3 Loosey Goosey (9 page)

Pauline, however, seemed to have different ideas on my role, or perhaps she noticed the animosity in my steps and assumed it was directed at Ben rather than Stone.

Or perhaps she was just a demon sent directly from hell.

Whatever the case, she ran toward me, head down and hissing.

Cornered between her snapping bill and a van filled with vacationers that had just arrived on the scene, pulling in between where I stood and my vehicle, I did the only thing I could: I took off cross country.

Honking in victorious glee, the goose followed.

Loose pine needles were everywhere. I scrambled and slipped, I fought my way through low hanging branches and brambles. I jumped over rocks and dashed around logs. I even tramped through run off from the community water spigot, thinking I could erase my scent and sprint to safety.

But my efforts were wasted. I could hear the flap of her wings, and when I hazarded a glance over my shoulder, I caught a flash of tie dye shirt.

The goose was close, and I was all alone.

My lungs burning and my thighs screaming, I ran blindly, heading back to what I hoped would be help.

I saw nothing but trees. I realized then that the worst had happened. I was lost and alone, forgotten in the Montana wilderness, driven to madness by a goose one-tenth my size.

A car horn honked. My car horn.

“Lucy, what are you doing?”

I spun in place.

I had looped around. I was standing six feet from my own vehicle, where my brother and three police officers stood gawking back at me.

Chapter 8

The drive to my house was quiet. Even Kiska seemed to sense that the time for yelling at me had passed.

Pauline, exhausted from her sprint through the woods, lay passed out on the seat next to me. I watched her out of the corner of my eye just in case this was yet another ruse to lure me into a false sense of security.

Ben slouched against his door. “I’ll call Mom from your house.”

Losing the Lemon hadn’t seemed to faze him, but losing the Egg for the night seemed to have taken a toll. At least, I assumed that he’d lost it for the night. He had yet to tell me exactly what the paper Stone had given him said.

“I can sleep in the garage,” he offered.

“Of course you can’t—” I cut myself off. Caught up in the embarrassment of my goose-induced panic, it hadn’t occurred to me until now that Ben losing access to his Egg meant he and Pauline would be staying with me, in my house. “The grocery didn’t look that bad, and you got free food.” I smiled.

My phone chirped. I closed my eyes, knowing without looking who it had to be.

It was times like this I knew my mother was on speaking, or at least texting, terms with the devil.

I shouldn’t even have had cell coverage right here.

I blew out a breath. “You can sleep on the couch. Pauline can stay in the laundry room.”

It was the best I could do. There was no way I was giving Goosezilla free roam of my house.

At home, Ben carried Pauline up from the garage, along with a duffle bag filled with items Stone had approved for removal from the Egg.

I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Ben at length yet as to what Stone had told him or what exactly was happening with the Egg, but I planned to: just as soon as I’d downed about three Diet Pepsis with milk, maybe topped off with a shot of vodka.

Kiska on his lead, I trudged up the hill to help get my houseguests settled.

After leaving Kiska outside, I walked into my living room. Ben was sitting on the couch talking, I assumed, to our mother. Pauline was nowhere in sight.

Thinking Ben had already deposited his pet into the laundry room, I went to get bowls for water and food. Then, as an afterthought, I went into my bedroom to find an old pillow or blanket to put on the dryer for Pauline’s nest.

The goose, however, had found a nest of her own. My pillow. On my bed. Perched like a princess, she looked down her long bill and hissed.

I could see in her glare that she meant business. I pursed my lips, told myself I was above fighting with a goose, and went to look for her owner.

My brother was in the living room, tossing popcorn into my malamute’s waiting open mouth.

“He asked,” Ben explained. I wasn’t sure if he meant for the popcorn or to be let inside, but neither really mattered.

“Pauline is on my pillow.”

“She likes pillows.”

So did I. I did my best impression of Peter, cocking one brow.

Ben paused mid-throw, causing Kiska to back up and toss his head in the dogversal sign of
come on
. “Did you want me to move her?”

I did, or... I looked around. Things were so peaceful at the moment. Was the loss of my pillow really that bad? Besides, I wanted to know what Stone had told my brother.

