“Porky’s ride will be here soon,” Mac told her.
“I’ll take him for a walk while we’re waiting, so he won’t get bored.” Nix took the ribbon and headed to the street.
“It was nice meeting you,” I called out and waved to Nix’s back. She didn’t acknowledge me or slow a step.
“Now that she’s far enough away that she can’t hear me…” Mac lowered her voice. “The pig is why she took off right after the accident. Upon impact, it escaped, and I’m not clear on the exact details. Once its hooves hit the pavement, it went on the run with Nix after it. When she couldn’t catch up, she headed back here. One look at you, she figured you were the owner and ducked into her cottage.”
“And what? Porky found his way back on his own?”
“Nix grabbed a bike and found him just down the street, with a neighbor feeding him dog food.”
Anyone other than Mac, and I wouldn’t have believed her. “Is that her… pickup?” I stared down the driveway at the nose of a truck with multiple layers of green paint in various shades, which poked out from the side of the cottage. It looked older than her, but I kept that to myself.
“It’s a 1950 Ford flatbed. I suggested that since it still runs, why not spiff it up? Nix’s nose hiked in the air was the only answer I got.”
“Good for hauling her livestock. I’m going to sneak out of here before something else happens. Can you save any more emergencies for next week?” I waved and had to restrain myself from running. I jumped into my SUV and drove sedately out of the neighborhood, taking one of Fab’s shortcuts to the office.
Chapter Ten
As I got to the warehouse and parked, my phone dinged with a message from Xander saying he had names for me. I texted back, “See you in a few.” Before going upstairs, I decided to steal a quick kiss from my husband. I walked through the raised doors and waved to Lark, who watched me approach. Arlo lifted his head, barked hello, and lay back down.
It surprised me to see a tall, statuesque brunette waiting for her coffee to brew while she rooted through the cupboard. She turned and caught me staring at her. “We ran out of coffee upstairs.”
Upstairs? An employee of the Chief’s? I was certain I’d met her before, but where?
I poked my head into the office space that the three men shared, which took up over half the square footage of the entire floor, and winked at Creole, who was on the phone, as was my brother, who was laughing it up with someone. With slinky in my sights, I crossed to the conference table where the woman was sitting. “We’ve met, and I’m sorry to say I’ve forgotten your name.” I barely got the words out before I remembered. “The artist from the beach. And you work upstairs?”
“Allegra Kent. Nice to see you again, Brad’s sister.” Her smile was phony, and it was clear that she didn’t mean a word of it.
Overprotective little sister. In my defense, my brother had a type, and it wasn’t stability. “I thought you moved.”
Brad, who’d hung up, raced out of his office and planted himself next to me, shooting me a side glare that I easily translated as be nice.
“Brad and I had a good laugh about that little lie.” Allegra patted her lips. Brad groaned. “It was my idea to get you to stop asking questions.” She scooted her chair back, walked over to the counter, and filled her thermos. “So we’re square, neither of us—” She pointed between Brad and herself. “—have ever been into each other. Nice guy, though.” She winked at him and slunk out, coffee in hand.
“Talk about being kicked in front of a moving vehicle,” Brad grouched. “Stay out of my personal life.”
I got in his face. “There’s no way that’s going to happen.” I struggled not to smirk.
“You really are a pain in the a—” he ground out.
“Dare you to say it. I’ll tell Mother.” I swallowed a laugh.
“We’re not five, and that threat doesn’t work anymore. It sounds like you need a reminder that squealing on me violates our super-secret pact of not telling on each other unless faced with certain death.”
I leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “You listen to me—I’m here for you no matter what, and don’t you forget it. I apologize for being a tad overbearing when I met Allegra. Just being protective, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Know that, even though I’m annoying at times, I am here for you.”
“Same here.”
Brad’s phone beeped, and I turned my attention to Lark, who hadn’t missed a single word and had a grin on her face the whole time. “Tell the tenant on the second floor to buy his own coffee.” That widened Lark’s grin.
