Claws for Concern

Chapter 1

A blast of sound rattled the windows and shook the coffee table where my friend Jane and I sat having afternoon tea.

“What was that? It sounded like an explosion coming from your driveway.” I jumped off the couch and rushed to the side window. The noise enveloped the house, making Jane’s tiny cottage tremble. I expected to see her single car garage demolished and engulfed in flames, but instead her driveway had filled with motorcycles, behemoth sized machines that roared and thundered. Leather clad, helmeted riders perched on each one.

“There’s a gang of bikers in your drive, Jane. I’m calling 9-1-1.”

Jane ran to the front door and opened it.

Before I could punch in the call, the lead biker cracked the throttle once more, then turned off the engine. The others did the same. The rider threw his leg over the machine, removed his helmet and waved. “Hey, Janie. It’s me. I told you I’d be here this afternoon and here I am, darlin’. I hope you don’t mind. I brought my mates.”

His “mates” as he called them were also dressed in black jackets, jeans and boots. The fellow who had called out to Jane had tamed his gray beard by gathering it into a braid which moved up and down when he spoke. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

“Darren. C’mon in. I want you to meet someone.” Jane stepped off her porch and hugged the biker named Darren of the braided chin hairs. “This my friend Maddie. We were having tea and you’re all welcome.”

All the riders followed Darren into the house, removing their boots inside the door.

Very polite of them, I thought. They each nodded and stood in line behind Darren to shake our hands.

The first held out his large bear paw-sized hand and said, “Tommy”—short, white, long gray hair and full beard.

The next man shoved as large a handout. “Adam.”—short, white, long gray hair and beard.

The third one held out a hand that was missing a finger. “Tips”—short, white, long gray hair and beard. I smiled and nodded.

How would I ever tell them apart? Tips maybe, but if their hands were hidden? They looked as similar as triplets. All of them smiled and winked.

“Smithie.” This biker was tall with broad shoulders and chest. His salt and pepper hair was cut so short, it left tiny corkscrew curls all over his head. While his lips were full like many Blacks, his beak of a nose was testament to perhaps some Native American ancestry.

The last one to reach out had stood behind the others. I was shocked to see this was no man, but a woman, long, dark hair with several white streaks through it, smaller than me—and I’m less than five feet two—and thin. I wondered how she could maneuver that giant motorcycle until she removed her leather jacket, and I saw her muscular arms.

“Lily.” She smiled, showing one prominent gold incisor. “Pleased to meet both of you. Is it alright if I hang my jacket on your coat rack?”

“Sure or toss it on one of the dining room chairs,” said Jane.

As Lily hung her leather coat on a hook, I noticed the logo on the back of it. It read “Upstate Riders.”

“I hope we didn’t upset your neighbors. Many don’t feel the glorious thunder of a motorcycle engine is as heavenly as bikers do,” Darren said.

“Please take a seat, everyone The tea will be ready in a jiffy. Maddie, could you help me?” Jane grabbed my arm and pulled me with her into the kitchen. “And Maddie, you should close your mouth. You look like a startled guppie.”

“Oh, sorry, Jane. I’ve just never been this close to a gang of bikers before.”

“I wouldn’t call them a gang. They’re just a group of riders who like to get together and hit the throttle. Or so Darren tells me.” Jane turned on her electric kettle to heat up more water for tea, then pulled out a cannister of cookies from the cupboard above her sink.

“Uhm, how do you know Darren?”

“We went to high school together. I had a terrible crush on him.” Jane held her hand over her mouth to suppress a giggle.

“It appears you still do.”

“Maybe. I think I’m too old for a crush.” Jane, with her bright blue eyes and curly white ringlets, had to be close to me in age––and I am over seventy. How much over, I’m not saying.

“Look at me, Jane. No one is too old for love.” I had found the love of my life just this past summer, Zack Montgomery, retired county sheriff and a really fine man. He was handsome, slim and younger than me. Not by much, but I liked the idea of being in love with a younger man. We’d had our difficulties this fall when a woman he’d known in college came back into his life and threatened to come between us. She didn’t.

Zack and my connection to each other has never been stronger. He was the inspiration for my romance novel about two lovers separated by family difficulties. Like Zack and me, my fictional lovers found each other again. Of course, there was the other part of our partnership—we solved crimes together.

“Darren was a bit of a renegade way back in high school too. He shoplifted from the corner gas station, a pack of cigarettes here and there, used a false ID to buy beer from the supermarket the next town over and…”

“Didn’t he get caught?” I worried at the look of happiness on Jane’s face. Did she think this youthful criminal behavior was hip?

“The store owners caught him a number of times, but Darren’s manner was so disarming. That guy could talk his way out of shrink wrap.” Jane stopped extracting cups from the cupboard and grinned. “And he talked his way into many young women’s beds.”

“Yours?” Jane and I had only known each other for a few months, but our friendship had quickly become close and honest. I knew I could ask her anything and she wouldn’t be offended.

“Why Maddie Sharps.” She put her fisted hands on her round hips, feigning being insulted. “I was a good girl. That came later when I came home at Thanksgiving my first year in college.”

“He have a bike then?” I grinned at her.

“No, silly. It was in his dad’s fifty-five Chevy, four-door with a nice wide back seat.” She began to hum. “Grab that plate of cookies, would you?”

