When the Devil Wants In

by Cate Ashwood

  “Just tryin’ to be thoughtful’s all. No need to be a dick about it,” Cathy said.

  “Jay’s still out, so someone’s gotta step up,” Andy replied.

  Despite the comment about Jay, Matt hadn’t encountered anyone at the station he’d classify as a dick. He was relieved and a little surprised that he hadn’t needed to prove himself or play any games with some alpha male looking to bully him.

  “Where are Jay and Carl?” Matt looked at the clock. “They should’ve been back by now. It’s almost lunch.”

  “Serving a warrant to Mrs. Beaudoin. Illegal moonshine.” Andy made the statement like Matt should have known exactly what Mrs. Beaudoin’s indiscretions were after being in town for less than a month.

  Before he could ask, the captain sauntered into the room, sipping from a large plastic cup, a sour look on his face.

  “You drinkin’ poison?” Cathy asked.

  “Wife’s makin’ me drink these damn smoothies. They taste like something my dog threw up, but they’re supposed to lower my cholesterol. Not sure I want it lowered if this is what I’m livin’ off the rest of my life.”

  Matt nodded and tried not to laugh. “I’ve had my share of green smoothies.”

  “By choice?” He was incredulous.

  Matt shrugged. “They’re pretty popular in San Francisco.”

  “California. Right,” Captain said.

  “They’re less awful if you throw some pineapple in there. Sweetens it up a bit.” Matt shut his mouth, confident his new boss wouldn’t find additional facts about pineapple’s sweetening properties all that useful.

  “I’ll let Marie know. Anything to make this swill less foul.”

  Just then there was a commotion coming from the front of the precinct. A moment later, Jay and Carl emerged from the hallway, a woman shuffling between them. She was eighty-five if she was a day and had one wrist handcuffed to her walker.

  “This is a load of crap and you know it, all y’all,” she protested, her heavily wrinkled mouth downturned in anger.

  Captain sighed. “Mrs. Beaudoin, calm down. You know the law. You cannot distill your own liquor without a license in the state of Georgia.”

  “I ain’t hurtin’ nobody, and Stuart Frederick Russel, if you don’t let me go right this second, I’m gonna have a talk with your momma.”

  Captain sighed, sounding very tired. “Mrs. Beaudoin, my momma’s been gone for six years now, and even if she wasn’t, she’d tell you the same as me. You cannot make your own whiskey in your shed.”

  “I hope you’re happy. The community is so much safer now that you’ve got yourselves a hardened criminal behind bars. You oughtta be ashamed of yourselves. Picking on a poor, sickly old woman.”

  Captain didn’t respond, just nodded to Jay and Carl, who flanked Mrs. Beaudoin and her walker. Jay touched her arm, prompting her forward. Surprisingly, she went without further protest.

  It took a few minutes, but she crossed the bull pen and went out through the door to the cells. Jay stayed behind.

  “Fifth arrest in as many months,” he said, leaning on the desk. “I think she likes us comin’ to get her. She likes her liquor more, but she knows we’re gonna seize her stuff. She does it anyway.”

  “She wouldn’ta bothered if she knew it was you comin’ to get her,” Andy countered. “Waste of time for her if she’s not gonna be rewarded with a front row view to all of this.” He puffed out his chest and smoothed his hands down the front of his uniform.

  “You’re full of shit, Manning,” Jay protested. “You look like the missing fucking link in blue polyester.”

  “You two assholes realize you’re fighting over a woman old enough to have birthed your grandparents, right?” Matt interjected.

  Andy burst out laughing.

  Jay scowled. “Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  “Which one of you wants to call her grandson to let him know she’s here?” Captain tossed his half-empty cup into the trash. It landed with a loud bang, and green sludge splattered against the wall above it. “Shit. Didn’t think that one through,” he muttered.

  “I’ll call,” Jay said. “Anyone got the number?”

  “You haven’t got it memorized?” Captain asked as he wiped smoothie off the walls.

  “Surprised he’s not already down here,” Andy said.

