Hot Texas Sunrise

by Delores Fossen

  “Tiffany, Monica and Harry are gone now,” Daisy assured Cleo.

  Good. Judd doubted she was going to want to deal with that tonight.

  “Are we free to get this cleaned up?” Cleo asked the officers. “Or will we need to wait until you’ve collected evidence?”

  “Nothing left to collect,” Sanchez said. “We’ve got pictures. All we need is the owner’s signature.” And he passed a clipboard with a form on it to Daisy since the bar was in her name. She made eye contact with Cleo before she signed it.

  “I’ve already called my brother and Tiny to come out and do cleanup,” Daisy said. She took a large box of trash bags from beneath her arm and set it on the sidewalk. Next to it, she put down the other box she’d been carrying. Latex gloves. “They’re bringing friends and should be here soon.”

  “Thank you for everything,” Cleo told her. “Go ahead back home. I’ll wait until they get here, and then I’ll lock up.”

  “I can stay.” Daisy sighed as she eyed the mess.

  “No,” Cleo insisted. “Go home to Mandy Rose.”

  Daisy must have been wiped out because she jumped at the offer. Brushing a kiss on Cleo’s cheek, the woman went back inside, got her purse and then left.

  Cleo took some pictures of the cow parts with her phone. Then she set her own purse on the floor just inside the door, put on a pair of gloves and grabbed one of the garbage bags. Judd was about to tell her that she should wait for an actual cleaning crew, but he figured this was something she needed to do. She still wasn’t as pissed as the average person would have been, but there had to be some anger simmering there.

  To deal with his own simmering, Judd grabbed one of the bags, and together they started picking up cow parts.

  “I could probably give this to someone who could use it for Halloween decorations,” she said but then made a face when a globule of the red gelatin slid off a Hereford’s severed head and splatted onto her shoe.

  He would have preferred to dump it on the lawn of the person who’d done this. Or ram it up their ass. Especially if that ass belonged to Lavinia. Judd was about to broach the subject of the piss witch being a possible suspect, but Cleo spoke before he could.

  “I’ve been playing BS with you,” she said.

  It took Judd a moment to realize she meant the best-scenario game. At least he hoped that’s what she meant.

  Cleo had a grip on a hacked-off hoof still attached to a partial hind leg when she turned to him. “Kace thinks it would be a bad idea for us to bang.”

  “Bang?” Judd asked, making a mental note to have a chat with his brother about keeping his mouth shut.

  “His word, not mine. Kace has a way with flowery, romantic language.” She flashed him a smile.

  “So does Beckham,” Judd said, remembering the conversations he’d had with the boy. “His favorite word is any form of piss.”

  Her smiled widened, but she might as well have doused him with sexual gasoline and lit a match. Instant fire. Inconvenient, too, since they were out on a sidewalk. But that didn’t stop Judd from moving toward her and brushing his mouth over hers.

  The hoof she was holding smacked against the partial Angus hindquarter in his hand.

  Not the most romantic place—around the plastic-cow carnage—but it was still satisfying. And stupid. Because, after all, Kace could be right about his banging Cleo being a bad idea. It was even more reason to guard his heart. However, heart-guarding didn’t take sex with Cleo off the table. He could have both.

  And Judd was almost certain he could pull that off.

  “You cause parts of me to flutter when you do that,” she said, her voice breathy now. She shoved the hoof into the garbage bag and picked up another head. This time it was a Holstein. “The best parts,” she added with a chuckle.

  Yeah, he could pull this off, and Judd would have kissed her again if he hadn’t heard the footsteps. Seconds later, Judd spotted the massive bartender and five other guys walking toward them.

  There were lots of “holy shits” and “WTFs” grumbled as they approached, but one of the guys, a skinny blond, said, “Cool.” It didn’t surprise Judd when that one asked Cleo if he could keep the stuff.

  Tiny picked up the box of garbage bags, pulled one out and handed the box to the others. “You think that loser dickhead ex of yours made this mess?” he asked Cleo.

  “Harmon?” Cleo said, as if testing out that theory. But she shook her head. “He’s never done anything like this.”

