The Hard Way: Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers 5

by Annika Martin

  I got out with my briefcase; Odin had brought one, too. Thor was our official note-taker. Zeus had bought a clipboard. Props were important to my guys, but still, the clipboard made me snort. “Who uses a clipboard anymore?” I teased.

  “I do.” Zeus turned and headed up the walk to the farmhouse, a traditional white Victorian with a front porch that had been glassed in during the 1970s to create that special architect-on-crack look. “I’m going to be writing all the things I plan to do to you on this clipboard.”

  “Shut up—don’t!”

  “That’s what I’ll use the clipboard for.”

  “You have to concentrate. This is serious.”

  “I’ll be concentrating, don’t worry. I can do two things at once.” He gave me a hot little backward glance. “You yourself have witnessed that many times.”

  My face went red, because of course he meant it in the dirtiest way possible.

  “This is a small-town kid,” Odin said. “We’ve questioned hardened fighters and warlords. I think we can get the truth out of a small-town kid without much trouble.”

  “Who broke up with who?” Thor asked.

  “It wasn’t even like that. We weren’t going out enough to have an official breakup. It was more of a fizzle.” I lowered my voice, because we were nearing the door. “He was a cute but not-too-bright guy on the football team who dated everyone.”

  “And he thought you weren’t cool enough?” Zeus growled. “Did he break your heart?”

  “This is why I didn’t want to tell you anything. Because you’d be freaks about it. But no, no broken hearts.”

  “But he fizzled on you,” Odin said.

  I shook my head hotly, but it was true. Andy dumped me once we fucked. He was that kind of boyfriend. A dolt and a cad, if you wanted to get technical. But I didn’t need my guys knowing that. Andy was in enough trouble already.

  Mrs. Miller came to the door wearing a terrycloth track suit and a look of great suspicion, because who comes to anybody’s door anymore? I lurked in the background during introductions, and she showed no sign of recognizing me. It was weird, because I so recognized her. But she hadn’t seen me in two years, she thought I was dead, and I seriously looked like Tootsie.

  My guys explained they wanted to talk to Andy, and she texted him. He was in the main barn. She pointed the way, and we headed over. It was a cool spring day. Crisp. April in Wisconsin was always the best.

  We hadn’t called ahead because Zeus didn’t like people preparing, but the text alerted Andy, of course. I could tell Zeus didn’t like that.

  Andy came out of the main barn, wiping his hands on a rag. He wore blue coveralls and dirty brown boots with red laces, just as he had in high school. He looked mostly the same—same twinkly eyes, same really straight blond hair, though in general he was way thicker—his face, his neck, his whole body. He had turned into a grown man, closer to thirty than twenty now, just like me.

  According to the newspaper reports, Andy had graduated with an ag degree from the community college in Dieter’s Corners. Night classes. Night classes were big in these parts due to the daytime nature of farm work.

  Zeus introduced us as insurance investigators who were looking into the Sunny Sisters salmonella outbreak, wanting to get the story.

  Andy looked concerned. “I already talked to the FDA investigators and a zillion other people. You could probably get the story from them.”

  “We need to establish the circumstances of the claim,” Odin said, which was just a bullshitty way of saying we were there to get the story, but Andy seemed to accept this more readily.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “You mind if we…” Odin gestured to the barn door. Wanting to get him back inside. My guys liked to question people inside of places when possible. Odin once said that when the subject looked at the door, that was a sign they were starting to get somewhere with their questioning.

  Oh, how my kinky bank robbers loved their sneaky little tricks.

  So did I, though I wasn’t usually on the world-of-hurt side of those tricks; I was usually on the world-of-pleasure side.

  Not that I even knew all their tricks. I was fine with that.

  Andy was back in the barn—it was the machine barn rather than the actual cow barn. From the looks of it, he’d been working on their tractor.

  He tossed the rag onto the tractor seat. “So,” he said. Our eyes met just then, but he gave no sign of recognition, and then Odin gave Andy a business card. Maybe Odin didn’t like him looking at me too hard. “When did you first learn about the cooler loss of power? Were you the one to bring it to management attention?”

