“So do I,” she said quietly.
He was watching her with a searching gaze again. Best to beat a hasty retreat. She dipped a quick and firm nod before crossing to the door and pulling it open. She didn’t even glance back as she walked out of the room, past the cell, and out of the station entirely. The night was dark, and she knew how to disappear into the shadows.
The DPS was in danger, and, though she was loath to admit it, she couldn’t keep them safe without Parkington’s help.
Still, she didn’t know if she had just sealed her own fate by drawing the attention of one who presented himself as a knight in shining armor but who could prove, in the end, to be a dangerous knave.
Posie and Pru
DETECTIVES FOR HIRE
by Chauncey Finnegan
Chapter One
Posie Poindexter was bored. Pru Dwerryhouse would have been, too, if she’d realized boredom was an option.
The two had set up house together on the occasion of Pru’s seventieth birthday, Posie having already marked that milestone a year earlier, and had continued on in that arrangement for well over a year. They’d known each other from childhood and had the good fortune to have lived near each other all their lives, marrying men whose homes were in the same village. It was, in fact, in the very village of Downsford where they lived still.
The two were well known to all. Posie, with her shockingly white hair and ordinary brown eyes, stood at the height of a child but with the wrinkles of a poorly laundered shirt. And Pru, whose hair would have been as white as Posie’s if not for her dedication to dying it an odd shade of dark brown using nuts and oil and other strange things, was built very much like the local church steeple, and she always wore something on her person that was blue.
Though neither of them realized as much, they had become somewhat legendary in their tiny village. It wasn’t that either was necessarily more strange than anyone else living in Downsford. Mr. Green had a pet mole he called Walter and walked about on a lead. Mrs. Brennan also had a favored color of clothing, always wearing something that was white, which somehow made her gray hair look more like snow than silver. The local vicar insisted on walking backward for at least one quarter hour every morning. The blacksmith also worked as the farrier yet was terrified of horses.
Downsford was an odd place. It was also, at the moment, a bit tiresome in the eyes of one particularly bored resident.
“I need an occupation,” Posie said on a sigh, her eyes on the window and the rain running down it in rivers.
“I believe the army would think you too old. And I do not think the vicar would let you take his living.” Pru did not make this observation in jest. Pru never did. Her humor was, without exception, unintentional. “Do you suppose a woman of seventy-two could take up farming?”
“Not an occupation in that sense.” Posie looked away from the window at long last. “I need . . . a hobby.”
“The blacksmith seems to enjoy his hobby,” Pru suggested.
Posie shook her head. “Blacksmithing isn’t his hobby; it is his occupation.”
“I thought you were looking for an occupation.” Pru looked up from her knitting, genuine confusion on her face.
Posie rubbed at the spot above her right eye, the bit that had ached on and off with great regularity the last year or more. She’d begun referring to it as petite pru, the Frenchified name making the recurring headache more elegant somehow and the one for whom the headache was named less insulted.
“Perhaps we might open a lending library.” Posie would enjoy that for a time.
“Who would lend us a library?” Pru asked, her knitting needles clicking quickly and rhythmically.
“It isn’t a library that is lent out but a library that lends things to people.”
“Ooh. What sort of things?”
“It’s a library.”
Pru’s look of curiosity remained.
“Books, Pru. Books.”
“Where would we get the books from?” Pru’s needles clicked unceasingly. “Seems we would need more than we currently have. Not too many more, though. It’s a small village after all.”
As was often the case with Pru, she’d stumbled upon a worthwhile insight quite by accident. Posie only owned seven books and hadn’t the funds for purchasing more. Even if she came upon a literary windfall, a village of Downsford’s size with its rather un-literary mindset would hardly have use for stacks and stacks of books.
“We used to look after dogs,” Pru said with her usual smile. “We were good at that.”
“When we were six years old. Could you imagine the two of us chasing after dogs now? I can hardly climb stairs any longer. You don’t always remember where the stairs are.”
“Well, each house and building has stairs in different places, don’t they?” Pru continued knitting, clearly unconcerned about the possibility of being bored for the remainder of their lives. “Perhaps we could train dogs to find stairs for us.”
“I think we can safely eliminate any potential pastimes that involve dogs, Pru.”
“Oh, that is a shame. We were good at looking after dogs.”
Petite pru perked up at that declaration. “There must be other things we are particularly good at,” Posie said. “Some other talents we possess.”
Pru smiled vaguely, not the least upended by their discussion.
“A shame I did not gain your propensity for knitwork,” Posie said. “We might find some occupation involving that.”
“I could knit sweaters for dogs!” Pru suggested eagerly.
“Whatever we choose,” Posie said firmly, “it will have nothing to do with dogs.”
Pru’s silver eyebrows pulled low. “Oh, that is a shame. We were good at looking after dogs.” She knitted another minute, then said, “Do you remember that time when your mother’s ear baubles went missing—the ones with pearls—and we found them? That had nothing to do with dogs.”
Posie did remember that. They’d gone on a very extensive search, one that included asking a great many questions of a great many people. After a time, they’d realized the jewelry had likely slipped behind a piece of furniture in Posie’s mother’s dressing room. They’d told her parents of their deduction, the dressing table was moved, and, much to everyone’s delight, the baubles were there. It had been an exhilarating experience.
“We did solve that mystery rather expertly, didn’t we?” Posie felt proud of herself, thinking back on it. “And I do recall it was not the first nor the last one we solved.”