Janet Evanovich - Wife for Hire

“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.”

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.