  “I already went through this.”

  “You’ll need to go through it for us. It could get to be a long, drawn-out process if we have to push it through the court system.”

  “This is going to court?”

  “Are you surprised?” Odin asked.

  “I thought…no, I don’t know.”

  Zeus scribbled on his clipboard just then, like what Andy had just said was really significant. Andy watched him, looking a little paranoid. I got the feeling he was fighting with himself, wanting to ask something, but fearing a potential trap. I was starting to feel a little bit sorry for him, cad that he was.

  “Just go ahead and run through the story. There should be no problem.” Zeus said it as if there could possibly be a really fucking major problem.

  Andy went though the story. Him getting in there in the morning and handling the deliveries. His family had a refrigerated truck, so it made sense to have him handle the deliveries instead of my sisters up keeping their own truck.

  Under other circumstances, I’d be fascinated to learn about the systems Vanessa had instituted. She had him doing anything that involved heavy lifting, as well as some of the mindless, time-consuming work, like the wine smear on the Swiss cheese. I was very impressed by this last part. Vanessa was acting as the artisan and the main shepherd, Kaitlin was handling the marketing and the business end, and they had Candace in a really minor role because of school. When I’d been there, I had been making Candace do the smear and feeding the sheep.

  They were paying him kind of a lot, but when I made a few quick calculations in my head, I realized it was money well spent.

  Vanessa was outsourcing like a pro.

  God, was my little sister better at running the farm than I had been? Making better decisions?

  Apparently yes.

  “I didn’t notice the plug itself out of the wall,” Andy said. “It was when I opened the cooler to pull out the delivery that I saw the light didn’t go on. That’s the delivery staging cooler, and I saw it was dark. And the crate of labeled ready-to-ship cheese was not at all cool when I pulled it out. I set the crate on the table and went around to check that the unit was turned on, and that’s when I saw the plug was out from the wall.”

  “Kicked out,” Zeus said.

  Andy shrugged. “Nobody would’ve intentionally unplugged it.”

  “Had it happened before?” Thor asked.

  “Yeah, but we were moving a table at the time. I don’t know how it got kicked out this time, but it was out, and I put it back in, and I texted Vanessa. She came down from the house with the girls and pulled out the rest of the cheese and checked it. She figured the cooler had been off all night, and she told me to toss all the cheese.”

  “So that’s what you did.”

  “Of course. I threw it all into the dumpster. Usually we’d use it for composting, but it was all wrapped and labeled so we put it in the dumpster.”

  Zeus took that moment to tip his clipboard toward me. He traced some words with his finger, as though to underline them. Vaginal stimulation with a porcelain cupid statue.

  I swallowed, trying not to look shocked. Then he moved his finger, and the next line was revealed. We will then hold you down, hold open your legs and rub you with the plastic cupid-head doll from Thor’s room until you beg. You will be begging us to let you come.
You will do anything.

  I widened my eyes, unsure what to say.

  “What?” I looked up to find Andy staring at me. “What?”

  “We’re just taking notes, lining up the facts,” Zeus said.

  “Well, that’s the story. I dumped the warm cheese. Vanessa wanted me to change a light bulb in the main barn, and when I came back, she showed me the cases she wanted to send to the Pig. She said she stuck labels on them and cased them up. So I delivered those ones to the Pig. One of them must’ve taken them from the dumpster. It’s the only explanation.”

  “Was Vanessa around when you loaded up the truck?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything. I’m asking if she was around to see you load the truck.”

  “No, she went into town with Kaitlin. To the hardware store…what?”

  “So she didn’t watch what you did.”

  “I delivered the cases she directed me to deliver. I took them to the Piggly Wiggly. Why would I lie?”

  “Your family put an offer in on their farm.”

  Andy backed up. “We’d be idiots not to. If they’re going to sell. I’d think they’d rather have it go to us. Not everyone would keep that land nice.”

