Where was he going?
Harvey shut the door, leaving me alone with his nephew’s sunshiny personality.
“Cooper, I don’t have time to listen to your law-dog barking. I’m hanging up.”
“Parker, wait!”
“What?”
“I believe we have another ‘sticky’ situation up in Lead—a mix of shoplifting and vandalism at the minimart.”
“So, that’s why there were so many cop cars parked willy-nilly when I passed through downtown a few minutes ago.”
Harvey leaned across the windshield and plucked the tan rock from the snow.
“You didn’t do anything stupid and go take a closer look, did you?”
“No. I run away from the cops, not toward them.”
“I noticed that.” The sound of paper shuffling came through the line. “The crime occurred in broad daylight this time, no slinking around in the dark.”
I wondered why Cooper was feeling so chatty about this. Usually when I prodded him for any kind of information on a crime scene, I hit his “none of your business” brick wall repeatedly.
“Were there any witnesses?” I asked.
“Nope. The store was empty except for the clerk, who was in the back using the bathroom at the time.” More paper shuffling came through the line. “The thief knocked over a standalone floor shelf near the cash register, broke the glass doors on two refrigerated merchandiser units, and made a royal mess of the candy aisle.”
Outside my windshield, Harvey frowned down at the tan rock in his gloved hand, inspecting it up close.
“Was any money missing?”
“The money appears to be all there, but there were some gnawed-on honey taffy bars left in its wake.”
More honey products? “That’s weird.”
“No, you’re weird, Parker. This shit is bananas.”
Harvey lifted the rock to his nose. I grimaced out the windshield at him, but he was too busy sniffing the rock to notice my scrunched-up face.
“You should probably lay low for a while,” Cooper said, “so that nobody tries to tie any of this back to you.”
Hold up. Was Cooper actually watching my back? I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Nope, this was the real deal. Apparently, sex with Natalie had oiled his rusted heart.
On the other side of my windshield, Harvey licked the rock. Why would he …? I leaned closer to the windshield. Maybe I’d seen that wrong.
He licked the rock again.
Cheez whiz! Had Prudence taken over his gray matter?
“Did you hear me, Parker?” Cooper barked in my ear.
“Yes, sorry.” I sat back, picking my jaw up from the floor mat. “Your uncle is distracting me.”
“You took Uncle Willis with you to the Carhart house?” There was no missing the displeased tone in that question.
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“He’s my bodyguard.”
Cooper let out a machine-gun spray of curses, two of which mentioned my “wild hairs.”
“Nothing is going to happen to him, Cooper. And you need to take back what you said about my hair.”
“You can’t guarantee his safety, and my comment about your hair stands until you stop dragging innocent bystanders into that fucked-up freak show of a house.”
“It’s a beautiful house,” I said, staring at its two-story loveliness. It just had an ugly history. “Listen, Detective Crybaby, I am ninety-nine percent certain that Prudence is going to be too distracted today to mess with your uncle.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because Mr. Black is here to talk to the two of us.”
His end of the line went silent.
On the other side of my windshield, Harvey held up the tan rock for me to see and pointed at it, mouthing something. Unfortunately, I was as bad at reading lips as I was at wiring rocket engines.
“Mr. Black is there?” Cooper asked in my ear.
“Yep.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, Cooper. At this very moment.”
“What’s he want?” Cooper asked.
“I don’t know because I’m still stuck in my dang vehicle talking to a pain-in-the-ass detective right now.”
Cooper snarled at me.
“That’s some real good dog acting, Cooper. If Detective Hawke gets your detective badge pulled, they could put you in charge of training the K-9 unit.”
“You’re lucky I’m on your side, Parker. Call me when you’re done there.”
“I’m sorry, did I miss the word ‘please’ somewhere in that order?”
“Just do it, damn it! And don’t make me come looking for you.” Without further bossiness, he hung up on me.
I flipped off my phone. If Natalie was going to continue doing the horizontal boogie on the sly with that man, she needed to teach him some phone etiquette.
I made sure I had my sunglasses to cover the whites of Prudence’s eyes and then shoved open my door, scrambling out from behind the wheel. “What are you doing, Harvey? And why on earth did you lick that?”
“You’re not gonna believe what this is,” he said, holding up the tan stone as I rounded the front of my Honda.
The memory of the imp throwing something at my windshield flashed through my thoughts.
“It’s a piece of a honey taffy bar,” I said, taking the candy from him and pocketing it. We needed to get rid of the evidence before someone else saw it—someone with pork chop sideburns and a hard-on to see me behind bars.
Harvey gaped at me. “How in tarnation did you figure that out?”
I motioned for him to walk and talk with me, speaking quietly as we made our way to the porch. “Your nephew just told me that the minimart down on Lead’s main drag was vandalized by the imp.”
“That explains the Johnny Law meetin’ downtown.”
“Other than damaging some shelves and a couple of coolers, the little shit left behind partially eaten honey taffy bars.”
“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!”
I scowled into the freezing wind. “I should have chased after it.”
“If you had, we’d have been late for this here date.”
“Right.” Not to mention Prudence’s tooth threat.
Mr. Black watched us climb the porch steps. His pale face showed no signs of red from the frigid weather, cementing my earlier notion that the cold didn’t bother him much. Although he was wearing a long coat that reminded me of a gangster from the 1940s.
“Your troubles are multiplying, Scharfrichter,” Mr. Black said in his rich, deep voice as we joined
