Home Is Where Your Boots Are

by Kalan Chapman Lloyd

  “Lilly, I just think if we talk we can work this out.”

  “There’s nothing to work out, Cash. Seriously, dude. You’re fired.”

  “But, Lil.” Good grief, if I had a dollar for every time I heard a “But, Lil” from this guy, I wouldn’t have to buy my Manolos off eBay. I don’t know if you can tell, but my give a damn was totally busted and broke-ass down.

  A booming voice startled us, and I backed into a brick wall, my head thudding against it. The lights were flashing, merrily and bright, and I struggled to sift through my schnockered state to understand what was going on. I have to confess here, I only had two shots. I’m a lightweight, which makes me a cheap date, but not very pleasant after imbibing. I tend to get a tad belligerent. I shook myself, literally, and tried again to focus on the swirling haze.

  Danny Muggs was standing next to Cash, his uniform starched and hat in hand, a megaphone dangling from his meaty hands. I stood staring, trying to get my bearings and finally noticed all the squad cars that had pulled up during my short, unproductive conversation with Cash. The brick wall came to stand beside me and I glanced up into the profile of Spencer Locke. A weird sense of relief eased some of my tension.

  “Danny, what the hell?” It seemed I was asking that a lot these days.

  “Miss Lilly, I am sorry,” he apologized, shaking his head.

  “Sorry for what, Danny?” I asked as the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I looked up over at Cash, who’d moved, and saw him standing between Scotty and another two other officers who’d shown up. He was shaking his head and talking quickly. His head lifted. He glanced over and caught my eye, anguish crossing over his features followed by an almost imperceptible defeat, maybe remorse. I wasn’t sure, but I was for sure going to find out. I marched past Danny around the truck only to find Cash handcuffed, having his rights read to him.

  “Cash?” my voice rattled out.

  “Lilly,” Sheriff Clay interrupted, stepping between us.

  “What’s going on Clay?” I asked again, the lawyer conquering my inner southern belle.

  “Now don’t you go getting upset. Can you call Rex to take you home?” he asked condescendingly.

  “I’ll call my Daddy when I’m good and ready,” I shot back. “Tell me what’s going on.” Clay eyed me stormily, not used to not having his orders not followed, out in the field or at home.

  “We’re arresting Cash. For the murder of Tina Stetson.” The air escaped from my chest and didn’t refill. My knees loosened, and through the neon lights of Chester’s, the flashing lights of the squad cars, and the sultry air of a hot Oklahoma July night, I tried to figure out what the look in Cash’s eyes meant. I searched his face for a clue, but a voice interrupted my expedition.

  “Lilly?” I whirled around to the source of my lessened anxiety.

  “Spencer,” I spit out, still startled enough not to have regained my manners.

  “You okay?” He asked, displaying uncharacteristic chivalry.

  “Yes,” I said, before I gave it much thought. “Do you have an O.R. card?” I asked him. A hooded look shaded his eyes. (O.R. meant “own recognizance.” Meaning in certain circumstances I had a get-out-of-jail-free card for myself and others. I hoped this was one of those certain circumstances.) “I’d like to borrow it,” I went on.

  “I thought you fired him,” Spencer responded, setting his granite jaw. How the heck had he been privy to that conversation?

  “Just because I fired him doesn’t mean I don’t care if he goes to jail. He’s innocent.” Spencer didn’t respond immediately, and I didn’t bother to look for his reaction. Something started to bubble up inside of me. The lights were still flashing, I wasn’t yet sober, and the idea of Cash in jail sent me over the edge I’d been skirting ever so close to for quite some time.

  I lost it. Whatever sense of balance I’d found on the dirt road was waylaid by aforementioned inebriation and the pending professional turned personal crisis. So I decided to unload on the last person who would understand.

