Polly Dent Loses Grip (A LaTisha Barnhart Mystery) by S. Dionne Moore

so busy flapping your gums you don’t hear my quiet.”
    “Missin’ home?”
    “Naw,” I said.
    “Your babies?”
    I shook my head and tried to refocus on the elements of Polly’s fall that seemed suspicious. “I can’t shake the feeling there’s more to Polly’s fall.”
    He guffawed. “Shoulda figured you’d have your mind wrapped around a puzzle.”
    “Something’s not right. Too many people didn’t like her.”
    “Expect there are a few who don’t care for you too much, that doesn’t mean they want you dead.”
    I huffed. “I should have come right out and asked Sue Mie if she’d called the police.”
    “Why didn’t you?”
    “Didn’t think of it.”
    If there’s one thing I know it’s Hardy’s ways. He was trying to let me down easy. Trying to get me to see that I should let the whole incident slide.
    Hardy gave me a side hug. “You need to get back and finish your degree. Now that M omma’s settled, it’s time.”
    I turned my head to look at him. “I want that.”
    He stretched hard and patted my knee. “You still thinking on the restaurant?”
    Your Goose Is Cooked, he meant. That’s the name of the restaurant, not commentary on my cooking skills.
    When my former employer Marion Peters was murdered months ago, it came out that one of the newer members of Maple Gap, our home town, had been father to Marion’s child years before. Mark Hamm had since taken their daughter Valorie and moved to Denver.   I’d almost gone to work for Mark right after I found Marion’s body, but he made his decision to take Valorie away, leaving the restaurant with a FOR SALE sign in the window.
    It tempted me mightily. One thing I loved more than a good mystery was cooking a storm. Course, I liked eating, too.
    But buying a restaurant was a lot of money. . .time. . .dedication. Funny thing is, I think Hardy really wanted to do it.
    “You thinking about it too?” I finally asked him.
    He grinned at me. “I sure could go for some of LaTisha Barnhart’s fried chicken ‘bout now. Why don’t we go out to eat tonight?”
    “Sure, babe . ” I stroked his arm and leaned into his warm embrace.
    The buzz of Hardy’s cell phone startled us apart. New-fangled thing. We still weren’t used to having it around. Our babies were so worried about us traveling without one, using the “everyone’s got one” argument, that the phone and service plan became our thirty-ninth Anniversary present.
    Hardy twisted himself around to dig out the phone from his back pocket. “Yeah?”
    A huge smile split his face in two. I could feel my own smile growing.
    “Hold on and you can tell her yourself.” He held the phone out to me.
    It turned out to be Cora, daughter-in-law of my oldest boy, Tyrone. Cora had given us a grand-child about nine months ago. Our first. Now we had three others baking. Cora with her second, our other daughter-in-law Fredlynn with her first, and our daughter Shayna with her first. All within a month of one another. Don’t know if Old Lou’d hold up to burning up all those miles visiting grandbabies.
    “Momma, Arianna is walking!”
    My heart swelled with pride. “That’s my little gal. Do tell.”
    “She finally let go today and walked two steps before she went down.”
    “Bet Daddy’s bustin’ his buttons.”
    “You know him. Starting to think he loves her more than he loves me,” Cora bemoaned.
    “Nonsense. It’s them hormones talking. You call him at work and tell him to line up a babysitter and Pappy and I will pay for it. Every woman needs to get out.”
    “Oh, M omma, you don’t have to do that.”
    She wasn’t fooling me none though. I heard the wetness in her voice. Cora’s tender heart and patient ways meant she’d probably pushed herself to the breaking point taking care of Arianna. “I do, too. You’re a good momma, baby, and if you don’t do it, I’ll call up that boy of mine and give him the message.”
    She laughed and sniffed a little bit.
    “Now we don’t