn’t take up quilting. And Clara somebody sneezed on my coffee cake.”

  “Clara Whipple. She has allergies.”

  “She did it on purpose!”

  “Honey, Clara Whipple sneezes on everybody and everything.”

  Maggie rubbed her toes. “She should use a tissue.”

  Hank turned into the driveway and stole a quick look at Maggie’s feet. “I’m really sorry about your toes. I tried to be careful.”

  “It’s not your fault. You hardly stepped on my toes at all. I’ve been going barefoot so much lately that my feet aren’t used to being in shoes.”

  Three cars passed them going in the opposite direction on the narrow dirt road. The last one was Bubba’s. He stopped and rolled his window down. “Don’t worry,” Bubba said to Hank. “We made sure everything got cleaned up. We even left the porch light on for you.”

  “How thoughtful,” Hank said. “I’ll have to do something nice for you someday.” He sat up a little straighter and got a bright look to his face, as if he’d just had a terrific idea. “I know…how about breakfast. Why don’t you come to breakfast this morning?”

  “I thought I wasn’t supposed to do that anymore.”

  “This is a special occasion.” He shot a look at Maggie. “You don’t mind, do you, cupcake?”

  “No bloodshed,” she said. “I threw up watching Rocky II.”

  Hank waved good night to Bubba and continued along the driveway. “I thought people in New Jersey liked that kind of thing. And what about the time you hit that kid in the head with your lunchbox?”

  Maggie didn’t answer him. She was thinking about the diaries, hoping they were still safely hidden. Tomorrow Hank would make Bubba tell him the name of the person offering the million dollars. That would be a step in the right direction. They could go to the authorities and press charges, although the crime seemed vague. Conspiring to commit robbery maybe.

  A million dollars was big time. If you wanted something badly enough to fork out that kind of money, you probably weren’t going to be easily discouraged. When the locals failed to find Kitty’s notebooks, it seemed logical that professionals would be hired, and professionals might be inclined to break kneecaps and shoot people if they didn’t cooperate. In fact, she couldn’t understand why a professional wasn’t hired in the first place. If she were conspiring to steal something, she certainly wouldn’t have told everyone in town.

  “Hank, don’t you think it’s strange that someone offered a million dollars for the diaries and turned the offer loose on the Skogen grapevine?”

  “Maybe it didn’t start on the grapevine. Maybe the offer was made in private to an individual, and he didn’t keep his mouth shut. Now everybody and their brother is running through my house looking for the good life.”

  He parked the truck and walked Maggie to the porch. He tried the door and found it locked. “Well, at least they locked up before they left.”

  A grim smile returned to his face. Only in Skogen would a pack of people break into your house and then lock up and leave the porch light on for you. And his best friend, Bubba, had been one of them! Obviously no one in Skogen considered breaking into Hank’s house and stealing Maggie’s diary to be a major crime. The truth is, it had more the flavor of a scavenger hunt or a fishing derby.

  He wondered why. People in Skogen were responsible to a fault. They took pride in their town and took care of their own. There had to be a reason for them to feel they had license to get the diary. Greed was strong motivation, but intuition told him there was more to it.

  Maggie watched him unlock the door. “How are they getting in? We locked the door and the windows when we left.”

  “This morning I had Melvin Nielson make extra keys at the hardware store. I imagine he made more than I requested, and now he’s selling them.”

  “Oh, great. That makes me feel real safe. Is there anyone in this town who can’t be bought?”

  Hank pulled her into the dark house and closed the door behind them. “Never fear. Horatio and I will protect you. And if we fail, there’s always Elsie and the cat from hell.”

  She didn’t need protecting nearly as much as she needed reassuring, she thought. As far as she could tell, everyone in Skogen was nuts. Generations of inbreeding, she decided. She looked at Hank and wondered how he’d escaped. He was a genetic masterpiece.

  “Tell me about the people here,” she said. “They aren’t really as awful as they seem to be, are they?”

