“No thanks. I want to bake, not lie on the bakery floor.” Iris waved behind her and off she went.
“Sure you don’t want one?” she asked me and refilled all three glasses.
“No, but I do want to know what’s going on. This isn’t like you.” I didn’t know Peaches very well, but well enough to know her to never drink like this. Maybe a cocktail here and there when I’d see her out and about, but not at her place of business.
“Let’s just say that Simon and Sarah have got me a little turned up sideways,” she confessed and sucked down another shot. “I didn’t think it was going to bother me as much as it has. He came to see me this afternoon, and I was shocked at how fast his disease has progressed.”
“I saw him at the doctor’s office. He told me.” I could see anger in Peaches’s face and wondered if she needed to take her own advice about her yoga class’s benefits.
“He told you about us?” She got super defensive and on edge as if there were a big secret.
“No. He told me about the disease.” I wanted to ask about them, but it certainly wasn’t my place unless she wanted to disclose it.
“Oh.” She threw down the last shot as her head tilted back, letting the bourbon slide down her throat. “Hopefully, the surgery will help. I need you to take this.”
She picked up a package off the floor and put it on the counter.
“It was delivered to my house today. I know it’s from Simon, and I can’t accept it.” She had written “return to sender” all over the box. She pushed it toward me.
“I can’t take it tonight since it’s work, but leave it here, and I’ll get it in the morning when I deliver your mail.” I patted her hand. “I’m going to go. Do you think you’re going to be okay?”
“I’m fine. I’ve got China’s bag of clothes to sort through, so I’m going to spend the night here on one of the massage tables.” She must’ve seen the look on my face. “Don’t worry. I do it all the time.”
“Okay, but if you ever need someone to talk to, please find me. Not a bottle.” I picked up the bourbon bottle and set it back down.
“I’ll be fine.” She rolled her eyes and laughed. “You keep working on your flexibility. Rest. Don’t let Lucy Drake intimidate you.”
“That noticeable?” I shrugged, laughing. “It looks like me and you are in the same boat,” I joked and headed out the door.
Chapter 6
No matter how much Peaches Partin preached about how good yoga was, encouraging me to stick with it because it would help me sleep, it started to sound like a lot of bull malarkey to me. Unless she meant the end of class when she had us lie down and put a nice, warm, cozy blanket over us, which I fell asleep to every single time.
I wanted the full night’s sleep I used to get when Grady was little and Richard was alive. Instead of dwelling on how much my body ached from yoga class and the tossing and turning all night, I got myself up and got ready for work. I decided to head on over to the garage early this morning, after my first loop, to see if Simon was there yet. When I’d gotten home last night, the certified letter was on the floor exactly where I thought it might’ve been when I couldn’t find it in my bag.
“Buster,” I called out from the front door with his leash in my hand, figuring it was early and he’d love to accompany me on the walk from our house to the post office to get my first loop, then head to the garage to drop off the letter, and then go back to the post office to get my second loop of mail.
From what Lucy Drake had said on the early morning radio weather update, which made me a little happy she was at work and not shacking up down the street with Mac, it was going to be a really cool morning but temperatures were going to rise as the day went on.
As soon as Buster saw his leash, he was raring to go. His hard tail whacked me a few times.
“You be a good girl,” I told Rowena, who sat a good distance back so she wouldn’t be in the line of danger, Buster’s tail. She blinked a few slow blinks like she was telling me how happy she was to have the house to herself.
With the leash clipped on Buster’s collar, we were ready to go. The duck paddled around the foot of the bridge that connected Main Street to the veterinary clinic across the street from the post office.
“What on earth?” I gasped when I saw a few of the sheriff’s deputies’ Jeeps parked along the side of the post office. All the lights were on inside, which never happened until Monica opened the service center.
“Come on.” I tugged on Buster’s leash to get him to stop sniffing around the vet clinic’s bushes and ran across Main Street to the back of the parking lot where none of the LLV drivers were going around their vehicles doing their morning assessments of the trucks.
That told me something was really wrong.
“Monica, what’s going on?” I’d found Monica near the taped-off area by the door. The kind like the police or, in our case, sheriff’s taped-off area that meant there was a crime.
“Someone has broken in to the post office.” Her voice cracked. She gnawed on her already short fingernails. “I had no idea when I let myself in this morning until I had flipped on the lights for y’all to see when you come through the back door.” She bent down and started to pat Buster.
Both of us stopped when we heard another car pull up. It was Sheriff Angela Hafley.
“What on earth did they steal? Stamps?” I joked, trying to make light of the situation since I could see she was relaxing a little with Buster’s help. He was so good at calming people.
Even before I inherited him, when I’d show up to his house, he always could tell when I was having a bad day. Just as soon as I’d drop the mail off at his house for his owner, I instantly felt good. Maybe I should make him a helper dog. I put the thought in the back of my head to ask Vivian Tillett, the director of the nursing home, if they had any sort of program like that.
“I have no idea what they wanted.” She let out a long sigh.
“They?” I asked, thinking more than one.
“I don’t know. By the time I realized someone had broken the glass on the door, I ran out and called the sheriff’s department.” She continued to pat Buster as Sheriff Hafley walked up.
“Mornin’, ladies.” Angela stuck her hand out for Buster to smell before he gave her the go ahead to pet him all over. “I guess we have someone who just couldn’t wait for their mail to be delivered.”
“Is that a joke or is that what’s happened?” I asked, not able to read Angela’s body language. I had gotten really good at that, but it was still pretty dark out, and I’d yet to have ten cups of coffee, so I was blaming lack of sleep.
Dang yoga.
“Bernie, I’m joking. I have no idea yet why someone would break in, but I’m guessing to do something so drastic, it would be in anticipation of receiving a letter possibly.” She had a point, I guess. She directed her next words to Monica. “Can I get a quick statement from you?”
“Yeah, sure,” Monica agreed and followed Angela to the sheriff’s car, passing Gerome on the way.