Catch As Cat Can

14

The Dogwood Festival, celebrating the state tree and springtime, provided ample opportunity for revelers to overindulge each mid-April. Automobile accidents, property destruction, and fights kept the sheriff's department busy.

Sheriff Rick Shaw had the whole force out working tonight. When Cooper called him concerning Partlow he drove out in a squad car himself. It would never do for Big Mim to be unhappy. His presence as the highest elected law-enforcement official in the county usually mollified the grand lady. He'd also learned when he'd been elected twenty years ago to call Mim first when something broke. It made his life easier but also with her wide net she often could help him.

As a man ages his judgment usually improves. If it doesn't he's either dead or a drunk. Rick Shaw had learned to trust his judgment. He followed procedure to the letter of the law but he also trusted his instinct. In the past, when Mary Minor Haristeen would blunder onto a crime scene accompanied by her animals, he used to fume. Over time he had learned that help comes from unusual quarters. Once the corgi found a human hand, which eventually led him to a murderer. Harry and her furry cohorts had a funny way of blundering onto things.

So he wasn't surprised when he drove up to Mim's front door to find Big Mim, Miranda, Tracy Raz, Harry, and Diego, to whom he was introduced.

Harry couldn't resist an event. When she saw Mim head for Coop she knew something was up so she followed the deputy. Diego found her curiosity amusing.

Rick smiled at his favorite deputy. “Coop, enjoy yourself. This is the only night off you've had in two months. I'll take the perp back.”

“You can't lock me up for stealing hubcaps—which I didn't do.” He snarled as he put the Mercedes star, which had slipped out again, back under his shirt.

“Boy, I can lock you up for just about anything.” Rick genially pulled Wesley's arms behind his back, cuffing his hands together.

BoomBoom and Thomas happened to walk out front.

“Mim, there you are. We had a wonderful time.” BoomBoom noticed Rick pushing Wesley into the back of the squad car as she finished her sentence. “What's happening?”

“Miranda thinks he stole the hubcaps off her Falcon earlier,” Harry said.

“We're lucky he didn't steal our jewels.” BoomBoom's hand protectively covered the priceless sapphire and diamond necklace at her throat.

“The jewels are nothing. The woman is everything. I'd be afraid that he'd steal you.” Thomas kissed her on the cheek after casting a jaundiced eye at Wesley, who cast it right back.

“That would be a first,” Mim wryly responded, as Thomas gave the head attendant his parking ticket.

Diego whispered to Harry, Silver tongue.”

“How long have you known Thomas?”

Diego shrugged. “Our families know one another. He's a bit older so we didn't go to school together. Since working at the embassy I've gotten to know him. Before that,” he shrugged again, “social. Like tonight.”

“A lady-killer,” she whispered, eyebrows lifting upward.

“He thinks so,” Diego giggled back, a giggle that made him irresistible, especially since American men rarely allow themselves a good giggle.

“BoomBoom eats it up.”

“There is a type of woman who does, and you're not that type,” Diego said with insight.

“Well—no.”

Their attention was drawn away from one another as Wesley Partlow turned around in the backseat of the squad car and with his handcuffed hands managed to shoot the bird as Rick started the motor.

“What an asshole,” Coop muttered under her breath.

Tracy, next to her, said, “Used to see guys like that all the time in the service. We had the draft back then so there was always a small percent who thought the rules didn't apply to them. Usually that was beat out of them during basic training. Seems to me that Wesley Partlow will miss the experience of being in the armed services. Too bad. Makes a man out of punks like that.”

“Well, there's one thing for sure, he's going nowhere.” Cooper removed her left high heel to shake out a small pebble. “Miranda, I didn't think we'd find your hubcap desecrator so soon.”

“Me neither. I bet he stole the truck, too.”

“That's a given.” Cooper rubbed her bare arms as the lightning flashed on the side of the mountains. “Looks like the storm finally rolled up over the Blue Ridge.”