From Fleeced at Yappy Hour
Chapter Three Part One…
“Did you hear there’s a new face in town?” Rachel asked the next morning, grunting as she lifted a case of tequila onto the counter.
“I didn’t hear,” I replied, absently wiping down a clean glass. “I saw him last night before the Pacific Cove gossip mill had its chance to get to me.”
Rachel’s eyes widened. She slipped her scissors across the top of the plastic covering, creating a slip to pull out the tequila bottles. “What’s he like?”
I thought about the question for a moment. What was this newcomer like? Truthfully, I didn’t have a good answer for my little sister. We’d hardly exchanged two words.
“Mysterious,” I finally said. I plopped the white cloth down and handed Rachel the glass so she could put it under the counter. “He didn’t seem interested in having much of a conversation with us. Of course, it didn’t help that Yolanda was so stressed out about Ocean she hardly gave me a minute to chat with the guy.”
“Oh, right, Ocean comes into town today,” Rachel grimaced.
“What?” I demanded. “Everyone seems to be wary of this kid except for me. Why is that?”
“Yolanda told you about her past, right?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah, so?” I shrugged. “How many of us got through our teenage years without a little rebellion?”
“You never stole a bridal crown,” Rachel said.
I ran my tongue over my front teeth, unable to come up with a good comeback. “Touché. Still, I don’t think we should focus so much negativity on Ocean. Let’s talk about Yolanda’s new neighbor instead.”
“Yolanda has a new neighbor?” Brenda asked, her tone spiking with interest.
I hadn’t even heard Brenda come in, but when I turned around, she was standing there with Max. They made up two-fourths of the beloved Roundup Crew and had semi-quietly become an adorable, if somewhat eccentric, couple in the last few months. Max had infiltrated the Roundup Crew with Mrs. Murphy’s Beagle, Bowser, a secret I’d been in on. He’d been using the slobbery dog to get in Brenda’s good graces, and the ruse had worked out after all. Brenda’s Chihuahua, PeeWee, was snuggled up in his arms.
The two of them had excited expressions on their faces, similar to kids on Halloween. This was Halloween for the two of them, after all. A new face in town equivalent to an expensive, handcrafted chocolate from France.
“Yep,” I replied. “I saw him last night. He was moving in at ten o’clock.”
Brenda pulled a face. “What a weird time to move in.”
“That’s what I thought!” I exclaimed. “And he wasn’t the least bit talkative, either.”
“Oh, because you wanted to speak to everyone you came across when you first got to town?” Rachel pointed out, cocking an eyebrow. She picked up the white cloth I’d been using to dry glasses and folded it neatly before placing it under the bar. “Maybe he was just tired after a long day of moving. Not everyone wants to be Chatty Cathy at ten at night.”
“Chatty Cathy is chatty at all times,” Brenda pointed out, turning away from Rachel and giving me a stare-down.
“You got that right,” Max said, rolling his eyes dramatically. “Women and their gossip!”
Brenda shot him a look. “Men are no better! We could call you Chatty Chuckie!”
Max barked out a laugh and took a seat at the bar.
Brenda turned to me, gripping both of my hands in his with so much force I was surprised I didn’t hear my bones cracking and popping. “Tell us everything, from the moment he entered your sight to the moment he left. “Give us all the juicy details. Name, age, height, looks, muscle tone.”
She waggled her drawn-on eyebrows at me like some terrifying cartoon.
“Brenda!” Max gasped, glancing at his sort of girlfriend in shock.
“What?” She shrugged. “I’m not in the grave. I can look.”
With a sigh, Max grabbed a peanut from the bowl on the bar and popped it into his mouth.
“I don’t know,” I hedged. “He was a guy. He dropped a baseball, I handed it back, and he disappeared without much conversation. What more can I say?”
I tried to ignore the strange bubbling in the base of my stomach, and the way it burned up into my throat and mouth like acid reflux, leaving a bad taste. This no-name stranger had seemed off somehow, but I didn’t have the words to articulate it. Besides, the last thing I needed was for Rachel to tell me I was overreacting just because I’d sleuthed out two murder cases better than the cops.
“You don’t like him.” The observation came from Max who could, unfortunately, read most people like a book.
“I don’t know him,” I replied simply.
“Max is right. You don’t like him.” Brenda threw another peanut into her mouth and gave me a severe once over. “Why?”
I glanced over to Rachel, who was pretending to busy herself by filling the shelves with bottles of tequila. But I could tell by the quirk of her brow that she was listening to every single word I said.
”I couldn’t stop reading!”
”Fast-paced and fun. I love these mysteires!”
”Diana Orgain is my new favorite author!”
Diana Orgain is the USA Today Bestselling Author of the Maternal Instincts Mystery Series, Love or Money Mystery series, and The Roundup Crew Mysteries. Diana is also the New York Times Bestselling co-author of the Scrapbooking Mystery Series with Laura Childs. To keep up to date with the latest releases visit Diana at www.dianaorgain.com
