Suzie’s House 55: Ladie’s Night Out

  We left off last week with Drew catching Miranda and Suzie in the kitchen while they were trying to sneak out. 

“Who are you supposed to be?  Emma Peel?”  Drew eyed Miranda’s outfit with mild interest.  She looked like she was playing the part of a cat burglar.  Not a real cat burglar.  A real one wouldn’t wear patent leather.  Too shiny.

“This is the latest fashion down at the Cardinal.”

“You’re going to a bar now?”  Actually, she probably would throw caution to the wind and head off for a night of carousing while two killers stalked the members of this household.

“Why not?”  She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin defiantly.

“Um… because it’s dangerous?”

“I’m not going to drive.  Suzie is.”  Miranda reached into the butler’s pantry and dragged Suzie out.

Suzie was wearing a pair of black jeans and a black T-shirt.  Drew couldn’t remember the last time he saw her in jeans.  She was always wearing skirts and dresses.

“YOU’RE going to the bar?”

“And what’s wrong with that?”  Suzie lifted her chin defiantly, giving Drew a sinking feeling.

“Nothing.  Nothing at all.  Not a thing.”  He shook his head and tightened his lower lip against all the different ways Suzie going to a bar at all, let alone tonight, didn’t add up.  “Only…”  He shouldn’t say anything.  Anything he said now was likely to backfire on him the way things did when you dealt with women.  He wasn’t a talkative man.  Why couldn’t he shut up?  “Are you sure you want to go tonight?”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

Drew bit his lip.  Why indeed.  It wasn’t like they didn’t know about Sean and Joseph.  It was like they were courting danger, just asking the two men to come after them.

Which, come to think of it, maybe they were.

His refusal to let anyone in the house help him with his investigation hadn’t gone down very well.  Looking over the black outfits on both woman, right down to Miranda’s eye makeup, he got the feeling they weren’t going out for a night of carousing so much as gunning for certain men.

Like Hell he was going to let them!  They had no idea how dangerous confronting either Sean or Joseph could be.  Hadn’t Joseph nearly killed Vin already?  He’d have killed Drew in the neighbor’s stairway given half a chance.  If Drew hadn’t shot them…

Come to think of it, both men had taken the bullet from Drew’s warning shot.  They’d been mobile, but seriously wounded.  The odds either might be found at any bar so soon afterward were fairly low.

So what the girls planned to do wasn’t exactly safe, but it wasn’t exactly dangerous either.  He could let them go without letting them know he was on to them. 

But what was the fun in that?

“I don’t know,” he said slowly.  “It can be dangerous out there.  Two gorgeous women such as yourselves are bound to attract unwanted attention.”

“Who says it’s unwanted,” Miranda muttered.

Suzie pulled her lower lip in between her teeth and worried it.

“You’re bound to get hit on.  What would Vin think?”  He addressed the comment to Miranda, but kept an eye on Suzie to assess how she’d react to the idea of getting hit on.

Suzie kept chewing on her lower lip, which didn’t tell him nearly as much as he wanted to know.  Miranda started to get the stubborn lift of a chin, then crumpled into a face full of doubts.  Drew wasn’t entirely sure what was going on between Miranda and Vin, but her reaction now told him there was something.

“Maybe you should both stay home,”  he tossed out casually, knowing full well they wouldn’t agree.  He had to work to keep the grin off his face.

“No!”  Suzie said over Miranda’s nearly incoherent sputtering.

“I don’t think I could let the two of you out of the house and still face myself as a man.”  He shook his head slowly, but firmly.

“You can’t stop us!”  Suzie said, crossing her arms.

“We have a right to go if we want to.”  Miranda also crossed her arms.

“All right, then.”  Drew flexed his shoulders, limbering up like a prizefighter.  If he recalled correctly from reading the Isthmus, tonight was a dance band retro-80’s night at the Cardinal; the perfect excuse to get Suzie into his arms.  “We’ll all go.  I haven’t been out for a night on the town in a long time.  This should be fun.”

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