The Marriage Charm (Bliss County 2) (16 page)

They frequently did business when he picked up interesting finds like this one—which was perhaps the most interesting yet. She carefully set the ring by the cash register. “Okay, any other hidden treasures I need?”

A bit of dickering later—she hated that part but Ronald loved it, so she couldn’t disappoint him—she had a necklace she could easily disassemble and turn into several pieces. She also bought a couple of silver bracelets missing their settings, but they were solid and worth redoing.

Ronald’s assistant was someone she remembered from high school. Cassandra Downing had hung out with the popular crowd and married, as they said, “well,” but had divorced her husband, who happened to be the town lawyer, a few years ago.

As she carefully wrapped up the purchases, Cassandra said pleasantly, “Good choice.”

Melody agreed. “If I worked here I’d spend my money as fast as I made it.”

Cassandra handed over the bag with a smile. “Oh, it is tempting.”

Satisfied, Melody left, stepping out onto the sidewalk, and immediately called Mrs. Arbuckle to leave a voice mail. “I have a one-of-a-kind center stone for the ring. It’s just...stunning. It has historical significance, too, so I’m sure you’ll be pleased.”

She
certainly was, but she’d promised those lanterns for the party tonight, and they weren’t quite done, though after last evening, she had mixed feelings about the whole thing.

*

R
ALPH,
W
ALDO AND
E
MERSON
were all snoozing on the couch, and they ignored her
and
her nice haul as she pulled it out to admire, their poses like synchronized swimmers, all limbs arranged in exactly the same positions.

“Look, guys.” She held up one of the bracelets triumphantly. “Good shopping day.”

Not an eyelid moved. What a girl had to do to impress them, she wasn’t sure.

Whether the cats liked the diamond or not, she loved it. Holding it up to the light, she admired the flashes of brilliance, and the cowboy’s engagement ring began to take shape in her mind. The old setting would be salvageable, too, with a different gem.

A win-win.

She sat down and went to work on the necklace first, trying to figure out how to assemble the gems so it would wear comfortably, as well as be decorative. Jewelry design wasn’t just about the aesthetic impact. She was completely absorbed in her design concepts, and not until her stomach rumbled did she remember that she’d missed lunch. It was 1:45, according to the clock on her wall, and her feline roommates were staring fixedly at her, as if she’d neglected them, ignoring their dietary requirements. Then a car pulled into her driveway, and she was finally shaken from her trance-like engagement with the drawing board.

It was Bex with a paper bag and a friendly but speculative smile. Since they had lunch together several times a week, her appearance wasn’t a big surprise. “I’m guessing,” she said as she came in, “that we’re going to be too busy helping tonight to actually eat. How are the lanterns coming along?”

“Just about done.” She’d finished them last evening, working well past midnight. They were scattered all over the studio, ready to be transported to Hadleigh’s gala.

“Glad I’m not the artistic one,” Bex observed, surveying the Melody’s creations everywhere, taking up most of the space. “This looks like a lot of work. No wonder you ducked out last night.”

Melody eyed her warily, waiting for some comment about Spence, but thankfully it didn’t come. Her stomach made another embarrassing sound. “Hey, it’s almost two. Let’s go into the kitchen. I have to feed the cats, anyway.”

There was nothing wrong with feline hearing in her house. Ralph, Waldo and Emerson jumped up with alacrity. She got out their food while Bex unloaded grilled chicken sandwiches with lettuce, tomato and the heavenly sauce created by the owner of the local bakery. She refused to divulge the recipe for it in her lifetime, or so she declared. Melody had tried more than once to duplicate it at home, but had eventually resigned herself to the fact that there was some mysterious ingredient she’d never be able to figure out. So she fulfilled the craving by simply buying sandwiches from Myra’s Hometown Bakery.

The delicious aroma alone made her mouth water. She poured some lemonade into two tall glasses, and they sat down to unwrap their sandwiches. “How was the meeting?”

“Extremely corporate.” Bex grimaced. “Nuff said. I know doing the graphs and pie charts is a necessary evil, but I’d rather just have Accounting tell me it’s all going well and leave it at that.” She sighed dramatically and stretched her arms over her head. “Franchising the business sure changes things.”

