The pale winter sun shone through the kitchen window. I cleaned up the last of the mess from my adventure. The caper hadn’t gone as planned. How many do? In my many years of life, most of my plans had taken an unexpected turn.
Merup.” Robespierre, my Maine Coon cat, announced a
visitor on the way. He’s almost as good
as a doorbell. The firm rap on the door
told me this wasn’t one of my female friends.
“Come in.”
Pete
Duggan strode across the room and thrust a bouquet of bright carnations into my
hands. A red hue, almost as vivid as his
hair, stained his face. “Mrs. Miller,
got to hand it to you. I’ve come to eat
crow.”
To
hide a smile I buried my face in the flowers and inhaled the spicy
fragrance. “How about chocolate chip
cookies and mint tea instead?”
“Sounds
great.” He straddled one of the chairs
at the table and picked up the local newspaper.
“Local Woman Thwarts Robbers.”
His grin made him look like the ten-year-old who had moved into the
corner house on my block. He cleared his
throat. “The guys at the station ribbed
me about this. Did you forget the plan?”
How,
when the idea to catch the real thieves had been mine? A series of burglaries had plagued the
neighborhood for months and had troubled me.
Especially when the police had decided two teenage neighbor boys were
the culprits. I knew the pair and had
disagreed strongly enough to set myself up as a victim. Then I informed Pete.
“Did
you forget?” he repeated. “When I crept up the stairs and saw you
grappling with one of the men, I nearly had a heart attack.”
Heat
singed my cheeks. “How was I to know my
date would poop out early?”
After
filling two mugs with mint tea I opened a tin of freshly baked cookies. How could I admit to a nagging doubt, or tell
him I had wanted to be part of the action?
In July I had turned sixty-five and in September retired from the
nursing staff at Tappan Zee Memorial Hospital.
Six months of placid existence had made me edgy. Lunch with friends, coffee with the neighbors
and weekly bridge games with old cronies bored me. These events held none of the challenge of
meeting crises at the hospital.
Pete
scowled. “You could have gone to the
Prescott's house.”
“They’re
away.” I sipped the tea and savored the
cool mint flavor.
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