“Okay, no recording anything until we finish the first part of this,” Chucky stated. He glanced out at Vickie again, who was now checking her watch.
Logan nodded since that was the deal. Chucky and he would work out blackmail payments from everyone involved, and then in turn Chucky would spill the dirt on Vickie.
“You made a smart choice dealing with me instead of that crazy she-bitch Vickie,” Chucky said as Logan sat across from him.
“Now you empty your pockets,” Logan insisted.
That was part of the deal, too, but in hindsight he wished he hadn’t. There was no reason for Chucky to record this, especially the parts where he was going to say how much he demanded and the names of the people he’d be demanding it from. But Logan wanted to make it look as if he was being thorough.
He should have known, though, that abnormal people might have abnormal pocket contents.
A wallet. Keys. Phone. Handkerchief—well used. Two malted milk balls—unwrapped. A breath mint—unwrapped. Turtle decal stickers. Two wads of what appeared to be lint. Or perhaps fungus. A stick of gum also seemingly coated with fungus/lint.
Chucky checked the time on his phone—6:05. “We don’t talk until Vickie’s given up on you and leaves,” Chucky insisted.
Since that was part of the deal, too, they just waited. Vickie paced while she waited, and she was clearly on edge, her gaze darting to her phone and then all around. A couple of seconds later, she disappeared into the grocery store.
“Why’s she going in there?” Chucky asked.
“Who knows? Now that she knows I’m not going to show, she might be buying rat poison or something.”
Chucky made a sound of suspicion. “Don’t think you can cook up something here with me and then head over there and do more cooking up with her.”
“Huh?” That was the best Logan could do with the info Chucky had just given him.
“I don’t want you double-crossing me by meeting her after you meet with me. That’s why I’ll be following you when you leave here, and I’ll keep right on following you until I got my money.”
Logan simply nodded, though he was slightly impressed that Chucky had thought to take such measures.
Chucky popped the breath mint in his mouth. “All right, now let’s get down to business. I want twenty-five thousand each from Delbert and you. Another twenty-five from Helene. Another twenty-five from Reese and ten from Jimena. Now, I’m figuring Reese and Jimena haven’t got that kind of money so you’ll have to pony up for them.” He grinned, revealing a piece of lint on his teeth, probably from the breath mint.
Logan rubbed his forehead and appeared to be distressed about that amount. One hundred and ten grand. It was a lot of money, but Logan was betting it wouldn’t buy much more than some sand itself on a Hawaiian beach. Apparently, Chucky’s big ideas weren’t so big, after all, but Logan wasn’t going to point that out to him.
“And how did you want the payment?” Logan asked.
Chucky slid the stick of gum closer to Logan, and that’s when he saw the email address written there. “For my PayPal account. Make sure y’all send it as a gift so I don’t have to pay fees.”
In addition to teeny ideas, Chucky was also an idiot since the account could be traced. Of course, Chucky was counting on them never turning any of this over to the authorities or he would release all the crap he was holding over their heads.
“The money’s gotta be in my account no later than 8:00 p.m.,” Chucky added.
Again, Logan pretended that would be a problem. It wasn’t. Those kinds of payments could be made in under a minute.
“Now, to your side of the deal.” Logan turned the tape recorder. “Tell me everything I’ll need to have Vickie arrested and put behind bars for a long, long time.”
Chucky smiled. A second piece of lint was now on his teeth. He started talking. And he talked and talked and talked. When he was done, Logan motioned toward the kitchen where Deputy Davy was waiting.
Davy didn’t waste a second hurrying out to use his handcuffs on a gob-smacked Chucky.
* * *
VICKIE COULD ALMOST feel that money in her hands, but she didn’t like this little twist that Logan had added to their arrangement. For one thing, he was late, and that was going to cost him. It would continue to cost him for every minute he kept her waiting.
The second thing she didn’t like about this was the meeting place. What the hell was a shitake mushroom, and why would Logan tell her to meet him there? Maybe because that’s where he’d planted some kind of bug. Well, this wasn’t her first rodeo, and they wouldn’t be standing anywhere near the shitake when he arrived.
She meandered her way through the vegetable row and found something that wasn’t spelled at all like it sounded. Still, this had to be it. There were no other mushrooms with a name that came close.
Vickie waited some more, glanced around to make sure Logan hadn’t hired a stock boy or something to use some long-range recording device. But the only person who appeared to be in the entire store was a clerk and a teenager mopping up a spill in the milk aisle.
6:16.
Yeah, being late was going to cost him.
She pulled out her phone, ready to call Logan and blast him a new one, but then she finally spotted the devil himself. Too bad that he hadn’t shown any interest in her because she wouldn’t have minded a tumble in his hay.
“Give me your phone,” she insisted as he approached her. “And anything else you could use to record this.”
He obliged and gave her a small tape recorder. He also showed her the contents of his pockets—keys, a wallet and a pocketknife. That wallet, or rather his bank account, was going to be a whole lot lighter before this was over.