“Do you miss being the person entirely in charge?” Melody was curious. She’d thought once or twice about opening a shop, but that would mean she’d have the headaches of hiring and supervising employees and renting a suitable space. So far, doing commissioned pieces was lucrative enough to give her a great deal of freedom. Local merchants carried her pieces, and Mustang Creek was tourist-busy in the spring, summer and winter, due to its scenic location. Fall tended to be quiet, but it was nice to get a break now and then. Plus, she loved it when the aspens turned golden and the air had that crisp bite to it.

Bex had taken a huge bite of her sandwich, so she thought over her answer while she chewed and swallowed. “I’m still adjusting. Since the company’s going to be publicly traded, I don’t have total say, of course, but I own fifty-one percent of the shares, so I still have a lot of clout. On another subject...are we going to take bets that Hadleigh’s already pregnant? She didn’t have more than one sip of her wine, even though it’s definitely her favorite.”

Come to think of it, that was true. Melody wiped her mouth with a paper napkin—she’d remembered to buy some—and put her sandwich down. Slowly she said, “Now that you mention it, I did notice that. I just thought she was too busy playing hostess... Holy cow, Batman! That was fast. Must’ve been quite the honeymoon.”

Drily, Bex commented, “You
have
seen her and Tripp together, haven’t you? Besides, we both know they decided to try right away.”

Inspiration took off. “I need to make her another charm. What do you think? Stork? No, that’s too clichéd. How about a mare with a foal? Side by side.”

“That sounds perfect, but don’t get ahead of yourself.” Bex was visibly amused. “We don’t
know
anything.”

True. And she still needed to finish the necklace, as well as that engagement ring. Melody swallowed the last bite of her sandwich and licked her fingers. “Mind helping me carry the lanterns out to my car and we’ll go hang them up?”

Serenely, Bex said, “What are friends for?”

*

T
HE RASH OF
breakins continued.

It was starting to become a real problem, especially in a place like Mustang Creek. Spence frowned at the most recent report that had landed on his desk and wondered if he should call in state detectives to help.

Six reports in six weeks now. In his jurisdiction that was a lot. No place was crime-free, but in Bliss County, they usually didn’t see much of this kind of thing.

The thieves seemed to operate in a consistent way, too, so he was sure it was all carefully planned. So far no one had been hurt, but as an officer with a lot of years under his belt, he knew that could change soon enough. They stole mostly small portable things, particularly electronics, always from private residences, never shops, although they weren’t above taking personal items like leather jackets.

Ross Hayden had just had the trolling motor for his fishing boat stolen from his garage, along with a cache of antique woodworking tools.

Considering the details of these thefts, he’d say the burglars knew the people they robbed, but that was based on his gut and no facts whatsoever.

It infuriated him to think that someone he might smile at on the street was doing this. Not just because it was happening right under his nose, but because that person was betraying a trust of place and safety. The
Mustang Banner,
published on Wednesdays, had picked up on it by now, and every single week there was a new piece about one theft or another. He was tired of being front-page news.

With that in mind, he probably wasn’t as congenial as he should have been when Moe Radner came into his office. “What?” he asked sharply.

The young man looked at him and shifted uneasily. “Something wrong, boss?”

“No. Well, yes,” he replied. “These robberies are bothering the heck out of me. What do you need?”

“I wanted to tell you the trail ride’s full.”

“Already? That was fast.” The announcement had gone out the day before. That news improved his day. If they were going to do this, at least the idea was being met with enthusiasm.

“Well, yeah, I thought so, too. But we have one, uh, small problem.”

“How small?” He asked it wryly, leaning back in his chair. When someone said that, describing a problem as insignificant, it was rarely true.

His deputy rubbed his cropped hair sheepishly. “I didn’t think of this before, but we have some miffed parents, because we’re only offering this for boys. I even saw that a couple of girls had signed up and I had to call their parents and tell them no way. I did my best to explain that grown men aren’t going to take young girls on a camping trip, not without female chaperones—much less with a bunch of boys to ride herd on. That’s asking for all kinds of trouble,” he said indignantly. “Anyway, we don’t have enough horses. But I wanted to let you know that a few people out there aren’t happy.”