  He hugged her against him. “They aren’t awful, just eccentric. It’s occurred to me that we take a lot of things for granted here because we’re all so familiar with each other. And I’ve been thinking that my reputation might have something to do with the relaxed attitude folks have about breaking into my house.”

  “Tit for tat?”

  “Something like that.”

  His words whispered through her hair, and she felt desire stir deep in the pit of her stomach. She had to admit she’d like to forget about Vern and Bubba and Mrs. Farnsworth. She’d like to go upstairs and spend the rest of the evening making love to Hank. If he could just give her some honest-to-goodness assurance that she’d be happy spending her life in Skogen, she’d race him to the bedroom.

  And quite frankly at this point she might not even care if he lied. She was willing to grasp at anything that might justify another night of loving. She was a weak woman, she admitted to herself. She was a sad excuse for a headstrong redhead.

  “Tell me the truth. Do you truly think I could be happy living in Skogen for the next hundred years?”

  Hank thought that was a tough question. He didn’t even know if he could be happy living in Skogen for a hundred more years. “A hundred years is a little unwieldy. Why don’t we worry about the future in smaller increments of time?”

  “How small?”

  “Let’s start out with the rest of the night.” He kissed her just below the earlobe. “I feel fairly certain I can keep you happy for the rest of the night.”

  As usual Maggie was the last one at the breakfast table. She’d finally managed to roll out of Hank’s bed, lured by the aroma of strong coffee and the sound of a heated argument going on in the kitchen below her. She hadn’t gotten enough hours of sleep, but she felt fine. A little lazy maybe, like a cat with a full belly, sleeping in a sunny spot.

  She ambled across the hall to her own room in search of clothes and a comb. Someone was stomping around the kitchen and shouting, but the words were muffled. Bubba was here, she realized as she tugged on a football jersey and a pair of running shorts. She tried to pull a comb through her hair, but it got stuck, so she gave up with an impatient grunt and told herself she preferred the tousled look anyway.

  When she reached the kitchen, Bubba and Hank were standing toe-to-toe.

  “I’m not gonna tell you,” Bubba said. “It’s not my place to tell.”

  Hank had him by the shirtfront. “You’re supposed to be my best friend! I trusted you, and you broke into my house like a commo
n thief!”

  “If I’d found the diary, I’d have split the money with you. And it wasn’t exactly breaking in. Slick had already opened the door.”

  “You were going to steal something from me!”

  “Well, I guess it could look like stealing. On the other hand it didn’t seem like stealing because—”

  Hank tightened his grip. “Because what?”

  “Oh, hell,” Bubba said. “All right I’ll tell you. Because it was your father who offered the reward for the diary.”

  “That’s a lie,” Hank said. “That’s impossible.”

  Bubba shook himself loose. “It’s true. He told Fred McDonough he’d pay him a million dollars if he could get hold of the diary.”

  “My father doesn’t have that kind of money.”

  “Sure he does,” Bubba said. “He’s the president of the bank. He’s the richest man in town.”

  It made sense, Hank thought. Ridiculous as it was, it made sense. It was the last piece of the puzzle. People were willing to steal the diary because not only would the diary remain in the family, but everyone trusted his father to do the right thing. His father’s reputation was impeccable. Why his father wanted the diary was beyond his imagination: It was impossible to visualize his father making such an offer. His father wasn’t exactly mob material.

  “I’m going to straighten this out right now,” Hank said. “I’m going to pay my father a visit.”

  Maggie poured herself a cup of coffee. “Say hello for me.”

  Hank clamped a hand on her wrist. “You’re part of this family. You’re coming with me.”

  “Oh no. No, no, no, no, no.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. It’s your diary. You can drink your coffee in the truck.” He grinned and squeezed her hand. “You look like you need it.”

  “Had a rough night,” she answered.

  Bubba cleared his throat. “I guess I’ll go home now.”