Between Friends, Chapter Six

Here it is, the ending of the great escapades of Flo and Joanie, Amelia and Hans. It's been tons of fun!!!! Next week we'll go back to stories from our snowed in homes.....thanks for checking in!!!!

Fern and Joanie both leaned forward to hear more. They would love to know what is going on.

“I am truly one of the “good guys”,” Hans began. “Clara has been working undercover here in Homer for quite some time. She has nearly single handily brought down these thugs, but now she is dead and we have to assume she had cracked the case.”

“Oh land sake alive, Clara broke the case. Did you hear that, Fern?” Joanie blathered.

Fern felt the need for chocolate. She would have to keep a “solving cases” supply for the next time such an occasion came up. And she desperately needed a refill of coffee. She glanced longingly at the coffee shop/tire shop as they passed. If only Amelia could see them right now......
But this was not the time to begin waning . “That does not explain what you did to Joanie here.” Fern turned her “you had better start explaining right now” dagger look right to Hans.

“I sincerely apologize about that.” Hans did look remorseful. He glanced at Joanie. “You fainted dead away when I came to the door. I had just heard the news about Clara and had come down to see what was going on,” his voice caught briefly, “But I found you at her back door in stead. When I seen you leave with the package, I had to get it back from you. But you fainted and the call came in that we thought we had the target and imagine my surprise when next I seen you up and talking with the target!”

Just then Fern's phone burst into “Don't Be Cruel”. She was able to find it in record time. “Heeeelllloooo?” she answered hoping she sounded her normal self.

“Fern? Oh, Fern! It's Amelia. I know you said you'd call back but I had to tell you...this just in, Clara was POISONED!”

“No!” gasped Fern.

“Oh, lands sake alive that doesn't sound very good.” Joanie fretted next to her.

“Yes! I'll have more for you just as soon as Clyde finds out more. Where ARE you, Fern?”
“Um, calling you back soon, Dearie,” Fern tried to sound chipper. Before Amelia could ask more, she flipped the phone shut.

“Clara was poisoned,” she reported.

“How do you know? That hasn't come across the wires to me,” Hans wanted to know.

“We have a system much faster than any FBI,” Fern informed him.

“Why was the note at the bottom of the blueberries?” asked Joanie suddenly.

“The note?” Hans asked quizzically as he turned the truck down an old rutted dirt road. There were driving further than Fern had expected them too. But then again, she really hadn't expected much more than death when she first climbed in so far all was going just peachy keen.

“Lands sake, you don't know about the note? It says “Keep your Hans off my property”,” Joanie explained.

“Dexter.....” Hans mumbled. “Clara has suspected he is just a behind the scenes player, but I think he may just be the master mind after all. We have been working undercover to find a gang of masterminds who have found a way to undetectably lace food with a severely toxic poison. I must conjecture that Clara was done in by this poison on her last trip in to the market by Dexter himself but...blueberries did you say it was?...was probably also laced when he hadn't heard that the job had been done.”

“Book club blueberries?????” Joanie was incredulous.

“It's a good thing we stick to eating butter and chocolate rather than organic something or another,” Fern nodded smartly.

Suddenly, right before them, was the most peculiar sight. A man was hanging by his feet from a tree and a group of children were gathered around him. Hans slammed the truck to stop and they all piled out to look closer at the sight. The lone little girl and a fully dressed in red little boy about the age of seven, she must be about six, had a wooden homemade bow pulled back with a wooden pointed arrow right at the man. Three little boys between the ages of three and five were howling like Indians and the oldest boy, about ten, had his BB gun aimed at the man on the tree. “Dexter!” Hans cried in surprise.

“Are you the authorities?” asked the boy. “I caught this guy in my trap and he seemed suspicious to me so I radioed my Dad and he called the authorities. Are you them?”
Hans held out his FBI badge. “Good job, son!” He quickly pulled the sputtering Dexter from the tree, handcuffing him.

“I had it all planned! The shipment was headed out tonight if it wasn't for that old lady and her book clubbing posse! If they had just left this all alone, the success we would have had!”

“Lands sake, it couldn't have been much hard work on your part,” Joanie cackled to Dexter, “to be found out by some old book clubbers and bunch of Homerian children!”

Fern's phone began to vibrate but she caught it before it broke into song. “They might have the man who killed Clara treed over by the old mill road,” Amelia informed breathless.

“Well, he is caught and confessed,” Fern reported. “Case closed.”