The Bogus Biker Read Free

and tightened his grip. “With sugar on it.”
    She put her lips together and shook her head, making her earrings dance. Across the table Jake swigged down the last of his beer. “Finish your sandwich, Nellie.”
    “I’m not hungry,” she said.
    The biker looked at Jake. “She’s not hungry.”
    “Then wrap it up, and let’s go.”
    Penelope complied and tried to stand up, but her backside hit the chair again, courtesy of the biker’s grip. “I want to go,” she said.
    “She wants to go,” the man parroted.
    “That’s what she said.” Jake leaned across the table. “Thought you fellows had a code of conduct where ladies and old-timers are concerned.”
    Something flickered in the man’s eyes. His fingers flew open, releasing Penelope’s arm, and he stood up so quickly the chair overturned. She watched his eyes dart around the room and wondered what—or who—he was looking for.  From the jukebox, Kenny Rogers pleaded with someone not to take their guns to town. Almost as if on cue, a single gunshot shattered the air and sent bodies scrambling for cover.

CHAPTER THREE
     
    Penelope tried without success to see her father, but the biker’s weight crushed her against the splintery wooden floor. Arms and legs spread-eagled like a turtle pinned under a rock, she thought she could feel her eyes bulging. “Daddy?”
    “He’s all right.” The biker’s voice, no hint of its former twang, came out clipped and correct. “Be still, and be quiet.”
    Yankee , she thought with automatic contempt. “You’re squashing me.”
    He lifted his body slightly but kept his fingers around her wrists, rendering her arms immobile.
    “What’s going on?” she asked.
    “Not sure. Be quiet.”
    “Shut up, Nellie, “Jake hissed from somewhere.
    She heard chairs crashing around her. The jukebox went silent as the front door flew open against it. Feet stampeded in that direction. The cooler above them groaned and sputtered, sending droplets of water spattering down. Suddenly, the biker heaved his body upwards. She rolled over in time to see him disappear toward the back. Then the wail of police sirens displaced the eerie silence left behind by the exodus of patrons.
    “Daddy?”
    Jake stood over her, his posture reminiscent of the soldier he had been a long time ago. “For heaven’s sake, get up off the floor, Nellie. Brad’s going to come walking through that door any minute, and he’s gonna be shocked enough seeing you here, much less with your skirt hiked up to your drawers.”
    Penelope fumbled with her turquoise, red, and yellow broomstick skirt and scrambled to her feet. “Out the back,” she said. “Hurry.”
    With Jake at her heels, she headed down the short hall, past the restrooms that never smelled exactly clean, toward what Roger euphemistically called the ‘fire door’, and flung it open. Officer Rosabel Deane, the police department’s newest recruit, smiled. “Going somewhere, Mrs. Pembroke?”
    “I guess not,” Penelope said, tugging at the yellow knit pullover that had edged its way above her waistband. “Office Deane, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, ma’am. You want to just step back inside?”
    “Do I have a choice?”
    The young officer’s dark eyes danced with mirth. “No, ma’am, I’m afraid you don’t.”
    Penelope sighed and turned around. Jake, already on his way back in the main area, motioned her to the table they’d vacated. Her unfinished Reuben lay wet and limp beside the overturned water glass. She pushed it away.
    Jake’s eyes focused on the front door. In a few minutes his grandson, newly-minted Detective Sergeant Bradley Pembroke, strode in with one hand resting on the butt of his undrawn nine millimeter Glock. “How-do, Brad,” he said, touching his forehead in a mock salute.
    “Pawpaw! What in the…Mother!” His generous mouth, inherited like his mother’s from the Irish Kelleys, opened in a perfect ‘O’. Penelope resisted the urge to reach up and close it for