Free Double Whammy (A Davis Way Crime Caper) by Gretchen Archer Page A

being the goose to my gander—insisting all our lives that her four years of higher education were a complete waste of time and money (cutting her eyes at me) and Meredith and I might as well skip it and go straight to the real deal: dirty diapers, pot roasts, and ironing boards.
    Mother wasted no time telling Eddie’s parents, turning their breakfast into a celebration. His dad probably wrestled him into a bear hug and gave him noogies. “Way to go, son!” Mel and Bea Crawford were beside themselves with glee, because we were as close to royalty as it got in Pine Apple. They envisioned a future of no parking tickets, the end of those annoying restaurant report card failures, and they probably thought sharing a grandchild with the Chief of Police/Mayor of Pine Apple would make them exempt from federal taxes, too.
    Why, after all these years and heartache for everyone involved, I still lugged around my wedding rings was anyone’s guess. They weren’t worth hocking should I need the cash, the combined weight of the diamond chips maybe totaling an eighth of a carat. They had no history; it’s not like they were Crawford Estate jewels retrieved from a vault hidden behind an oily portrait of great granddaddy. They weren’t even pretty; they had been on clearance at Sears, the rock of the Westside Mall in Montgomery.
    There were two reasons I kept them handy: they reminded me of what could happen if you lived a big, fat lie, and they were proof that no matter how hard you tried, some points weren’t worth making. There was a distant third reason; I secretly longed for the opportunity to give them back to Eddie in a fashion that would require subsequent surgical removal from his person. With long, pointy tongs. And no anesthesia.
    They sounded like two pennies going into the safe as the knock came on the door.
    “Security,” I heard.
    I closed the safe door, pressed in the code I’d assigned the night before, pushed the star button to lock it, tied my robe tighter, and let the crew in.
    Same drill as the Bellissimo: to get into the room safe of an occupied guest room, it took one housekeeping supervisor pass-card swipe, one security pass-card swipe, and two other employee witnesses, one from housekeeping, the other from security. Everyone, including me, had to sign on the dotted line before and after.
    They all peered at the pathetic wedding rings. They all turned to me.
    Really?
    I smiled.
      
    *    *    *
      
    I had Natalie Middleton’s blessing to stay at the Silver Moon as long as I was working. So I could justify the two glorious nights, but I couldn’t justify a third on Bellissimo’s dime because I now knew there was no entering the safe without an authorized break-in crew, two passkeys, the code, an act of Congress, or a bulldozer. Did I give George the satisfaction of hearing those words pass these lips? No, I did not. But I didn’t have to; I’m sure he figured it out when I pushed through the doors the next morning with all my earthly belongings in tow. It was Thursday. I’d been on this assignment for two and a half weeks, and I suppose I was headed back to the EconoLodge after my shift today. The Silver Moon rooms were three-hundred dollars a night and I didn’t have that kind of extra loot lying around. The best I could hope for was that the porn stars next door had moved on.
    The shift started, like every other shift, with Maria, our supervisor, complaining Spanish-style about the shoddy job we’d all done the day before. It was a total waste of time, the purpose of which was to give Maria’s pets time to drag into work. The second they staggered through the door Maria announced, “Dat all. Geet to de work.”  I sat through the ten-minute pep talk every morning wondering how Maria managed to maintain her perfect manicure. Her fingernails were blood red, out to there, and her index fingers had geometrical designs in white. At the end of today’s lecture, I gave Maria a big hug when she