“Someone needs to shove Elizabeth’s head in the toilet and flush repeatedly,” Katie said, jumping on Penny’s bandwagon.
Penny laughed. “Kate, you’re my kind of woman—the show no mercy, head-on-a-spike brand of spitfire.”
“Please don’t encourage her,” Ronnie said, grimacing. “She’s already been in your brother’s jail multiple times over the last month.”
Katie whacked Ronnie’s arm. “Shush it, or I’ll lock you up in Grady’s jail and run away with the key.”
Ronnie believed her.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, she found herself in Penny’s office admiring the cacti photos on the walls. The recessed lights were on today, making the southwestern décor look even homier.
“So what’s this secret meeting about?” she asked Katie and Penny while admiring a black-and-white shot of a giant saguaro.
“Your problem,” Penny answered. “We’ll get started in a minute. I invited someone else this morning who will be in charge of ground patrol. She’s in the bathroom.”
Ground patrol? Ronnie frowned toward Grady’s sister. “Are we building an army?”
“Sort of.” She moved to the door. “Here she comes.”
Ronnie heard the familiar squeak and creak of a walker. The sight of Grady’s aunt Millie filling the doorway along with her infamous cherry red walker lined with dingle balls made Ronnie grimace and wince at the same time.
“That’s not a nice face to greet me with on the first day of a new year,” Millie said, smiling at Ronnie.
Ronnie moved over and gave Grady’s aunt a hug. “It’s not you, Millie. It’s what Grady will do to me if he finds out I’m meeting on the sly with not only his sister but his aunt, too.”
“Pshaw,” Millie said, sitting on the couch Ronnie had crashed on yesterday. “That boy needs to loosen his tie. You’re good for him.” She pointed at Katie. “Her? Not so much.”
Katie and Millie had a history that included whispered threats to do bodily harm and a possible smashed toe—Katie’s, thanks to Millie’s walker. They’d agreed at Thanksgiving to let bygones and hurt toes be a part of their past, but Katie still got her feathers ruffled when Millie shared breathing space with her.
Katie flipped off Millie. “Good to see you, too, dingle-ball bully.” She scowled at Penny. “You’re putting Mad Dog Millie, the ring leader of dancing-with-the-oldies gang, in charge of ground patrol?”
“It was ‘Sweatin’ to the Oldies,’ ” Ronnie corrected.
“I know that, Claire Jr.,” Katie snapped.
“Yes, I am,” Penny said. “Between Aunt Millie and her library friends, they’ll be able to cover a lot of ground.”
“You mean her library lynching buddies,” Katie grumbled.
Millie cackled. “Ronnie, I’m liking your little sister more and more. She’s got some spark in her bloomers.”
“You might want to be careful around her,” Ronnie said. “Pregnancy has made Katie’s teeth sharper.”
Katie blew a raspberry at Ronnie.
Penny chuckled, shaking her head. “I think this diamond killer of yours is going to regret the day he came to Yuccaville hunting up trouble.”
Frowning, Ronnie leaned against Penny’s desk. “I’m worried about Millie and her friends and you getting hurt.”
“What about me?” Katie asked.
“You’re Butch’s problem. He’s the one who knocked you up and sent you careening over Insanity Falls in a wooden barrel.”
“Wow. Your love is so warm these days, like a scratchy wool blanket infected with smallpox.”
“Don’t worry about me and the girls,” Millie told Ronnie. “We pick our teeth with barbed wire.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Ronnie asked Penny. “How do we find a killer who could be hiding in any of Yuccaville’s many nooks and crannies?” That was assuming he was still lying low in town and hadn’t pulled up stakes until things cooled down.
“Aunt Millie and her crew will canvass the streets, paying visits to hotels and motels, asking if anyone has caught sight of a John Denver wanna-be with a left-legged limp.” Penny pointed at her aunt. “Try to be discreet about it, Aunt Millie. We don’t want the sheriff’s department or the local cops to get distracted from keeping an eye out for the killer. The end goal is for somebody to find the killer before he comes for Ronnie or Claire.”
“What are you going to do?” Millie asked her niece.
“I’m going to hit some of the businesses where a killer might pass through, like Dirty Gerties and the gas stations. I’ll talk to the owners, give them my number, have them act as extra sets of eyes.”
“Good.” Katie crossed her arms, her small baby bump showing under her blue flannel shirt. “I’m going to get hold of Tank if I can. I’ll pick his brain, see what other clues he might have but doesn’t realize.” She looked at Ronnie. “You need to talk to Mississippi.”
“Why?”
“Because he was there with Grady and might have learned something your sugar daddy isn’t telling you.”
“Grady isn’t my sugar daddy.”
“Are you sleeping under his roof and eating his food?”
Ronnie sighed. “Well, sometimes, but that doesn’t make him a sugar daddy.”
“Did he buy you those boots?” She pointed at Ronnie’s new silver cowboy boots.
“For Christmas.”
“And those earrings?”
“Shut up,” Ronnie said. “I bought him things, too.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I could meet with Mr. FBI Agent,” Penny offered, her expression hard, her eyes narrow. “I could make Mississippi howl like a bluetick hound dog for us.”
“What’s the deal with you and Mississippi?” Katie asked. “I saw you two butting heads a couple of times last night before you and I had our pre-planning meeting in the bathroom. How do you know him?”
“I didn’t. Not until last night.”
“You’ll have to excuse Penny,” Millie told them. “She used to have mad monkey sex with an FBI agent she lived with in San Francisco until he started investigating other women’s vaginas with his rather rambunctious penis.”
Penny squeezed the bridge of her nose. “You could have just said he screwed around on me, Aunt Millie.”
“Yes, I could have, but ‘screwed’ is such a vulgar word.”
So maybe Penny’s animosity to Mississippi was what had Grady talking to her over by the Big Buck Hunter video game last night, and why she hadn’t looked happy about whatever her
