"She has plans with me," Eleanor said from her place at the file cabinets. "We have a date to, ah, do goat yoga."
Both of us turned to stare at her.
Jack spoke first. "What the heck is goat yoga?"
She bit her lip and looked everywhere but at him. "You know! Goat yoga. We saw it on the news and wanted to try it out, right, Tess? It's that thing where, ah, the goats do yoga. And we watch! Right. Goat yoga."
I closed my eyes. This was not helpful.
"Repeating the phrase 'goat yoga' over and over does not explain to me how goats do yoga or why you'd want to watch such a thing," Jack said dryly.
"No, Eleanor," I said. "Remember, the baby goats run around and do cute things whilewedo the yoga?"
Jack looked at me, then at Eleanor, and then back at me.
"You're making this up."
Now I was on safer ground. I Googled, and then held out my phone to show him the video. "See? Goat yoga?"
Jack watched a few seconds of the clip, his eyes widening. "That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. They have this here? In Dead End?"
"Sure, absolutely, we're going tonight right after work, see you later, we have plans to make," Eleanor said, practically babbling.
This was pitiful. If I ever committed a crime, Eleanor wouldnotbe one of my alibi witnesses.
"Jack," I said firmly. "Busy. Work and then goat yoga. Go do some detective things."
His eyes were filled with laughter. "But I want to go too. I like goats."
"We're noteatingthe goats!" I had a sudden vision of Jack, in tiger form, chasing a bunch of baby goats around a yoga studio, and I almost couldn't keep a straight face.
"Eating them makes more sense than doing yoga with them."
He wasn't wrong, exactly, but I didn’t have time to debate the issue. First, I needed to find out what was going on with Eleanor, whose face was bright red. She looked like she was going to start crying, and she would be horrified to cry in front of Jack.
"Okay, whatever, let's discuss it later." I gestured to him to follow me.
When we were back in the shop, he frowned down at me. "Is she okay? Do I need to call Dave?"
Jack and Eleanor's son Dave had been best friends in school and had rebuilt their friendship recently.
"I think she's fine. I'll find out what's going on."
He nodded and flicked the end of the ponytail I wore to work. "All right. I'll be in my office catching up. Let me know if you need anything."
Before I could reply, customers walked into the shop, so I just smiled my thanks and moved to greet them and then answered some questions about a set of china that was displayed in the front window. When I turned around, Eleanor was at the cash register, calm again, and Jack had disappeared through the connecting door from my shop to his office, the headquarters of Tiger's Eye Investigations.
After that, we had a steady stream of customers, buying, selling, and pawning, for the next three hours. When we finally had a lull, I put my hand on Eleanor's arm.
"What's going on? And don't tell me we're going to goat yoga. If I wanted to hang out with goats, I could go to Uncle Mike's barn."
She took a deep breath and then blew it out. "Bill is cheating on me with some hussy, and we're going to stake out his place and spy on him."
"What?" I needed a moment to digest this. "Bill? Mr. Oliver? What? And who's 'we'?"
"You, me, and Lorraine," she said, her face determined. "We're going to catch him red-handed."
I leaned back and gently banged my head against the wall.
