Almost Home. Debbie Macomber

paused, bent to cup the dog’s face and kiss her, then was up again announcing her guilt. She dumped her designer purse and bag on the front step of my porch and held out her wrists to be cuffed, but not before she smiled brightly at Aiden and drawled, “Wellll, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? Chalese! Who! Is! This! My, oh my, you are scrumptious!”

      She shook Aiden’s hand, then flipped her hair back over her shoulders and her glasses to the top of her head. As usual Brenda was wearing bright red lipstick and elegant, flower-shaped jewelry I knew well. “Scrumptious!” she declared again.

      “Yes, indeedy, he is. Let’s wrap him up in a strawberry pancake and eat him,” I snapped. “A little powdered sugar, and he’ll go down fine.”

      Brenda humphed at me, but then a quizzical expression crossed her face and her brows knit together. “I know who he is! He’s that terrible bulldog who wants to—”

      I clamped my hand over Brenda’s lipsticked mouth. “Not now, my friend, not now.”

      The chief crossed his arms. He does that when he’s analyzing confounding situations.

      I released Brenda. “Personal information,” I told the chief.

      Brenda glared at Aiden, hands on hips, beaded bracelets jingling, “So you’re the enemy?”

      “Brenda, shush.”

      “I’m not here for personal, I’m here for the crime committed,” the chief drawled. “Can you tell me what you girls were up to again last night?”

      “Again?” I protested.

      “Yes, ma’am, again.”

      “But …” I shut my mouth. Okay, perhaps a few of Brenda’s pranks had gotten out of hand in the past, but really, did he need to say “again,” drawing it out real slow, like stretching taffy, right in front of Aiden?

      “Again?” Aiden chuckled. “This is gonna be good. My lucky day.”

      “My fault, Chief.” Brenda shook her head sorrowfully. “You can handcuff me first. I’m guilty, but please be careful of my nails, I carefully polished them all by myself! What do you think? Red to match the lipstick, get it?”

      The chief stood up straighter, chest out. “This isn’t going in one of your movies, is it, Brenda?”

      “It could, it could!”

      The chief rubbed his hands together. “Good. Something for our family’s Christmas card. I’m gonna be famous again. Okeydokey, ladies, let’s have some fun here. You want to list the charges against you and Chalese this time around?”

      I slapped both hands to my face, then regretted that move. A weak scream emerged as my glass wounds smarted.

      “Are you all right?” Aiden asked, worried. “Can I help you with your face?”

      Can I help you with your face? I rolled my eyes at him.

      “Lemme think! I love police games! What would the official words be here?” Brenda tapped her forehead with both index fingers as if she were trying to jostle her brain. “Eureka, I’ve got it! It’s not stealing, because we didn’t take anything this time and put it where it shouldn’t be. Remember that time with the truck?”

      I cleared my throat to get Brenda’s attention about the truck. Didn’t work.

      “It’s not graffiti, because we didn’t paint anything this time like we did on that brick wall. It’s not attempted assault with a tractor this time, because we didn’t—”

      “Oh, stop it, Brenda,” I interrupted, flushing red. I could not stand to hear her say “this time” again! “For heaven’s sake. It’s breaking and entering, trespassing, harassment, and destruction of property.”

      The chief pointed both index fingers at me. “Bingo! You’re the winner in today’s criminal charges! And for that, you’ve won a trip down to the police station! Congratulations!”

      I did not miss Aiden’s befuddled expression.

      “Chalese is so smart, isn’t she, Chief?” Brenda said, examining her nails by stretching her hands two feet from her face, then slanting another glare toward the Enemy.

      “Sharp as a tack, gets it from her momma. Okay, ladies, into the car, I gotta take you two downtown again.”

      “Do you have to keep using that word ‘again,’ Chief?” I sputtered. “I’m friends with your wife, and I’m going to tell her that you—”

      “Can we take my car and meet you there? That’s gotta be a ‘Yes,’ Chief,” Brenda begged. “Last time we were in your car, I got gum on my gold heels! Gum! Pink gum!”

      The chief thought about it. “All right, Brenda, we’ll make a parade of it. You lead.”

      “Yahoo. I’m the person out front with the banner, right?”

      “That’s it. Mr. Bridger here, a friend of Chalese’s from Seattle, he’ll bring up the rear.”

      “He’s the trash sweeper,” Brenda drawled to the Enemy. “They always come at the end of a parade.”

      “You don’t need to come, Aiden,” I said, trying not to be profoundly pathetic. “This isn’t going to be fun. Go to town until I get back. Shop for … something. Corduroy pants? A whale key chain? Buy beer. Ogle women. Scratch. Hang. But don’t come.”

      “But it will be fun,” the chief said. “My motto is ‘No crime and we’ll all have a good time.’ We hardly ever get to book anyone. Come on down, Mr. Bridger.”

      “No, don’t—”

      “I wouldn’t miss it,” Aiden told the chief. He slung an arm around my shoulders, pretending we were the best of buds. “Lead the way.”

      He patted Mrs. Zebra on the head when we left. She licked his fingers.

      I called Gina Martinez, my friend the pet communicator, as Brenda drove her humming, female midlife-crisis sports car to the police station with the chief behind her and Aiden behind him in his truck, like the trash sweeper. I had a feeling I’d be gone awhile, and I wanted Gina to check on my dogs in a few hours if she hadn’t heard from me.

      Gina loves that her first and last names kind of rhyme. She said all through school kids called her “Poet Girl” because of it. She actually writes poetry, and it’s not bad. It is, however, all about animals who are abused and how she thinks abusers should be stuffed with cabbage, oiled, boiled, then hung over a steep cliff attached to a short, skinny tree branch, their hands tied behind their backs.

      “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, Gina, probably a few hours …” I gripped the handle on the car door and whacked Brenda as we careened down roads bordered by pine trees or rolling meadows. “Let’s arrive alive, Brenda, okay?”

      “I’m already on my way over to your house, Chalese. Reuby is coming with me. He wants to pet the dogs.”

      Reuby was Gina’s nose-and-eyebrow-pierced teenage son. Instead of calling his mother Mom, he called her the Authority Figure. He had blond hair to his shoulders and came over all the time, although he was not allowed in my studio. He loved two things: technology and animals. “How could you already be on your way over? Brenda and I are driving to the police station at this very embarrassing second.”

      “Joey Bradonovich called me. Her daughter, Toni, works as a hairdresser, and she heard it from Kobi Chao, who was in the police station to pay a parking ticket. By now the whole island knows you girls got yourselves in trouble again.”

      “Why does everyone have to keep using the word ‘again’? It’s not ‘again,’ Gina.”

      “Yes, it is.”

      “There may have been a few crazy incidents in the past, regrettable, forgettable—”

      “Not