Fool's Puzzle Earlene Fowler (microsoft ebook reader TXT) 📖

myself up, then burst into tears.

“Ah, don’t cry,” he said, putting a heavy arm around me. As I leaned against his comfortable bulk and tried to get control of myself, he carefully led me to the tweed sofa in the living room. His partner, a tall, freckled guy in horn-rimmed glasses, was inspecting the bullet hole in the wall across from the window.

“Looks like a .22,” he said to Miguel. He turned to me. “Who’s pissed at you, lady?”

I stared at them a moment, wondering where I should start, when we were distracted by the arrival of two more police cars. After getting my description of the truck, I was left alone as they put out a report to the other patrol cars and assessed the damage made by the three bullets. Finally, Miguel came over, pulled out a notebook, and started asking me questions. I repeated my story of the light-colored pickup.

“That could be thousands of people in this county,” he said. He started to ask who I suspected, when the front door flew open and Ortiz burst into the room. His navy L.A.P.D. sweatshirt had the crumpled look of something slept in or grabbed off the floor; the fierce expression on his face caused all of us to stop talking mid-sentence.

“What happened?” he demanded. For a moment, we all just stared at him, then three officers started talking at once. He held up his hand and scanned the room, glaring indiscriminately. His eyes paused at me, then moved on to the hole in my living room wall.

“Someone get the slug?” he asked, walking over to the wall.

“Whose smart idea was it to call him?” I whispered to Miguel.

“Probably the dispatcher,” Miguel said out of the side of his mouth. “Orders. Anything that involved you, we were suppose to call him pronto.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I blurted out. Ortiz turned and gave me a threatening look.

After taking my statement, Miguel helped me nail up the plywood my neighbor, Mr. Treton, had graciously cut to fit my broken window and pick up the groceries splattered across the porch.

“Man, I loved this movie,” he said, picking up the video dripping with Italian dressing. I turned down his offer to take me to Elvia’s with the assertion that I wasn’t going to let a yahoo with a peashooter run me from my home.

After he and his partner left, I looked around and realized the only people left in the house were me and Ortiz. His expression hadn’t changed since he’d arrived. Silently, he walked over to the front door and locked it, pulled down the shades on the front windows, then sat down in Jack’s brown leather recliner, arms folded, eyes angry.

“What happened?” he asked.

“It’s in the report. With your pull, I’m sure you can obtain a copy.”

“I’m not in the mood for your bullshit.”

“I told Officer Aragon everything. It’s in the report.”

He let out a string of Spanish words I vaguely recalled hearing spew from the mouths of Elvia’s brothers when we were kids. I also remembered them getting repeated whippings from Señora Aragon for it. His outburst caused no reaction in me, seeing as I didn’t actually understand what he was saying. That is, until I heard the word estupida.

“I am not stupid,” I said. Before he could comment, the phone rang.

“Are you okay?” Dove’s voice sounded faraway but gruffly familiar. I wanted to crawl into the phone toward it.

“How in the world did you hear about it so fast? And yes, I’m fine.”

“That nosy old fart who lives next door to you.”

“Mr. Treton?”

“I give him a couple of jars of my clover honey and he keeps me informed.”

“You’re paying the neighbors to spy on me?” I asked incredulously. Ortiz’s scowl turned into a confused look.

“I prefer to think of it as bartering.”

“Dove, I’m thirty-four years old.”

“I know how old you are. Whose sports car is that out front?”

“You don’t miss a thing, do you? Are Mr. Treton’s binoculars trained in on me at this moment? Are you hooked up by cellular phones? What am I doing right now?” I stuck my tongue out at the phone.

“Probably making a face,” she said and cackled.

“Are you through? I want to go to bed.”

“So, what about the car? Heard it’s a great restoration job.”

“It’s the chief of police’s car and he was just leaving.”

“Heard he’s a fine-looking man,” she said. I looked over at him in his old jeans, the thick black mustache I still thought about at odd moments, and slightly perplexed blue-gray eyes.

“Pretty fine,” I said.

“Let me talk to him.”

“No.”

“Benni ...”

“No, Dove. He was just leaving. There’s nothing you could possibly have to say to him.”

“You need police protection.”

“I have Jack’s pistol. That’s all the protection I need.”

“Let me talk to him.”

“No.”

“I’m bringing Garnet out, then. You shouldn’t be alone. I can be there in a half hour.” Knowing how she drove, I didn’t doubt it.

“Why, you old coot, that’s blackmail.”

“So call the cops. Let me talk to him.”

I held the phone out to Ortiz. “My grandmother wishes to speak to you.”

He looked bewildered as he took the phone.

“Whatever she wants, tell her no.”

“I heard that,” a tiny voice squawked from the receiver.

He nodded as she spoke, her voice a frantic buzz audible from where I was standing.

“Yes, ma‘am,” he said. “Yes, ma’am. I intend to, ma‘am. I’ll take care of it personally.”

He handed the phone back to me, his face impassive.

“What did she say?” I asked.

He answered with a shrug.

“Dove,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know you will, honeybun,” she said in a saccharine voice.

I looked at Ortiz suspiciously.

“I’ll see you soon. Have fun,” she said.

“What do you mean, have ...” but she’d already hung up.

In the meantime, Ortiz had settled back in Jack’s recliner, and punched the television on to a rerun of Saturday Night Live. The Coneheads were going to the circus.

“Excuse me.” I grabbed the controller from him and flipped the TV off. “Weren’t you just leaving?”

“Can’t.”

“What?”

“Orders.”

“What?”

“Your grandmother demanded police protection for you,