Better Than Gold. Mary Brady

Monique was her friend’s penchant for asking the hard questions. “But we have to start, to invest time and sweat equity somewhere, to regrow our town. I’d say money, but right now it’s the bank in Portland’s money, not mine.”

      “Do you suppose the police’ll call you tonight with any news?”

      “I don’t know what the procedure is. I don’t know if they’ll call me at all. If they don’t, the chief will get a new desk ornament. Me.”

      “You’re such a toughie.” Monique plucked another grape from the bowl and ate it.

      “And you’re such a girly-girl.” To make her point, Mia tossed a pillow with a beaded pink ruffle at her friend.

      “What do you suppose will happen with the bones?”

      “I don’t know. I guess they have to determine how old they are before anything is decided. I just hope they get them out of my wall quickly.”

      Monique hugged the pillow and grinned. “I know what we need to take our minds off everything else.”

      Mia waved both hands in the air. “No. No. Not your favorite subject.”

      “Men!” Monique said and then gave an exaggerated sigh.

      “Ha!” Mia leaned back and put her head against the crocheted doily draped over the back of the matching mauve chair. “Men. Had ’em, don’t need ’em.”

      “You got robbed. That rat Rory should still be here.”

      “Yes. I did and he should. But since I had it all and lost it—twice—”

      “I wonder—” Monique put a finger to her chin “—if you’d still say that if another good man came along and rang your bell.”

      “I’d ring his bell right back and send him from whence he came.”

      “Whence?”

      Mia expelled an unenthusiastic huff. “I’m fine just the way I am. Maybe if I want a man, I’ll go after Chief Montcalm.”

      “He’s gotta be your dad’s age.”

      “What about Rufus’s baby brother? He’s neither attached nor too old.”

      “He just left for college, so that’d make you a cradle robber.”

      Mia slapped the knee of the clean jeans she’d put on after her shower. “Well, that about exhausts the supply of men here in the Bailey’s Cove area. I think that’s why I moved back here. I wanted a peaceful life.”

      Monique snorted. “So, that seems to be going really well.”

      “Skeleton aside, in a few short weeks, I’m going to have the best restaurant for a hundred miles. I’ll have tourists clamoring for a meal as they head north and then again when they head south and I’ll have a nice cozy mortgage and a nice fat business loan to keep me warm.”

      “You’ll get the chance to work even more hours in a day than you do now. You’ll have even more employees to keep on their toes, and more—”

      Monique’s front doorbell gave its usual unenthusiastic dong-dong.

      “Am I being saved by the bell?” Mia asked.

      “That’s gotta be for you,” Monique said without any indication that she intended to get up. “Granddad’s already safely perched on his barstool for the evening and you’re here. That’s the entire list of people who might want to talk to me this late on a Tuesday night.”

      “Won’t be for me, either. They’d have called me if they’d wanted me.” Mia patted the pocket where she kept her phone. The pocket was empty. “Or not. My phone’s in my work jeans.”

      “How’d they find you here?”

      “Because my social life is so grand as to have a total of three options, the Pirate’s Roost, my house or yours, and maybe because my kiwi-green SUV is parked in your driveway.”

      “And is likely to be there all night because you drink like a fish.” Monique gave her a twitchy-faced smile and the bell rang again.

      “Your doorbell is ringing.” Mia smirked.

      “You’re closer.” Monique tossed the pillow back.

      “I guess since you provided the lobster dinner, I can answer your bell.”

      Mia got up, successfully taking a sip of wine as she went, and opened the door to find Officer Lenny Gardner on the stoop. One more for the short list of bachelors in Bailey’s Cove. She looked him up and down. How could they have forgotten fastidious Lenny? Everybody in town knew he would take either of them as his wife, and having grown up with him, neither of them wanted a man that badly. But the boy had certainly grown up to be a well-built man.

      “Hey, Lenny.”

      “Chief wants to talk to you,” said the police officer who did everything he could to make himself attractive, including aftershave and a smartly pressed uniform and, holy cow, he must lift pickup trucks at the gym. The ploy might even work if he weren’t so bossy.

      “What did he find out?”

      The cop eyeballed the wineglass in her hand. “I’ll drive you.”

      She looked at the glass and then at him.

      He shifted his gaze over her shoulder at Monique, who had come up behind her, and the expression on his face said her small ash-blond friend was Lenny’s first choice.

      “I’ll drive you there and back,” he promised when he turned his attention back to Mia, this time with the pursed lips of judgment. “We can’t have you endangering the townsfolk.”

      She stifled a two-and-a-half-glass-of-wine grin, but she couldn’t deny that he might be right.

      Monique poked her in the back. When Mia turned, her friend tilted her head toward Lenny as if to ask, what about him?

      Mia handed over the glass, made a deranged face and mouthed, “For you.”

      Monique made a “call me” sign with her pinky and thumb. Mia nodded, grabbed her coat from the hook behind the door and followed Lenny to the squad. The chill in the night air sobered her a bit.

      Be good to me, Chief, she thought.

      “Lenny, what did the chief find out?” she asked once they were in the squad and he couldn’t dodge the question as easily this time.

      “If Chief Montcalm wanted me to tell you, I’d have told you.”

      That couldn’t be good. “No hints?”

      Lenny kept his gaze straight ahead, both hands on the wheel and didn’t comment. When they arrived at the police station, he escorted her inside with a hand in the middle of her back. If she hadn’t known him long enough to have seen him tinkle in the sandbox when they were four, she might have pointed out just how politically incorrect that old-fashioned gesture was. For all she did not like about Lenny, he wasn’t a chauvinist. He meant the gesture in the same polite and helpful way he would if she were his grandmother.

      There was a lot to be said for homegrown Maine boys in today’s world. Maybe Monique should snap him up.

      “Ev’ning, Ms. Parker.”

      The chief greeted her plain-faced in the doorway of his office and gestured her to a visitor’s chair in front of his desk. That couldn’t be good, either. If he wanted her to sit down before he told her anything, he must be expecting an untoward reaction.

      “Thanks for calling me in, Chief.” She wondered if she sounded sober. She hoped so.

      As she settled into the chair, she heard the door click shut behind her. Whatever he had to say, Mia was sure she didn’t want to hear. But, let it rip, like a Band-Aid off tender flesh.

      That was definitely