  “She’s been arrested that many times and it’s never deterred her?” Matt asked.

  “Nope. Mrs. Beaudoin’s been making moonshine in her shed for sixty years. Even if we threw her in jail for longer’n the few hours we’re keepin’ her today, she’d just do it all over again when we let her out.”

  “So why bother arresting her?”

  Andy shrugged. “Just what we do. Marcus from the Elite orders in a pressure cooker for her every time we seize her stills, then he gives us a call to let us know. The excuses why she needs so many keep piling up. The first few were broken, then one exploded, she sent two off to her grandkids in Tuscaloosa…. Everyone knows what she uses ’em for, so we get the call from Marcus, we give her a day or two, then go in and take ’em again.”

  “You’d think she’d learn to buy them from someone else. At least try to hide it.” Matt thought it sounded like a waste of time, but what did he know? Clearly things around here functioned differently than he was used to. Back home, someone breaking the law would be arrested and tried, no matter what their age. It seemed as though there was a bit more leniency in the interpretation of the law in Magnolia Ridge, and although Matt believed in the justice system, he agreed sometimes clemency was deserved.

  Andy snorted a laugh. “Yeah, you’d think.”

  He was slowly getting into the swing of things. Santiago had been right. It’d been a bit of a shock when he’d first started, trying to figure out the dynamics of everyone, but although they spoke a hell of a lot slower, and there were a lot fewer of them, the police officers on the MRPD had a lot in common with the guys back in San Francisco.

  Once Mrs. Beaudoin had been booked, the afternoon was decidedly less exciting. The radios were quiet, and half the crew was at the precinct, counting down the hours until shift change. A couple of the guys were on patrol, but there was only so much patrolling that needed to be done in Magnolia Ridge.

  Matt leaned against Andy’s desk. “Everyone going to Donny’s after shift?”

  The last two Thursdays, all the guys had met up at the bar and grill on the corner across from the station after work for a couple of beers before going home. Andy had extended the invite both weeks, but Matt was starting to feel like he fit in well enough to invite himself along.

  “Think so. You comin’?”

  “You’d better not skip out,” Carl warned. “You still owe me one more beer after I whooped your ass at pool last week.”

  “You’re a dick, Carl.”

  Carl looked genuinely confused. “How am I a dick?”

  “Everyone in town knows your momma used to take you to work with her when you were a kid. You learned to crawl underneath that pool table. That gives you an unfair advantage. Fleecin’ the new guy should be against the rules. He didn’t know any better.”

  “Nothin’ unfair about it. I can’t help it if I got a natural talent for playin’ pool.”

  “Andy’s right, Carl,” Jay said. “You are a dick.”

  “Least I’m not a fag,” Carl countered.

  It wasn’t the first time that word had been tossed around the station. Hell, it wasn’t the first time one of them had called the other one a fag that day. It was a commonplace occurrence and something Matt had expected when he’d moved here. It was also one of the reasons he kept his mouth shut about his sexuality. Still getting a feel for the people in Magnolia Ridge and where their levels of tolerance lay, he wasn’t willing to out himself yet.

  Being back in the closet—a place he hadn’t ever really been in the first place—was more difficult than he thought it would be. More than once he’d almost slipped up, shooting the shit with Andy and talki
ng about his past. He’d managed to catch himself, but each time his heart had hammered thinking about being discovered.

  There would come a time when he would be comfortable enough in this place to let the truth out. He couldn’t lie about who he was forever, but today was not that day. So he tried his best to ignore the guys when they made gay jokes, and let the more offensive shit roll off his back. For now, he redirected the conversation back to pool. “He was right. He schooled me and I do owe him a beer.”

  Carl clapped him on the shoulder, Jay’s questionable sexuality forgotten. “See? This is an honorable man.”

  Andy threw his head back and laughed. “Honorable man. I saw that man drop his bagel on the floor this morning, pick it up, and eat it anyway.”

  “The five-second rule has nothing to do with honor,” Matt said.

