Chapter 14: Do You Think He's Amish?

“I suppose we could just clean up the wrecker and use it...”

Delaney snorted. “It’d be funny. Tiffany would go with it, but Mother would have a stroke, and Tara would be really pissed.”

“I don’t know ... put a couple of those crepe streamers on it; nobody’d even notice, right?”

She grinned and looked out the office window at the wrecker.

“What are you renting?” Delaney looked over my shoulder at the computer.

“A Mercedes S-class in black.”

“It looks like it’s got some power. What’s the top speed?”

“This one can reach over 180 miles per hour.”

“Ooooh. Can I drive it?” She batted her eyelashes awkwardly.

“Uh, no. I think that would void the rental insurance.”

Delaney scrunched her nose in distaste. “I bet I’m a better driver than most of the people they rent those to.”

That may have been true. Actually, it was almost certainly true. “Maybe. But they have that weird ‘must have a license’ rule.”

With Sally a little more perforated than I needed anyone to notice, I’d decided to go ahead and rent a car for the wedding. We wouldn’t be using it much since we had seats in limousines from the church to the banquet, but a big four-door that wouldn’t crush Sheree and Delaney’s dresses would be convenient. A really expensive sedan might also tweak Charlotte, so there was that as well. She’d expected me to object to the cost of the wedding, and renting the nice car was a poke at her.

I knew from Tara and Tiffany that my lack of complaint over the expenses was driving Charlotte up the wall. When she’d proposed one of the top country clubs in the area as a venue for the reception, I’d called Deluca and asked him find one even more over the top. The Glenwyck was the absolute top tier venue in the area; it certainly was never available on short notice of less than a year, but Deluca pulled strings to make it happen. He’d even found a way to do it at a lower cost than normal. My best guess was that Charlotte had somehow managed to get under his apparently impenetrable armor. He hadn’t really explained, but there had been a look of amusement in his eyes when he quoted us a price I knew was a damn sight lower than it should have been.

Charlotte’s shock when she was told that the venue would be the Glenwyck had left Tara and Tiffany giggling for hours. She’d been rendered speechless when informed that it had been “Dad’s idea.”

I knew Sheree would have cheerfully gone in Sally; she loved the screaming yellow paint job and didn’t give one happy damn about appearances or drama. But I really couldn’t get the bullet holes patched in time. Besides, even if we only used the car for the trip to the church and home, I wanted Sheree to feel special, even if it was Tiffany’s day.

Delaney studied the car a bit more. “It looks classy.” She smiled softly, an odd look for her. “You could take Sheree in a wheelbarrow, and she’d still be thrilled with you. You got Shelly off the hook.”

“I didn’t get her off the hook; I just figured out why she shouldn’t be on it.”

“I saw her face when the sheriff came by.” The sheriff had “informally dropped by” to tell Sheree that he’d found loose spice in Lucy’s purse. Shelly had just had the bad luck to dig around in the purse to find an insurance card.

“She was pretty happy.”

Delaney rolled her eyes at the understatement, then changed the subject. “It looks classy.”

“That’s the point. It is for a wedding.”

I could see her pick up on my thoughts. She grinned. “I bet Mother isn’t coming in a car this cool.”

“Probably not.” We both grinned. “How about we tell Sheree about the car.”

Something felt off as we rolled up to the cabin. Sheree’s car was parked at an odd angle, something she never did. Delaney and I looked at each other silently for a moment. I pulled the 1911 from under the dash, and Delaney lifted a heavy wrench from the door pocket.

I opened the door cautiously, saw Sheree pouring a glass of ice tea at the kitchen counter and felt a little tension drain.

“Hey, babe ... so how was your day?”

Sheree smiled. “It was pretty good. The repair guy came and fixed the soda machine at the Quickmart.”

Delaney looked at me, at Sheree, then at the skinny blond guy tied to the chair next to the fireplace. I walked over and studied him. He had a nasty split lip, and he’d have a helluva shiner for a while. Probably two, since his nose looked like it might be broken.

“You two want some tea?” Before she even finished asking, Sheree pulled two more glasses out and began filling them.

The guy looked up at me. “Do something, man. Get me outta here. That bitch is crazy.”

Delaney winced and stepped back hastily. “Ooh. Bad move.”

I backhanded him hard across the face, knocking the chair over backwards in a bloody spray. Now his nose was definitely broken. “Don’t ever call her that again, shithead.”

Sheree calmly strolled over and handed us the tea. She gestured nonchalantly at the blond tweaker. “This is Caleb. Caleb Yoder.”

I looked at him. “Yoder? Do you think he’s Amish? He kind of looks Amish.”

She shrugged, a slight frown on her face. “I’m a guessin’ if he is, he left the fold.”

Delaney rolled her eyes. “Are we doing this here now? The sheriff still has my Stun gun, and my electrical shock thingy is back at the yard. Do I need to make one to keep here now?”