  “My life is a mess. It’s a frickin’ cliché. It’s like Andy Griffith meets Dallas. I caught my spineless, gutless wonder of a fiancé screwing his secretary, after I’d always assumed he’d never do anything without his mother telling him to. I had to leave my life in Dallas to come back home. I’m living with my sister, who looks like honky-tonk Barbie, in my great-grandmother’s house, across from my grandparents, one hundred and fifty yards from my parents. I’m ‘working’,” I air quoted, “with my Nonnie, catty-corner from my Daddy’s office and down the street from my Mama’s antique store. I’m singing karaoke! I can’t find my favorite lipstick, and now my first client’s gotten arrested, and I can’t even be a decent lawyer and bail him out of jail because I am drunk, and I’m making a total fool out of myself in front of you, who I don’t even know. And if I hear one more person in this damn town call me Miss Lilly, I’m going to lose what little I have left of my everlovin’ mind!” I ranted, waving my hands theatrically, slightly stifled by the proximity of Spencer’s solid chest.

  Spencer, while short on Southern charm, had apparently had enough tutoring from his aunt to have figured out what to do when a woman had a hissy fit.

  He grabbed the back of my neck with a big, hot hand and proceeded to shut me the hell up.

  It wasn’t smooth. It was awkward, and unskilled. Our semi-patrician foreheads smacked, I cut my tongue on his teeth, his one o’clock in the morning shadow and movie star chin dug into my jaw. It was hot. Hotter than a beer can in the Oklahoma sunshine, hotter than a firecracker on the Fourth of July, it was, you get the picture. I ground myself into him, and he ground right back, his big hands cradling my face tenderly while the kiss continued to go wild. There was a certain sense of safety in our Animal Kingdom act, and with my uptight, control-freak tendencies, that was probably the reason I was enjoying it so much.

  Then, with restraint I wished he hadn’t shown, he withdrew and regarded me without humor.

  “Feel better?”

  “Yeah. Kind of.” I told him.

  “Good,” he told me.

  “Sissy?” Tally had made it outside, slower than I expected given I was sure someone had been designated as lookout before my boots had hit the parking lot. Perhaps time had stopped. That was certainly the kind of kiss that could do that. I tried to focus. Tally glanced between me and Spencer, a slight frown marring her otherwise smoothly expensive forehead. I took a deep breath, shook it off, and decided to do the only thing that had yet to best me. First and foremost, I was a lawyer. Even if I couldn’t get my personal shit together, I was still a badass, slightly disheveled or not.

  “You sober?” I asked Tally curtly.

  “Enough to drive,” she nodded.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Home?” Spencer was watching our aside with feigned disinterest. I could feel the coiled attention radiating beneath the surface.

  “The police station.”

  “Agh,” Tally growled.

  “He’s my client.”

  “I thought you fired him?” they both pointed out strongly in unison, ganging up on me and then nodding at each other in satisfaction.

  “I didn’t get to finish. And he’s innocent.” Their collective eye rolls didn’t deter me. I knew that. I knew Cash did not kill his wife and come to Chester’s to drink a beer and try to reconcile with me. Cash was a lot of things. A user, a cheater, a liar, a thief of hearts. A murderer he was not. I think.

  Avoiding Spencer’s gaze and still trying to calm my libido, I pushed aside my irritation that he appeared unruffled by kissing me, which meant he’d definitely done it to just shut me up. I’d revisit that later. The big fish was waiting on my frying pan. I marched to Tally’s T-Bird and climbed in to wait on her reluctance. She drove the short way, silently, lips pursed and the disapproval slapped back in place. I ignored her the same way she’d been ignoring me in this regard for quite some time, hopping out once she pulled up under the lighted entrance and sl
owed down. She agreed to wait.

  xxx

  Scotty was the first person I saw when I stepped inside. He was shaking his head at me before I even turned toward him. He strode hard in my direction, the furrow in his brow deepening with each boot heel strike.

  “No. Go home.” I ignored him.

  “What’s going on? What happened? She’s really dead?”

  “Their house is gone. Up in flames. I’ve got a dead body matching her description, although not identifiable. I’ve got her mama telling me that’s where she was going. And I’ve got Cash Stetson with no alibi. Please don’t tell me you’re his alibi,” he said as an afterthought. “Fae said you had your shit together.”

