but realizing that he would lay down his life to protect her. After he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to his side, she shut her eyes and pressed her body against his. While holding her, he maneuvered her around so that he could see whatever lay beyond the door. That’s when he saw what had made her scream. A small, open pet carrier had been placed on the porch, directly in front of the entrance. Inside the carrier lay a medium-size stuffed dog, a menacing butcher knife stuck through its body and what Vic assumed was fake blood of some sort oozing from the wound.
“It’s okay, honey.” He stroked her back soothingly. “It’s not a real dog. This is just somebody’s idea of a joke. A very sick joke.”
Penny Sue lifted her head and looked up at Vic, moisture glistening in her eyes. “I realize it’s not a real dog, but at first…for just a minute…I thought it was Lucky.” She eased away from him and turned to glare at the pet carrier. “I’m sorry about screaming. It’s just seeing him—that—” she nodded toward the gruesome sight “—was so totally unexpected. I don’t usually act like such a ninny.”
“You were frightened. It’s perfectly understandable that you’d react the way you did.” And he meant exactly what he’d said. It was understandable that on first glance she’d think the stuffed dog was Lucky and that she would scream. But what wasn’t understandable was why Penny Sue reacting in a typical female way didn’t irritate the hell out of him. As a general rule, he preferred his women sophisticated, even jaded. He avoided silly women who giggled or screamed or cried or talked too much.
“What the hell is that?” a man’s voice called from outside the gate at the end of the sidewalk.
“Oh dear, that’s Uncle Douglas,” Penny Sue groaned.
“Well, what’s all the ruckus about?” Dottie came up behind them, doing her best to see around Vic and Penny Sue. “That’s Douglas and Candy, isn’t it? Why on earth did Penny Sue scream?”
Reaching down to grasp Vic’s hand, Penny Sue took a deep breath. “Would you please get rid of it—all of it—right now?” Her words were whispered, for his ears only. “I’ll take care of Aunt Dottie and explain things to her and Uncle Douglas.”
“We should call the police first,” Vic told her.
“It won’t do a bit of good. Chief Miller isn’t going to waste his time on a stunt like that,” Penny Sue said. “The police aren’t the least bit interested in protecting Lucky.”
Vic nodded. In a way, he understood the police chief’s reasoning. Not many law enforcement officers would take threats on a dog’s life seriously and they’d do little more than laugh at the stuffed dog, even one that had been mutilated in such a grotesque fashion.
“I’ll take care of it,” Vic assured her. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Nodding, she offered him a closed-mouth, forced smile.
He squeezed her arm reassuringly, then headed out the front door just as a gray-haired man and a woman of no more than thirty came up on the front porch. Penny Sue circled around Vic and met the visitors.
“Why on earth would somebody do such a darn fool thing?” Douglas Paine nursed a crystal tumbler half full of whiskey. Penny Sue had poured her uncle the drink herself, after she had calmed Aunt Dottie with soothing words and a hug.
“Don’t you think maybe somebody is just making fun of Penny Sue?” Candy Paine positioned her skinny behind on the arm of her husband’s chair and laid her hand on his knee. “It’s obviously just a joke. One of the family poking fun at the fact that Penny Sue thinks someone’s trying to kill Lucky.”
Penny Sue glared at Candy. “Someone did try to kill lucky.”
“So you keep telling us.” Candy rubbed her hand up and down Douglas’s leg. “But you’re the only one who believes such silliness.”
Eyeing Candy’s caressing hand, Aunt Dottie cleared her throat disapprovingly. Uncle Douglas grasped his young wife’s hand and lifted it in his. The whole family had been mortified when Douglas had married for the fourth time, more because of who he married than the fact it was his fourth walk down the aisle. Redheaded, bosomy Candy Coley had been a wannabe Vegas showgirl, someone Douglas Paine had met at a convention two years ago. After a whirlwind courtship, they’d been married in some shabby Vegas chapel by an Elvis impersonator. It hadn’t taken the family, including Douglas’s two children by his first wife, very long to realize Candy considered her new husband a real sugar daddy. However, despite his lucrative dental practice in Alabaster Creek, Douglas was not a millionaire—not yet. But when he inherited his share of Aunt Lottie’s fortune that fact would change immediately.
“Candy, dear, why don’t you come sit on the sofa by me?” Aunt Dottie asked. “You’ll be so much more comfortable than you are perched there on the arm of Douglas’s chair.”
Before Candy could reply, the doorbell rang.
“Let Ruby get it,” Dottie said.
Penny Sue nodded. Where was Vic? What was taking him so long? All he had to do was take the pet carrier and dump it in the garbage can in the detached three-car garage behind the house.
Eula Paine showed herself into the front parlor. “Am I late?” she asked.
“No, no,” Dottie said. “Douglas and Candy are early.”
The doorbell rang again. Ruby called from the foyer, “I might as well keep the front door open at this rate.”
Within five minutes, the front parlor filled with Paine relatives. Aunt Lottie’s heirs. And last, but not least, coming in at seven o’clock on the dot, was Uncle Willie. Since this was, for all intents and purposes, a business meeting as far as Uncle Willie was concerned, Aunt Pattie hadn’t come with him tonight as she usually did to Paine functions. After all, she, not he, was the blood relative.
Penny Sue kept glancing out into the foyer, wondering what had happened to Vic. Where is he? Why isn’t he here? He’d known she wanted him present for this meeting.
Once she had made the rounds and welcomed everyone, taking her hostess duties seriously, Aunt Dottie came over to Penny Sue and clutched her hand. “Perhaps he has decided to forego this family meeting.”
“What?”
“You’re concerned about Mr. Noble, aren’t you?”
“Not concerned, just wondering where he is.”
“The natives are getting restless.” Dottie squeezed her hand. “Why don’t I have Ruby see what everyone wants to drink. It might keep them pacified. In the meantime, you go find Mr. Noble. I’m sure he can convince the others that Lucky needs a bodyguard.”
“What about you, Aunt Dottie, are you convinced?”
“It’s not my decision to make. It’s yours. And I support you in whatever you do. Haven’t I always?”
Penny Sue sighed. “Yes, of course you have. Even when Aunt Lottie…well, we both know she could be rather stern at times.”
“Lottie loved you, my dear, and trusted you more than anyone in the family,” Dottie said. “She wouldn’t have entrusted Lucky to anyone else. That says a great deal about how much faith she had in you. And although I think it was rather foolish of her to have left her money to her dog, I do think she made the right choice in naming you the executor of her will. I’ve done the same, you know.”
“You’ve done what?”
“I named you executor of my will,” Dottie replied. “Of course, I won’t be leaving such a sizable fortune, but—”
“Oh, my…my goodness.” Penny Sue hugged her tiny, fragile aunt. As her father used to say, “Dottie’s so thin that she looks as if a strong wind would blow her away.”
“When are we going to start the meeting?” Stacie Paine asked. She was