Romeow and Juliet (5 page)

I glanced at Tara. I wanted to suggest that Danny take Tara instead, but that would be too cruel. “Okay, but just one date.”

“Thanks, sis.” Danny hugged me again.

Danny turned toward Tara, who had picked the kitten back up and was hugging him to her chest. “Did you do something different with your hair?” Danny asked my smitten friend.

“No. Why do you ask?”

Danny had the strangest look on his face as he stared at her. “No reason. Something just seems different about you.” Danny turned back toward me. “Saturday at seven. I’ll pick you up.”

With that, he was out the door.

I turned back to Tara, who was smiling at the kitten. Yep, our little charmer had definitely found a home.

I should have known it was going to be a very bad, horribly awful day as soon as I was awakened before first light by an angry banging on my front door. It seemed that I had forgotten to close the downstairs window, and apparently, Romeo had decided to take a midnight stroll to introduce himself to the fair maiden Juliet. I know: adorable, right? Unfortunately, Francine was a lot less charmed by the idea of a romance between her prized show cat and my temporary houseguest and wanted to be certain that I suffered the full extent of her wrath.

After listening to Francine rant for a good twenty minutes, I promised to make certain that Romeo would never come courting again and offered her a plate of the enchiladas Tara and I had made the previous evening. Francine is a ninety-eight-pound woman who’s shorter than I am but can eat like a truck driver. Needless to say, she was temporarily pacified by my delicious offering and promised not to strangle my adorable visitor as long as he stayed on his side of the hedge.

By the time I was able to free myself from Francine’s unwanted company I was fully awake, so I decided to get an early start on my day. That turned out to be the first in a series of really bad decisions. On the surface heading out to the beach for my run with Max a good two hours earlier than usual seemed like a harmless idea. The sun rises early during the spring and summer in this part of the country, so I still had a good two hours before I needed to meet Tara for our first class at the community center. A short run to stretch out and get Max some exercise couldn’t possibly hurt. What I failed to take into account was that the long stretch of normally deserted sand that Max and I routinely enjoyed, is, at this time of day, infested with men and women lined up along the water’s edge trying to catch their daily limit.

You know how, in the movies, they slow down the camera to show that pivotal moment when everything falls apart in extraslow motion? Well, I swear that’s exactly what happened to me. One minute Max and I were jogging along, trying to ignore the buckets of fish lined up along the sand, and the next thing I knew, an extraexuberant fisherman was pulling on his line with a strong force to fling his fish from the water, up into the air, and onto the beach behind him.

I could see what was coming, but before I could yell at Max to stay, my playful companion veered from my side and dashed toward the bounty from the sea, which by this point was wildly flopping around on the sand.

“Hey, your dog stole my fish,” a very large and very angry man yelled at me as Max trotted up with the fish in his mouth. The man didn’t look familiar, so I had to assume he was a visitor from the mainland.

“I’m so sorry. I’m sure he didn’t mean to. Drop it,” I commanded my tail-wagging friend.

Max obediently lay the slightly mangled prize at my feet.

“I can’t eat that now,” the man complained.

“I really am very sorry. I don’t know what happened. Max is normally very well behaved. Perhaps if you had controlled your catch a little better . . . I mean, you did fling it twenty feet behind you.”

“Listen here, little lady—” The man grabbed my wrist a split second before Max clamped his jaw around his leg.

“Max, no!” I screamed.

He obediently let go of the man’s leg and sat down beside me, but there was nothing I could do about the growling coming from deep within his throat.

“That dog is a menace and should be put down. I’m calling the sheriff.”

“No, don’t!” I pleaded. “Max didn’t even break the skin on your leg. He was just warning you to back off. Any dog would have done the same. I’ll pay for the fish,” I offered.

The man took a step back. “You have any money on you?”

“No,” I admitted, “but I live down the beach. I’ll go get some and bring it right back.”

The man seemed to be considering my offer. “Okay. A hundred bucks, and you got twenty minutes or I call the sheriff and report the fact that your dog attacked me.”

“A hundred bucks?” I complained. “For that tiny fish?”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll be right back.”

Luckily, I kept a stash of emergency cash in my cabin, so I was able to avert a disaster by appeasing the unfriendly visitor to our island. I left Max at home with Romeo while I returned to give the man his money, which turned out to be my second really bad idea. Max was understandably riled up by the unpleasant encounter and was therefore determined not to let me out of his sight. Once I left, Max’s protective instinct kicked in, resulting in a doggie-size hole in the screen door.

By the time Max caught up with me, I had delivered the money to the unreasonable fisherman and was on my way back to the house.

“What did you do?” I asked my dog. He suddenly realized the error of his ways and hung his head in shame. Max lay down at my feet with his face flat against the ground and looked up at me with the most apologetic eyes.

“I know. You were worried about me and wanted to protect me from the bad man. It’s okay. I’m not mad.” I smiled at my protector. “I guess we can call Danny to see if he has time to come by to fix this.”

Max covered his eyes with his paw. I guess he knew that calling Danny before I jumped in the shower would be my third increasingly horrible decision of the day.

“Oh my gosh.” Tara laughed. “You
are
kidding?”

“I’m afraid not.” I groaned. I had just recounted my morning to Tara, including the fact that not only had Danny come right over while I was in the shower but that he had brought Cody with him. The problem was that I didn’t know they were there and had come walking out of the bathroom in nothing but a very small towel.

“The towel was so small that when I turned to scamper back to my bedroom I’m pretty sure my right butt cheek was hanging out,” I shared as we pulled up to the community center for our first exercise class.

“That is too funny. I wish I could have been there. What did the guys say?”

