Wrapped Up In Christmas

“You definitely should. He could be a serial killer on the run,” Claudia suggested, tucking a loose strand of gray hair behind her ear.

Maybelle rolled her eyes. “He’s not.”

Something in the way Maybelle said the words so confidently had Sarah asking, “How do you know that?”

“I had Sheriff Roscoe run his tags,” Maybelle said matter-of-factly, as if it was no big deal.

“What?”

“You heard me.” Maybelle didn’t so much as bat an eyelash, just kept on sorting through the ornaments and placing the ones that passed inspection carefully into a box that would be stored until the day of the Christmas festival.

The woman never ceased to amaze Sarah. Outside of doing something illegal, Sarah couldn’t imagine Sheriff Roscoe, or anyone, ever telling Maybelle no. When the town matriarch said to jump, most people asked how high.

“Dare I even ask how you got his tag number?”

Maybelle glanced at Rosie who beamed with pride, rather than guilt.

Oh, good grief, what had they done?

She could just see them donning black clothes and ski masks, stalking Bodie. They could probably tell her his shoe size and what he’d had for breakfast, too.

Rosie’s chin tilted a little higher than usual as she said, “You might recall Lou had that fancy security system installed at the diner a few years ago. Seems his cameras pick up all kinds of things in his parking lot.”

They’d gotten Lou in on their investigative action? The big-hearted restaurateur didn’t seem the Sherlock Holmes type. Poor Lou. There was no telling what Rosie had done to get him involved.

Eyebrow arched, she asked, “Things like Bodie’s license plate?”

Rosie nodded. “Pulled the recordings right up on his phone and there it was, clear as a bell.”

“Why would Lou pay any attention to Bodie’s truck?” Sarah’s head spun as she processed what the women had been up to.

“When I mentioned our visitor, Lou told me he’d met him in the diner,” Rosie said. “He said he seemed like a nice enough fella, but didn’t stay long, just ate and left.”

“Lou figured he didn’t stick around because he had a dog with him that stayed in his truck while he was in the diner,” Ruby added.

“Harry,” Sarah filled in. At their confused looks, she clarified, “The dog. His name is Harry. Smartest dog I’ve ever met.”

“Okay, so Harry was in the truck.” Rosie looked at Sarah with a touch of annoyance that she’d interrupted for such a trivial detail. “Anyway, I had Lou pull up his security footage because I wanted another look, just wanting to make sure I didn’t see anything suspicious about your new handyman, of course.”

“Of course,” the other three women and Sarah said at the same time, causing all to chuckle.

“Mighty generous of you taking it upon yourself to check Mr. Lewis out further for our Sarah,” Maybelle contributed with her usual bit of sass.

“Without me, you wouldn’t have gotten to ask Sherriff Roscoe to run his tags, now would you?” Rosie pointed out to her friend, then patted her well-coiffed blue hair. “Now, where was I? Oh yes. Lou’s been after me for years. When I mentioned I was worried about you because of this newcomer, he mentioned his cameras. He appreciated the opportunity to do something nice for me. Some people do, you know.”

“We know,” they all said in unison, eliciting a round of giggles that better befitted teens than senior citizens.

“I took a picture of Lou’s video footage and sent it to the others, so they’d know I was doing my part to keep you safe.”

“Sarah didn’t need a play by play.” Maybelle’s eyes went heavenward again. “After that, I zoomed in on the picture Rosie sent, cropped his tag, and texted my photo to the sheriff.”

Maybelle’s tone brooked no argument on the fact that she’d been well within her rights to do so.

“And to think, I taught you how to use a smartphone,” Sarah mused, secretly impressed by the women’s sleuth work. Sometimes she wondered if the Butterflies were some former secret society in days gone past.

“That was a useful class you put on,” Claudia praised. “Now I can text with my grandkids and wow them with my emoji-sending abilities. It was one of the best classes you’ve ever put on in the community room.”

“You really should consider annual update courses,” Rosie added, pulling her phone out and clicking on her camera. She had it in reverse camera mode. It was a distinct possibility that, other than the rare spying photo, Rosie’s phone was permanently set that way. “It took me forever to figure out how to add gifs to my messages.”