“I’ll keep this simple,” she said, and Vickie handed him the routing numbers for an offshore bank account. “I don’t care how you, Delbert, Helene, Jimena and my daughter divvy it all up, but in the next twenty minutes I want five hundred thousand dollars added to that account. In exchange I’ll give you the password for the storage cloud where I’m keeping all the pictures, reports and such.”
“Does that include the dirt on Chucky?” he asked.
“No. As soon as you agree to the money, you’ll hear all you need to arrest Chucky.”
Shit, she would have given him that for free. Anything to make Chucky fry, but it was a nice touch to tie it to their business deal. Except she had her own twist to add to the deal. One that these marks wouldn’t know about until, well, until she ran out of money and needed more. Yes, she’d give him the copies of stuff she had in the storage cloud.
But there were three clouds.
Good thing she’d learned all about computers during her last stint in jail.
“So, do we have a deal?” Vickie asked.
Logan nodded.
That was a half-million-dollar kind of nod. So, Vickie decided to help him out a little. She turned on the recorder for Logan and started telling him all the dirty little secrets that she knew about Chucky.
When she was done, Vickie heard the footsteps and saw the chief of police making his way toward her.
“Vickie Stephenson,” he said. “You’re under arrest.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Vickie howled.
Logan smiled. “Double-crossing you.” He handed the recorder to the cop. “Thanks, Luke,” he told him.
“Anytime, Lucky,” the cop answered, and he hauled Vickie away.
* * *
REESE HAD NO idea how the rest of the plan was going, but she felt as if she were juggling cats. Everyone was talking at once, and the poor newspaper editor, Marlene Holland, was trying her best to write everything down.
Operation Dirt Sweep was in full swing.
For Marlene, it had to be like Christmas, her bi
rthday and Fourth of July all rolled into one. She’d have enough stories for the newspaper to last for weeks. Maybe months.
“Everybody get quiet for a second,” Marlene finally shouted. Surprisingly, everybody did. “All right, now let’s do this alphabetically so I’ll make sure to get it all down.” She looked at Cassie. “That means you go first.”
Cassie pushed her way through the others to get to Marlene’s desk. The editor’s office was the size of a broom closet so it took some doing.
“I’m two months pregnant,” Cassie announced. “So yes, that means I got pregnant before getting married and before Lucky and I got custody of our girls.”
All in all, it wasn’t big news, but it was something Cassie probably would have preferred to spill at a family gathering rather than to the town’s biggest blabbermouth. Still, it needed to be said so that it couldn’t be used as gossip fodder against her.
Claire was up next, and Riley was right by her side. “I’m pregnant, too, and I was trying to keep it a secret so I wouldn’t steal Cassie and Lucky’s thunder what with their wedding.”
Again, not a big revelation, but judging from the dog-with-a-bone look Marlene gave her, it was still news that Marlene could use.
“Delbert?” Marlene called him up.
Unlike Cassie and Claire, he didn’t charge forward. He stayed in the corner. “I slept with her mother.” He flung a finger at Reese. “Vickie.” Said like venom. “And now she’s blackmailing me.”
Surprisingly, Delbert had managed to get through that with only mumbled profanity, but no matter how he went with this, it was going to cost him. This way, he would just pay money to his wife in a divorce settlement rather than paying it to Vickie as hush money. Either way would eventually bleed him dry, but Delbert had been the one to cheat, and he wasn’t exactly blameless in this.
Reese motioned for him to finish up. It wasn’t called Operation Dirt Sweep for nothing.
“I, uh, told Logan I couldn’t do business with him,” Delbert went on, fessing up to Marlene, “but that’s because Vickie told me to say that. I’ll keep doing business with Logan if he’ll let me, and I’ll tell everybody to do the same.”
Reese wasn’t sure how much clout Delbert would have with those friends after this. Then again, maybe the publicity would actually help.
Helene was up next, and this was where Reese held her breath. Unlike Cassie and Claire, whose secrets would have soon “shown,” Helene could have kept hers buried if she’d wanted to keep being blackmailed.
“There are sex pictures of me with two different men,” Helene finally said after a long silence. “Greg and another man who worked for Logan.”
“Elrond, my ex,” Jimena piped up.
Helene gave her a sharp look. “He was only your ex after he was my ex.”
It was a valid point, and Jimena shrugged, nodded.
“I also located a man, Chucky,” Helene went on, “and told him that Reese was here in town. And I did that with the hopes that he’d pressure her into leaving. I also tried to bribe her to leave. I’m really sorry about that.”
Reese hadn’t expected the woman to confess that last part since only Helene and Reese knew about it, but maybe Helene had thought it would come back later to bite her in her perfectly shaped butt.
“One final thing,” Helene went on, “I paid off Elrond because he was blackmailing me with those sex pictures.”
Marlene looked up from her writing. “Is that everything?” she asked when Helene hushed. “Nothing about Logan and you maybe having some ex-sex on the side?”
“No. Logan’s choice, not mine. Trust me, I’ve thrown myself at him enough times, and he’s turned me down. That’s why I’m leaving town and finding some new adventures.”
Reese and she actually shared a smile. She wanted to tell Helene that she was proud of her for doing this, but the words weren’t necessary. Helene appeared to be proud of herself.
