Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth by Tamar Myers

aware of our presence.
     
     
I went around to the other side of the bed and tried to follow the angle of her gaze. She was staring at something just below her knees, at some point in a strip of blue and red calico. Then I saw it too, but, I'm ashamed to say, I started to laugh.
     
     
"What's so funny?" demanded Joel.
     
     
"It's only this." I took off one of my slippers and laid it gently on the quilt, atop Linda's shins. When I removed it a minute later, there was a little brown, eight-legged creature clinging to it. "A little itsy-bitsy, teensie-weensie spider."
     
     
Joel recoiled as if I were waving a snake at him, and Linda somewhat ironically began to open and close her mouth like a baby bird begging to be fed.
     
     
"Come on, folks, get a grip on it," I said in my best Susannah imitation. "This is a harmless little house spider, just out to get himself a midnight snack. And I don't mean you," I hastened to assure Linda.
     
     
"Where did he come from?" Joel had backed far enough away from the bed so that I was having to lean way over it just to allow him to get a good look.
     
     
"Probably from up there," I said, pointing to the ceiling. "He really is harmless, I can assure you. He eats things too small to even see. In fact, some folks consider them to be lucky spiders." I wasn't really lying. Susannah did consider it lucky when I didn't make her sweep down all the cobwebs that eventually collected in her room.
     
     
"Well, I consider it a health hazard and a menace," said the Congressman, who had apparently been standing in the doorway for some time. "You will, of course, be calling an exterminator in the morning." It was a directive, not a question.
     
     
I simply stared at the Congressman in his peacock-blue silk robe, not quite sure what to say. At last the lovely Lydia intervened by slipping her arm through her husband's and pulling him gently away. "Come on, dear," I heard her say as she led him down the hall, "you've got to get some sleep if you're going to bag that eight-point buck in the morning." Wordlessly, their loyal aide trotted after them.
     
     
"What are you going to do about him?" asked Joel. "Ignore him, I guess."
     
     
"No, I mean him." He pointed to the spider, which was still clinging to my slipper.
     
     
I glanced down at the little critter, which by then was crawling up the slipper toward my hand. "Open the window, please!"
     
     
"Oh, no," cried Joel. "You can't do that! It's November. Arachnids can't take freezing weather."
     
     
I headed resolutely for the bathroom. "Not that, either, Miss Yoder." He took a couple of deep breaths and seemed to calm down a little. "I mean, please. Can't we release him someplace safe and warm?"
     
     
I practically thrust the slipper at him. "Here, you release him. Try the cellar-through the kitchen, but before the porch."
     
     
Joel took the slipper, handling it as gingerly as Susannah handles the poop-scoop on those rare occasions when she stoops to clean up after Shnookums. But once it was in his possession, he took off at a sprint.
     
     
I sat down on the edge of the bed to attend to young Linda. She had ceased gaping like a hungry fledgling and was by this time gasping like a dying fish. I patted her shoulder and tried to look sympathetic. Admittedly, nurturing is not my forte.
     
     
"There, there," I said somewhat lamely, "it'll be all right."
     
     
"But he might die down there," she finally managed to say.
     
     
"Don't worry," I hastened to assure her, "there are plenty more where that one came from."
     
     
Linda began gasping and gaping again, and it took me a couple of minutes to get her coherent. "Not the spider! Joel!"
     
     
I patted her a little harder. "Joel will be just fine. The cellar stairs aren't that much steeper than these, and Mose promised me he would fix both the loose steps."
     
     
"You idiot!" said Linda rudely. I must have looked shocked, because she almost immediately apologized. "But don't you