Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills Series Book 6)

by Mary B. Moore

  When Bexley had found out about her, she’d rallied some of the ladies around to help look after Cinder, making sure she had stuff that women apparently couldn’t live without and visiting so that she knew she wasn’t on her own.

  Yesterday, we’d walked into the ICU to update Alejandro, whose turn it was to guard her, and Ava had been reading her a romance book.

  Alejandro was quite a quiet guy who listened more than he talked, but the look he’d given us when we’d entered was like he was begging us to swap with him so he could get away from it all.

  When we’d made to leave, he’d grabbed my arm and hissed, “If you don’t make this shit stop, I’m going to move her to my house and breathe down the fucking tube for her.”

  As funny as it was, and I had zero doubts that he was serious about it, we still left him there for the rest of the shift.

  “Dirk is hiding him,” DB sighed as he looked at the board with all of the photos and notes on it.

  “Maybe you guys could get the blueprints of the Kirkwood mansion,” Naomi suggested, walking in with a file in her hand. “One that old has to have hidey holes in it, and with Ingleston on vacation, you have Judge Ramsey, who’ll definitely give you a warrant.”

  All of us turned from the board to look at her, making her stop in place with the file in her hand.

  DB took it from her, dropping it on the table and then crossing his arms in front of him. “What if there have been additions that aren’t on any of the plans we get?”

  “Uh, well, I was studying architecture at school when—” she stopped, not needing to rehash what’d happened to her.

  Her brother and sister-in-law had died shortly after her niece was born, and then her parents had tried to sell the baby via a company that excelled in thinking only of their pockets and not of the children. It wasn’t sex trafficking from what the case file outlined, but it was selling kids for adoption.

  “Go on,” Alex urged, taking a seat and waving at her to take one.

  Slowly, she lowered herself into one next to Carter. “I was studying architecture at school when I got custody of Shanti. One of the houses I had to look at for a case study was an old mansion that’d been updated. They had the original plans for the house and ones from about ten years later, but during the prohibition period, they’d updated it again to hide stuff.”

  “They sold moonshine?” Carter guessed, and she nodded back at him.

  “And homemade whiskey. Because they were making both in the house, they built new walls in some of the rooms, making them narrower but giving them a space behind it to put the stuff in so they could make the hooch. With some clever decorating, no one was any the wiser.”

  Raising his eyebrows, DB nodded slowly. “Makes sense, and the Kirkwood mansion has gone through a lot of work over the years. It started about the same size as Bexley’s house,”—he nodded at me, then turned back to the others—“and is about four times that now.”

  “Plenty of space to hide stuff or make hooch,” Carter confirmed, smiling at Naomi and making her blush as she hung her head.

  “Wouldn’t they just use the basement?” I asked, intrigued by the story but also confused. Most people hid shit in the basement, so why not use that?

  Naomi’s head lifted so quickly it cracked. “Oh, well, the machinery used to make moonshine and whiskey created a smell as it worked from the alcohol and the machine itself. There was also some steam that would’ve ruined the barrels and booze. It was easier to explain away a smell and steam if there was, say, a bathroom in the room or it was next to the kitchen, so that’s where they’d put it. There were some false rooms and false flooring in the basement, but that was where they’d stored the alcohol. Something about it being the perfect temperature for it, so it never went bad.”

  “How do you tell if a room’s been worked on? We’d have to go into the house and look around, and Kirkwood’s not going to allow that,” DB pointed out, looking frustrated.

  I felt the same way. This could’ve been what we were looking for to find Lord and piece all of this shit together.

  “Well, when I was thinking about it, I did a search for the house online. Dirk Kirkwood did an interview for a magazine that was doing a story on old houses that’d stayed in the family since they were built. It was a great piece, and some of the houses were just gor—” she stopped, looking embarrassed at how enthusiastically she’d been talking about it.

  “Sorry, I just liked the history attached to some of them. Anyway, the magazine published the article every week for three months and dedicated each edition to the house for that week. Dirk Kirkwood got nine pages for his house, and in it, he provided plans for each floor, with the measurements of each room on them.”

  “Holy shit,” DB breathed, sitting back in his chair with a thud.

  Not realizing what she was handing us, Naomi continued, “They’re all very impressive, and he said he had a professional measure them for accuracy. So, if we were to compare the original plans with the ones from the magazine—”

  “We might find a hiding spot,” Carter finished, standing up and holding out his hand to her. “Let’s go and get the original records.”

  Standing up, I followed behind them to the door. “I’ll print out the article and blow up the floor plans so we can compare them.”

  “See if there’s any paperwork filed on the house while you’re there,” DB ordered to them, rubbing his hands together. “I’ll speak to Ramsey about the possibility of a warrant.”

  “Can we trust him?” Garrett asked, sounding dubious at the prospect. “We don’t know who’s involved in it.”

  Looking back at him over his shoulder, DB said seriously, “Judge Ramsey hates the Kirkwoods and Ingleston as much as we do. There’s a lot of bad blood there, and the way that Ingleston’s managed to get certain cases and been lenient on them, as well as the fact he’s a corrupt bastard, Ramsey’ll sign that warrant faster than you can say bless you.”

