Immediately, my mother dropped the rooster. It took off, running zigzag across Miss Maisie's yard.
"Now, Maisie," Flash began, apparently having no qualms against upsetting the woman. "That's silly."
I crossed my arms and tucked my hands into my armpits to keep my fingers from getting frostbitten. "They're not contaminated," I said. "There's been no bird flu reported in the U.S. yet."
"Then you explain it," Miss Maisie demanded.
Two turkeys. One terrified rooster. I had no explanation whatsoever.
"That's what I thought," she snapped. "Someone has to catch that rooster so we can get it tested."
No one budged.
Miss Maisie took the tearful approach. "Our lives could be at stake!"
My mother nudged me. "Go get the rooster, chérie."
"Oh, sacrifice your favorite child."
She arched an eyebrow. "Nonsense. You're the only one fast enough. You've been working out."
I looked at Riley.
"He's but a child, chérie!"
Gritting my teeth, I went after the rooster. My mother called out tips. "Grab him around the middle, Nina! Catching roosters is in your genes. You should have no problems."
I was cold. I was upset about Kit. I was mad at Kevin. The last thing I wanted to be doing was catching a runaway rooster that might or might not be carrying the bird flu.
And, to top it all off, I had problems. It seemed Gregory Peck didn't want to be caught. He led me all around the yard, and by the time I grabbed him by his skinny little leg and was able to get my hands around his middle, the clink was looking good again.
"Now what?" I asked once I caught the bird.
No one had an answer.
"Chérie, why are your lips blue?"
Argh!
"Here." I shoved the bird at Mr. Cabrera. "Put him in your garage. I'll call Animal Control. I'm going home."
"There's no need to be crabby, Miz Quinn." Gregory Peck flapped his wings. "Whoa, whoa," Mr. Cabrera said to the rooster, trying to calm it as though it was a horse.
With that image in my head, I hurried home. I walked in the front door and closed it behind me, tempted to lock it. Kevin was on the phone. Lewy and Joe were sitting on my sofa, both sipping coffee from my favorite Wizard of Oz mugs.
I froze. I'd been hoping they would be long gone.
"You don't smell so good," Joe said, sniffing.
I looked down at myself. Gregory Peck had left a calling card behind—on my shirt.
"What are you two still doing here?" Glancing out the window, I saw their car. It sat at the curb—I'd completely overlooked it.
Joe leaned forward. "We'd like to know where you were this morning, Nina."
"Out," I said.
"Out isn't going to cut it." Lewy sipped his coffee.
"I went for a ride with a friend."
"Where?"
"We were headed for Indiana, but got lost, then the roads were so bad we decided to turn around."
I was a great fibber.
"You're good, Nina," Joe intoned melodramatically, "but we're better. Just remember that."
I shivered, but not from his words. I was frozen to the bone. Truthfully, the pair didn't scare me in the least. I thought maybe Gregory Peck had more brains than the two of them combined.
"If we find out you've been aiding and abetting . . . "
"Yeah, yeah." I motioned to the phone. "Is that for me?"
Kevin handed it over. "It's Tam," he said.
I took the call.
"He's stubborn," Tam said once I was on the line. "He wouldn't listen to a word I said about Kit."
"I had to live with that for seven years." I smiled at Kevin, and he growled. He'd been doing that a lot lately. So much for being grateful for my hospitality. "What's up?" I asked Tam.
Clearing her throat, she said, "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but one of the TBS trucks is missing."
She went on to tell me the story just as we'd rehearsed. I made appropriately distressed noises where I was supposed to. The whole act was just in case the phone lines were tapped—something I wouldn't put past the two sitting on my couch.
I hung up and faced the three men who'd like nothing better than to see Kit in jail.
"What's going on?" Kevin asked.
"Nothing," I hedged, playing my part really well.
"We have ways of finding out if you're lying," Joe said.
Well, that answered the question of the phones being tapped.
"Oh, all right. One of my TBS trucks is missing from the lot at work. It was there yesterday and wasn't there today."
Lewy jumped up, walked to the corner of the room and made a call from his cell phone. It took me much effort not to smile.
I ducked into the kitchen and came out with the phone book. "Who are you calling?" Joe asked.
"None of your business."
"Everything you do is my business, Nina," he answered. Amazingly, he didn't sound happy about it either.
"I'm aware," I said, grumpy.
I found the number for the Animal Control office and called, leaving a message on their machine.
"A rooster?" Kevin asked once I hung up.
"He's quite handsome."
"Testy, I bet," Joe said. "Those roosters always are."
Kevin and I looked at him.
"Grew up on a farm," he mumbled, draining the last of his coffee.
"Shouldn't you two be leaving now?" I asked Joe.