  Andy rolled his eyes and pretended to ignore them both, but Matt knew he was still listening to their banter. The conversation was stupid and meaningless, but it was obvious there was more to it than that. Carl had sided with him, and that meant everything. He’d worried that getting anyone to warm up to an outsider would be next to impossible in a small town like Magnolia Ridge, but almost from the first day he’d started, the guys had welcomed him into their club like he’d always been one of them.

  Andy wasn’t Santiago, and Matt didn’t know if they’d ever becomes as close as he’d been with his old partner, but almost without trying, these guys had become his brothers in blue.

  Chapter Five

  “GONNA RAIN,” John said with a glance at the fat, dark clouds.

  Chloe hopped out of his truck and came around to the front. “Yeah, I know. My phone told me so.”

  John grinned at her. “It’s more fun to guess than to have a notice pop up on a screen.”

  “If you say so,” she said, hooking her arm through his as they walked to the corner of Old Main Street and Cherry Blossom Lane. They were in the older part of town, the scrap that still felt like it had twenty—or, hell, probably fifty—years ago, with the brick sidewalks and cobblestone streets. From a simpler time, back before the Super Walmart and the movie theater sprang up. Back before the nicer houses on the other end of the tracks and talk of a shopping mall. Back when Magnolia Ridge was just a speck on the map in the middle of the county.

  Chloe had just gotten off work, so her skirt was only an inch above her knees and her shoes only had a two-inch heel on them. She looked good, because she always looked good, but she didn’t look like herself when she was in her work clothes. And, of course, John felt out of place and wrong striding along next to her. He was still in his work clothes too. Dusty boots, jeans with holes in the knees, a bright orange T-shirt that he hadn’t bothered to change out of. He knew he was covered in red dirt and sweat and probably smelled worse than a hog. Digging ditches and laying down tar all day under the hot Georgia sun wasn’t exactly white-collar work.

  “You wanna grab a bite to eat before we head home?” Chloe asked from his side.

  “Could do,” he said, turning down the street as soon as they’d cleared the crosswalk. “I just gotta get to Mason’s before he closes up for the night.” He had been meaning to stop by the hardware store all week but had missed it by five minutes every time.

  When they got to the shop now—ten minutes until closing—John heaved a sigh as he read the sign posted on the front door. “Goddamn it,” he said. “What’s the point in having store hours if you’re gonna take off an hour early to go fishing?”

  “What’s the point in knowing Mason since you were two if you don’t just call him up and ask him to stay open an extra few minutes for you tomorrow?”

  That hadn’t occurred to John. “Yeah, I guess I’ll have to do that if I wanna get my screen door fixed.”

  “See? Now you can buy me dinner.”

  John glanced down at her, grinning. “Why is it I’m always the one buying you dinner? You make more than I do.”

  “It’s my fee for being your beard.” When John looked at her with his usual why-do-you-say-things-like-that-in-public expression, she said, “Please, you didn’t even know what that meant until I told you, jackass.” She turned to drag him down to the diner at the other end of the block. “You really think anyone else in this town would understand?” She had, thankfully, dropped her voice to a near whisper. To passersby, they probably looked like lovers making plans for the weekend, plans for their future.

  “Hey, beautiful!”

  John jerked his head around at the shout from the street. Chloe got catcalls all the time, but not usually on a sleepy Wednesday evening on Main Street. For some reason, the guys who acted like that usually did it in packs, and almost never when their mothers might hear about it.

  The squad car rolled to a stop at the curb, right in front of a fire hydrant, but that wasn’t too surprising. The cops in Magnolia Ridge had a friendly rivalry with the fire department. Nothing that would get anyone hurt—unless you counted a few drunken fistfights on rare occasion—but they did enjoy antagonizing each other when there wasn’t anything better to do.

  Chloe pulled away from John, practically bouncing. “Is that you, Andy?”

  The door on the squad car opened and Andy stepped out. “It’s been so long you don’t even recognize me?” Andy asked, laughing as he pulled Chloe into a hug. “I’m hurt.”

