Where You Least Expect It. Tori Carrington

her with his watery brown eyes and gave a small whine.

      She resisted the urge to tell him to hush. The townspeople already thought her strange enough without witnessing her talking to her dog.

      She took her keys out of the front pocket of her cotton dress and looked around the clump of businesses that sat, one against the other, down Main Street and Old Orchard Avenue. Eddie’s Pub had already opened, but was likely serving coffee rather than beer this early. The library directly across from her was still closed. She could just make out some activity at the sheriff’s office across Lucas Circle and down a ways.

      The tiny brass bells in the shape of morning glories tinkled as she opened the glass door bearing her shop’s name and hours in purple and white. The colors were mirrored inside with crisp, white wood bookcases lining the walls, and sprigs of lavender displayed everywhere.

      Maximus gave a loud bark and pulled free of her grasp, galloping straight toward a waist-high display of aromatherapy lotions she had carefully stacked the day before.

      “Max, no!” Penelope hurried after him, leaving the door unlocked behind her.

      His leash was within reach, but it was too late. The four-foot pyramid of smooth, white plastic jars tumbled into a pile at her feet, one jar landing on her big toe.

      “Ouch! Oh, Max.”

      She stood staring at the mess, then at the canine—who was looking pleased with himself as he sat next to the demolished mountain, his tongue lolling. She’d had the exasperating dog for two years and had yet to find a way to tame his roguish ways. A Scorpio. Definitely a Scorpio. Though she had no way of knowing for sure. She’d awakened in the middle of the night to find him howling on the front porch where someone had put him, little more than a pup. She’d taken the abandoned pooch under her wing before he could blink his mournful eyes. Penelope had never even tried to find out who had left him there. All that mattered was that he’d needed love and she’d had it to give to him.

      If only she was any good at discipline, maybe her life with him wouldn’t be so difficult. Even Mavis refused to keep him at the house while Penelope was at the shop.

      “You,” she said, rubbing his ear. “Out back.”

      “He ought to be put down, that dog.”

      Penelope turned from where she was gathering the jars in her arms to find town gossip Elva Mollenkopf in the door, wearing her normal drab clothes and familiar lemon-sucking expression.

      I should have locked the door behind me, Penelope thought. She put the jars down on the checkout counter, pretending not to notice the way Elva tried to hide behind displays and the two purple poles flanking the entrance to conceal her presence in the shop from anyone passing outside.

      “He’s not that bad, really,” Penelope said, giving the dog a beseeching look not to prove her wrong. “He’s just a little clumsy is all.”

      “He’s a menace.”

      Penelope raised a brow and forced a smile as she turned fully toward the other woman. Elva wasn’t looking at her. Rather, she was trying to see whether she’d been spotted by anyone passing by.

      “Drat that Lion’s store. I don’t know why they stopped carrying my face cream. It would be so much easier if I could still get it there.”

      Fewer covert maneuvers, Penelope agreed silently.

      Of course, even Elva grudgingly admitted that the herbal cream she bought from Penelope’s store was much more effective than the name-brand stuff she’d spent an arm and a leg on at the exclusive department store. In fact, during her last browsing expedition, Penelope was convinced she’d seen the face cream Elva claimed to have used right there on the cosmetics counter of the store in question. It was all she could do not to share the information with Elva. But no matter how much the woman bothered her, she needed the business.

      Elva glanced over her shoulder from where she had a death grip on the foot-wide pole. “Did the cream come in?”

      Penelope nodded. “Received a shipment from the guy in brown late yesterday.”

      “Thank God.”

      Elva released the pole and started toward the counter. “How much?”

      Penelope named a price as she unlocked the register and put the prepared order on the glass countertop.

      Elva’s eyebrows rose to meet the poorly dyed black of her hair. “That much?”

      “Same price every time you buy it, Mrs. Mollenkopf.”

      “I think you’re wrong. Could you check, please?”

      Penelope smiled at her. “Sure.”

      Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Maximus get to his feet, his tail wagging with mischievous intent as he rounded the counter. Elva gasped as he pressed his cold snout into her crotch. The calculated nature of his actions made Penelope catch her breath.

      “Max!” Penelope grabbed hold of his leash and tried to pull him back, a completely inappropriate laugh erupting from her mouth. She quickly cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Mollenkopf. You know how dogs are.”

      “I loathe dogs and have never spent time around them, so no, Miss Moon, I would not know how dogs are.”

      She should have caught a clue in the two years she’d been coming into the shop—but Penelope wasn’t about to sass her.

      “If you’d waited until I opened the store, Max would have been tied up out back.” Terrorizing her business neighbors when they tried to throw something out in the Dumpster rather than burrowing his nose in other people’s business.

      Elva pulled the skirt of her dress out and stared at it in horror, as if she believed it permanently stained. “I’ll have you know that I’m going to file a complaint with the sheriff’s office.”

      So what else is new?

      “Pardon me?”

      Penelope blinked at the older woman as she finally managed to gain control of the dog and pull him back. She hadn’t said the words, had she?

      Maybe this morning was not like every other morning, after all.

      “What if I give you a special ten-percent discount, Mrs. Mollenkopf?” she said. “You know, by way of apology for Max’s behavior?”

      “Fifteen.”

      “Done.”

      Max sat, and she ignored his expression—which seemed to say “sucker”—as she rounded the counter to complete the transaction.

      “Strange, that man.”

      Penelope squinted at where Elva was staring through the front window at a figure walking down the street. The man’s hands were in the pockets of his khaki pants; his crisp, white short-sleeved shirt emphasized his long, lean arms and the deep copper tone of his skin.

      “I don’t think Mr. Kendall’s strange.”

      Elva glared at her. “Neither does the rest of the town. But I’m telling you, he’s strange. Blows in here from out of nowhere a year ago, no family, no mention of a family, and becomes so much a part of the community, you can’t tell him from the next guy.”

      “He’s from Oregon. He doesn’t have any family. And he’s a middle-school teacher at St. Joe’s. What more do you want to know?”

      Elva looked at her a little too closely, then took her change and counted it again. “I’d like to get a peek at what skeletons he’s hiding in that closet of his over at Mrs. O’Malley’s bed-and-breakfast.” She lifted a finger after putting her money in a black-sequined change purse. “And that’s another thing. Who lives in a bed-and-breakfast? A bed-and-breakfast is where one spends a weekend, not a year.”

      Penelope said, “I’m sure there are no skeletons in Mr. Kendall’s closet, Mrs. Mollenkopf.”