She frowned. “This is right up the road.”
He nodded. “The Robinsons used to live there. Nice people. I didn’t know the property changed hands, or that that asshole had bought it. I opened the invite because I was curious about what he’s up to. He’s looking for money to fund a run for the state senate.”
“You didn’t RSVP,” she said, turning the reply card in her fingers thoughtfully.
“Where’s Lorraine?” I asked, moving on to dicing potatoes after flipping the turkey burgers.
Stacey set the card down and brought my coffee over, which was actually six or eight shots of espresso with steamed milk and plenty of sugar. I sipped. Liquid bliss.
“She’ll be back soon. She went to check on the horse she operated on last night.”
“It went okay?”
“Lorraine was pretty confident the mare would be fine,” Jen said.
“Anybody hungry?” I asked, as I rifled the cupboards for oil and spices. I tossed a mixture of potatoes, bell peppers, and onions with olive oil and a variety of spices, then poured them on a giant jelly roll sheet and slid them into the oven.
Up to this point, Officer Mikey had remained quiet, but he added his voice to the chorus of affirmatives.
“How are you feeling?” He asked.
I had to admit I looked at him like his hair was on fire. Of all the people to ask me that question, I’d have put him at the bottom of the list. Crossed off in thick black Sharpie.
“Good. Sore, but the shower helped.” In fact, I had some bruises on my hip, knee, and side, but he didn’t need to hear about those. “Where are Lindsey and her cousins?”
“Asleep,” Luke said. “When we got her into the gym she went nuts. I mean demented. Frantic. Like she was hopped up on a truckload of meth. She went to town on the walls. Pens I gave her ran out of ink in nothing flat.”
“We got here just in time with supplies,” Jen added, sipping on her orange juice. “Luke’s right. She was in a frenzy. Focused and manic. She wrote on the walls and the floor, and it was nothing any of us could understand. Diagrams and words that weren’t words. At least they weren’t English.”
“As soon as she was done, she collapsed,” Stacey said. “She was soaked with sweat and she’d broken another blood vessel. Her eyes looked like they were bleeding. I’m not sure, but she looked like she might have lost twenty pounds. Her clothes hung on her. Rhi and Lorel had been trying to get her to eat and drink, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t stop or slow down.”
Curiosity gnawed at me, but breakfast demanded I stay and eat before wandering off to look at the results of Lindsey’s fugue.
“Grate some parmesan, would you?” I asked Luke. “And some Gruyere. Mikey, make yourself useful and stir the potatoes.”
Both stood and went to work.
“Anything we can do?” Jen asked.
“Drinks, set the table, make toast. Oh, crap!”
“What?”
“I’m supposed to meet my mother for lunch today. I need to text her.” I pulled out my cell and tapped out the message, saying an emergency had come up, but we could reschedule for tomorrow if she had time. I sent it and went back to cooking.
“We should use the invitation,” Stacey announced, while buttering a batch of rye toast.
“You planning to start a fire?” Luke asked. “I know I haven’t run out of toilet paper, so you can’t be wanting to use it for that.”
She made a face at him. “Don’t be an idiot. I mean we could go to the party and get Lydia’s cats.”
“Whose cats?”
“Lydia. Carson Flannery, the asshole up the road, is her ex and he’s been terrorizing her.” She went on to explain the whole story, finishing up with, “so we’re going to take the cats back and make him stop harassing her.”
“You’re talking about theft,” Mikey said with a frown. “You could get arrested. And how would you make him do anything?”
“I’ve got a few ideas.”
