Fool's Puzzle by Earlene Fowler (reading eggs books .TXT) 📕

This was the first morning I’d slept in; the first night of good, dreamless sleep I’d had in a long time.

“Bet you scared the tar outta them,” she said, the deep lines in her peachy-brown face moving upward in a grin. “All those big ole tough cops.”

I grinned back. “I do believe I did.”

“Good.” Her braid swung around like a monkey’s tail as she turned back to the turkey she was basting.

“Heard from your policeman?” She pronounced it pole-leece and she knew the answer; she was just digging at me.

“No,” I said in a casual voice. He was the one thing I had purposely avoided thinking about the last four days. “Doesn’t matter.”

She turned, gave me a knowing look and gestured at the coffee cake.

“Eat up. You’re too skinny. Most men like a little something to hold onto.”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.” I pushed up the sleeves of my red sweatshirt and took a small bite, letting the brown sugar dissolve on my tongue. “Where’s Daddy?”

“Outside someplace, and don’t change the subject. You’re too young to be alone.”

“You weren’t much older than me when Grampa died,” I said. “You’ve been alone all this time.”

“Honeybun.” She pointed the dripping baster at me. “What with raising six kids and then you, I haven’t been alone in over fifty years.”

I rolled my eyes and played with the crumbly topping on the coffee cake.

“Elvia called earlier this morning,” she said, closing the door to the oven.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“She said she’d call back. She talked to Miguel. They got the tests back from the gun they found in J.D.’s collection. It was the one that killed the boy who worked with you. Stupid old fool. Doesn’t he even watch TV? I would of got rid of it.”

“Did she say anything about Carl?”

She looked at me with troubled eyes. “They can’t do nothing to him, baby. There’s just no proof he was driving. If they can get that Suzanne character to talk, the most he’d be charged with would be leaving the scene of an accident.” She wiped her hands on her jeans, never taking her eyes off my face.

“I still can’t believe J.D. would kill two people just to ...” I couldn’t think about what he really did. “To protect Carl’s reputation, his own? I don’t understand it.”

“Habit,” Dove said. “He’s been bailing Carl out since that boy could walk. Some parents just don’t know when to draw the line.”

“But murder?”

“He probably thought it was the only way to protect his child. When we love someone, we don’t always know when to quit.”

“I can’t believe you’re defending his actions.”

“I’m not, honeybun. I’m just telling you what he probably felt.” She picked up a knife and whacked the head off a stalk of celery. “It’s just a shame he never thought about those two kids he killed. That they were someone’s children, too.”

Outside, a car door slammed. Dove walked over to the large picture window in the living room and peered out.

“Who is it?” I asked after she stood there for a minute or so.

“Can’t really tell from this angle, but it appears to be for you.”

“What?” I walked over to the window. The hood of my Chevy was up and a long pair of legs in washed-out Levi’s pulled tight across the thighs was bent over the engine while Daddy stood talking and gesturing with his coffee cup.

“I can see what attracted you to him,” Dove said with a snicker.

“Dove!” I gently slapped her shoulder. “You’re seventy-five years old. You’re a great-grandmother, for Pete’s sake.”

“Which makes me more qualified than you to judge the quality of a man’s butt.” She looked back outside. “Looks pretty good. He must be one of them fellas who likes to exercise. Probably has lots of staying power.”

“You are unbelievable. You sound like a teenager.”

She patted my arm. “Best not let him get too close to me today. I might just give it a little pinch.”

I groaned and shook my head.

She placed a hand between my shoulder blades and shoved me toward the door. “You’d better get out there before your daddy puts him to work shoveling crap in the barn.”

As I walked down the porch steps, Daddy passed me, empty coffee cup in hand.

“Nice boy,” was all he said.

Ortiz leaned against the white rail fence that lined our long gravel driveway. A smudge of grease from the Chevy’s engine streaked the front of his white tee shirt.

“What are you doing to my truck?” I asked.

“Just checking it out.” His eyes widened a bit when he saw me, but he didn’t mention my hair. He gestured to a small pasteboard box sitting on the ground next to the truck. “Brought you something.” I opened it with the toe of my boot and peered in at some mechanical contraption.

“What is it?”

“A new starter. I’m tired of worrying about you breaking down somewhere. It’ll only take an hour or two to put it in.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. In my family, when a man started feeling proprietary about a woman’s vehicle, that meant he had intentions. I wasn’t sure what it meant to Ortiz. I stared at the ground and waited.

“You’re welcome,” he said in a wry voice.

We were silent for a moment.

“You have a heck of a lot of nerve showing up here after how you treated me,” I blurted out.

“I am not going to talk about any of that with you. Every time I think about it, I have this uncontrollable urge to wring your neck.”

“You!” I said. “What about me? You treated me like a common criminal. And I want to know why you didn’t tell me you suspected J.D. all along? I can’t believe you kept that from me.”

“Why, so you could go running to Carl or J.D. and screw things up worse than you already did? It was a lucky break for us J.D. was stupid enough to keep the gun he killed the Griffin kid with, or we’d