Murder Has a Sweet Tooth - By Miranda Bliss Page 0,51
what they were up to. I refused to let Alex stay locked up in jail that long. Of course, the best of all possible scenarios was that once they left home, Celia, Glynis, and Beth would hook up. Then I could keep an eye on all three of them. If not . . . well, sometimes even Holmes had to rely on Watson. In my case, it was two Watsons. I knew I was lucky to have them, as assistants and as friends.
“You’ve got your cell phones?” I asked Norman and Eve, just to make sure I had all my bases covered. “We’ll need to check in regularly. I want to know where everybody is at all times. I’ll keep track.” There was a clipboard on my desk and I lifted it for them to see. “I’ve made a spreadsheet, see? I’ll make a note of each move Celia, Glynis, and Beth make.”
“I still think walkie-talkies would be more fun.” When Norman grumped, his mustache drooped over his lips. “Then we’d be like real gumshoes.”
“Yeah,” Eve chimed in, “like the detectives on TV.”
“We’re not like the detectives on TV,” I reminded them both. “We’re the real deal. But we’ve got a couple problems. We don’t know where our marks are headed. And we don’t want to get caught behind the eight ball. We can’t take the chance that these ladies are going to ankle off and go on the lam. We don’t want them to take a powder.” I guess I was getting carried away, too. I shook my head to dislodge the remnants of all the old black-and-white detective movies I’d ever watched. “We know they can’t be going to Sonny’s on Tuesday nights. Not for cooking classes. So we need to figure out where they’re really going.”
“Gotcha!” With the hand that clutched the paper bearing Glynis’s address, Norman gave me a crisp salute. The paper fluttered in his eyes.
“I’m ready, too,” Eve said, but not before she checked her makeup and her lipstick.
I clapped my hands together. “Then let’s roll.”
And roll we did. Each in our own car, we headed to McLean and staked out our targets. I sat across the street from Beth and Michael’s fabulous gee-whiz home, and I wasn’t worried that Beth would look out a window and spot me. I didn’t think she’d ever imagine that the Annie she thought was her neighbor from the big, gorgeous, expensive brick Colonial would be driving a six-year-old Saturn. But that didn’t mean I was taking any chances. At six o’clock on the dot, when Beth’s garage door slid open and I saw her slip behind the wheel of a black Lexus SUV, I hunkered down on the front seat just to make sure she couldn’t see me. That was exactly the moment my cell phone rang.
It was Eve. I didn’t bother to point out that since Celia was in one car and Eve was calling from another, she didn’t have to whisper. “I’m outside Celia’s house,” Eve said. “She’s leaving.”
“So’s Beth.” I whispered, too. A natural response, and I told myself to cut it out.
“She’s heading down the street toward the first stop sign,” Eve said. “She’s turning right. She’s driving past a house with the prettiest rose garden. Oh, I bet it’s just spectacular in the summer. She’s stopping at another stop sign. She’s—”
“That’s terrific. Really.” I couldn’t take the chance of offending my Watson so I did my best to be diplomatic. “But I don’t need to know every turn Celia makes.”
“Oh, but you said—”
“Each move she makes. Yeah.” I remembered our talk back at Bellywasher’s and realized my mistake. Eve could be completely obtuse at times, and totally literal at others. The trick was that I was never sure which time was which. I scrambled to redeem myself. “What I meant is that you should call me to tell me where she ends up.”
“Well, really, Annie!” Eve tsk-tsked as only Eve can. “Detective work is an analytical thing. Like a science. You need to be a little clearer when you give instructions.”
“I do. I will. From now on. I promise.” I was sincere, but distracted. I’d been driving three car lengths behind Beth since she left her house, and now she got on the George Washington Memorial Parkway heading east and I eased into traffic behind her. That, of course, sounds easier than it was in practice. Drivers in the D.C. metro area are notoriously competitive. If there’s an inch of free space,