Jimena went closer to the desk when it was her alphabetical turn. “I blackmailed Elrond because of his clown sex fetish so I could pay off Chucky so he’d leave Reese alone. Do you want to hear about the other men I’ve had sex with while I’ve been in town?”
“Of course,” Marlene said.
“Even if one of them is someone close to you? As in very close?” Jimena’s gaze lingered on Marlene’s wedding band.
“No, what you already gave me is fine.” Though Marlene did narrow her eyes at Jimena.
Reese knew Jimena hadn’t slept with Marlene’s husband, Roy. Roy was in his sixties, chewed tobacco and was missing several teeth. Still, it had given the town’s biggest gossip a small dose of her own medicine.
It was finally Reese’s turn, and she was dreading it. No way could she back down when the others had been so brave, but she suddenly wished Logan was there with her.
And he was.
At that exact moment Logan came through the door, Lucky behind him, and even though there was no room for them, they made room. Lucky went to Cassie, pulling her into his arms, and Logan went to Reese.
“How’d it go?” Reese asked, afraid of the answer.
He gave her a thumbs-up and a kiss. Both were exactly what she needed.
“Is it finished?” Delbert asked. “Did you get Vickie and Chucky?”
Helene asked a variation on the same question except she added, “Are they rotting in jail?”
Logan and Lucky nodded.
“I got Vickie to rat out Chucky,” Lucky continued, “and Logan got Chucky to rat out Vickie. Both have been arrested and will face multiple charges.”
That caused some whoops of joy and some hugs throughout the room. Sometimes, like now, having an identical twin brother came in handy. But Logan and she weren’t out of the stew pot just yet.
Reese handed the PI’s report to Marlene. “I have a police record, and the details are all in there.”
Marlene didn’t exactly start drooling, but it was close.
“What Reese’s not saying is that the charges were trumped up,” Logan explained. “Also, she wasn’t responsible for Spenser O’Malley’s death. He was an abusive dick who got hit by a bus. It was an accident and not her fault.”
Reese felt it again. The L-word. Other than Jimena, people didn’t usually stick up for her, and here Logan was doing it even though it could cost him plenty.
But his next admission would cost him even more.
That’s why Reese knew she wanted to stick up for him. “My mother tried to blackmail Logan by saying she’d have you print gossip about his parents’ death. Gossip and rumors,” Reese emphasized.
Somehow, Claire, Cassie, Lucky and Riley all worked their way to the desk and joined Reese and Logan in hovering over Marlene.
“I’m sure everyone here wishes they could have saved the McCords,” Reese added. “But since it was an accident, no one had control over that. What happened happened, and it’s certainly nothing to be gossiped about.”
“Understand?” Jimena added.
Despite barely having her face squeezed between three lethal-looking cowboys and the three determined women with them, Jimena’s expression was somehow more fierce than all of theirs combined.
Jimena mumbled something about cat shit in coffee.
And Marlene nodded. “Understood.” She glanced down at the all the notes she’d made. “Plus, I have enough here to last me until I retire.” She paused. “Why exactly did you tell me all these things?”
“So that Chucky and Vickie can never use any of this to blackmail us,” Logan answered, and one by one, they all gave a confirming nod.
The cons had been conned, and when the McCords, Delbert, Jimena, Helene and she all walked out of the newspaper office, they’d be doing it with something they hadn’t had when they came in.
A clean dirty slate.
LOGAN WASN’T SURE Reese would show. Even though Chucky and Vickie were in jail, the whole town of Spring Hill would soon be talking about the tell-all gossip. That could send Reese running for the hills, but Logan was hoping it would send her running for him.
A lofty wish.
He sipped his Glenlivet, not at the “make me forget this shit” pace he’d had the last time he was in the Purple Cactus hotel bar. Tonight, there was nothing he wanted to forget and plenty that he wanted to remember. His family had stood by him and Reese, and while they had personal motives for what they’d done, Helene and Delbert had come through, too.
His phone dinged, and he saw the new text from Lucky. Anything yet?
As Logan had done with Riley’s, Claire’s, Della’s and Jimena’s texts, he answered no. He’d told them all what his plans were for the night. In hindsight, that had been a mistake, since they were collectively texting at a pace greater than that of a teenager. But as corny as it sounded, Logan had wanted their approval.
And he’d gotten it.
Well, he’d gotten it from everyone but Jimena, but Logan was hoping she’d come around if and when Reese came around. And if and when he could put his family’s approval to good use.
Logan frowned.
There were a lot of ifs and whens in all of this, and he always liked to deal in sure things. Especially when it was something this important.
He had all the arguments worked out in his head. If Reese said this was a rebound relationship, he could argue that four months was plenty enough time to get over a woman he’d never actually loved. He could admit that to himself now. He’d never been in love with Helene. She’d just been part of that perfect plan he’d had to make that perfect life.
Of course, Reese’s other argument would be the effect she could have on his business, and Logan had a comeback for that, too. He could give her data and examples of other storms the McCords had weathered. He had all his ducks and stats lined up. And forgot every single duck and stat when Reese walked in.
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