Spence hadn’t actually seen that one coming, although in this day and age, anything that even smacked of gender discrimination was a problem. He twirled his pencil in his fingers, thinking it over. “I suppose we could do a second one just for girls. We’d have to find some women to manage it, since I wouldn’t even know where to begin. One or two of us would have to go along to make sure everyone stays safe.” He shook his head. “I didn’t understand teenage girls when I was a teenage boy, and I sure as hell wouldn’t understand them now.”

“The only female ranger I know who’d really be on board with this is out on maternity leave, so obviously I can’t ask her,” Moe said. “The other two might be interested but they’re filling in for her while she’s off.”

It occurred to Spence that Hadleigh might help them out. She had her own horse, too, a pretty little mare Tripp had bought her last fall. Maybe she could rope in Bex and Melody, too. He had no idea where their riding skills fell on a scale of one to ten, but this was a trail ride, not the Kentucky Derby.

He could always pitch the idea at the party tonight with a heads-up to Tripp first so he’d have back-up. That would only work if a newly married man was willing to give up his blushing bride for a few days. But Hadleigh was an adventurous woman, so she just might go for it.

“I might be able to make some arrangements,” he said. “Now, did you run those files through the state database?” He was looking for any similarities to the crimes they were experiencing in Bliss County. “I was hoping you’d get some sort of match.”

Moe shook his head. “If you want my slant on it, they must be local, Chief. Living in Mustang Creek, and stealing in Mustang Creek. They don’t seem to be hitting any other towns.”

Well, shit, he’d thought that all along. “It’s too slick for it to be a bunch of kids. I think we need to look more closely at the victims. Do they have anything in common? Are they connected in any way? Do they go to the same church? Where do they work? Who are their neighbors? Anything that could tie them together so we can understand why they’re targets.”

“On it.” Moe seemed relieved about Spence’s solution to the trail ride problem, but also serious about this shadow clouding their horizon. He’d told Junie, and Junie had told Spence, that he’d always thought he’d try for a spot in the FBI; then he’d found out field agents didn’t get to choose where they were assigned, and he loved Wyoming way too much to leave the mountains.

Spence understood that.

Yeah, there was a lot he loved about this place, and it included one stubborn blonde he was fairly sure he just couldn’t live without.

He glanced at his computer screen and registered the time. “I’m out of here,” he told Moe.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
HE LANTERNS LOOKED
fabulous, Melody thought with justifiable pride. She surveyed the effect and felt a sense of satisfaction because the
wow
factor seemed to impress all the arriving guests. The gold and crimson glow reflected the burst of color over the mountain peaks as the sun went down.

As predicted, Hadleigh had done this up right, and Mother Nature was cooperating.

There was a live band tuning up, a dance floor behind the house set up by a local company and a large tent that held tables and chairs. The buffet consisted of good old-fashioned beef barbecue, baked beans, coleslaw and a variety of desserts, including a Key lime cheesecake and Bad Billy’s signature brownies. It was the only dessert he offered, and people drove upward of an hour just to get them. How Hadleigh had wheedled him into making some for the party was a mystery. He refused to do catering but he was fond of Hadleigh and Tripp. He was in his mid-fifties now, and they’d all known him since he was the JV basketball coach.

Except, remembering the pact, Melody reminded herself that they weren’t those girls anymore, the girls who’d grown up together, and life wasn’t slumber parties and gossip and giggles. They were women, all of them almost thirty, and it wasn’t so much the biological clock ticking, as the happiness clock chiming in the background.

She didn’t
need
a man to make her happy, but she sure
wanted
what Hadleigh had with Tripp.

As the real wedding reception—the one that actually involved the bride and groom—it was quite an occasion. Melody was delighted to help with more than just the lanterns, but everything seemed to be under control, so she just sipped a glass of beer, grateful for the mountain breeze.