Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills Series Book 6)

by Mary B. Moore

  Yeah, this was something we’d also found out on our way here this morning. We’d know that Lord Kirkwood was the owner of the construction company responsible for the development of thirty-one houses being built in Piersville.

  Property prices in the bigger cities had pushed people into moving to smaller towns, so we’d hit a bit of a population and housing boom over the last three years. What we’d discovered was that this most recent development had received building permits quickly—having been fast-tracked by none other than Dirk Kirkwood himself, with King's legal assistance.

  “I think we need to get a warrant to check the construction site,” I suggested, an idea occurring to me. “If you own buildings that no one lives in or goes to without your knowledge—like say, a building crew—where would you hide someone the police are looking for?”

  Judd’s wise eyes narrowed on me. “Can’t say I’ve ever been in that situation myself, but it seems a building site might not be a bad place for it.”

  So, with that agreed, we called DB to fill him in on what was going on, got an update on Cinder’s condition, and got him onto contacting the judge for the warrant. He was also going to send Carter and Garrett over to the Kirkwood mansion to see if they could speak with Dirk. Both men were observant, so they’d also take note of what was going on.

  Our end goal was obviously to find out who killed Jordy Watts, who’d attempted to kill Cinder, who was making the drugs, and who was running the drug operation between Piersville and Palmerstown.

  Evidence was vital to making an air-tight case against them that our prosecutors would use to convict them in court, so we had to go about it carefully.

  It was just a shame that carefully sucked, because we all wanted them put away now. Even thinking about where their drugs could be headed and the damage they could do, I just wanted them gone.

  As we were all walking out to our vehicles, I stayed vigilant on the street in front of us.

  “You know,” Judd called over the top of his cruiser. “While y’all were putting in your safe room in the new building, we began doing the same thing. It seems it’s not a bad idea to have something to fall back on for when people need it.”

  That was something I knew Hurst was responsible for in our building. We had a room like a panic room for residents who felt threatened or wanted to remove themselves from a situation while we searched for someone.

  Before now, we’d used a cell or a fake arrest so that the antagonizer let down their guard, de-escalating a situation and allowing us to apprehend them. The new place was more secure and comfortable for people, though.

  It was a weird thing to have, but once you thought about it, it wasn’t a bad facility to have, either. Palmerstown having one made sense.

  “A week after it was completed,” he continued, “an elderly couple came to us scared out of their minds because they kept getting aggressive phone calls, letters, and weird noises around their house at night. We put them in the room for their peace of mind while we investigated and tracked down the person behind it.”

  Not waiting for him to finish it, Kap butted in. “It was their grandson. He had gambling debts and wanted their money, so he went about scaring them into handing it over without looking like a shit bag to them and his family.”

  “Bet he looks like a shit bag to them now,” Alex sighed, squinting into the distance. “Little fucker.”

  “Just to say,” Judd said. “I was against the room when it was suggested by a well-meaning civilian, who’d spoken to one of your residents. Then we received funding for it, and it was approved, and I bit my tongue about how useless I thought it would end up being. Once you see it in action, though, and the difference it can make to an investigation, even one like that, I admit that I was wrong.”

  “Your point?” I asked, not seeing where this was going.

  “I’m just saying, sometimes suggestions and changes aren’t a bad thing. Maybe having a Townsend as a mayor would do both our towns some good.” His shoulders started shaking at our incredulous looks. “Or maybe not. We won’t know until it happens.”

  Alex straightened from where he’d been leaning against our vehicle. “If you’re going to move onto saying that we should ask Hurst for help in finding Lord—”

  “Fuck no,” he clipped. “But he might be useful in getting our mayors to trip up. They’re greedy fuckers, so if he panders to them, they’ll lap it up.”

  Scowling at him, I opened my door. “You know, I heard him say he’d seen a beautiful property for sale in Palmerstown, and with his age and all, some peace and quiet would be perfect. Plus, Linda’s been on at him to move somewhere that isn’t so taxing on her knees—something about arthritis and bad joints.”

  I left the threat hanging in the air, smiling to myself as I ignored their furious glares at the implication.

  “Well played, Richards,” Alex snickered, turning the engine on. “Maybe they’ll have nightmares tonight?”

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see a text from Bexley waiting for me.

  Bex: Is it weird that I’m cuddling your pillow? There’s a mark that makes me think you drooled on it in your sleep, but I turned it over to avoid it and can live with my decision. I’m too tired to care after repainting the booby wall.

  Chuckling, I tapped out a reply and put the phone away, think about what Alex had just said about Judd and Kap.

  “Then they should both find women to chase those nightmares away, man.”

  Driving down the road that led out of Palmerstown, he asked, “Things going well with Bexley?”

  Alex had lost his first wife and had been fake married a second time as part of an investigation into a group of people who were defrauding men. His second ‘wife’ was in prison because of her crimes.

  I’d never spoken to him about how he felt about it, but if I was in his shoes, I knew I’d be kind of bitter. He’d moved to Piersville after DB and Tabby had hooked up, and the man who’d arrived was very different from the man sitting beside me now. Alex was happy now, looked healthier, and looked more relaxed, but he deserved happiness and peace.