  Tiny huffed, and coming from a guy his size, it was a gust of breath big enough to blow out the candles on a senior citizen’s birthday cake. “You blocked his number on your cell, but he still fills your work phone with messages. I’ve seen him parked out front watching the place, probably waiting for you to come out.”

  Now Judd huffed. And cursed. “This guy’s a stalker.”

  “Yeah,” Tiny readily agreed. “My granny would call him smitten, but I prefer the term dick-wad.”

  Judd liked that term, as well. “Did you happen to see him around here tonight?”

  Tiny shook his head. “But I had the early shift and left at six. The cows were still in the alley then. I know because I saw them when I took out some trash.” He glanced around. “How the hell did he get all of this out here without somebody noticing?”

  That was something Judd wanted to know. “Where does Harmon live?” he asked Cleo. “Because I want to have a chat with him.”

  Judd figured Cleo would try to nix that, but there was fire in her eyes when she shoved the Holstein head into the trash bag and handed it to Tiny. “I’ll show you the way, but if Harmon’s ass needs kicking, I’ll be the one to do it.”

  He admired her attitude, but Judd had no intention of letting her assault Harmon and have her on the wrong side of the law. If Harmon had indeed done this, Judd would make sure he paid, the legal way. With an arrest, a restraining order and money for cleanup. Of course, Judd would get in his face first and give the guy a whole lot of grief.

  Cleo pulled off the gloves, dumping them into a trash bag, and she got her purse so she could follow Judd back to his truck. When Judd drove off, she started giving him directions.

  Judd went through what he knew about the guy. Harmon was rich and had claimed to have dreamed about Cleo before he met her. No criminal record but plenty of nutjobs had clean records.

  “Has Harmon ever been violent with you?” Judd asked.

  “No,” she snapped, but she must have realized it was best not to take her anger out on him, so she repeated it in a softer, calmer voice. “For him, it’s more about ego. He’s a dick-inch kind of guy.”

  Judd frowned and gave her a puzzled glance. Apparently, Cleo and Mercy shared some vocabulary words.

  “You know, he exaggerates things,” she explained. “Instead of saying he’s down about our breakup, he’ll say his heart is crushed. He never has just a single sleepless night but rather has dozens of them. And according to him, it’s my fault. If I’d just get back with him, everything would be fine. Except he wouldn’t say it was just fine—he would call it picture-perfect.”

  Maybe Judd wouldn’t be able to stick to the legal way after all. “What a tool. Why the hell were you ever with him?”

  “Because he was nice. At first. And he didn’t tell me about the whole dream thing he’d had about me until after we were involved. But after Miranda got sick, I didn’t have time to spend with him, and he resented it. That’s when the dick-inch stuff started coming up. I got tired of it and broke things off.”

  But Harmon clearly hadn’t gotten the message about the breakup. Judd would make sure he understood it tonight.

  “Kace said you mainly have one-nighters,” Cleo mumbled. “Smart. That’s how you avoid the Harmons of the world.”

  She’d continued so fast after throwing out the “one-nighter” revelation that Jud
d didn’t have time to say anything until after she’d finished. Now he said, “What?”

  Cleo looked at him, shrugged and told him to take a turn onto another street. “I guess you don’t like Kace talking to me about your sex life,” she commented.

  “No, I don’t.” And he was going to bring that up, too, when he had a discussion with Kace.

  “He’s your brother. He’s worried about you. Nico is as well, and I’m guessing that’s why he paid you a visit earlier.”

  Well, hell. Apparently, nothing about his life was private. “Did Nico happen to talk to you about staying at my place?” Judd asked, only because he was certain that Nico had already chatted about this with Cleo.

  Judd was wrong about that, though.

  “What?” Cleo said. “No. What?” she repeated.

  Judd took in a long breath, sorry that he’d even gotten into this. “Nico had a stupid idea that it’d look better with the social worker if you weren’t staying in the house with Kace and the boys. He thought if you were at my place, then you could still keep an eye on things without raising suspicion from CPS.”

