Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 05 - Trouble on the Doorstep Read Free Page B

hard on the back, and he stopped choking before Pooki sat at the table with us. “Pooki, Scoobie. Scoobie, Pooki.”
    “Is that for real your name?” she asked as she took her first bite.
    She has the nerve to ask?
    Scoobie swallowed some really hot coffee and his eyes watered even more.
    “You remember the Sappersteins, Scoobie?” I asked. It really was kind of mean to enjoy his expression. And I would have told him about Pooki in another minute or two. Once he showed up I plain forgot. “Pooki is their daughter.”
    “It’s a nickname,” he said, eyeing her.
    “So’s Pooki,” she said, solemnly.
    Scoobie looked at me. “Thought you weren’t having guests last night.”
    He knows full well guests don’t come down the back staircase, and I have yet to see one wandering around in shorty pajamas.
    “I came late, very late,” she said.
    “You seem to be feeling better,” I said, hoping she had learned the phone message was some kind of hoax or something.
    “Can I use your phone? Eric told me not to use my phone, but he didn’t say anything about anyone else’s. I want to see if he left me a message at home.”
    “Of course.” I nodded toward the wall phone. “Use that one, or there’s one on the serving buffet in the breakfast room.” She walked through the swinging door and I heard her lift the guest phone from its cradle.
    “And…?” Scoobie asked. He had regained his usual color, and with his dirty blond beard and hair trimmed more neatly than usual, he could have been a college professor asking a question rather than a fairly new radiology tech student.
    “And she showed up here soaking wet, almost midnight, and played this weird phone message from her husband, I guess it really was, saying she shouldn’t go home or use credit cards, and she should hide.”
    He stared at me. “And you let her in?”
    “She was crying.”
    “That always works,” he said, and stood to let the dogs in from the back yard.
    “She’s married to Eric Morton, and he works with Bill Oliver’s brother, and they live near…”
    “You mean Eric is Eric Morton?” he asked, seeming a bit alarmed.
    “Yep. You know him?”
    “I do, or maybe did,” Scoobie said. “He’s missing and his business partner is dead.”
     
    I MANAGED TO GET Pooki back into the kitchen before she saw the paper, which I had brought in and placed on the guest breakfast table, per Aunt Madge’s routine. Unfortunately, I had not read the paper, and I certainly hadn’t watched the news after Aunt Madge and Harry left last night.
    I told Pooki there was a pair of jeans in my closet that would fit her, they fit my five-foot two frame five pounds ago, and took the paper from Scoobie. It was a short piece, with the young reporter Tiffany’s byline, which explained why George hadn’t called me about this last night.
    Hit and Run Kills Builder .
    I scanned quickly. It said that Steve Oliver had been hit by a car that had not stopped, and was only identified as a “dark, late-model sedan.” He was about to go into a meeting at Silver Times Senior Living, where he and his partner had planned to present a bid for post-hurricane renovation. The meeting had been postponed. The article also said his business partner, Eric Morton, had not been heard from since early yesterday afternoon.
    “You’re sure she doesn’t know?” Scoobie asked, quietly.
    “No way.”
    “We should call her parents, or Morehouse, or somebody,” he said.
    Sergeant Morehouse of the Ocean Alley Police credits me with some help in solving a couple earlier crimes, but he basically thinks I’m a busybody. Or something less polite. But talking to him wasn’t what concerned me. “We don’t even know who might be looking for her.”
    “Not our problem,” Scoobie said. “You need her out of here.”
    “Her husband told her to hide. You don’t need to be a detective to know she shouldn’t be walking around in the open,” I said.
    “Jolie…” he began.
    “I’m