The Bogus Biker - Chapter 1

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CHAPTER ONE

(Friday)




“I
know what I heard.” Penelope Pembroke leaned across the table in the kitchen of
the Amaryllis Bed and Breakfast, of which she was proprietor, and tapped the
woven placemat with a well-manicured, unpolished nail. Blowing away the strand
of honey-blonde hair falling across her nose, she readjusted the narrow
tortoise-shell glasses perched on the end of that appendage, and leaned closer
to her best friend Mary Lynn Hargrove, wife of the town’s longtime mayor. “I’m
not senile, you know.”

“No
one said you were.” Mary Lynn placated Penelope as she’d done since the first
day they’d met in high school some thirty years earlier.

“You
implied it.” Penelope reached down for the orange tabby nosing around her
sneaker-clad feet and lifted him into her lap. “Abijah heard it, too.”

Mary
Lynn rolled her dark eyes

 toward the hairline of close-cropped black
curls. “The only thing that blob hears is the sound of the can opener signaling
dinner.”

“He’s
not a blob.”

“He’s
obese. He’s going to keel over one of these days. Death by Feline Feast.”

“Oh,
hush up.” Penelope stroked the cat, whose ample hindquarters hung over the edge
of her lap. “Anyway, I heard what I heard.” The strand of hair drifted across
one lens again, and she blew it away and tucked it firmly behind her ear, which
set the long silver and turquoise earring swaying. “They specifically said the
word ‘shipment’ and mentioned the Sit-n-Swill.”

“Roger
Sitton gets shipments all the time. It’s a bar and grill you know. He doesn’t
make moonshine in his bathtub or slaughter his barbecue out back.”

Penelope
sat back and shifted the cat to distribute his weight more evenly. “These guys
weren’t blessed salesmen, I’m telling you. They were, well, Mafia types.”

Mary
Lynn snorted. “Mafioso? Then by all means call the police. Call the FBI. Call
out the National Guard or maybe the Marines.”

The
smirk on her friend’s face rankled Penelope, but she kept her cool. “I thought
about calling Bradley, but he’s worse than you are. He’s convinced I lost it
when I divorced his father.”

“He
was fifteen then, and it got you a better settlement than if you’d waited on
Travis to divorce you.”

“That’s
true. I wasn’t so dumb, and I guess he knows that now. He just can’t admit I
was right to dump his father, but the man couldn’t keep his blessed pants
zipped. I put up with it as long as I could.”

Mary
Lynn shook her head. “That’s a dead mule. So tell Brad about the men.”

“Since
he got that fancy new title at the police department, he’s not that easy to
talk to.”

“CID.
Criminal Investigation. Detective Sergeant Bradley Pembroke. You know you’re
proud of him, Pen.”

“Just
so proud I can’t stand myself.” Penelope’s generous mouth parted in a wide
smile. “So’s Daddy. I just wish his grandmother could’ve lived to see what he’s
done.”

“Your
mother would’ve been proud. So would old Mrs. Pembroke. She was crazy about him
as I remember.”

“I
think she knew Bradley wasn’t going to turn out like his father.” Penelope
frowned. “You’re changing the subject. I know what I heard.”

“Then
tell Roger.”

“Roger
Sitton has lace on his drawers, for Heaven’s sake. He’d no more be involved in
a drug deal than I would.”

“Well,
that’s probably true, but he could be involved without knowing it. Anyway, if
you’re not going to tell anyone, forget about it.”

“I’m
telling you, Mary Lynn.”

“Which
is about as useful as telling Abijah.” On cue, the massive feline lifted his
head and stretched, then flailed his back legs to keep from sliding to the
floor.

Penelope
grabbed for him, and he snuggled in again, setting up a rumbling purr her
father described as a distant freight train. “Don’t badmouth Abijah. No wonder
he doesn’t like you.”

“He
doesn’t like anybody but you, and nobody likes him, including me.” Mary Lynn
took one last sip of coffee, slung her floppy zebra-striped bag over one
shoulder, and ran long fingers through dark hair beginning to show a few
streaks of gray. “I’ve got to get going. The new resale shop over in the strip
mall is having its grand opening at two o’clock, and I promised Harry I’d be
there for the ribbon-cutting. But I have to stop by the Garden Market first.”

“So
you aren’t going to give me any advice?” Penelope’s slender body, still the
envy of every classmate, wafted up from the chair like smoke from a pipe. When
Abijah squirmed in her arms, she set him down. He stalked away and made it into
the bay window in only two tries.

