The Wedding Caper by Janice Thompson Page B

continued on as we exited the
car: “There’s Shoo-Fly Pie for dessert—best to be had, if I do say so
myself. I hate to brag, but folks from around these parts say I’m the best cook
in the Dutch countryside.” The zealous woman continued on talking a mile a
minute as we snatched our luggage and headed inside. So much
for peace and quiet.
    After one
of the most amazing lunches I’d ever eaten, Sheila and I rested in our room.
She took the brass daybed with the colorful quilt and let me have the larger,
double bed with the rich blue and white quilt. I’d almost dozed off when her
voice roused me.
    “I’d say
it’s about time you told me what’s really been going with you these past few
weeks.”
    I sat up
and gave her a quizzical look. “What do you mean?” The thump-thumping of my heart nearly gave away my feigned innocence.
    She gave
me that I’m-older-than-you-so-treat-me-with-some-respect look and, in true
Sasha style, I tucked my tail between my legs. Perhaps the time had come to
spill my guts.
    Sheila’s
penetrating gaze wouldn’t let me off the hook. Yes, I needed to tell her what
I’d been up to. She would run it all through her “Sheila-filter” and let me
know her thoughts on the matter.
    And so I
began—tentatively at first, then with ever-increasing fervor. She
listened to my tale with her lips clamped—a rarity. I tried to gauge from
her expression what she might be thinking about my involvement in crime
fighting. I told her, with a few tears, actually, about Warren and the $25,000.
I filled her in on Nikki Rogers, single mom and security guard. Sheila’s brow
knotted as I got to the story of Janetta Mullins and
her wayward son. And her eyes misted over as I shared the specifics regarding
Richard and Judy Blevins.
    As I
concluded, I expressed my concerns about not being able to narrow down the
suspect list. Sheila nodded and popped out a rather atypical remark: “Well,
Annie, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
    “What?”
    “I
mean—” she gave me a pensive look, “—you’re swinging at anything
and everything. You haven’t narrowed down your list because you’re all over the
place with this. Truth is, you’re just following whatever feels right at any
given moment. You’re not looking at the whole picture. You’re not listening to
the clues. Not really.”
    “Ah.” How
do I do that?
    “You’re
the most trusting person I know,” she added. “And that means you’re easily
swayed.”
    “Hey,
I—” I really couldn’t say more, all things considered.
    Sheila
grew quite serious. Kind of threw me. “Truthfully, we don’t know if any of
those people took the money. We don’t even know for sure that Janetta’s daughter made the night deposit drop like she
said. The power was out, right?”
    “Right.”
To be honest, that had worried me all along.
    “So,
really, you could be chasing around after absolutely nothing. And all in an
attempt to exonerate a man you know in your heart couldn’t have done this. Am I
right?”
    I
swallowed hard and nodded.
    “Maybe
that’s why we’re here this weekend.” She yawned and leaned back against the
pillow. “Maybe you need to go back to square one and see where all of this
started. If the Lord is asking you to be involved—and that’s a big
if—then you’ll probably need to go back through all of the clues one by
one and ask Him to help you sort things out.”
    If He’s
asking you to be involved. . .
    Her words
caught me off guard a little. And kind of hurt my feelings. Didn’t she know me
well enough to know I wouldn’t dive head-first into
something unless the Lord had prompted me to do so?
    On the
other hand, Sheila had witnessed my impulsive side on more than one occasion.
And she clearly had my best interest at heart. Maybe that’s why her opinion
mattered so much to me. I wanted to ask what she thought about all of my
suspicions—wanted to know if my ramblings had opened her eyes to