  “But it is a stroke of good fortune.”

  “You think I pulled those cheeses out of the trash and put them in the case?”

  In a flash, Odin was on him, pressing him to the wall. I made to move at him, break them up, but Zeus had my arm in an iron grip. I looked up at him wildly.

  Zeus shook his head at me. Let him do the work.

  Odin said, “Are you telling me those girls pulled the cheese out and sold it?”

  “It didn’t walk there itself.” Andy was trying to act tough, despite literally having his back against a wall, but I could smell his fear.

  “Is that funny?”

  “Fuck,” Andy said. “I’m not lying!”

  “So you think the girls did it.”

  “Honestly? Yeah. It was thousands of dollars’ worth of cheese. They were pretty fucking upset.”

  There was this silence where Odin just watched his face.

  “I swear to you,” Andy said. “I wouldn’t want their land that way.”

  “And there’s the dead man, don’t forget that.”

  “I’m not forgetting the dead man,” Andy gasped. Thor intervened now, pulling Odin off. “What kind of insurance investigators are you?”

  “The kind that prefer the truth,” Zeus said.

  “I’m sorry that’s not what you want to hear,” Andy said. “That cooler of cheese represented weeks of work. It’s not like whichever one of them switched the cheese was being malicious. They’re not bad people. Losing power to the cooler like that—you know those regulations are redundant. If the cheese is well made and you’ve kept shit clean, cheese getting warmed up shouldn’t be a problem. And we really keep shit clean in there. So there was a moment where we were all looking at that brie, thinking, ‘This cheese is probably fine, and nothing would happen if we shipped it.’ Just standing there thinking about that cheese. Candy crying.”

  I gritted my teeth. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that my sisters would never ship warmed brie, even if they were sure it was good.

  “It was a big issue because they were planning a vacation to Mexico this year. Vanessa developed this farm co-op ring between us and them and these other neighbors, the Schneiders, where we handle a week per winter on each other’s farms. But you toss that amount of cheese out, and your vacation plans are pretty much toast at that point. We’re standing there looking at it, and Vanessa goes, ‘We have to toss it.’ So I tossed it and went out to the barn.”

  “So it’s your theory that Vanessa switched in the bad cheese?”

  “She was the only one there the whole time. Anyway, one of them had to because I didn’t load it in from the garbage. That would not happen. Period.” He swept his hands against each other as if to say, I wipe my hands. “I don’t know how it got in there, but there were three other people who knew it was tossed.”

  I looked from Thor to Zeus to Odin. I couldn’t read them. I couldn’t read Andy, either.

  “You have a theory,” Odin said. “Let’s hear it.”

  “It wasn’t Vanessa,” Andy said. “But Kaitlin…she’s just a kid.”

  I stared down at the ground, heart pounding. Kaitlin was seventeen—she knew better. She wouldn’t.

  Five minutes later, we were back in the car, bumping out of the Miller’s Acres gate.

  “I didn’t like him,” Odin said.

  “But did you think he was lying?” Zeus asked.

  Odin looked back at me. “Ice?”

  “Fuck yeah, he’s lying.”

  “What about his theory? Candy or Kaitlin?”

  “No way. Vanessa would know if one of my sisters was lying, and she’d make it right.”

  “Could their lawyer be advising them to deny, deny, deny? Could Vanessa be willing to take the fall for a sister?”

  My heart pounded. Good people did stupid things all the time. Did one of them fuck up and Vanessa was protecting her? But then I remembered the newsletter. “No. In the newsletter, Vanessa said an employee lied. She said it to you. She wouldn’t slag somebody like that if she suspected it was Kaitlin or Candace. No, it had to be Andy. Or maybe Andy was working with somebody. Something happened there. It wasn’t my sisters.”

  Thor studied my eyes.

  “You have to believe me,” I said.