  I was just out of the door when he added, “And if you say bless you just for shits and giggles, I swear I’ll tip that coffee over your head.”

  “How are you finding the job?” I asked Mark Montgomery as we printed out the floor plans from the magazine.

  Leaning on one of the desks, he focused on the window that overlooked the main street through the town.

  “It’s okay. Busy, but okay,” he mumbled, his focus entirely on what was happening outside. “Hey, do you ever feel like the town’s been run by the people and not the Mayor for years? I mean, if it weren’t for a lot of what the community has achieved and worked hard for, nothing would have been updated or done around the place.”

  Tilting my head to the side, I studied the guy. He wasn’t much younger than I was, but he’d veered off his initial career path to join us, so he was still learning about shit that went on behind the scenes in Piersville. It was a bit like seeing an iceberg in the ocean, then diving under it and seeing the dark algae and different shapes of it. Basically, it was a stark contrast to what it appeared to be from head to toe. A bit like who Mark was now, in comparison to the kid who’d—rightfully—punched me.

  “The mayor has been a corrupt stain on the town for years, as has Judge Ingleston, and I agree that the people have been the power behind the good changes to the town. Why?”

  “Dad told me last night Lord Kirkwood approached him about designing the houses for the new developments. He wanted to undercut the competition and offered him money to do it, with the assurance that planning permission would be granted regardless so there wouldn’t be any losses. When the houses were finished, they’d split the profits to make up for the shortfall in the money he was paid for the designs plus a bonus for helping them out.”

  “So, he was to come in cheap with the designs, they’d get passed, and once they were built and sold, they’d pay him the remainder of what the designs were worth and a bonus?”

  Turning slowly, he nodded at me. “And he said there was a one hundred percent guarantee
that his designs would get approved.”

  “That’s not illegal that I’m aware of,” I said slowly, “but there’s an alarm bell going off over what it means.”

  “It means Lord already had the contract for the builds even before all of the bids were received and processed. Daddy’s been giving him them for years.”

  “Are they all up to code?”

  Smiling at me, he got up and walked over to his desk, then picked up a folder and waved it at me. “Seems he has the same inspection officers do a majority of the work for him. On the occasions where they couldn’t get those officers, their inspections failed.”

  “Does that have the inspections for the new builds we’re looking at as a hiding place for Jordy?”

  “It does. All of them failed the first inspection, so some token adjustments were done, and their favored inspectors passed them on the next inspection. One of them failed because the basement wasn’t done correctly, which would compromise the integrity of the structure of the house itself.”

  “Damn,” I breathed. “Did that house pass the follow-up inspection?”

  Shaking his head, he reached into the file and pulled out a piece of paper. “Funny thing that, apparently they said that they were going to allocate extra time to secure it all properly, so the inspectors didn’t look at it. It’s currently listed as a no-entry zone to most of the workers unless they’ve specifically been given the job for it.”

  Grabbing up the printouts from the printer, I moved quickly to where he was standing and pointed at DB’s office. “We’re going to let him know all of this, drop off these plans, and then we’re headed out to the building site for a look around.”

  I hated that all of this had been going on right under our noses, but then all crime did. How deep did the Kirkwood rabbit hole go?

  I was about to find out the answer to that was: fucking deep.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bexley

  Tony’s list said to get canned beans.

  That was it: canned beans.

  Did he mean baked beans, Mexican salad mix beans, red beans… Why were there so many types?

  While I waited for an answer to my frantic text asking for clarification, I walked around the store doing what everyone does at some point—picking up shit I didn’t need but wanted to have in the pantry just in case.

  The floor guy was coming in two days, so I had to be smart about what I bought. The problem was, now that I’d successfully cooked one meal, I wanted to make more.

  Ooo, a Crock-Pot, I need one of those.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” an angry voice hissed behind me. “Teaching kids about rape and how it’s funny?”

  Turning around, I took a step back when I saw how closely Piersville’s mayor, Dirk Kirkwood, was standing.

  “I didn’t teach them that. I taught them about a book called The Rape Of The Lock and stressed how different society was back then to now.”

  His lip lifted in a sneer as he looked at me from head to toe, making me feel dirty just by looking at me. “I’d have thought that your grandpa and parents would have raised you better, but obviously, they aren’t what we thought they were.”

  “Mayor Kirkwood, I had written permission from the parents before even mentioning the book due to the controversy of the title. But if you’d just let me explain why we were teaching them that, I’m sure you’d understand and appreciate the weight of it. I can also promise you that my grandfather and parents, as well as myself, are upstanding citizens who only—”

  “I have complaints, Mizz Heath, from the parents your purportedly got permission from. Some of them even state that their kids are idolizing rape now, thanks to you.”

  “What?” I breathed, my heart plummeting into my feet. That wasn’t the object of the lesson. Why would that be what they took away from it?

  “I’m also in discussions with a highly respected judge to have your grandfather’s remains exhumed and banned from being buried in the town.”