Before she reentered the living room, she turned. “I haven’t seen him in years. I didn’t even know he was around here. I ran into him a few days ago in the convenience store.”

“Lifting some smokes and beer, was he?”

“He’s changed, Maddie.”

Had he? I wondered. He still exuded that bad boy charm. Even I found him kind of sexy. I remembered what a smooth talker my ex-husband Dan had been. I wasn’t immune to macho charm, but I’d learned my lesson the hard way. I watched hubby bed a number of women before he left our marriage. I wish I could say I tossed him out, but no. He left me for a younger woman. Yet there was a positive aspect to my story. The new wife had finally wised up when he tried to pull the same philandering behavior on her, and she divorced him. He was now in prison for the role he played in killing someone. He was my walk on the wild side. I was glad I was rid of him.

Jane hummed a happy tune and grinned at me. “Oh, Darren’s still a bad boy, I’ll bet. And some down on his luck until he finds steady work. He doesn’t have any place to store his bike this winter, so I offered my garage. I don’t own a car, you know, so it’s empty.”

Jane and I had met this summer and since then, we’d become best friends. She’d been eager to help Zack and me in tracking down clues as we worked to identify murderers this summer and again in the fall. I guess she was as nosy a senior as I was. In all our discussions I’d never heard Jane mention a man in her life, so her interest in Darren was interesting, and given the kind of man I assumed him to be, it was also worrying.

Jane and I took the tray with teacups, pot and the platter of cookies into the living room and set it on the coffee table.

“Help yourselves, everyone. There are more cookies in the kitchen, so take as many as you like. Grab some chairs out of the dining room and bring them in here.” Jane settled herself on the couch on one side of Darren. Lily sat on the other. I took the recliner across from them while Tips sat in the easy chair next to me. The others brought in dining room chairs.

No one spoke, the silence filled with the sound of tea sipping and cookie crunching. Finally Lily said, “You have a lovely house.”

The boys looked up from their cups, nodded, smiled and then continued the chewing and swallowing.

“Yep, just lovely,” said Darren, “except for that.” He pointed to the corner of the room where a crack had formed in the ceiling.

“I know. I meant to get someone in to take care of it, but what with all our work,” she shifted her gaze to me and grinned, “and my volunteering at the museum, I haven’t had time to make the call. If I don’t contact a repair person soon, it will be spring before anyone comes. It’s hard to hire people around here. Not too many contractors want to take on small jobs. There’s no money in it, I guess.”

“Well, never mind. I can do it for you. No charge either. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours to repair.” Darren patted Jane’s hand and gave her a look that could only be described as inviting.

It sounded as if Darren was getting quite a deal. Jane hadn’t mentioned rent for the storing the bike in her garage. Half a day’s work in exchange for six months of storage didn’t sound like a fair exchange for Jane.

“Oh, would you?” Jane beamed at him.

I gave an internal sigh. Was everyone else as uncomfortable with the two doing googley eyes at each other? I looked around the room at Darren’s friends. Yep. They stared at the ceiling, out the windows or into their teacups as if they were reading the leaves there, anyplace but at Darren and Jane who moved closer to each other. Lily gave them a sideways glance filled with a glint of annoyance. Was she Darren’s girlfriend or biker babe or whatever was the designation for an older couple? Hmm. Zack and I were that couple. What did we call ourselves?

I got out of my chair. “Well, I’ve got to be going. Zack and I are closing down his travel trailer for the winter this weekend.”

“I wondered when you would be doing that. It’s kind of late into the season, isn’t it?” Jane asked.

Zack had rented a campsite in the nearby state park for the fall, but the travel trailer he parked on the site couldn’t remain there through the winter months when the park was closed. It had to be moved for the winter season. We’d put it off because the weather had remained unseasonably warm early this November and spending weekends in the park, especially sitting outside with a campfire keeping the chill off was our idea of heaven. Jane came into my house those weekends to feed my cat, Spike, and clean out his litter box. Although we might have wanted Spike along with us, I had heard many stories about cats sneaking out of trailers and getting lost. There were too many coyotes around the park to chance that.

I carried my cup into the kitchen, gave Jane a hug, said goodbye to everyone and started to leave.

“Say,” said Darren, “I’m taking Jane for a ride on my bike, kind of a goodbye to the old gal, the bike, not Jane,” Darren laughed and pursed his lips at Jane, “So maybe we could give you a ride home. You can ride on the back of anyone’s bike.”

Riding a motorcycle? That activity wasn’t on my bucket list. “Uh, thanks anyway. It’s not far to my place and I need the exercise. Nice meeting all of you.” I scurried out the door before the invitation could be renewed.

Halfway home, I heard it. That bone-shattering racket. The motorcycles sped past me. I spied Jane on the back of Darren’s bike, a black helmet on her head, her round body wrapped in her lined jeans jacket, a pair of wellies usually worn when she gardened on her feet. She waved to me, and the group roared on. Drops of rain hit my head and I pulled my coat collar up around my ears. The rain intensified and soon the roadway was wet. I increased my pace. At this time of the year, the rain was cold and who knew if it might turn to ice as temperatures dropped. I worried about Jane speeding down the highway on what I considered a two-wheeled death trap.