License to Dill by Mary Ellen Hughes

for your accidental fall, then come next door and talk to me about suing. One-stop shopping.” Scott laughed heartily.
    â€œOh, I wouldn’t count on much business of that kind,” Aunt Judy said, though Piper saw Uncle Frank’s lip curl upward just a bit at the comment.
    â€œJust joking,” Scott assured her. “I don’t intend to be an ambulance chaser. Though in a town this size, I know I’ll need to be open to handling a broad range of cases. No specializing.”
    The crowd roared, and everyone’s attention snapped forward. Cloverdale had blocked a Bianconeri attempt at a goal.
    â€œThat number twelve on the Italian team is pretty good,” Megan said. She then grinned. “But our goalie is better.”
    â€œNumber twelve,” Scott said. “That’s Frederico, the guy I was talking to at the hotel.”
    Piper searched the field for number twelve to see if she would recognize him as the player she’d seen chatting with Miranda Standley.
    Megan saved her the trouble, saying, “Frederico! That’s who was with Miranda this afternoon. I ran into them near the Italian ice stand in the park. She said she was showing him the town.” Megan clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oops, I forgot. She asked me not to say anything. She didn’t want that to get back to her dad.”
    â€œWhy on earth not?” Aunt Judy asked. “What could be more innocent or thoughtful than spending a little time in the afternoon with a visitor, especially when the poor young man is so far from home?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Megan admitted. “But she seemed to think her dad wouldn’t like it. Maybe because he’s on the rival team?”
    â€œThat seems rather extreme,” Scott said, but Piper thought she could imagine Gerald Standley’s feelings, which might stem from his experience with Raffaele Conti. Unfair, of course, to Frederico. She wondered how much Miranda knew of her father’s old grievance.
    Thinking about Raffaele Conti, Piper scanned the field, looking for him. With no television crew to pull him away that night, she quickly spotted him pacing behind the Bianconeri players’ bench. As she watched, he went up to the team’s coach and appeared to argue with him. Piper figured a team manager had authority over the coach but wondered if that included overriding strategy during a game, since that’s what Conti seemed to be attempting as he gestured toward the field. The coach was shaking his head and his body language telegraphed anger. Eventually he walked away from Conti, still shaking his head.
    Will noticed Piper watching the two and leaned closer. “That Conti fellow,” he said, “has been stirring up more than one pot since he got here.”
    â€œYou mean from his comments on the radio this morning?”
    â€œThat, yes, but the interview also clued in a few of his old classmates who hadn’t been aware that Raffaele Conti was in town.
Female
classmates. They apparently were fairly swooning over him in the hotel lobby this afternoon. You’d think Elvis had returned, from what I was told.”
    When Piper grinned at the image, Will added, “That might not have been a big deal if Conti handled it better, but he ate it up and flirted right back pretty outrageously. This didn’t go down well with one or two of the husbands, as you can guess.”
    Piper was about to ask which husbands in particular when an open box of candy with Scott’s hand on it was suddenly wriggled between her and Will. “Piper,” he said, “look what I got! I stumbled upon an amazing candy shop today when Stan Yeager and I were out office shopping and remembered how much you liked peanut butter meltaways. So I ran in and picked up a box. Help yourself.”
    Piper saw that the box came from Charlotte’s Chocolates and Confections, a shop Piper hadn’t yet visited because of its