Woe to the Chief for giving her a hard time when she was first hired. He hadn’t completely wiggled back into her good graces. Lark came off as an easygoing hippy chick, but she had a bite to her.
“Dude upstairs can hire who he wants, but we should know who they are so we don’t shoot an innocent person, thinking we’ve got a trespasser,” I said.
“You don’t need to worry about intruders. I got my rifle loaded with rock salt,” Lark assured me. “That will have them yowling and on the run, as opposed to dead. Makes the cleanup less messy.”
Brad, who’d come up behind me in time to hear everything, groaned. “We’re going to have to have a meeting and make up a host of new rules.”
“Yeah, okay.” I waved him off and turned my attention back to Lark. “What’s the artist doing working for the Chief?” Pottery or something had been her gig when we first met.
“No gossiping,” Brad said over his shoulder as he went back to his desk, his phone ringing.
“Ignore him,” I said.
“She prefers Allie.” Lark lowered her voice and pointed to the ceiling. “An ex-DEA agent and friendly with the Chief, although she made it clear that she wasn’t doing him either. She was hired for her kick-ass skills, but didn’t elaborate. A little tip: she doesn’t care for questions; one or two, she’s fine, but after that, she gets annoyed.”
Brad was back in a flash and leveled a stare at the two of us when we stopped talking. “What happens in this office doesn’t get shared with my sister,” he grouched.
“Don’t listen to him.” I made a face at Lark, who laughed. “I’m going to order lunch and have it delivered. Call me when it gets here.” I waved to the two of them and bounded up the stairs to the third floor.
I wasn’t used to the new location yet, but happy that we’d made the move. The interior was almost a duplicate of the previous office. Once again, Fab had put her decorating stamp on it. I was happy to have my desk facing the floor-to-ceiling windows that I’d had installed, replacing the old ones and bringing them up to hurricane code. The sun streaming in made it less of a grubby hole.
I waved to Xander, who was on the phone and sitting at the far end of my desk. I spread my paperwork out and scooted my chair over, then pulled out my phone, called Jake’s, and placed an order for a little of everything.
“How many people?” Cook grumped.
“Five? No, seven. Better plan for ten. And an assortment of beer.” I ignored his clucking noises. “Hopefully you can con someone into delivering.”
“Got it taken care of.” He hung up.
“You feeding an army?” Xander asked when I hung up.
“With any luck, there will be leftovers, and they make the best breakfasts.”
“I just emailed you the names you’re wanting.”
I opened my laptop and easily found the message. “You’re the best.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Fab?” Xander looked over at the door.
“I’m banking on her being a no-show. She’s suffering retribution for pushing her husband off the dock.” I told him about the morning. “It looked fun from my vantage point, and I’m thinking I should christen Creole with a little salt water. Except he wouldn’t have to chase me; I’d dive in after him.”
Xander laughed. “Thanks to you, and promises of rounds of drinks, I got an in at the coroner’s office and can call directly n
ow, so this news is hot off the press.”
“I’m happy that the digger dudes came through for you.”
“The three bodies in the house were easy to identify, even though they had no IDs on them; their fingerprints pulled up rap sheets a mile long. Most of the charges stemmed from drugs.” Xander read off their names. “I ran background checks on the men, all in their thirties, and they’ve been in and out of jail since they were teens.”
I made a note of the information and would return to it later. “Sounds like they crossed the wrong person and paid big. How is it that they were basically left to rot and hadn’t been discovered earlier?”
“The previous owner of the house died, and apparently there were no heirs. It sat empty until the taxes went unpaid long enough that the county took it over and put it up for auction. Pretty sure it was illegal for Fab to be poking around inside.” Xander laughed. “I know it wasn’t you. If not for the two of you, the lucky buyer would’ve been in for a smelly surprise. The sale is on hold for now. I was told that when it comes back up for auction, it won’t come with any kind of cleanup.”
