Free Doing It at the Dixie Dew by Ruth Moose

kidding,” I said, trying to check out the condition of some tables heaped high with glassware. One table had a tin top and turned legs.
    I straightened up and stepped back into someone walking past. “Oops, sorry,” I said. The woman in black slacks pushed past the crowd. A beefy-type fellow in a Harley-Davidson T-shirt followed close behind her, holding her elbow. He brushed past so close I felt the hair on his arms and got a whiff of yesterday’s sweat. Somewhere I’d seen the woman before. But where? I hadn’t been that many places lately in Littleboro.
    Scott had gone to register for a bidding number and I tried not to stare at the couple, who stood away from the crowd in the shade of the barn.
    Father Roderick. I remembered suddenly. That woman was with Father Roderick in the vestibule after Miss Lavinia’s funeral. She was the one brushing lint off his jacket in that strange wifely intimate way.
    â€œWhat?” Scott came up beside me. He poked his bidding card in his shirt pocket, left the number showing.
    â€œThat woman by the barn,” I said out loud. “Don’t look now, but in a minute.”
    â€œThe one in black?” Scott said. “That’s Father Roderick’s housekeeper, Debbie. Debbie Delinger.”
    â€œOh,” I said, as if that explained something. Maybe even half of something. When I looked again, they were gone.
    Scott got the bid on the chairs. Ten dollars each, but the long tin-covered table was $250.
    â€œIt wasn’t worth fifty,” I said. “You’re nuts to pay that much.”
    â€œThose things are considered primitive pieces,” Scott said. “And the only way you can get a buy is if nobody at an auction knows what it is.”
    â€œWonder what Father Roderick’s housekeeper thought she’d find at the auction?” I asked as Scott and I unloaded chairs in the backyard. The first thing we’d do was scrub and hose down years of accumulated crud off the chairs, then sand and mend and tighten legs and rungs, and finally the chairs would be ready for paint.
    â€œSome people go to auctions just to be going,” Scott said. “It’s entertainment.”
    â€œThat housekeeper and her sidekick didn’t look like the type on the prowl for that type of entertainment,” I said, remembering the housekeeper’s tight pants and top, her long ropes of limp and greasy hair, the blue bruised-looking tattoos on her companion’s arms.
    Scott laughed. “Who knows what goes on in this town?” he asked as he hooked up the water hose.
    Ida Plum swept up the walk. “You been spied on,” she said.
    â€œMr. Lucas?” I had a sinking feeling. “That’s not fair.”
    â€œHe sat in his car in front of the house a long time this morning,” Ida Plum said. “And I think he took a photograph.”
    â€œI wasn’t even here to do the hostess bit, bid him good-bye, ask how he slept and all those gold-star things,” I moaned. “Do you think it was one of the B-and-B directories, a guidebook or what?” I had written them all for a listing, begging for a visit, a call, a notation. I didn’t dream they’d come on the sly.
    â€œI think he slept well, enjoyed your pineapple muffins, approved of your ‘Think Pink’ tearoom and liked your grandmother’s house in general.”
    â€œYou did all the hostess things,” I said, and hugged her. “Thank you.”
    â€œHe even poked around the attic,” Ida Plum said. “And looked in Miss Lavinia’s bedroom. I heard him.”
    â€œBut that’s not—”
    â€œThey said it was okay to clean it, so I did. The detective was through with it. Thank goodness I didn’t have to explain a locked door and tell anyone the life and death story of Miss Lavinia Lovingood.”
    I took the broom from Ida Plum and swept cobwebs off the chairs. “What if he