  I bristled. “I do have my shit together. I’m not his alibi. But Cash wouldn’t do this, Scotty, you know that.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’ve got to go. They’re not going to release him tonight. Don’t even try.” He walked away agitated, and I ignored him again and went to the front desk. After being informed that they were holding him all night because he was a murder suspect, and no, there wasn’t anything I could do about it, and no, they really didn’t care who my Daddy was, I made my way back to the car, feeling more than a little sick. I got in and explained to Tally what was going on. She didn’t ask for details. I was sure she’d been on the phone with Fae, who probably knew more than Scotty by now.

  “Buckle up then,” she said, “Home again, home again.” I rolled the window down to let the air blow off some of my nausea.

  She finally pulled in the drive, and we got out and made our way to the front porch.

  I chose a rocker and stayed there even after Tally had unlocked the door and moved to go in. With a sigh, she took pity on me.

  “Oh sissy, you okay?” she asked.

  “Fine,” I answered with a sigh.

  “Liar,” she shot back, “Nobody who leaves karaoke, intent on bailing her ex-boyfriend out of jail, can be ‘fine’,” she lectured. “You can be bad or worn out, or worried, but fine is a weak ass answer.” She shook her head softly.

  “Fine,” I eye-rolled. “My life is apparently one big, big…”

  “Fucktastrophe?” Tally went ahead and finished for me.

  I grimaced.

  “Yes.”

  “Like a cosmic clusterfuck?”

  “Yes. That kind of hits the nail on the head.” I ignored the fact that my mother would be appalled at that word, although perhaps impressed with the creative usage. Tally could get away with it. She giggled devilishly; I joined in, and before long we were holding on to each other in hysteria, both from laughter and stress.

  “Thanks, sister,” I said once I’d gotten a hold of myself. She sat down by me and put her long arm around my shoulders, while I rested my head on hers.

  “We’ll get down to the bottom of this,” she assured me. “I called Fae. She’s gonna pick us up.” My head went up.

  “Excuse me?” I asked. Tally did her own eye-roll.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t take Mr. Cash Stetson’s keys from his little manila envelope at the police station?” she berated me.

  “I did but…” I trailed off.

  “Sister, just because you’ve been living down with those hoity-toity society Texans and I’ve been up there with those Yankees doesn’t mean either one of us has turned into an idiot,” she chastised. I nodded.

  “True.”

  “So where first? The hospital or his house?”

  “The hospital,” I answered and got up to go in the house.

  “So what was that thing between you and the new lawyer?” she asked, as I stepped into the light. It was unfortunate that my faux-twit of a little sister missed nothing.

  “Nothing.” I said shortly and went in to change my clothes and wait for Fae Lynn.

  Tally followed me back to my bedroom and watched as I sank down on the bed and unzipped my boots.

  “What happened to your lipstick?” I threw my pink and purple ostrich-skin boot across the room. Hard.

  “He kissed me.”

  “No shit?” I nodded affirmatively.

  “Shit. I very loudly had a white-trash hissy fit before you came out to rescue me. So he kissed me to shut me up. I blame you.” I dramatically tossed my hair.

  “Huh. Fun.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Fae Lynn parked her minivan in the hospital parking lot and looked at me sideways.

  “So what’s the plan, Nancy?” Tally asked as she leaned forward from the backseat, her hair barely fitting between the seats. I doubt my sister had had an inconspicuous day in her life. Great for her career, but bad for our Nancy Drew routine.

  “The only plan I have is to dig through some of the files in Cash’s office and see if we find something incriminating.” My initial suspicions about Cash I’d attributed to the fact that I was always suspicious of him for some reason or another. But now I was wondering if maybe he was guilty of something beyond heartbreak.

  “That’s a pretty good start, but how do you plan on getting in Cash’s office, considering it’s after hours and his being in jail and all?” she asked me warily. Tally laughed gleefully and did a little drumroll.

  “Well, I filched his key from all his stuff they were holding. Amanda let me look through it all, since everyone down there thinks I’m his lawyer.” Fae Lynn slapped the steering wheel and laughed. She grabbed me in a big hug.

