How to Leash a Thief by Cat Clayton

Author:Cat Clayton [Clayton, Cat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780692075838
Publisher: Pickle Juice Press
Published: 2017-12-28T05:00:00+00:00

WE STAYED IN OUR RESPECTIVE corners of the shop for the rest of the afternoon, both of us licking our wounds. Daniel up front answering the phone and me at my desk. Nick had followed through with his threat. A police car arrived after we’d gotten back and parked across the street to monitor us and the shop.

Around four o’clock, Daniel put a call through to my office phone. Maybe it’s Nick wanting to apologize and ask me to come home. I picked it up on the second ring, my fingers crossed.

“Scrubadub, Three Pups in a Tub, this is Steely.”

“Miss Lamarr, this is Lois over at the retirement center.”

Ugh. I’d forgotten to call them back.

“I’m afraid we have a big problem with your grandmother,” Lois said.

“What’s she done now?” Please let her have spilled a glass of milk or something equally minor. But something told me to brace myself. I said a little prayer to the big guy upstairs, or whoever was listening.

“Well, we got her to admit she was cheating at Bingo last week,” Nurse Lois said, popping her gum in my ear. “And yesterday we caught her on the computer at the nurse’s station. Your father didn’t answer his phone, so we called you. Again. Miss Lamarr, we will not tolerate this behavior at Bluebonnet Hills.”

“Maybe she needed to use the Internet,” I said, hoping Lois would calm down.

“She claims to have hacked into our main system and gotten everyone’s social security numbers. And I’m afraid that’s not all.” I heard a weighted sigh come across the line. “We discovered her stealing from Jerry Joe’s donation jar last night, and she refuses to give his money back.”

Jerry Joe visited the retirement center and other various locations around town and played his guitar and sang folk songs. For the retirement center music, he took donations only. Still putting his two children through graduate school, he made his money where he could these days.

Sheesh Louise. Did Gertie have any lines she wouldn’t cross?

“May I speak with her, please?” I asked.

“She’s right here,” Lois said.

I heard shuffling as she passed the phone to Gertie.

“How’s my baby girl?” Gertie’s gravelly voice from years of smoking came over the line.

“I’m okay. How are you?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said.

“They said you took money from Jerry Joe. Did you?” I asked.

“Yes, but he owed me money,” she said.

Good grief. Better me than Pop.

“Gertie, you can’t go around stealing money from people. How much did you take from the jar?”

“Sixty bucks,” she answered.

I envisioned her sitting there, twisting in the nurse’s chair with a smug look, her dangling feet barely touching the ground, arms crossed over her busty bosom, and her bejeweled reading glasses on the bridge of her nose.

“Where’s the money?”

“Tucked somewhere safe and I’m not giving it back. He owed me from a poker game back in 1996,” she said.

“Gertie, give it back.”

“Over my dead body. And stop calling me Gertie.”

Oh jeez. I’d had enough dead bodies lately. Time to bring out the big guns.

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