Free Thrown Off: A Cozy Mystery (Brenna Battle Book 3) by Laney Monday Page A

lollipop right out of his hand.
    Yeah, right, kid. Hey, why didn’t you just stand there and let me kick you? That’s what he was thinking.
    I turned to the mother with my best effort at a calm, friendly tone, given the fact that I had to keep watching out of the corner of my eye for an ambush. “It looks like the boys are really into striking. That looks like fun, but there really isn’t any kicking and punching in judo.”
    “No?”
    “No. Throwing and grappling only.” I shook my head sadly. Darn. What a shame you’ll have to take the boys somewhere else , I tried to convey.
    “I wanna learn to throw people down!” Allen said.
    “And then kick and punch ’em!” Holden chimed in.
    “Yeah!”
    “Oh, well, I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Jessie said.
    Okay, maybe it was time to get just a little more blunt. “We take safety very seriously. We can’t have the boys punching or kicking us or the other students.”
    Blythe added, “Like one body, working in harmony.”
    “Oh, okay.” Jessie nodded earnestly, as though now everything made sense. “Well, the boys and I will dialogue about that. We wouldn’t want to disrupt the balance of harmony. So, you can take them, right?”
    It was just a tad scary how good Blythe was at speaking Jessie’s language. Before I could tell her she’d have to wait until the next session—at least that would give us a couple weeks before we had to deal with this, and maybe they’d even find something else to do instead— Blythe said, “Oh, that’s okay. They can join now.”
    What!  
    “Oh, good. I’m sorry we missed the beginning of the session. I didn’t know I’d be needing to find activities for them at the last minute. Our nanny left unexpectedly to go to school in Colorado.”
    That poor girl really earned her education. The Pakowskis’ clothes and their behavior made me wish I could hide my advertised prices and charge them double. “Unfortunately, we won’t be able to offer a discount. We’ll have to charge for the days they missed.”
    “Oh, that won’t be a problem.”
    “Great!” I could tell Blythe caught the trace of sarcasm I’d tried and failed to filter out, but Jessie seemed clueless.
    It was an ordeal getting the paperwork filled out, let me tell you. When they were finally gone and Blythe and I hunched over bowls of bow-tie pasta in our apartment, we had only half an hour left of our precious break.
    I took a pinch of shredded parmesan and sprinkled it over my steaming pasta. “Why did you say yes? Why?”
    “It’ll be good for them, Brenna. You know it will.”
    “Only if the mom’s on board.”
    “We’ll get her on board. Those kids need this just as much as kids like Sammi and Katie.”
    But they would be so much more annoying than Sammi and Katie. I’d bet dessert on it.

13

    I was already half awake when my alarm went off the next morning. The window was wide open, and I’d been in a sort of semi-conscious state for a couple of hours because of the birds squawking outside my window. Okay, some of them actually sang, and I guess you could say it was kind of pretty, but “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony” might as well be squawking at five a.m., you know?
    Blythe’s bed was empty, and I could hear the shower running. I plumped the pillow up against the wall behind me and sat up halfway, trying to acclimate myself to the Land of the Living. My twin bed was brand new, but it was just a basic mattress and box springs, with no frame. Blythe’s mattress and box springs was new too, but she had one of those old-school eighties metal frames. She’d found it at a garage sale and painted it purple.
    Grabbed my phone from the nightstand and I turned off my alarm and checked my text messages. I had one from Lourdes. Odd, for her to message me this early.
    “Can you meet me in the park for lunch? I know it’s hard for you to leave the kids, but it’s important.”
    It must be trouble with her boyfriend, Brent. He was thinking about