The Damsel in This Dress Read Free Page A

police presence is enough of a deterrent, but, well, we’ll see. I don’t want to scare you, but I do want you to be aware.”
    He reached down to pat Piddle on the nose, but the dog took offense and growled. Officer Winslow’s smile stayed frozen in place. “Uh, nice dog.”
    “No he isn’t.”
    Piddle sneezed.
    As one of Port Henry’s finest walked back to his patrol car, Betsy couldn’t help but notice the man’s empyrean body.
    Empyrean! What a stupid word. It meant ideal, sublime. She knew because she’d been forced to look it up. J. Soldier McKennitt had used it to refer to somebody in his book, and now she couldn’t get the damn word out of her head.
    Empyrean . Well, if it meant perfect, Winslow surely was that all right. He slid behind the wheel, gave Betsy a smile and wave, then drove down her quiet, tree-lined street and out of sight.
    “He works out,” she confided to Piddle. “He wouldn’t want a woman who doesn’t work out, I’ll bet.” With a man like Winslow, hourglass figures wouldn’t do. He was buff; he would want buff.
    Against the now late evening chill, Betsy closed and locked her front door. In the Olden Days, she thought as she meandered toward the kitchen, men courted women for their ability to cook a good meal, keep a clean house, raise healthy kids, plow a straight furrow, milk a cow single-handed. Nowadays, you could cure cancer on Monday, climb Everest on Tuesday, solve world hunger on Wednesday, but unless you had a perfect body, a sexy guy like Sam Winslow would never give you a second glance.
    The hunky cop had instructed her to keep her doors and windows bolted, her drapes closed, and her eyes and ears open. Whether he found her interesting or not was the least of her problems.
    She was being stalked. Maybe. She wanted to go deeply into denial, but that wouldn’t make the situation go away. As much as she hated the very idea, she was going to have to behave like a crime victim, because the simple fact of the matter was, she was a crime victim. Well, maybe.
    In the blink of an eye her orderly life had changed, and she had to respond accordingly. To ignore the warnings could mean her life. Or not. Only if she really was being stalked.
    The urge to dismiss the whole thing was overwhelming. Gosh, she thought, maybe she was just turning this little molehill into a mountain. Perhaps the note was intended for Mrs. Banes next door. Sure, Mrs. Banes was an eighty-five-year-old widow, but you never knew who had the hots for whom. Maybe some old gent at the Port Henry Senior Activity Center had designs on her.
    Besty nibbled on her lip. She didn’t know who, she didn’t know why. But someone had come secretly into her backyard and terrorized her dog. By mistake? Well, the note he’d left her was now being analyzed at the county crime lab.
    She shuddered when she recalled pulling the back door open without turning on a light or even checking to see if someone was out there. As a woman living alone, she should have known better than that.
    Betsy looked down at Piddle. “As my Canine in Shining Armor, I trust you will protect me if and when the time comes?”
    The dog’s luminous eyes stared into hers. He looked guilty. But then, he always looked guilty. His long lashes fluttered nervously, his wet nose twitched.
    “I’ll take that as a yes.”
    Betsy went into the kitchen and opened the pantry door. The brass knob felt cool and smooth in her fingers.
    “Hm,” she said, leaning down to pick up the dog. “Just like Old Mother Hubbard who went to her cupboard to fetch her poor dog a bone . . . although why she kept bones in the cupboard, we have no way of knowing.” Piddle burrowed deep under Betsy’s armpit and began quaking hard enough to register on the Richter scale.
    “A little something to settle the nerves, I think,” she mumbled as she pulled a dust-covered bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the depths of her spice shelf. “My nerves, not yours.”
    It took concentration