"We thought we'd just hang around for a while longer," Lewy said after finishing his call.
I could have argued about civil liberties and warrants and such, but decided to take an easier way out. "Fine by me. I'm going to go take a shower." I started up the stairs, then stopped. "Oh, I should let BeBe in first."
Outside, I unhooked BeBe from her lead, and she galloped into the house, leaving her snowman behind. Apparently her crush had been fleeting.
I ran up the stairs as she pranced around the living room, licking, slobbering, drooling, and shaking wet fur.
It wasn't long before I heard the front door close and saw the two detectives walking toward the street.
I had the uneasy feeling I'd be seeing a lot more of them.
Eight
In times of stress I take to my drawing pad. And if this wasn't a stressful time, I didn't know what was. Never mind that Kit was missing. Or that Daisy was dead. Or that there was a poultry pestilence going on in the Mill.
No, my brain had already filed away those mind-numbing morsels in a corner labeled Deal with Later.
My current elevated stress hit a little closer to home.
From my spot on the floor, I glanced up at my bed, though I didn't need visual confirmation for what I was hearing.
My mother snored.
So did BeBe.
It was all a girl could do to stay sane.
The forty watt glow of my table lamp was just enough light for me to work. I picked a purple oil pastel out of its case and colored in foxglove. I used my pinkie to blend. I was working on a design board for Alice Graeme, a sweet old lady who'd heard of Taken by Surprise through the Mill's grapevine. She and her sister, May, lived a few blocks over, technically out of the neighborhood, but I'd learned never to underestimate the power of the Mill's gossiping abilities. Alice had hired me to do a backyard makeover for May this coming spring, and my head swam with ideas for the pair.
I stretched out my legs, rolled my shoulders. Under ordinary circumstances my bedroom floor wasn't the ideal place to work. But these weren't ordinary times, and there wasn't anywhere else for me to go.
Downstairs was occupado with Kevin. Downstairs I would feel obligated to talk to him. Downstairs we might have to discuss that phone call I'd overheard.
I was avoiding downstairs like the plague.
Riley's room was off-limits. Never mind the fact that he was in there—Xena was in there. Xena was Riley's pet boa constrictor. We had a love/hate relationship. Mostly, I loved to hate her. Th
e deal was that as long as Riley took care of her, he could live. If, for some reason, Xena managed to escape again, like she did last spring, Riley knew I'd hunt him down.
I had boundaries.
Speaking of boundaries, I rose up on my knees and peered out the bottom of my window at the house across the street. My shade was pulled down three-quarters of the way—just enough to see that the lights were on at Bobby's, as if beckoning me over.
I felt beckoned.
And tempted.
It was odd having Bobby across the street. Don't get me wrong, I loved having him there. But it was strange being here, with him there. I always felt as though the neighbors knew when I went over—and stayed the night. It was worse than if we'd moved in together.
So, I tried to set limits for myself. Tried to keep things the way they would be if he lived across town and not two hundred feet away.
My mother snorted and rolled over, causing BeBe to snort and roll over too. I thought about taking a picture for this year's Christmas card, but I valued my life.
I sunk back down, trying not to think about Bobby. I shuffled him off into another corner of my brain labeled, Keep Your Pants On. It was a dusty corner, rarely used.
Which said volumes about how well I was doing with the boundaries I'd set with him.
Refocusing on my drawing, I smiled at what I had so far. Since Alice had said May loved whimsy, I was aiming for a fairy garden. Romantic and old-fashioned, with lots of fuss but little muss, because realistically the two women couldn't get around all that well anymore.
I planned a sedum walkway and would fill in empty space with colorful delphiniums, hollyhocks, roses, dianthus, and ferns. I set a section aside for herbs such as rosemary, thyme, and saffron, to scent the air. I hoped my local nursery would have the perfect lichen-covered rock for added atmosphere.
I'd spent the last hour scouring online catalogs for the right accessories. I found a tree-stump shaped as a chair, a weathered whitewashed bench, and a scalloped-shaped fountain complete with a perched fairy, wings spread as she poured water into the bowl, perfect for the garden.
Lighting would be essential to this garden, so I colored in two- and three-stemmed mushroom-shaped lights made from copper I found on an artisan website. I made a mental note to ask Kit to look into—
I stiffened.
Kit.
I tried to shove him back into that corner of my mind he'd snuck out of, but I couldn't. He didn't just loom large in real life, but in my thoughts too.
What was he doing? Was he okay? Scared? Hungry? Grieving all alone?
What had he thought about Kent Ingless? And what exactly had he been doing to help Daisy with her business?
My cell phone vibrated, and I grabbed it and headed into the bathroom.
"Where are you?" Ana asked. "You sound all echoey."