  Chapter 6

  Back at the B&B, Zeus put together a plate of milk and cookies from the snack kitchen, and we took it upstairs even though we probably weren’t supposed to. Even though classical music was invitingly playing in the empty living room. But the dirty-minded criminal God Pack couldn’t hang around in a living room full of cupids where classical music was playing from an unseen source. It was too much. A bridge too far.

  “Well?” I flopped down on our bed. “Maybe we should make a diagram or something. Or maybe we should steal Andy’s phone and see who he alerted.”

  “Come here.” Zeus held out his arm. He wanted me to snuggle closer to him, which was something I typically loved to do, but I wasn’t liking his attitude. I sensed that he wanted to comfort me.

  “You think my sisters are guilty,” I said.

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “You’re suspecting it.”

  “Here’s what I know—Andy isn’t your man,” Odin said.

  I jumped up. “How do you know? Did you give him a lie detector? And seriously! Maybe he called somebody and told them about the cheese, and they snuck it into the cooler when my sisters weren’t watching, or…”

  “In that short of time? The time it takes to change a barn light bulb?”

  “Maybe!”

  “So the refrigerator plug is kicked out, and he concocts the entire scheme?” Zeus said.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s not smart enough,” Odin said. “That’s not how his mind works.”

  “What if he unplugged it the day before? Like he set it up?”

  They all looked at me sadly.

  “What? You think my sisters did it? No. Screw that.” I felt my eyes heat with tears. “You don’t understand. When Mom and Dad died, it was our life’s mission to be good parents to Kaitlin and Candy. People tried to take them away, and we fought. And we were fucking poor, but we were all about doing the right thing. I know, right, I helped you guys rob a bank, but that was about screwing Hank Vernon, the man who was responsible for the death of my parents, okay? But with this thing, an innocent man died. People were sickened. Fans of our cheese, the very people who have been supporting us and helping us by buying that cheese…the answer is no. None of us would risk it. And that thing where Andy was suggesting they were all looking at the cheese like, maybe we should pretend this never happened? That was him being fucking dense about the good character of my sisters. He might have been thinking it, but they weren’t thinki
ng any such thing.” My heart was pounding by that time. “It’s bullshit.”

  “Goddess, you left two years ago,” Zeus said.

  I held up a talk-to-the-hand hand. “I believe in my sisters. They didn’t do it. And they’re too close for one of them to have done it without the others figuring it out.”

  “Are you sure you’re looking at it objectively?” Thor began.

  I turned my icy gaze to him. “What? You think I feel so guilty about leaving that I can’t handle that one of them could be a liar and do this? Like maybe if I hadn’t left, if I hadn’t thrown in with bank robbers, if only I’d stayed, I could’ve prevented something like this?”

  “Kind of,” he said.

  I looked away. I did feel guilty. I wasn’t objective. I loved them. They were my sisters!

  “Vanessa was a little shaky,” Thor said. “Even she didn’t seem a hundred percent.”

  “Of course she was shaky,” I said.

  “Goddess,” Zeus said.

  “Don’t goddess me. We need to solve this mystery. Andy’s lying. Because it wasn’t my sisters.”

  “We’ll keep going,” Zeus said, “but you need to know that we can’t rule out your sisters just because they’re your sisters. That’s bad detective work, baby.”

  “No…” I whispered, throat thick. What was I even saying no to?

  “That’s enough,” Odin growled. “We rule out her sisters. It’s somebody else. End of story.”

  “Ice doesn’t need to be patronized,” Thor said.

  “I’m not patronizing her. Ice’s instinct is that her sisters didn’t do it. So we sit here fucking wearing her down because we can’t find easy answers? Making her doubt her objectivity? She says it’s not them. She says Vanessa wouldn’t do it. She says Vanessa would know if one of them is lying. It’s good enough for me.”

  Thor and Zeus looked at Odin hard. But I wanted to kiss him.

  Odin crossed his arms. The tension in the room was starting to feel overwhelming. He was patronizing me. Zeus was right—it was bad detective work to automatically rule people out.

  Still!

  The silence was getting thick. This was bad; it wasn’t like us to be at odds.