Poisoned Pin: A Cozy Mystery (Brenna Battle Book 2) by Laney Monday Read Free Book Online Page B

yet, and I wanted to know how many cups I should brew—the usual six for me or eight for the two of us.
    I opened the door from the stairwell to the back of the dojo, and I stopped mid stride. The room was filled with voices. About twenty kids, mostly girls with their mothers, turned toward me. They looked different without the tutus and the gelled up-dos and tiaras they’d worn when I saw them last, at the recital and going away party Miss Ruth had invited us to on our first day in town. But I recognized them as her ballerinas. Her girls. The Little Swans I’d vowed to turn into fighters. Miss Ruth had come through! And I was standing with my mouth hanging open and a towel wrapped around my head! Looking totally rumpled and completely uncaffeinated.
    Blythe, standing by her desk with a handful of pens and a stack of papers, displayed a look of absolute horror. It took her about a nanosecond to mask it with a smile.
    Some of the kids giggled and whispered to each other. One of them, a boy about six years old, took the direct approach: “Who are you ? Why do you have a towel on your head?”
    I couldn’t bring myself to answer the “Who are you?” question. I guess I hoped maybe if I didn’t say my name, he’d forget he’d ever seen me. They’d all forget about the strange lady with the towel head. They’d never connect the lady who’d flung herself, half blind, into their former dance studio like a bat out of her cave with—
    “Brenna Battle, the Olympian!” One little girl piped up. She nudged the boy who’d asked who I was. “Don’t you remember? From the party.”
    I waved at the line of kids. “I’ll be right back to help you all. Just—needed an emergency shower, you know.” Of course they didn’t know. I didn’t even know. What the heck was an emergency shower? Oh, great. I’d just made it sound like I’d done something to get myself unbearably filthy. In the middle of the morning!
    A very small girl bounced up and down, her puff-ball-esque brown pig tails shaking like little pompoms. I recognized her, but not from the dance studio. “Mommy, that’s the lady from the park! The lady who needed a fairy godmother. See? I told you she wasn’t a crazy bad lady like Anthony said!”
    Oh. No. My little glitter-giver.
    What could I say? I just smiled. A big, cheesy smile. I’m sure I turned neon pink. I spun around and disappeared back into the stairwell as quickly as I could without running. This is not a disaster, I told myself. This is a good thing. There are twenty kids down there, trying to sign up for judo. All at once. And Blythe was all by herself. Crud! I tossed the towel on the stairs, twisted my wet hair up, secured it with the hair tie I kept knotted onto the belt loop of my jeans, and plunged back into the dojo, ready for action. Okay, ready for paperwork.
    Soon I had my own stack of information packets, sign-up forms, and waivers, and I’d managed to persuade half the line to move over to my desk. I did my best to prove to them that I was completely sane and capable. You know, not the kind of lady who screams random things in the park or who can’t make it out of bed and into her place of business at a reasonable hour. I chatted and smiled, and after the first few minutes my nerves settled and my embarrassment faded, and I really meant it.
    Once the last family had been taken care of, Blythe and I knelt next to the open bins of judo gis. We’d opened up a wholesale account and ordered a bunch of the common kids’ sizes before we opened the dojo. After we’d signed up our new Battlers, we’d sized them up and sent them home with brand new uniforms they were to wear to class tonight. We folded rejected sizes neatly and slipped them back into their clear plastic bags, and recorded how many of which size remained.
    It’s pretty hard to do much more than learn how to fall in judo without a gi. Regular clothes tend to get ripped, pulled off—though some people even manage to rip off