  She certainly didn’t jump on confirming that the idea was stupid. Judging from her expression, she was actually testing out whether or not it would work. But then she shook her head.

  “That would definitely take you out of your one-night-stand comfort zone,” she concluded. Before Judd could figure out how to respond, she motioned to a modern two-story house just ahead. “There’s Harmon’s place. His car’s in the driveway so he should be here.”

  Good. Best to deal with this now. Judd’s “chatting to” and “clearing up” list was growing, and he wanted to get Harmon off of it.

  Cleo and he got out of his truck, but before they even reached the front door, it opened, and a beefy, brown-haired guy came out onto the porch.

  “Cleo,” he said on a rise of breath. The kind of rise that meant he was surprised to see her. Happy, too, because he started grinning. The grin wavered significantly, though, when his gaze landed on Judd, but it was barely a glance before he turned his attention back to Cleo.

  Harmon lifted his nose, sniffing. “Cleo, you smell good. Is that a new perfume?”

  “It’s Jell-O and Extra Creamy Dreamy,” Judd explained.

  “I know who you are.” Harmon’s mouth tightened, and his eyes went to slits. “Cleo, why do both of you smell like Jell-O and Extra Creamy Dreamy?”

  Judd had no trouble picking up on the jealous undertones. Mr. Dick-inches probably thought those were sex aids.

  “Why are you here, Deputy Judd David Laramie?” Harmon demanded before Judd could speak.

  Judd had no trouble picking up on that tone, either. Harmon wanted to let him know that he’d been doing some internet searches on him and therefore knew his middle name.

  “I’m here to ask you questions, Harmon Caspian Hawthorne,” Judd growled back. “What the hell kind of name is Caspian, anyway?”

  Harmon looked down the long length of his nose at Judd, and Cleo stepped between them before Harmon had a comeback for that. “Judd’s with me,” Cleo snapped. “There was some trouble at the bar tonight, and I wondered if you had anything to do with it.”

  Harmon pulled back his shoulders, and he volleyed his gaze between Judd and her. “If you mean the calls I made to you, that’s not trouble. I have a right to call you. I need to call you, Cleo,” he added. “It makes me insane when I can’t hear your voice. My thoughts spin in my head, my heart nearly pounds out of my chest and I can’t breathe. It’s like I’m dying.”

  Yeah, so maybe this was the rare instance where dick inches did indeed apply. “Did it make you crazy enough to vandalize the bar?” Judd demanded, and because he was feeling especially mean, he tapped his badge.

  “Vandalize? Vandalize! Vandalize!” By the third time Harmon had said it, his voice had some shrill to it.

  “Vandalize,” Cleo flatly repeated. “Someone chopped up a whole bunch of assorted plastic cows, globbed red Jell-O and Extra Creamy Dreamy on them, and dumped them in front of the bar.”

  Clearly, from his blank stare, Harmon appeared to be waiting for a punch line. What he didn’t appear to be was guilty. “You mean the cows you had inside the bar?” he asked after a long pause.

  She nodded. “But I’d had them moved to the alley by the dumpster.”

  This time when Harmon’s mouth tightened, it didn’t seem to be from being pissed off or jealous of Judd. “Why the hell would someone do that?”

  Judd suspected that would be the most asked question when it came to the incident. “When’s the last time you were at the bar?” Judd asked.

  The mouth tightening turned mean again. “None of your beeswax. Like I said, I know who you are, and you don’t have jurisdiction here.”

  Cleo huffed, rolled her eyes. “When’s the last time you were at the bar?” she snapped.

  Judging from his long silence, it wasn’t a question that Harmon wanted to answer, but Cleo’s persistent stare made it clear she wasn’t leaving until she learned the truth.

  “I was there a couple of hours ago,” Harmon finally said, “but I didn’t see any cows.” Another pause. “Does this have something to do with the woman who was lurking in the alley?”

  “What woman?” Judd and Cleo said in unison.

  Harmon gave Judd a persnickety glance and settled his attention on Cleo. “She was probably in her sixties, long stringy dark brown hair. She was standing in the alley, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette.”

