Beeline to Trouble by Hannah Reed

Author:Hannah Reed [Reed, Hannah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery, cookie429
ISBN: 9780425251805
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-two

“I’ve decided you can’t have them,” Holly said, taking one of her formidable wrestling stances right in front of the table with the gloves in the outbuilding.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked her, surprised that she was directing all that aggression toward me.

“Think this through,” Holly said, water droplets dripping from her hair, her top plastered to her chest. “What if Jackson finds something with the gloves?”

I gaped at her, just as wet. “That would be awesome!”

“Okay, what would be the next step?”

“Um, I guess at that point, Hunter could advise us,” I suggested. It was a good thing Patti wasn’t here. She hated asking for help from any male in one of our investigations. According to her, it was wimpy, sexist, clinging, subservient . . . the list went on and on, and none of it was complimentary.

I used to wonder about P.P. Patti’s backstory, why she was so fiercely independent almost to the point of carelessness, and why she didn’t date. For a while, I figured that maybe she found women more attractive, since she had such a dislike for the males of our species. Now I knew the truth. She’d had to get super tough to survive and escape her abusive ex-husband.

No wonder she’d dissed me every time I suggested including Hunter in any decision making.

“And then, what happens after?” Holly prodded me. “What will Hunter and Jackson tell you to do once it’s established that a pair of gloves has residue from water hemlock?”

I wrinkled my nose in disgust, because I hated saying it. “They’d insist that I take it to the police chief. Can you please come to the point?”

Holly hadn’t relaxed her challenging physical position. Maybe because she could tell that I was still looking for an opening to snag the gloves. I should know better—I’ve never gotten past her when she went in pin-down mode, not once. “Then what?” she demanded. “What would the chief do?”

I beamed. “He’d arrest Camilla Bailey for murder one.”

“Really? That’s how you see it?”

“Well . . .”

I’m not completely dense all the time. I finally figured out where this was going. “And how do you see the next scene?” I asked rather weakly.

“Johnny Jay would pull me in for questioning.” In case I didn’t know who “me” was, Holly jammed a thumb toward her own chest. “Or Max. Or both of us. Because all the gloves around here belong to us, not Camilla. He might even arrest you as an accessory to murder, claiming you were trying to implicate a guest while covering for me.”

That did sound just like Johnny Jay. What had I been thinking? My word against Camilla’s, with Johnny Jay as judge? He’d never believe that I’d really seen Camilla wearing gloves the same day Nova was murdered.

“Let’s take a breather and figure out how to get around this little glitch,” I said. “In the meantime, I’m going to make a phone call. Camilla told me she had a permit to pick wildflowers. If she lied about that, maybe she’d lie about her alibi, too.

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