"In the bathroom." I kept my voice low.
"Do I want to know?"
I peeked out my door, at my mother hogging the covers
and BeBe hogging the bed. "No." Closing the door tight, I wondered how I was going to budge BeBe so I could get some sleep. "Where are you?" I asked. Filtered voices came across the line. "What's all that noise in the background?"
"TSA warning about leaving baggage unattended."
I sank into the empty bathtub. "You're coming home?"
"How could I stay away? This is Kit we're talking about. The big galoot."
"Galoot? Have you been drinking?"
"Just a little. Listen, I'm stuck in Denver. There's a blizzard here, and most of the flights into Cincinnati have been canceled because of the snow there. I don't know when I'll be getting in. Can you pick me up?"
I had to smile. Only Ana would ask me to pick her up when she didn't have a clue as to when that might be. "Of course."
And only I would agree without a moment's hesitation.
"How are things there?" she asked.
I filled her in on Kevin, Maddie, Daisy's parents, Lewy and Joe, and the rooster fiasco.
I could hear her pout. "I'm missing everything!"
"Be glad."
"Hmmph. Well, what are you doing tomorrow?"
"Perry and I are going to talk to Kent Ingless. See what he knows."
"Can't you wait until I get in?"
"We'll see."
"I miss everything!"
We said our good-byes, and I climbed out of the bathtub.
I yawned as I gathered up my drawing supplies and set them on my nightstand in the bedroom. Crossing over to the window, I knelt down and looked across the street. Then I glanced back at my bed, where there was no room for me.
It made sense to go over there.
Perfectly justifiable.
It would be so nice to curl up with Bobby. There was something about being in his arms that made me feel safe and secure and . . . loved.
But there were those pesky boundaries.
What was a girl to do?
Making up my mind, I went into the closet and pulled down an extra blanket. I wrestled my pillow out from beneath BeBe's head, hoping she didn't drool in her sleep, and settled in on the floor.
As I turned off the lamp, I told myself my decision had everything to do with maintaining a healthy distance so my and Bobby's relationship could grow.
But I knew as I fell into a fitful sleep it had more to do with not wanting to have to deal with Kevin on my way out.
There were no corners left in my head to store away that information.
I was getting good at sneaking out.
It was all about distraction.
I'd waited until my mother was changing Kevin's gauze, then announced that I'd be taking BeBe for a walk, maybe go check on Gregory Peck, and see if Miss Maisie had contacted the CDC yet.
It was ten in the morning and all was quiet in the Mill. Snow reached mid-calf on my galoshes, but the sun peeped through fluffy clouds, promising a beautiful day. BeBe pranced around the yard, taking a moment to visit her snowman. She'd been having a blast until she saw the turkeys lurking near the woods at the back of my property.
One turkey sighting and she was cowering behind my legs, shaking like a bad Elvis impersonator. Namely, my dad. I wondered if he'd give a performance of "Don't Be Cruel" if my Thanksgiving dinner needed livening up.
As I dragged BeBe toward Mr. Cabrera's, I thought about my father. Was he lonely? I guessed not. I could practi cally see him lounging in his recliner, watching the History Channel, coffee in one hand, bag of Cheetos in the other.
My mom never let Dad have Cheetos.
I had to know. Pulling out my cell phone, I called him. "Are you eating Cheetos?"
Crunch, crunch. "What? No. Never! Did you know on this day in 1835 the horseshoe manufacturing machine was patented?"
"No. And I'd wipe the cheesy fingerprints off the phone before Mom gets home." To the dog, I said, "C'mon, BeBe!"
She'd planted all four paws in the snow.
"She's not coming home, is she?" Dad didn't have to specify the "she." I could tell by the fear in his voice.
"I don't know," I lied, tugging on BeBe. It wasn't easy budging 150 pounds of turkey-fearing canine.
"What do you mean you don't know? Didn't you see your mother this morning?"
My breath puffed out in front of me like little evil cumulous clouds. "Actually, I didn't."
Lying again. I suppose it was bad enough to lie, but to lie and enjoy it? Maybe I had a sadistic streak.
If I did, it was easily explained by the fact that he'd gone and left my mother with me. I was going to need to see a chiropractor if I had to sleep on the floor again.
His voice tinged in panic, he said, "I've got to go, Nina."
"'Bye, Dad."
I flipped my phone closed, tucked it into my pocket. A light coat of snow had covered BeBe.
"Come on, Beebs." I yanked, I tugged, I begged, I cajoled. Finally, I said, "Gobble, gobble!"
She leaped forward, nearly knocking me down in the process. Barking, she wound her
way around me, wrapping me like a mummy.
"BeBe, stop!"
She was having fun now, the little devil.