  “It absolutely is. Think you’ll ever give it another go?”

  “Possibly,” he grunted, but his tone was off.

  Glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, I pressed, “Let me rephrase that, then. Think you’ll give her a shot?”

  Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he was silent for a moment. Finally, he blew out a breath. “I want to. Evita—Evie—is different and makes me laugh without meaning to, but I don’t know if she wants to. She’s just gone through a world full of hurt and has a teenage son who seems to have experienced his own version of it. Would I make it worse for them?”

  “You’ve been through hurt, too,” I pointed out. “And seems to me that, even with the loss of his mom at a young age, you did okay by DB.”

  “Can’t say I did when I took that case on, though.”

  “Don’t be dumb,” I snapped, shocking him. “You did your job and probably saved young kids from the trauma of what that group was doing. Wrecking marriages and stealing the money from them led to men committing suicide, Alex, you know that. Someone had to help stop them and feed the Feds the details. DB didn’t hold it against you, and he’s the one who you were most concerned about.”

  Alex let this sink in for a moment. “I’ll think on it.”

  Realizing there wasn’t much more I could say on the subject, I decided to lighten things up. “Well, aren’t we modern men, talking about our feelings and women and shit.”

  “If I get an embroidered apron and start asking for recipes, punch me, will you?”

  “I think Tony would burst out crying with happiness if that day comes.”

  Shaking his head, Alex sighed. “He does have the best recipes, and I swear he makes food that just isn’t possible to do in real life.”

  I’d heard the rumors, but I’d never experienced his cooking for myself. “So I’ve heard. I just hope h
e doesn’t plan on ever trying to teach Bex how to cook.”

  He looked at me in surprise. “That bad?”

  “She burned water two days ago,” I told him, expecting the laughter that came out of him. “I shit you not, she put it on to boil eggs, forgot about it, and only remembered when the smoke alarm went off, and she found nothing but a brown residue inside the pan that was almost on fire.”

  “What was the brown residue?”

  “She seasoned the fucking water to boil the eggs in, thinking it would make its way through the shell, so it was salt, pepper, Worcestershire Sauce, and soya sauce.”

  The whole vehicle jerked as he looked at me, accidentally yanking the steering wheel with the sudden movement.

  “I don’t even know what to say to that.”

  “She also tried to make herself mac ‘n cheese out of the box and burned it. That time she forgot to boil water or even add water, just put the milk and butter in the pan.”

  Grimacing, he mumbled, “Don’t let her meet Tony, man. It’s not safe.”

  Rubbing my face with my hands, I groaned into them. “They’ve already met and become friends.”

  After a moment’s silence, during which I kept my face in my hands, he said what I’m sure everyone would think when they heard about her kitchen and culinary issues. “You’re screwed.”

  I had good health insurance. That might be what ended up saving me one day.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Bexley

  I’d cooked dinner.

  Those words might not mean much to most people who could actually cook, but for me, they were huge.

  Tony had spent all afternoon teaching me how to make meatloaf. It’d only taken three trips to the store and two failed attempts, and now I was staring at something that looked good—made by my own hands. Tomorrow he was teaching me how to make something else, seeing as how the school was closed for one more day, and I was excited about it.

  I couldn’t go all out with candles and a beautiful table, but I’d managed to make a makeshift platform out of some of the old wooden panels from the walls that still needed to be taken away, and it looked cute.

  All it needed now was Logan.

  “Sorry, buds,” I told Doyle and Prince as they stared at me. “I need him to see the whole thing, so you can’t have any. If he sees pieces missing, it’ll ruin the visual effect of my culinary masterpiece.”

  The vet had warned us that Prince might react to Doyle being near the kittens, but he seemed warier of them than she was of him. Every time he heard them crying out, he’d start whining and hide behind me. The big scary dog had met his match.

  Prince had adapted to having a vagina and babies like nothing had changed, and for her, I guess, nothing had. Unlike me, she’d known what bits she had and the fact she was baking her little minions inside of her.

  The kittens were tiny, and I’d made the mistake of reading up about cats abandoning their babies if they smelled like humans, so I was scared to touch them. I’d even bought gloves at the store today—a dozen pairs, to be precise—so that when I cleaned them out, I didn’t accidentally leave my scent in a place that could trigger rejection in Prince.

  Basically, I was out of my comfort zone. Inheriting Doyle from Pops had been a life lesson in itself, but kittens? I had no freaking clue!

  Almost like they knew I was thinking about them, the mewling started up again, accompanied by Doyle’s whining. Prince had only been away from them for about two minutes, but she quickly waddled back to them and lay down.

  “Maybe they were cold?” I asked my dog, who had his face in the corner of the room we were in, with his ass pointing at the rest of it. Hearing my voice, he turned his head toward me. “You know, you don’t have to hide from them. They won’t be able to terrorize you for a while.”

  With a dirty look over his shoulder, he turned back to the corner, leaving me talking to his ass.