“Danny laughed and Cody whistled. I scurried away as soon as I noticed them, so I didn’t really give them a chance to say anything. I snuck out my bedroom window and climbed down the tree when I left so I didn’t have to face them.”

“You didn’t!”

“I had to. Trust me, that wasn’t how I wanted my first encounter with Cody to go after everything that happened between us.”

Tara and I paid for the class and continued into the room that was used for the various classes the center offered. Unfortunately, one entire wall was lined with mirrors, accentuating the fact that both Tara and I looked ridiculous in the leotards that had seemed like a good idea when we’d bought them the previous year for a dance class we’d never wound up attending. My bright green leotard clung to my slim frame, making me look like Peter Pan, and even worse, with her voluptuous figure, Tara looked like a grape about to pop in the purple leotard she’d chosen to wear.

“Maybe we should put our sweats back on,” I suggested.

Tara frowned at her refection in the mirror. “Yeah, it is a little chilly in here.”

Although the temperature in the room actually resembled that of a sauna, Tara and I remained fully clothed for the entire hour. The class was fairly intense for a beginners’ group, but as far as I was concerned it was still fun. Poor Tara, though, looked like she was going to die by the time our instructor called for us to begin our cooldown. I hoped Tara would stick with the class this time around. I’d tried to get her to commit to a regular exercise routine in the past, but every time we registered for a class Tara would end up with an excuse to quit before we even began.

“Wonderful job,” our instructor, Bitzy Biner, who looked like an airbrushed Barbie doll, complimented us as the class began to break up. “I hope you both enjoyed yourselves and plan to return.”

“I had a good time,” I said, though I was pretty sure Tara was too winded to speak. “I think Tara and I can fit two mornings a week into our schedules.”

My friend didn’t say anything, but I was willing to bet that if she could, she’d offer a counter to my statement.

“I heard you were the one who found Keith Weaver’s body,” Bitzy added.

“Yes. Unfortunately, I stumbled over him while Tara and I were taking a look at the cannery. It’s such a shame.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Bitzy shrugged. “Most of the folks who showed up at the meeting last night seemed to think that Keith’s death wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.”

“Meeting?” I asked.

“The show-and-tell seminar about the condo development Bill Powell is proposing,” Bitzy explained. “Most everyone seemed to think Keith Weaver was intent on blocking the project before it ever got off the ground. Personally, I’d like to see some affordable housing on the island.”

I frowned. “I thought the scuttlebutt was that Keith had changed his mind and decided to support the project. I heard he planned to help push it through the island council.”

“That’s not what people were saying last night. Bill Powell wanted us all to think the project was a slam dunk so those of us who were interested in buying the units would put down deposits, but behind the scenes the chatter was contradictory at best. More than one person there told me that Keith had made a move to stop last night’s meeting from even happening. It seems he was in possession of some pretty compelling evidence that the island’s current infrastructure would never hold up with all the new units. The general feeling in the room seemed to suggest that if Keith hadn’t died, the entire project would have been dead in the water.”

“Bill Powell was trying to get people to put money down on the units even though the project hasn’t been approved yet?”

“Yup. And there were people lining up with their checkbooks out. Bill is offering some sort of a discount to anyone who commits in the next few days. I don’t have all the details, but I suppose if you’re interested you could ask that handsome district manager from the bank.”

“Mr. Bradford was at the meeting?” I asked.

“Yeah, he was there representing the bank. I guess they’re backing the project, so he was there to talk to people about financing.”

I frowned. I suppose it made sense that the bank would provide the funding, but something felt off about the whole thing.

Bitzy wandered away to speak to other class members, and Tara and I made our way out to my car. “Didn’t you say Kim told you that Keith had decided to back Bill’s project?” I asked her as she slid into the passenger seat.

“That’s what Kim told me, but I guess she was wrong.”

“I feel like something isn’t adding up. We need to speak to Kim again. If Keith was against the project we have an entirely different set of suspects than if he supported it.”

Tara pulled her sweatband off and tossed it in her gym bag. “Why do you even care who the suspects are?”

“Because if we don’t have suspects we won’t be able to figure out who killed Keith Weaver.”

Tara turned to look at me. “And why on earth would you think it was up to us to figure out who killed Keith Weaver?”

I turned the key and prayed my old clunker of a car would start. “We found his body,” I pointed out. “That’s like a sign from the universe that we’re supposed to be involved.”

Tara rolled down her window. “I have to say your logic is . . . well, illogical.”

“No it’s not,” I argued. “It’s like that thing where if you save someone’s life you’re responsible for them. Likewise, if you find a dead body you’re responsible for finding out how the person died.”

“You’re insane. You know that, right?”

“Come on, Tara. What do we have to lose by snooping around a bit?”

“Our lives, for a start. Besides, Finn won’t want us to get involved. He’s perfectly capable of figuring this out without our help.”

“He doesn’t have to know we’re snooping,” I argued.

Tara let out a long breath. “I know you’re a huge mystery buff and the chance to investigate a local murder must be tempting, but I want to point out that, unlike most of the heroines in the books you read, we’re neither strong nor brave. We don’t have superpowers and neither of us is an extraordinary physical specimen. I shop in the plus size department and you shop in the children’s department. Trust me when I say that I really don’t think the universe is depending on us to save the day.”

I put my car into gear and pulled out into traffic. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

“Come on, cheer up,” Tara tried. “I’ll take you to breakfast.”

“Actually, I told Mr. Parsons and Mrs. Trexler I’d stop by this morning to drop off the enchiladas we made last night.”

“That’s probably just as well. I really want to finish up the new proposal for Mr. Bradford. I’m hoping if we can get it approved we can begin the remodel as soon as the building is released by the crime scene unit. I’ll call you later.”