Admitting defeat, I plopped onto the couch beside him. “What did Stone say?”

“Nothing. He just wanted to search the Egg.”

“And you said yes?”

“He had a warrant. Not just to search it, but to move it too.”

“Move it?” I’d thought tonight was a one-night thing, but if the Egg was taken into custody... “Can they do that?”

Ben shrugged. His laid-back attitude was beginning to make me twitchy.

“You should have asked.” I stood up, thinking I’d call Pete, or the cavalry, or... our mother!

“He had a piece of paper. I looked at it.”

“And?”

He shrugged again. “I didn’t really pay attention. He said they’d get it back to me as soon as they could, and I wasn’t planning on leaving for a week or so anyway.”

“But it’s yours. You can’t just let them take it.”

He looked at me, his eyes completely devoid of sarcasm, and asked, “Why not?”

Oh my God. “Because it is yours,” I explained slowly, although I was beginning to wonder if his time in the Egg had cooked his brain. Maybe the thing had a gas leak or something.

“I’m not big on personal property.”

Not big on personal property? I glanced around, wondering if that extended to my personal property, which, while it wasn’t all that much, I was pretty big on.

“But what if he finds something?”

“Something what?”

“Something he uses against you. He thinks you killed Tiffany.”

“That’s crazy. There’s nothing to find. So he takes the Egg, he finds that out, and by the time I’m ready to leave Helena, I have it and the Lemon back.”

I could not believe him. I looked around for a hard surface to bang my head into.

“What?” he asked, as if
I
was the Mathews acting irrationally.

“Tomorrow you have to talk to a lawyer.” Luckily, I knew one.

“Naw, that’s okay. The convention starts tomorrow.”

“Forget the convention.”

“Can’t do that. HA! is counting on me and Pauline. She’s our mascot. Pretty cool, don’t you think?”

My eyelids fluttered. I could not express my joy over Pauline’s rise in stature. Especially with her perched on my pillow, where she might decide to leave a little unwanted gift.

But it did remind me of Pauline’s place of prominence on Tiffany’s FriendTime page. I pinned my brother with a glare and asked him what he knew about her online activities.

“It’s for HA!” he informed me, obviously bored with our conversation.

“So you were stalking Tiffany’s page.”

He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “I am not on FriendTime.”

“So Pauline is stalking Tiffany’s page?”

“I doubt that.” He leaned back with his neck bent and his gaze on the ceiling.

“You doubt... you mean you didn’t know that Pauline is plastered all over Tiffany’s FriendTime page?” Feeling more than a little frustrated, I unplugged my laptop from the wall and carried it over to him. After navigating to Tiffany’s page, I plopped the computer down onto his lap. “See.”

With a tried look on his face, he glanced at the page. Then he shrugged.

Shrugged
.

I jerked my laptop back up. “When Detective Stone came in today, he asked if you were active online.”

Ben stared back at me as if I’d just announced the sky was blue.

“He thinks you’ve been stalking Tiffany.”

His mouth twisted. “I haven’t.”

“Then.” I held the laptop back up so he could see the screen. “Who. Did. This?”

He shrugged.

Again.

“Hope, maybe. She’s on FriendTime a lot.”

Hope. Well, at least I had a starting point. I closed the lid on my laptop as slowly and carefully as I could, using the motion to calm my surging temper.

Someone was impersonating my brother’s goose while using our last name to stalk a chef who had just turned up dead under my brother’s car.

How Ben could not see this as a reason for some anger, I didn’t know.

But then, my brother had never been one to share my outrage. Not on my favorite jeans being discontinued or our mother insisting on sending thank you notes to every teacher I’d ever had for “putting up with me.” The only thing that I’d ever seen Ben fired up about was HA!

Which probably meant it was where he was meant to be. I fell down onto the couch beside him, resolved to once again feeling enough outrage for both of us.

We sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. Long enough that I felt bad about my earlier lack of charity regarding housing him and transporting him. He didn’t take up that much room, and I could haul him around for a bit. He really wouldn’t be any inconvenience at all.

