Read Online Darned if You Do by Monica Ferris - Free Book Online Page B

fifties.
    â€œHere, Betsy, let me take that,” said the young man, hurrying forward to lift the box from her arm.
    â€œThanks, Goddy,” said Betsy.
    Goddy?
    â€œAre you Betsy Devonshire?” asked Valentina, tucking the book under her elbow and coming toward her.
    â€œYes,” replied Betsy.
    â€œI’m Valentina Shipp, and Leona Cunningham said I should talk to you.”
    â€œLeona called a few minutes ago,” Godwin broke in, as he was putting the box on the table. “She said she was sending a woman named Valentina over to talk to you. I told her you were out but would be back.” He gave Valentina a look of mild rebuke. “This lady didn’t tell me her name.”
    â€œYou didn’t look like a Betsy,” Valentina shot back.
    â€œWell . . . no,” conceded Godwin, looking down at himself as if for reassurance. When he looked up, he had that mischievous look in his eyes again.
    Valentina couldn’t help it. She smiled. “You’re quite a character!”
    â€œYou don’t know the half of it,” said Betsy, who was shrugging off her coat. “Let me hang this up,” she continued, heading for the back of her shop. “Then you can tell me what this is about.”
    â€œDo you want that book?” Godwin asked Valentina. “And these two hooks, size E?”
    â€œYes, please,” said Valentina, joining him at a big old desk near one wall.
    He quickly added up the charges, and, with a sigh she carefully suppressed, she swiped her credit card to pay them. Everything else was a bargain, but that book wasn’t!
    He had just handed her a large paper bag printed with purple flowers when Betsy came back.
    â€œNow,” said Betsy, “what does Leona want of me?”
    â€œThis is going to take a few minutes,” said Valentina. “It’s about my cousin, Tommy Riordan.”
    â€œWho?” said Godwin with a puzzled frown. Then his expression cleared. “Oh, Tom Take!” He drew up his shoulders and pressed the fingers of one hand against his mouth. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!” he mumbled, casting glances at both Valentina and Betsy.
    There was a painful silence. Then Valentina said, in a chilly voice, “Is that what he’s called around here?”
    â€œYes,” asserted Betsy. “That’s what a lot of people call him. Not being mean, not really. And Tom’s not mean, either. We know he can’t help it. He doesn’t do it often and he doesn’t take valuable things; it’s more a nuisance. I understand that if you catch him in the act, he’ll give the object back.”
    Godwin, anxious to make good, said, “I heard that if you think he’s got something of yours and ask him if he’s seen it, he’ll say he thinks he knows where it is and will bring it back to you a day or two later.”
    Valentina’s ire melted. “When he was a little boy,” she confessed to the two of them now, “he came to stay with us twice, and when he went home, we’d go into his room to get our things back.”
    Godwin laughed. “So he was born like that!”
    Betsy said, “So why are you here? What is it that you want from me? Here, come and sit down. Would you like a cup of coffee? Or tea?”
    â€œNo, thanks.” Valentina followed Betsy back past the box shelves, into another, larger room. Here the walls were covered with stitched models, most of them framed, each with a three-digit number in a lower corner. Below them, slanted holders of counted cross-stitch patterns lined the entire room, and the floor was scattered with spinner racks holding everything from pretty scissors to different kinds of floss. In the center stood a small round table covered with a white tablecloth embroidered with winter scenes: snow-laden trees, sledding children, cross-country skiers.
    Around the table were four delicate, pretty chairs with thin