“I
thought I just did.” Mary Lynn’s eyes ran the length of her friend’s
five-foot-five frame. “I hate you, you know. You ate two kolaches to my one,
and I probably gained five pounds.”

“You
worry about your weight too much. Also, what you gave me wasn’t very good
advice.”

“It’s
all I have, and I really have to go. Thanks for the coffee and kolache, even
though I like the peach ones better.”

“The
bakery was out of peach.”

“Another
time.” The mayor’s wife pushed open the back screen door and stepped out onto
the terrace, the rubber soles of her expensive loafers making no sound on the
smooth stones. “See you.”

Penelope
gathered up the plates and cups and began to rinse them at the sink.

“Nellie.”

“Yes,
Daddy?”

“Got
anymore of those kolatsky things?”

“Kolaches.
They’re full of sugar, Daddy.”

Jake
Kelley emerged from the tiny hall leading to what he called his ‘lair’. It had
been the quarters for the live-in housekeeper when he was a child, but after
his daughter turned the family home into a bed and breakfast, he’d taken refuge
there. “I want one anyway.”

Penelope
shrugged. “You know where they are.”

Jake’s
tall, lean body floated across the kitchen. The sunlight glinted off his white
hair which he wore short enough to be convenient and long enough to be
fashionable. He helped himself to the largest pastry left in the box and took a
bite. “I really like the peach ones better.”

“They
were out.”

“Maybe
tomorrow.”

“Maybe.”

“Did
those two young fellows leave right after breakfast? Anybody else coming in?”

“Yes
and yes.”

“They
seemed like nice youngsters.” Jake took down his favorite mug, the one with the
hunting dogs on it, and poured himself some coffee.

“They
were thirty if they were a day, and I don’t think they were very nice.”

“No?
Left a mess upstairs, did they?”

“I
haven’t been upstairs. No, I thought they seemed shifty.”

“Shifty?”
Jake chuckled as he took his coffee and kolache to the table.

Penelope
hesitated. At seventy-five, Jake was sharper than most men half his age,
despite a stroke two years ago that had ended his employment as general manager
of the Garden Market. He’d come back all the way, but by then the owner said it
was past time for him to retire anyway. He hadn’t liked it much then, but in
six months he’d liked his freedom a lot. She straightened from putting dishes
into the dishwasher. “I overheard them talking about something that didn’t
sound right to me.”

“Which
was?”

“Something
about a shipment at the Sit-n-Swill.”

Jake
added sugar from the grapeleaf bowl to his coffee. “Drugs.”

Penelope’s
eyebrows went up. “That’s what I thought, too. Mary Lynn didn’t get it.”

“Mary
Lynn doesn’t think like you.”

“But
you do?”

Jake
looked up and grinned. “You’re a chip off the old block, darlin’.”

“Oh,
Daddy, you wouldn’t recognize Jack the Ripper if he knocked on the back door
and asked to borrow the butcher knife.”

Jake’s
shaggy eyebrows came together in a straight line above his slate-blue eyes. “I
knew a shoplifter the minute he walked in the market. I could smell him.” He
took another bite of the pastry and chewed slowly. “Dry.”

“They
were in the day-old bin.”

“Maybe
you should call Brad. On second thought, maybe not.”

“My
feelings exactly.”

“I’m
sure glad you don’t think I’m over the hill, Nellie.”

“You’re
not over the hill, Daddy. You’re not even near the top. But you know Bradley.”

“I
know my grandson. So what are you going to do?”

Penelope
sat down. “Nothing I guess.”

“Nothing,
huh.”

“What
can I do?”

“I
haven’t had one of Roger’s Reubens in a long time.”

Penelope’s
mouth twitched. “Neither have I.”

“Well,
then, it seems to me after you check in tonight’s guests, you and I should
mosey on over to the Sit-n-Swill and have one. And a beer.”

Penelope
got up and wiped a few drops of water from the new granite counter top she’d
had installed to replace the old-fashioned grouted tile. “I guess it couldn’t
hurt.”

“I
don’t think so.”

She
frowned. “Daddy, do you really believe what I heard, or is this just an excuse
for a beer and a Reuben?”

He
shrugged.

“And
what if something happens while we’re there, and the police come? I’d rather
face a firing squad than my own son.”

“Nellie,
I always told you not to cross a bridge ‘til you came to it. Besides, Brad
wouldn’t arrest us. He’d have to take care of Abijah, and he hates that cat.”

Penelope
twisted her mouth, then nodded. “All right, Daddy. We’ll do it.”







Penelope and Jake should have possibly rethought their foray to the  Sit-n-Swill. Find out why.



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The Bogus Biker 

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