I wrinkled my nose.
“I’ve got a report ready to send Big Boy before he comes tromping up here, demanding answers.”
“Good idea.” I nodded. “Besides getting screwed out of other deals, Gunz got burned once, buying sight unseen, and he knows that Fab won’t give trespassing a second thought and will thoroughly check out the properties.”
“You’d think the county would find it hard to get a buyer, but I did some checking, and they changed the law—that someone died there no longer has to be disclosed.”
“If it’s cheap enough, buyers will line up, do a basic rehab, and flip.” I grimaced. “Even though you don’t have to disclose crimes that happened on the property, you know the second the new owner moves in, the neighbors will be banging down the door—’Oh, did you know…?’—the picture of innocence as they relate the ghoulish details, which will get embellished in the retelling.”
“The first noise I heard in the night, I’d be, ‘Oh no, the ghosts are partying.’”
I laughed.
“More news,” Xander said with a smirk. “The second body, which floated off with the currents, surfaced just south of you. Mark Bowe is the unfortunate man’s name. He got hung up on the boat of a man who made the discovery as he was about to fire it up for a ride.”
Yikes. “That means we don’t have to be on dead-body lookout.”
“The two men, Bowe and Paul, owned a warehouse north of town. What kind of business they were engaged in is unclear. The cops checked it out and found it empty. The sign advertised a lumber yard, but according to a neighboring business, the billboard had been up for years, long before the new owners took possession.”
“What did the records say about who owned the place?” I asked.
“It was purchased a couple of years ago by BP Inc., and the paperwork doesn’t yield a clue about what they were into. They didn’t file for a business license, and since the building didn’t attract attention, no one went around to ask questions. So far, I haven’t found any other records under their names.”
“Smells illegal, and if it was, then they must have been conducting business at night so as not to attract attention.”
“The neighboring businesses all kept regular hours, and they either didn’t have any information or didn’t want to get involved.” Xander pulled a file from his briefcase. “Another interesting tidbit is that no missing persons reports had been filed on any of these men. Five men missing for who knows how long, and not missed by anyone.”
“Someone had to know. Another case of not wanting to get involved because they knew they were up to their eyeballs in illegal and were afraid, not wanting it to come back on them.”
“My source said to call anytime, so I’ll keep checking back. Only costs me a beer or two.”
“Take him to Jake’s. Everyone there knows you and knows it’s on the house. Just don’t drive.”
“Not doing that.” Xander nodded.
“Another job. Would you research the street that we all live on? Who lived there before? Anything newsworthy? I’ve got my fingers crossed that you come up with zero.”
“On it.” Xander scribbled a note on a pad in front of him. “I’ve got a case that I’d like help on.”
“You’re switching roles and becoming a client?” I hoped he wasn’t in any trouble.
“This is for a friend of a friend.” He chuckled at my raised eyebrows. “Thanks to Crum, our mutual friend Tessa was able to make up her back schoolwork and ace the tests to start high school.”
Fab and I had helped Tessa and her brother, who were both homeless, find her grandmother and get off the street. Their grandmother, Blanche Bijou, was the one who ran the animal sanctuary.
“Tessa made friends with a senior chick that she met in the library. The girl turns eighteen in two months, and her mother told her she had to move out on her birthday. Here’s the kicker—the mother’s forbidden her to take any of her personal belongings. Claims ownership because she paid for the stuff, which isn’t true for everything, as some were gifts. The daughter’s only allowed to keep the clothes she wears out the door.”
“I can’t believe… why would her mother do that? Even if she’s been a big pain in the backside. To say that the relationship sucks is an understatement.”
“Jealousy. The final straw for the mother was that Lena got an acceptance letter to an out-of-state college. Her mother had picked up the mail that day and ripped open the envelope, and by the time Lena got home from school, she was raging mad—how dare Lena apply anywhere without her permission, and she wasn’t paying. Lena told her she’d applied for a scholarship, which made her mother angrier, and she snorted out that it was a pipe dream, since she was too damn stupid.”
