Free The Babbling Brook Naked Poker Club - Book One by Ann Warner

So
. . .
    Oh my God . Eddie? Perhaps searching
for the receipts?
    The thought of what could have happened if
I’d walked in on Eddie in an empty apartment made me shiver.
    “He might not be satisfied with searching,
you know,” Josephine continued. “He knows I helped collect the
evidence, and he also knows neither Lill nor I believed his story.
He might want to stop us from talking to anybody else.”
    “You think you could be in danger?”
    “We’re both old ladies. Would anyone be very
surprised if we died in our sleep?”
    I considered Josephine too young to die in
her sleep. But Lillian was old enough it might be plausible, so
Josephine did have a point.

    ~ ~ ~
    Although my interacting with the police was a very bad idea, I
drove Josephine to the Montgomery Safety Center where the police
station is located. I would have been happy to wait in the car, but
Josephine insisted I go in with her. Reluctantly, I did so.
    We entered through the public entrance to
find ourselves in a small anteroom. A woman sitting behind glass,
bulletproof no doubt, asked us our business. I let Josephine do the
talking, although I was the one carrying the evidence.
    “We’re here to report a crime,” Josephine
said.
    “What kind of crime?”
    “A burglary. Or maybe it’s a robbery. At any
rate, it’s a theft.”
    The woman directed us to open the door to
our left and take a seat, saying an officer would be with us
shortly. A lock release buzzed, and I pulled the door open on a
small conference room with a table and chairs, wishing I could
usher Josephine and the bag of receipts inside and escape.
    We sat down, and within a couple of minutes,
a police officer came through the door carrying a notebook.
    I concentrated on my breathing, trying to
tamp down a feeling of irrational panic. I was safe and anonymous.
I was simply the companion of the person here to make a report.
    The officer introduced himself as Detective
Darren McElroy, and we told him who we were. He took his time,
shaking our hands and then sitting opposite us and opening a
slightly battered notebook to a fresh page. That gave me time to
calm down enough to notice the air of quiet authority he’d brought
into the room with him. I had the fanciful thought that if I were
in imminent danger, I would want this man protecting me.
    Although that air of competence was unusual
and made him immediately appealing, he wasn’t otherwise remarkable,
except perhaps for the fact he had very short hair and was
clean-shaven. Fortyish was my guess. I wondered if his friends
called him Mac. He looked like a Mac.
    He wrote our names, double-checking the
spellings, along with the time and date, and we watched him do it
in silence. Then he looked up and asked our business. I had a sense
he was weighing and measuring us, and I sat up straighter and
folded my hands in my lap so I wouldn’t be tempted to fidget.
    I let Josephine do the talking, and she did
a creditable job of laying everything out in a logical fashion with
little embellishment. She also added to her report of Eddie’s
thefts the fact that the son of a recently deceased resident and
the daughter of a second resident who’d been moved to the memory
unit had subsequently discovered valuable items missing. That was a
surprise to me, since I’d heard nothing about either loss.
    Occasionally, the officer interrupted
Josephine’s account to check on a name or ask for more details.
Throughout, he took careful notes. Although I was watching him do
it upside down, I could see his handwriting was as neat and precise
as his demeanor and grooming.
    I wondered what his wife was like, and
whether he had any children. I could easily picture a skinny
towhead with hair as short as his, begging him to play catch. But
then I noticed he wore no wedding ring. Did that mean he was
single, or did he simply not wear it at work?
    I shook my head in confusion at the
direction of my thoughts since I’d given up checking out guys some
time