  Could they do that?

  In just a few allegations, my world was literally crashing down around me. Pops loved our town. My whole family loved it. Why would they want to remove his body from his grave?

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “Well, Mayor Kirkwood,” a deep voice said beside me, and I turned to see Hurst Townsend standing with his grandson Cole. “Fancy bumping into you here.”

  “I need to get groceries just like everyone else,” he sniffed, just as Cole moved in next to me and squeezed my shoulder.

  “Wait for it,” he whispered, confusing me.

  What more could there be?

  “Now, did I hear right, or are my old ears deceiving me?” Hurst asked, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “There are complaints against Miss Heath about a class on an old piece of literature?”

  “It fantasized about rape,” Kirkwood replied, glaring at him. “It also made it sound like it wasn’t as severe a crime as it is. What kind of teacher tells the youth of Piersville, impressionable young people, that?”

  Holding a finger up, Hurst pulled his phone out of his back pocket and touched the screen. “The Rape Of The Lock, a satirical piece published by Alexander Pope, satirizes the cutting of a lock of hair from a woman and compares it to something akin to the tragedies outlined in the mythologies of the Gods. Pope used the vapid nature of society to emphasize the triviality of the situation.” Then, lifting his head, he asked, “Do you wish for me to continue what the book is about?”

  “That’s not the point,” Mayor Kirkwood snapped, pointing at me. “She told them that the word meant nothing, so they now assume that rape isn’t a disgusting crime.”

  “Actually, I said the opposite of that,” I told him quietly, still feeling sick over it. “I said that today rape is something horrific and that Pope managed to stress that to the society around him by comparing their reactions to a lock of hair being cut off to an atrocity like that. The only reason I even did that was to assist Miss Waite with educating them on how words have power, so they should choose their words carefully. It’s a lesson based on making them better people and not following the teachings of the internet on how to conduct yourself.”

  Hurst had been watching me carefully throughout my explanation, and when I finished, he added, “I agree with that. Those two students who tried to commit suicide after following a random account who told them to do things to join up to an anonymous club could’ve done with being taught what Miss Waite and Miss Heath have been teaching. Did you hear about the attempted suicides? How about that group of kids who did whacked stuff because a guy calling himself Blue Elephant Boots online told them to?”

  “That’s not what she did, though,” the mayor argued. “I have statements from parents who—”

  “Well, I’d like to see those,” Hurst interrupted. “If Miss Heath is being accused of something like that, surely showing her the statements wouldn’t hurt. I mean, if this goes to court, she’ll hear them straight from the parents.”

  It looked like Mayor Kirkwood recoiled into himself, like a snake about to strike. “I will do no such thing. That’s a violation of their human rights.”

  “What?” Cole chuckled. “You of all people are talking about violations of human rights—which is a weird thing to just throw in at this point, by the way—when you’ve also threatened to exhume the body of Bexley’s grandpa?”

  “It’s pertinent to the case,” Kirkwood sniffed.

  “It’s pertinent to jack shit apart from whatever scam you’ve got running, man,” Hurst said loud enough to get people's attention.

  Once he made sure we had enough people around us, he added, “Now, I’m going to personally get statements from the students and their parents about the class. I’ll make sure to be thorough, don’t you mind.” Then, he said quickly as Kirkwood opened his mouth, “No, you’ve had your say, now we’re having ours, so shut up.”

  “You can’t talk to me like that—”

  “Just did,” he threw back
. “Now, where was I?”

  “You’re getting thorough statements from the students and their parents,” someone shouted. “I’ve got two kids who went to those classes and said they learned something big to take away with them. Never mentioned condoning rape or anything like that, so I’ll start by giving you mine now.”

  “Me, too,” another voice called out. “My kid read the book and said it taught him about society today, too, and that we need to focus on what’s important. I’ve been trying to tell him that for years, so I’m happy he finally got the damn message.”

  “Well, this seems like a good place to start,” Hurst mused, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “And I’m also going to get a lawyer to look at your threats toward the body and final resting place of Lawrence Heath, ‘cos that shit’s just messed up.”

  “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, and your language is disgusting,” Kirkwood sneered. “Did you even go to school?”

  “Yeah, it was back in the day when they had to chip away at stone to write it all down, but he went,” Cole snickered, ignoring the glares from both men. “Looks like he came away with more than you did, though.”

  “And finally,” Hurst said, taking a step closer to Kirkwood. “I’m going to run for mayor. For years the people have been running this town, doing the work you wouldn’t do unless it benefited your family. I’m sick and tired of doing your job for you, so I’m going to run for the position. And I will beat you.”

  “Well shit,” Cole muttered, his voice only just audible over the cheers and noise coming from our spectators and his body shaking with laughter. “I don’t think he meant to say that, but I’m glad he did.”

  “You can try, but it won’t happen,” Kirkwood tried to fire back confidently, but his body language screamed he was far from it.

  Then, giving us a scathing glare, he left his cart with items in it and walked away, leaving me staring at Hurst in shock.