The Missing Dough(73)

“Sure, but he’ll do right by me. He always has.”

“Let’s go,” Maddy said as she unlocked her car. “Just a warning, but I might speed a little.”

“Be my guest, but you’re paying for the ticket if you get one.”

“Me? Didn’t you know, Eleanor? I’m too charming to get a speeding ticket.”

“Just keep telling yourself that, and maybe someday it will be true.”



When we got to the outdoor stage, though, it appeared that we were too late. No one was playing, and the people who had gathered for the show were milling about as though they were waiting for something that might not happen. The band’s logo from the notice I’d seen, STOUTER THAN MOST, was on the stage, but neither performer was there. In the crowd I spotted Jenny Wilkes, the woman who ran the flower shop in town, but she didn’t see me. It was just as well. I didn’t really have time to stop and chat.

“We missed it,” Maddy said, dejected that another lead had dead-ended on us.

I was about to agree when I saw a flash of something backstage. “Follow me,” I said softly and tugged lightly on Maddy’s arm.

As we neared the back area, I could hear a loud conversation going on. Argument was probably more like it. Kenny was clearly angry about something, and Samantha was doing her best to hold up her end under the attack from her ex-husband.

“I’m not going to do it, and I don’t care what you think,” I heard Samantha say.

“If you don’t now, then you’d better start,” Kenny said as he moved closer to her. “Neither one of us can afford to have those two nosy sisters keep digging into our business. You’ve got to stop going to them every time we have a little spat.”

“That wasn’t a little spat,” she countered.

“Do you want to know something? That’s your problem, Samantha. You blow everything out of proportion and read things into the simplest actions. You’ve got to stop and think about what you’re saying before you open your mouth,” he said with an ominous pause.

“It sounds like there’s an ‘or else’ somewhere in there,” Samantha said.

“There you go again. I know how important it is to you that you’re the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral, but the world doesn’t spin that way.”

“I’m not like that,” she said defiantly.

“Try telling that to someone who was never married to you. The more I think about it, the more I realize that was probably the biggest mistake I ever made in my life.”

“Me too,” she said so softly that I could barely hear her.

“What was that?”

Instead of answering, Samantha pointed to her watch. “Our break is over. We just have to go on for fifteen more minutes, and then we’re finished. This is my last show with you, Kenny. After today I never want to see you again.”

“You don’t really mean that, do you?” he said, his voice getting low and mean. “How are you going to avoid it? We both know that I am going to be in this area forever, and so are you.”

“I can do whatever I want to. You don’t own me. The days of you telling me what to do are long gone.”

“Do you honestly believe that’s true?” he asked, and I saw Samantha step back just a little. When she didn’t answer his question, he added, “Remember, no more talking to anyone about anything that concerns me. I have some errands to run after the show, but we’ll discuss this later, I promise you.”

“Whatever,” she said shakily.

“Do us both a favor and try not to cause me any more trouble in the meantime, okay?”

As they headed for the stage, I pulled Maddy back behind a bush so they wouldn’t see us. They walked past us and mounted the platform to the cheers from the crowd. As they started to play, Samantha’s voice was a little shaky at first, but she quickly got it back.

“And I thought I had some bad ex-husbands,” Maddy said. “He’s really not a nice man, is he?”

“Kenny’s not my favorite guy in the world, there’s no doubt about that,” I agreed. “Why do you suppose he was so upset that she’d been talking to us?”

“Think about it. Would you want someone sharing their opinions of you if you were that guy? I know I wouldn’t.”

“No, there’s got to be more to it than that. It was almost as though he was afraid she’d tell us something that would incriminate him, you know?”

“It’s possible. If we’re lucky, we’ll find out, anyway.”

“Hey, ladies, did we miss anything?” Josh asked from right behind me, nearly scaring me out of my shoes.