  “Hey, I don’t know what you’re so scared about. It’s not like your parents saw your tit drawings on the walls. Speaking of that, do you know why you have nipples?”

  Sue me, I was bored.

  Just then, the front door opened, and Doyle’s stance changed from nose in the corner to a canine sneer as he waited for Logan to come into the room.

  “I don’t know why you don’t like him, dude,” I sighed, getting up from where I was lying on a comforter on the floor. “You’re going to have to get over that shit at some point.”

  “Because your Pops told him what happened when we were younger,” Logan replied as he came in, bending down to kiss me almost immediately. “I’m sure he probably waved one of my t-shirts under his nose and repeated the word kill.”

  I laughed on the outside, but on the inside, I had to admit that’s probably what’d happened. The low growl that came from Doyle made me frown, though.

  “Is there some sort of doggy therapy camp he can go to?”

  “Not a clue,” he replied as he waved at Doyle regardless and then moved over to where Prince was sitting, waiting for his attention, her babies squealing at the loss of her boobies.

  The night she had them had reset their relationship, and now she went to him instead of me most of the time.

  Squatting down in front of her, he gave her some chin scratches. “How are you doing, pretty momma? How are our babies?”

  “Judging by the crying because she sat up to see you and took away their food, I’m thinking hangry.”

  Huffing out a laugh, he picked up the mini version of her mama, gray all over with a white chest and white paws. “Hey, Miracle. Are you being good? They’re not stealing all your food, are they?”

  Our trip to the vet had revealed that all four kittens were girls, so now in the house, we were four females ahead of the two males in it. Not that Logan or Doyle cared at all, far from it.

  And just in case it needed to be pointed out—Logan didn’t have the same concerns over Prince rejecting her babies if they smelled like us. He said she was too smart for that, which was just as well, seeing how he carried Miracle around with him as much as possible.

  He was also the one who picked them all up and carried them upstairs to sleep in our room in case Prince or the babies needed anything last night. Doyle wasn’t left out either because his bed had been brought up and put in the corner, too.

  “I’m thinking she’s holding her own on the titties. She got knocked onto her back today during the feeding frenzy—”

  “What the hell?” he barked, glaring at the three oblivious babies who were now blindly wiggling their little bodies.

  “—but Prince sorted her out—”

  “Of course she did. She’s a good momma.”

  Rolling my eyes, I continued, “And she fed for longer than the other three and even fell asleep during it.”

  With her cradled in one hand, he ran the tip of his pinky finger down her back, making her look even tinier than she already was. “I bought some scales and a box of Rubbermaid containers at the store on my way home so we can weigh them like the vet suggested. If she doesn’t put on weight like she should be, we’ve got the kitten formula for her.”

  Ah yes, the kitten formula. Last night, Logan had begged the vet to give us some, so we were prepared. The price of it made my eyes water, but Logan asked if we could have a second container instead of being worried about it. He’d also paid an extortionate amount for the bottle and nipple we’d need, and after he dropped us back home, he’d gone out and bought what the vet had recommended to sterilize it between each use.

  He was a mean kitten feeding machine.

  Knowing he was itching to weigh them but didn’t want to put her down for even a second while he put it all together, I got up and went out to find the bag and brought it back through. Then, pre-empting the request, I went back to pick up the roll of paper towels and brought it back.

  “Just in case the container is cold,” I explained, waving them in the air.

  Chewing his lip, he considered this. “I hadn’t
thought of that. Should we warm the container? Maybe I should heat up a towel, and we can put that inside it instead?”

  Opening the box with the scales in it, I only just held back the eye roll. It wasn’t a cheap one he’d bought, it was a professional one.

  Seeing my expression and reading it correctly, his cheeks turned pink as he shrugged. “I didn’t want to get an unreliable set that gave us the wrong readings.”

  “And the fact you bought Rubbermaid containers?”

  “They’ve got a thing on them saying they’re award-winning, that means they’re safer.”

  “I don’t think they make them with kittens in mind, though, Logan. More like food and liquid.”

  When he didn’t reply, I looked up to see him rubbing Doyle with the tip of his toe. There was something different about him tonight. He looked more at peace since Prince had the babies and was putting himself out there to break my dog down now, too. But he also had tension in his shoulders, and judging by the lines on his forehead, he’d frowned a lot today. Either that or he’d aged, like a reverse Benjamin Button.

  Setting it all up for him, I grabbed a pen and an old receipt out of my purse before I waved him over. “What happened?” I asked conversationally as we put Miracle in the container, and I wrote the reading down. “You’ve got a crease like a wedgie between your eyebrows.”

  Giving Miracle a small kiss on her head, he took her back to Prince and picked up Smudge, who was mostly white, but already had a black smudge under her nose, on the tips of both ears, and the end of her tail.

  As he crouched down to put her onto the scales, he exhaled loudly. “I can’t talk about it right now, but I want to let you know how good it felt to leave, knowing I was coming back to you and these guys and Doyle.” My mouth dropped open at the unexpected revelation. “It’s been a shitty, shitty day, but y’all made it tolerable for me.”