  In another world, another town, this scenario wouldn’t be possible. But seeing as how Cash was in jail, and it was three o’clock in the morning, we weren’t worried about the scene being secured or taped off. Scotty was in bed and no one was in a hurry, or worried about someone hiding any evidence. The police force would figure out the details in the morning, after a round of coffee and sausage rolls. Our amateur detective routine was safe for the next few hours. The first forty-eight weren’t a big issue here in Brooks.

  Supposedly, allegedly, Tina had died in an intentional fire. Cash’s house, elaborate and befitting his station, so I’d heard, was gone. Singed all the way back down to the foundation. They’d found a body, a lot of gasoline-soaked rags, and were hanging it on Cash.

  “You are your mama’s daughter,” she laughed. Pulling back, she looked at me hard. “You think he did it?” she asked bluntly. I sighed again; I was doing a lot of sighing lately.

  “I don’t know. And I hate that I don’t know.” I hedged. “I don’t think he killed Tina; he really doesn’t have the heart for that, but he may be involved in something dirty that he’s not telling. I’d hate to think that.” I mean Cash was a menace, but he’d always been a menace with morals. Sort of.

  “Maybe it’s nothing,” she consoled, “maybe it’s all Tina and Cash is guilty by proxy. We know she was nuts. Not to speak ill of the dead, but there’s no telling what she could’ve been involved in.” That was a skewed rationalization, but one that cheered me up a bit.

  “You just don’t want to kill any lingering fantasies. That’s your problem,” Tally taunted.

  “Maybe. But a few more got killed tonight.” Fae and Tally exchanged a look and Tally grinned with glee.

  “Yes! Finally.” Fae Lynn, annoyed at being left out of the loop, was looking between us.

  “What? Who?”

  “Spencer Locke,” Tally supplied. Fae started nodding appreciatively.

  “It’s not as good as it sounds. I kind of had a little hissy fit bordering on a breakdown in the parking lot at Chester’s after they arrested Cash.”

  “And...”

  “And he kissed me.”

  “Maybe he’s a Southerner after all.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sooo…how’d that work for you?”

  “Amazing,” I said dryly. “Sparks flew, a flame was lit, the fire burned high. And then once our lips weren’t occupied, he went back to being annoyed at me.”

  “He is a Yankee.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But a hot one.” Fae Lynn started to
pull the door handle, but turned back to me. “What are we looking for exactly?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, getting out of the car, “But it’s like porn; we’ll know it when we see it.”

  xxx

  The three of us walked toward the hospital entrance, attempting to enter covertly. Considering it was three in the morning and you’d be hard pressed to find someone in this town that didn’t know who we were, it wasn’t an easy task. We strode through the automatic doors, waved to the nurse sitting at the desk (who Tally’d gone to high school with), marched to the elevator, and managed to make it to Cash’s office without being accosted by anyone else we knew. I found the key to Cash’s office and unlocked the door. Flipping on the light switch, I looked around. Tally reached into her purse.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t call more attention to ourselves than necessary,” she reasoned, handing us both a mini-flashlight and flipping the light back off. There was no telling why Tally had flashlights in her purse. I didn’t ask.

  “Nice touch,” I commented.

  “Thanks,” she shot back, clicking on her flashlight and making her way over to the cabinets at the back of the room. Fae Lynn started going through Cash’s desk while I began systematically checking his file cabinet. We searched for about two minutes, whispering back and forth as we did, until Fae Lynn called me over to the closet.

  “Locked safe,” she hissed, pointing to a small fireproof safe on the top shelf. Tally reached up above us and dragged down the safe from the handle.

  “Key ring,” I responded pulling Cash’s keys out of my pocket.

  “Sis, I know you think Cash is an idiot, but if he’s doing illegal crap, and it’s in this safe, would there really be a key on the key ring?” Tally burst my bubble.

  Fae Lynn shone her flashlight around until it picked up the glint from Cash’s shoehorn. If you are a male person in rural Oklahoma, there are three things you will have: cowboy boots, an accessory to put the tight boots on, and an apparatus to take the tight boots off.