High Strung: A Glass Bead Mystery (The Glass Bead Mystery Series) by Janice Peacock

Val. ‘An animal companion.’”
    “ I don’t get it.” Val gave me a squinty, puzzled look. “Well, you know, Gumdrop always has a place to stay at my house, honey. Ever since Ken moved out, it’s been lonely over here.”
    “ We may need to relocate Gumdrop for a couple of days,” I agreed. “I’m not sure if it will work any other way. Sort of uncool she didn’t tell me ahead of time.” I was feeling grumpier by the minute. “I’ll bring him over if it looks like we’re headed for disaster.”
    “ Okay, my little human companion,” said Val, taking a sip of coffee and patting me on the head. “I do not want to be around for Stanley and Gumdrop’s meet-and-greet. See you around seven so we can go to the wild party!”
    “ Val, we are going to the opening reception of an exhibition at a bead shop. The owner said anyone who wanted could stay late and have a party afterward. But, I don’t think it will be ‘wild’—more like ‘mild.’”
    “ There will be guys there, right?” Val asked . Val acted more like she was nineteen, rather than thirty-nin e, her real age, though she’d never admit it. The only reason I was sure how old she was, was that I peeked at her driver’s license. I wanted to prove to myself she wasn’t “in her early thirties,” which is what she told almost everyone she’d ever met, at least for the couple of years I’d known her.
    “Val, what about ‘bead show’ and ‘bead shop’ do you not understand? Mostly it’s going to be women—bead ladies like me. Over-forty—like you.”
    “I’m not forty yet, ” she huffed, as if I had insulted her greatly.
    “ You might find that there are a couple of guys there, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.”
    Poor Val had been through dozens of boyfriends, the last one—Ken, as cute as Barbie’s plastic boyfriend—having moved out just weeks ago. Val had discovered the pockets of his jeans filled with cocktail napkins with phone numbers and lipstick smudges on them. When she confronted him with the wad of paper evidence, he shrugged, got his duffle bag, and was out the front door in less than thirty minutes. Ken hadn’t been there long, so he didn’t have much to take with him when he left.
    Too bad Val couldn’t look at what was on the inside of someone, and not just the packaging. She might actually find someone great if she did. I tried to tell her this over and over, but she never seemed to hear me.
    Marta came bustling up the walkway toward me —being dragged by a basset hound, would be more accurate. Stanley’s low-slung white-and-brown body burst past me. His paws skittered across the entryway tile as Marta dropped her bags in the hall and tried to control her dog.
    “ Oh my gosh! Oh my! Stanley! Off! Off!” shouted Marta. “Sit! Stay!”
    Amazingly, Stanley obeyed. It was hard to imagine having a pet that actually did what you told him to do. Gumdrop didn’t have this skill. In fact, his skill was to do the exact opposite of what I wanted him to do. And, unfortunately, reverse psychology didn’t seem to work on him.
    “ Let me show you where your room is,” I said, trying to be as hospitable as possible, but feeling like telling her I’d contracted a terrible contagious disease and that she simply couldn’t stay here. But, it seemed too late to be making excuses.
    I tried to muster as much enthusiasm as possible. “Here’s the guest room. The bathroom is down the hall right before you get to the studio at the back.” I was glad the office-cum-guest room was in good shape, and not too messy. Since I’d had my laptop set up in there, I’d been trying to keep the space from getting too chaotic. I’d squeezed a nice wrought-iron daybed along one wall. It was a big splurge because I’d actually paid for this piece of furniture, along with a desk, at a local garage sale.
    Stanley went wild , smelling everything in sight. He snuffled at the Oriental rug, and the tags on his collar jingled