  Andy and Chloe’s brother had been best friends all through school. Hell, all their lives, really. John was too many years younger than them to have run in the same circle, but he knew them from the football games, the state championship they’d won together, and he’d known Billy through Chloe. They’d even gone to a few of the same parties as John had gotten older. Andy was good people, and he’d always treated Chloe like his little sister.

  “You need to come by more often, then,” Chloe said as she pulled back, still smiling at Andy. She looked happy to see him—probably was happy to see him—but John caught the pain in her eyes too. The same pain that always haunted her when someone mentioned her brother or when she thought of him for no reason at all. Everyone had told her it would get easier with time, that the grief wouldn’t go away, but it would get lighter, easier to bear. John thought that wasn’t entirely true. He didn’t think her sorrow, her missing him, got lighter. No, Chloe just got stronger under the weight of it.

  “Hey, you’re the one who moved across town to live in one of them plastic condos,” Andy said, finally letting her go.

  Chloe rolled her eyes. John knew why she’d moved. She’d needed a little space for herself, a place where new people were moving in, people who hadn’t known her all her life. Somewhere close enough to see her folks every day, but far enough away to hide if she needed to.

  “You should come by Momma and Daddy’s for Sunday supper,” she said, her voice genuine. “I know they’d love to see you. You could bring Claire and give Momma a chance to see Will.”

  John had forgotten that Andy had named his first son after Chloe’s brother. They were kind enough to use a different nickname, one that wouldn’t make Chloe’s mother cry every time she said it.

  She looked at John and added, “I’m trying to find people who’ll let her babysit so she’ll get off my case about grandbabies.” She nudged him in the ribs, all for show, all so John could hide inside her lies.

  Well, the grandkid bit wasn’t a lie. Both of their parents had been giving some less-than-gentle prods about getting married and handing over their offspring. In the eyes of their families, John and Chloe had been together over eight years. As his granddaddy would’ve said, it was time to shit or get off the pot.

  John wrapped his arm around Chloe’s waist and said, “You should probably say yes the next time I ask you to marry me, then.”

  The way Chloe could roll with whatever John threw at her always amazed him. “You should probably ask me when you’ve got a ring in your pocket, then, John Turner.” She deserved a goddamn Academy Award for her acting skills.

  Andy laughed and said, “I’m glad to
see you two are still the same.” He reached out to shake John’s hand. “Whatcha been up to, John?”

  “Workin’,” John said with a shrug. “Been fixin’ up my house in my downtime, mostly.”

  “Adding on or just fixing it up to sell it?”

  “Neither, I don’t reckon. It’s a nice little house, good enough for us—once I buy a ring, I guess.”

  Chloe snorted a laugh. “I love your family, John, but I’m not living next door to my future mother-in-law.”

  John looked at Andy again. “Fixin’ it up to sell it, I suppose.”

  Andy nodded, another chuckle slipping out. “That’s okay, Claire had the same rule when we got hitched. She wanted a minimum of five miles between us and my folks.”

  “See?” Chloe said, teasing. “She’s a smart girl.” Andy only nodded in response, and Chloe asked, “What’re you up to today, then?” She leaned around Andy, obviously trying to see who was driving.

  “We’re on second shift, about to take our dinner break,” Andy said before turning back to the squad car. He hit the side of the door, “Hey, Kinsley, get your ass out here so I can introduce you.”

  The name didn’t sound familiar, but as Magnolia Ridge had been growing over the last few years, that was par for the course. From Main Street to the west side of the town, John could probably name everyone on sight, but to the north and the east, there were too many people, too many transplants moving in from every which way.

  The driver’s door swung open slowly, and it took another long moment for Andy’s partner to get out. John could only see the broad shoulders swathed in the dark blue uniform, the back of his head at first, but the familiarity niggled at John, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Then Matt turned around—the guy John had spent the better part of a week trying to put out of his mind.

  “This here is my new partner, Matt Kinsley,” Andy said as Matt stepped around the front of the car. “Kinsley, this is John Turner—you already met his mother, Miss Ilene.” Andy looked at John and added, “She dropped off a pile of cornbread for us down at the station yesterday.”