Death and Relaxation (Ordinary Magic #1)(44)

“What?” she asked as Ryder got out of his truck and stood next to it, waiting for us. “Seriously. What?”

“Have I been a terrible sister over the last year?”

“Just the last year?”

I made a face at her. “We need to go see a movie.”

“Right now?”

“No. Soon. Yes?”

“Sure.”

We both spoke at the same time: “I pick the movie.”

“Eldest picks,” I said.

She opened her door and I followed. “You picked last time. That sob-fest teen romance.” She stuck her finger in her mouth and flicked her thumb down like firing a gun.

“Movie?” Ryder asked as we walked to the front of the community center together, Ryder falling into step behind Jean and me.

“It was pretty terrible.” I pushed open the door and stepped in. We walked down the empty main hallway, our feet and voices echoing off the painted ceiling and wooden walls. “You’ll make me watch a space movie, won’t you?”

“Maybe,” she said. “With one hundred percent more explosions than the last thing you made me watch.”

The door to the main office was ajar. Dan Perkin was behind that door, his voice raised in mid-tirade.

Speaking of explosions. I took a deep breath, then strolled into the room. “Afternoon, everyone.”

Dan Perkin had his back to us, one hand raised, finger pointing at the sky, his other hand on the bill of his baseball hat. He was right in the middle of his patented God-is-my-witness move.

Bertie sat behind a desk with two vases of flowers on the corners and a laptop to one side. She had placed a tea towel in front of her and was slicing an apple in her palm over it. The knife in her deceptively frail hands slid through the meat of the apple with a razor’s ease.

Bertie was a sparrow of a woman who appeared to be in her eighties: petite, short shock-white hair with a jag of bangs over her sharp green eyes. Her skin was pale as the moon, the golden polish on her nails sparking with each stab of the knife.

Great. Dan Perkin had pissed off the valkyrie.

I didn’t know how this man wasn’t dead yet.

“Good afternoon, Delaney, Jean, Mr. Bailey.” Bertie gave the kind of look that said she was glad we’d stopped in because she was just about to stab Dan in the jugular with that little apple knife.

Dan Perkin turned so he could glare at us. His eyes narrowed at Ryder then ticked back to me.

“Maybe you can make something decent come out of this mess,” he said. “I’ve been trying to make her listen to me for an hour.”

“Is there a problem?” I asked. Those four words were like Perkin’s own catnip. He loved hearing them.

Next lecture in three…two…one: “There has been a death in this town, Officer Reed. I demand to know who is going to replace Heim on the judging panel immediately.”

Dan Perkin. A lover of his fellow man.

“That decision falls to Bertie,” I said. “I assume she needs time to choose who would be most suited for the job. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” She placed her apple on the towel. She hesitated, then placed the knife next to it, staring at it with longing in her eyes. “As I told Mr. Perkin, the list of candidates is narrow and vetted. Whomever I choose will be unbiased.”

“It better be someone who won’t favor big business in this town.” He stabbed a finger into the top of her desk, hard enough to make the flowers tremble. “It better be someone who judges entries on their merits, not on marketing razzle-dazzle. Someone who won’t cave in when some rich guy slips them a few dollars.”

Bertie was not amused. “Are you accusing me of taking bribes, Mr. Perkin? If so, I will see to it that the rhubarb contest is cancelled. Today.”

“No,” he said. “Wait! No. Don’t do that.”

“I wouldn’t want to tarnish the good name of our town,” she went on. “If you and other contestants doubt that our contest judges are anything but impartial, it throws the entire event into question, doesn’t it, Officer Reed?”

It took everything I had to keep the smile off my face. When Bertie wanted to draw blood, she didn’t need a knife.

“Yes,” I said grimly. “I believe it does.”

“But—but no!” Dan was on full defense now. “I don’t want the rally cancelled. I never said I wanted the rally cancelled. I just want a fair judge. An honest judge. I know you can find one.”

Bertie was hardcore genius getting him to turn around like that.

“I happen to have a judge in mind,” she said. “Someone who will absolutely follow the rules and laws of the contest.”

She had him on her hook. Dan shifted the brim of his baseball hat, nervous as a worm. “All right. I trust you, Bertie. Always have. Who is it?”

“Delaney Reed,” she said, “would you please do Ordinary the great honor of becoming a judge for the Rhubarb Rally?”

Jean snorted. She knew I hated rhubarb. Ryder coughed, and I suspected he was covering a laugh—not coming down with sudden hay fever. Dan wasn’t the only worm on her hook.

I opened my mouth to say no, but the slight twitch of Bertie’s eyebrow stopped me.

I was wrong. She didn’t resemble a sparrow, she resembled a hawk. If I refused to judge, I was pretty sure she’d stab me with her apple knife.