  Judd groaned. He already had a strong notion of who that might be even before Harmon added the clincher. “The woman obviously didn’t believe in wearing a bra because her tits were hanging pretty darn low.”

  “Lavinia.” Judd and Cleo said that at the same time, too.

  “Come on,” Judd told Cleo. “Let’s go have a chat with her.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LAVINIA.

  Cleo was trying hard to keep the woman off her mind, but even with the Saturday-morning kid chaos going on around her, it was hard to do. Lavinia hadn’t been home when Judd and she had gone to question her. Ditto for when the cops had paid Lavinia a visit. So for now, they still had no answers about whether she had anything to do with the plastic-cow carnage.

  Judd was trying to fix that. He’d gone into work early so he could make some calls—not just to find Lavinia, but Otto as well, since the man might have info about the vandalism and Lavinia’s whereabouts. That and Judd’s regular duties would likely keep him busy. Maybe busy enough that he wouldn’t think about what’d gone on before they’d gotten the call from Daisy about the cows.

  She rethought that.

  There wasn’t enough busyness in the world to make her forget it, and she suspected it was the same for Judd. They had little willpower when it came to each other, so sex would almost certainly happen in their near future. Really great sex. And then they could deal with whatever gloom and doom Kace was predicting.

  Sitting next to Cleo at the kitchen counter, Leo drew her attention back to him when he bashed a big brown egg against the side of the glass bowl. No part of the egg landed inside with the rest of the blueberry-muffin mix, which was probably a good thing. Cleo doubted the shell crunch would be very appetizing.

  “Sorry,” Leo said, and he reached for another egg that he likely would have attempted to bash, but Isaac took it from him. Isaac cracked it as if he was a trained chef.

  “Miss Rosy taught me.” Isaac’s voice was quiet, and he looked both pleased with himself and embarrassed at the same time.

  “Isaac’s a big help when it comes to cooking,” Rosy confirmed as Isaac cleaned up the egg mess Leo had made.

  Cleo already had an inkling of that since Isaac’s chore chart had a line of gold stars when it came to anything to do with the kitchen. Apparently he’d found his niche, so Cleo passed
him the bowl to finish. He took it across the kitchen to the counter nearest the stove, and Leo trailed along behind him.

  “There’s no saving the Hereford, but you know, I could probably work some taxidermic magic on the Angus and the Holstein,” Rosy muttered while she flipped through the pictures of the vandalism on Cleo’s phone.

  God, no. That was Cleo’s first reaction, but she caught herself in time. “That’s okay. I hadn’t planned on using them in the bar, anyway.”

  Rosy shrugged. “Still, it could be a conversation piece. Like Eddie and his family here.”

  Rosy ran her hand down the back of her latest creation, a quartet of frogs of varying sizes that she’d mounted around a lily-pad poker table. A fat bullfrog with bulging amber eyes and a flicking tongue was about to win the hand with a straight flush and lap up a fly at the same time.

  Cleo was always a little icked out by dead stuffed things and figured she’d feel nearly the same about stuffed plastic ones. She didn’t want that kind of conversation. Or the reminder of what’d happened. Even though she had no sentimental connection to the cows, it was still unsettling to know that someone might have done it to get back at her. That meant either Harmon or Lavinia.

  Her money was on Lavinia.

  There’d be an investigation, of course, but Cleo wasn’t holding out hope that the police would actually be able to pin the vandalism on the woman. Too bad, because then Lavinia could be arrested, and it would get her out of Cleo’s and the boys’ hair. Out of Judd’s, too.

  Cleo hadn’t meant for her sigh to be so loud, but Rosy noticed, and the woman looked at her. “Anything I can help with?” Rosy asked, her voice a whisper, probably so the boys wouldn’t be able to hear.

  “No.” Cleo meant it, too, and that’s why she was surprised when she went closer to Rosy and added, “I just hate that Judd’s gotten involved in this.”

  Rosy’s sound of agreement only made Cleo feel worse. “Judd will be fine.” But for once, she didn’t sound so, well, rosy.