Danger in a Small Town. Ginny Aiken
Ethan made another sound, this one more like a stifled chuckle.
Miss Tabitha met Tess’s gaze. “You wouldn’t be thinking there’s ashes in them, now would you?”
“Uh…er…no! No, no. Of course not.” Phew!
Miss Tabitha flashed the mischievous grin that had stolen Tess’s great-uncle’s heart. “Good. I’m glad to hear that. At auction I’ve seen them go for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars.”
Tess shook her head. There really was no accounting for taste, as the old saying went. “Okay, then. Why don’t you bring me a couple? We’ll start small and see how it goes from there.”
“That sounds wonderful.” Miss Tabitha turned to Ethan. “Would you be so kind as to bring them to Tess later on tonight? I’d like to get her up and running. This sounds like fun.”
Ethan’s eyes twinkled. “Be happy to.”
Miss Tabitha studied him through narrowed green eyes. Long, silent moments later, she pushed her chair from the table. “I’d better be getting back home. I need to start supper for my guests.”
“I’ll walk you there,” Ethan said.
Tess gathered her plate and glass and stood. “I’ll take Uncle Gordon his sandwich when he wakes up from his nap.”
Miss Tabitha crossed the room to the sink, washed her hands, dried them on a nearby kitchen towel and then headed toward the front hall, all the time chattering about the meal she planned to serve.
Tess laid an arm around Miss Tabitha’s shoulders. “How many boarders do you have these days?”
“A full house—all four rooms are occupied. The Good Lord’s blessed me with just the right amount of income to keep me independent all these years.”
“I hope the boarders know how lucky they are. Not many landladies throw in gourmet meals as part of the rent.”
“I’m glad this one does,” Ethan said, smiling.
“Thank you, dear. I love to mess around in the kitchen, and it does my heart good to see folks enjoy the results.”
“You do more than mess around,” Tess said, “and you know it. I think you should open up a cooking school, give lessons, at the very least.”
Miss Tabitha’s green eyes twinkled. “Oh, who knows. Maybe someday. But I’ve all I can handle on my plate right now.”
Tess hugged Miss Tabitha then held the door open. “I’ll be waiting for the urns.”
Ethan winked. “With bated breath.”
Tess couldn’t hold it back this time. She laughed. He joined her, and as Ethan escorted Miss Tabitha to the sidewalk, Tess couldn’t squelch the tiny flicker of excitement. She liked Ethan Rogers.
“Lord? I did the right thing coming home, didn’t I?”
Only time would tell.
THREE
Later that evening Ethan delivered the urns as they’d agreed. He didn’t stay long, saying he had to meet his cousin to go over the files on the three drug overdoses. Tess couldn’t help the sense of loss every time she thought of the dead woman. It was good to know Loganton would have someone with Ethan’s training and experience working on their drug-crime problem.
She murmured a silent prayer for anyone trapped by drugs, for someone to show them a better way, God’s way.
After she had Uncle Gordon settled in for the night, she headed to her room with her Bible. She changed into her favorite blue T-shirt and polka-dot pajama pants, washed her face, brushed her teeth, took down her ponytail then turned off the overhead light. She clicked on the bedside lamp and curled up on top of her silky green-on-green comforter to pray.
But the image of the dead woman’s dog—now her responsibility—intruded in her conversation with her Lord. She didn’t want a nasty confrontation with Uncle Gordon, not over an abandoned dog. “Father, I know I’m treading on thin ice here. Uncle Gordon’s not crazy about dogs, and I’ve just taken one on—even though he’s still at the groomer’s tonight. I was too chicken to bring him home the same day Uncle Gordon left the hospital. Help me, please?”
She opened her worn and marked-up Bible then went straight to the book of Psalms. That’s where she usually wound up when she needed comfort. Verse eleven in Psalm 5 leaped out at her, highlighted in yellow marker. “But let all who take refuge in you be glad; let them ever sing for joy. Spread your protection over them…”
She’d turned to these words time and time again while things at Magnusson’s Department Store were in turmoil. Someone with knowledge of their security codes had been stealing from cash registers, most frequently from her department. As the manager, Tess had immediately come under scrutiny since she had the code for the register. No matter how vehemently she insisted on her innocence, until the culprit—a computer whiz from the IT department—was caught, her every move had been scrutinized.
She’d clung to that verse and the knowledge of the Apostle Paul’s experiences, how he’d endured beatings and jailings and never stopped praising and trusting God. But it had been hard at times. These days she still found it difficult to trust people.
Even after the woman was arrested and Tess cleared, many of her fellow workers continued to avoid her. Work became intolerable. When her cousin Molly called about Uncle Gordon’s situation, Tess jumped at the opportunity. She needed a fresh start.
She’d never expected to stumble on a dying woman while out for a jog.
After an hour or so she closed the Bible, turned the light off and again prayed for wisdom and the right words when she brought the dog home from the groomer’s tomorrow. She fell asleep to the sound of a spring rain.
Ethan and his partner, Steve, had crouched across from the alley for hours. It wasn’t the best neighborhood to work; it had hit on bad times years ago. Now it offered a haven to anyone with evil intent. Drug dealers had sunk the roots of their sick empires deep into the cracks of the crumbling pavement and had spread shoots like tentacles to choke off all life they found. Ethan and Steve were there to round up another purveyor of death.
The agency had been after Ernesto Moreno for a decade; the guy was slick. Ethan and Steve had been assigned to the Chicago end of the case three years before. All that work, all that danger, would finally come to fruition tonight. They were about to get their payoff. They had Moreno’s jail cell ready.
Twenty minutes ago they’d heard their backup behind the rotting fence down one side of the alley.
Ethan was growing tired of waiting. He wanted Moreno now.
Then, at around two-thirty, three shadowy figures arrived near the trash bin that blocked the alley’s far exit. The wait was coming to an end.
“Ready?” Steve asked.
“I’ve been ready for Moreno from day one.”
The meticulous investigation had painted Moreno as a deadly Pied Piper. He’d led too many into the trap of coke, heroin and meth. That kind of poison was deadly, the meth particularly cheap and available to those with fewer means. This scum spent his time hanging out around schools. Oh, yeah, Ethan was ready.
He and Steve crept silently, hugging the fence, its jagged splinters snagging their clothes, their weapons drawn, all their senses on alert.
Inch by inch the partners edged close enough to hear the suspects’ argument.
“You owe me!” the lanky one on the far left said in a raw whisper.
“I do not,” spat the short, thin shadow farthest back.
“You got all you gonna get.”
“That’s not what you said. You don’t come through,