"Eleanor."
"Yes?"
"I changed my mind. Let's go to goat yoga."
10
"Okay, I need more than 'some hussy' to go on. What are you talking about?"
Eleanor drew in a deep, trembling breath and brushed an imaginary speck of lint off the front of her blue Dead End Pawn polo shirt and then smoothed nonexistent wrinkles out of her blue and white capri pants.
"Well, I saw her. With him. Last night."
I waited. There had to be more. Bill Oliver was a very reserved, very nice, older gentleman who'd spent months coming in to pawn his stuffed Jackalope—I know, don't ask—as an excuse to see Eleanor before he'd finally worked up the nerve to ask her out.
He was smitten. So there was no way he was cheating on her, let alone with a hussy. He'd probably faint if anybody even slightly hussyish started a conversation with him.
"How did this come about?" I got out the broom. While we were slow, I might as well sweep up. Keeping the shop clean was a daily task.
Eleanor started dusting shelves. "Well, I was supposed to have dinner with him last night at his place. He was making roast chicken."
"Nice!" I grinned at her. "Sounds like he's a good guy, if he's cooking for you."
"That's what I thought," she said darkly. "But he called and said he needed to postpone. So I happened to drive by his place later—"
"Just happened to drive by, huh?"
She raised her chin. "Exactly. And what did I see?"
"Um, the hussy?"
"The hussy! Bill was on the porch hugging a very pretty woman who was probably half his age! He never even saw me!" She sniffled, put the duster down, and reached for the box of tissues we keep behind the counter.
"Eleanor, I'm sure—"
She blew her nose, loudly.
"I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for this. Bill Oliver is crazy about you. What did he say when you called him?"
Silence.
"Eleanor?"
She avoided my gaze.
I sighed, emptied the dustpan, and put the broom away. "You didn't even try to have a simple conversation to clear up this misunderstanding?"
"No! Not when the 'misunderstanding' was standing there in her tight jeans hugging him right out on the porch in broad daylight! I have my pride, you know." The bright red spots on her cheeks told me that she was in no way, shape, or form planning to be reasonable about this. "I did the only possible thing I could do in a situation like this."
I was afraid to ask.
She glanced at the door to Jack's office and lowered her voice. "I called Lorraine, and we made a plan to stake out his house tonight after dark. You're coming too, in case we need to do anything stealthy. Our knees aren't what they used to be."
Lorraine, who ran Beau's Diner with an iron hand, was in her seventies. Eleanor was in her late sixties. I was being recruited for a senior-citizen stakeout on one of my own customers.
"That is the craziest thing I've ever heard."
"So. You're in?"