I could see where Xander wouldn’t turn his back on this girl. It was too close to his own circumstances. His father had died while he was in college—a straight-A student with a bright future ahead of him—and the first thing his stepmother did, without a word to him, was stop his tuition and dorm payments. He was getting the last laugh, having sold a social media app that netted him six figures.
“What is it you want me to do?” I asked.
“Lena wants her stuff. All of it, and especially her childhood memories. I don’t see how Mrs. Craig has the right to keep everything.” Xander hissed out his annoyance. “The day after her mother issued the threat, she began collecting items, hiding them in the garage and telling Lena she threw them out.”
“How do you know that?”
“Once I met her and heard her story, I offered to stop by her house when her mother wouldn’t be there. The two of us had a look around and found the boxes she’d stuffed in the corner of the garage.”
“I’m happy you didn’t get caught,” I said.
“It was my idea to go to a thrift store and replace the items in the boxes, which we did, and store her personal items in Billy’s garage.”
Billy, who worked for Spoon, had offered Xander a place to live when he first came to the Cove. They’d been roommates ever since.
“Does Billy know what you two did?” I asked.
“Billy said if Mrs. Craig weren’t a woman, he’d have offered to rearrange her face. He then offered to talk to her, and I told him thanks, but a bad idea, since she was apt to call the cops. The last thing I want is for any of us to end up in jail.”
“Good advice.” I settled back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling. I already knew what Fab would do—confront the woman, like Billy wanted to do.
“The mother smashed her computer,” Xander continued. “Figures if Lena can’t turn in her homework, she won’t graduate and no college.”
“Most parents want the best for their kids. And the father?” I asked.
“He died when Lena was a kid, and her mother changed after that—once loving and kind, she withdrew and turned cold.”
“Can Lena exp
lain her dilemma to her teachers?”
“Too embarrassed. She’s able to use the computer in the library. That way, her mother doesn’t know what she’s up to. She goes to school early and stays late and never takes her books home, for fear her mother will throw those out.”
“What Lena needs is a lawyer, and I can make that happen,” I assured him. “Her mother can legally kick Lena out at eighteen. Keep her belongings? Probably not. But she probably knows it would take the services of a lawyer to fight that, which Lena can’t afford, so there’s no one to tell her daughter that she can’t railroad the girl.” I frowned at him. “If you two get caught sneaking her stuff out of the house, you will definitely get in trouble. Lena is a question mark. Once the cops hear the whole story, they won’t think much of the mother, but it wouldn’t stop them from arresting you.”
“What do I tell her?”
“Tell Lena that I know a lawyer that takes pro bono cases and hopefully this one won’t be too involved. If it becomes necessary, does she want to take her mother to court? Once she’s served, she could immediately kick her out. If that happens, does she have a place to go?”
“Don’t know.” Xander shook his head. “I’ll talk it over with her.”
“Also tell her that there will no cost for the attorney.” I’d call in a favor or six if I had to. “Once she meets with him, he can tell her what her rights are and advise her on a course of action. I hope the law isn’t on the mother’s side or that she gets a judge who rules against her. There’s also the chance that once words like ‘lawyer’ and ‘court’ get bandied about, her mother will back off. Talk to Lena and get back to me with what she’s decided to do, and I’ll contact Tank. I suggest that she at least find out what her rights are.”
“I’m thinking if Lena threatens her mother with legal action, she’ll clean out her stuff in one fell swoop.”
“Doesn’t sound like there’s a winning solution in this case.”
“Don’t forget to send me your bill.” Xander smiled.
“Don’t you worry your pretty head.” I stared at the brown mop that framed his face and dancing eyes and bet that it had the girls doing a double take. “It’s a freebie all the way around.” My phone rang, and Lark’s face popped up. “Chow arrive?” I asked upon answering.
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