Then he opened his mouth and said, “That reminds me. Eric wants us at the grocery store by 5 a.m. tomorrow. What time do you get up?”

o0o

At six a.m. the next morning, I was sitting at Cuppa Joe’s trying not to nod off into my latte. I could have hung with the HA! set, but all their do-gooder energy was way too depressing, especially before my daily allotment of caffeine.

To entertain myself and get out some venting, I’d called Rhonda. As I poured real sugar into my cup and stirred, she walked in the back door.

I held up my cup in salute and waited for her to get her cup of whatever green, healthy concoction she was going to get and come join me.

I barely let her get settled before launching into my personal frustrations.

She tested the temperature of her drink with the pad of her index finger. “Have you thought of calling Avery Gregor yourself?”

Gregor had represented me a few months earlier regarding a little misunderstanding when I was found in a horse trailer with a not-so-alive rodeo queen.

I took a sip of latte. “If Ben won’t talk to him, it would just be a waste of money.” And I didn’t exactly have wads of extra cash lying around.

“How about Peter? Have you talked to him?”

I just stared at her for that. Seriously, she knew better.

She tilted her head in acknowledgment, then poked at her partially submerged teabag with a spoon. “Ben can stay at my house if you like. I have a guest room, and he could walk to the grocery where HA! has been meeting.”

I stared at her over the top of my mug.

“What?”

What my ass. We both knew what, but I let it pass. Instead I decided to lead her to other, greener, pastures. “What about that guy Eric? The founder? Have you talked to him?” He was a rich, organic-food-eating do-gooder; I couldn’t imagine a bigger catch in Rhonda’s world.

She set the spoon down. “I don’t know. He may be a little too fervent for me.”

Too fervent for Rhonda? I couldn’t imagine. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a vibe I get. Everyone in HA! is pretty dedicated, but it’s like he has something to prove. He even questioned the grocery store owner about allowing fliers on the bulletin board for events where meat would be served.”

“You mean like every fundraiser in Montana?”

She laughed. “Exactly. The store doesn’t sell meat, but if they came out against everyone who bought it or ate it, they would have about ten customers left.”

“I wonder how his business got so big.”

“I don’t know. Maybe when and where he started, things were different than they are here.”

Ah, a time and place where the cattle ran free and the geese ruled all.

I was getting ready to voice the thought, or something equally politically incorrect, when Phyllis hurried in the front door.

“You are here,” she announced.

Instantly wary, I looked around. “Yeah, why, and what are you doing here at...” I checked my phone. It had powered off. I really needed to remember to use the charger in my car. I checked the round schoolhouse clock hanging on the wall beside me instead. “Six thirty in the morning?”

“Looking for you. Your mother said you were here, but knowing how you like to sleep in, I couldn’t imagine it.”

“My mother?” My hand tightened on the edges of the table. “You know my mother?”

“She friended me on FriendTime.”

Argh. But wait... “And she told you I was here?” I stood up and scanned the coffee shop. There were maybe five patrons besides Rhonda, Phyllis, and myself, and I didn’t know any of them.

Rhonda held up her hands. “Not me.”

Joe bustled out from the storage area carrying a rubber bin. I took a step toward him, but Phyllis stepped in front of me, cutting me off.

“You are not going to believe the lead I have.”

“Lead?” As an ex-reporter, the word drew my attention like a flashing strobe.

“Richard Danes, who you met yesterday? He’s not interested in buying anything anymore.”

I didn’t welcome the news, but with the tenant that he was buying for being dead, his change of heart made sense. The joy painted all over Phyllis’ face, however, didn’t.

She rose on her toes and flapped her hands as if excitement might send her into flight. “Instead, he is selling the Antlers and everything in it.”

I appreciated Phyllis’ enthusiasm, but thinking back to what I’d seen of Tiffany’s restaurant, I couldn’t share in it. “I don’t think the stuff in the restaurant—”

“Not the restaurant.” My crazed maybe-partner/maybe-employee made a sad face. “I wish. It’s what they moved out of the old theater when they converted it into a restaurant.”

This, of course, was an entirely different kettle of beans. I sat up straight in my wooden chair.