He shrugged best he could with his hands tied up behind his back. “S’kay.”
I sighed. I hated to do it, but there was no way I wanted to spend the next half hour dragging his uncooperative carcass into the back of my cruiser. He’d asked for it.
“Welp, looks like I’ll have to get Sheriff Locke down here to collect you.”
The guy moved so fast I had to jump out of the way. He found his feet and hustled toward my car before I could bark out a laugh. Man, I was jealous. I hoped uttering my name one day would make people jump to attention like that. Our county sheriff was a fair guy, but you didn’t want to be on his bad side. He turned fifty soon and seemed to have no time for foolhardiness and shenanigans any more. His almost six-foot-five stature with at least two hundred fifty pounds of bulk helped too. The man was a tank with a badge.
Boots crunching over the gravel, I got down to the cruiser and opened the back door. Jeremiah made a face I couldn’t make out in the dimming light and slid right in. I walked around to the driver’s side and radioed in that I had the suspect in custody and would be in shortly to book him in our tiny county jail.
Getting in behind the wheel, I stopped short, nose lifting automatically. I gave a test sniff and groaned out loud. I radioed in again.
“Got a code brown situation here. Let maintenance know this rig’ll need a full cleanout before tomorrow.”
The dispatcher, a lady in her late fifties whom I liked before tonight, couldn’t contain the peal of laughter before she responded. “Ten-four. What a shitty night, huh?” She broke into laughter again before I cut off the radio and put the car in gear.
“Seriously, Jeremiah?” I asked him in the rearview mirror, none too happy to end my night like this.
He had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I’ve been having tummy troubles, and when you said Sheriff Locke, I just lost control a bit, that’s all.”
“A bit?” I snapped.
My nose said he shit his pants something awful.
I pulled my little Grom motorcycle under the carport next to my house in the woods and cut the engine. I’d been saving all my money while working for the sheriff’s department to get this house. Having a vehicle seemed a little unnecessary, especially when I spent most of my time in a government-issued cruiser. The Grom was all I needed to get around in the small town of Auburn Hill.
Pulling off my helmet, I noticed a light on at my neighbor’s house. One of the deciding factors on my house purchase had been only having one neighbor close enough to see daily. I liked my privacy, okay? Old man Jim had been a good guy. Never caused any trouble, but sadly, he’d passed away a few months ago. His kids hadn’t wanted to move to a small town, so they’d had it on the market. The For Sale sign had come down last week, so I guessed my new neighbor had moved in, though I hadn’t seen anyone around.
I walked closer, not because I was nosy, but because it was neighborly to monitor the goings-on in the area. A huge black truck sat in the driveway, obscuring the front of the house from my view. I snorted and grabbed my cell phone from my back pocket to text my sister, Amelia.
I held up my pinkie and took the shot, the truck in the background.
Oakley: Uh-oh. The new neighbor moved in. Seems like he might be compensating for something…
Amelia: What’s with micro-dicks buying jacked-up trucks??
I snickered and headed back inside my house to make some dinner. I knew Amelia would get my reference. We’d been more like best friends since we were the closest in age out of all the Waldo sisters. In high school, we’d had a game where we tried to guess the guy’s personality based on the car he drove. The flashier the car, the bigger asshole he typically was. And invariably, the bigger the vehicle, the smaller the dick size. Since high school, I hadn’t been proven wrong yet. It was science, y’all.
I threw my helmet and keys on the tiny kitchenette table and hurried to turn the heater on. My home may have been old and drafty, more cabin than house, but it had charm you couldn’t manufacture in a master-planned community. While throwing a frozen lasagna dinner in the microwave, my phone rang. It was my parents. They likely memorized my work schedule and called the second they knew I’d be home.
“Hello, Mom,” I said, putting the call on speakerphone so I could strip out of my uniform in my bedroom.
“Hey, doll. How was work? All in one piece, huh?”
Mom always worried about me, but I guessed she was used to that state of being. My father was the chief of police in Auburn Hill.
“I’m just fine. Trying to scrounge up some dinner and relax. How’d your day go?” I tossed my shirt over the antique chair I’d found in the attic of this house after I’d moved in. My boots and pants were next, though my boots went into the tub in the bathroom and my pants went into the clothes hamper. I took all sanitary precautions in case that code brown had spread. I’d learned that the hard way.
“Oh, it was fine. Just caught up on the gossip at Coffee today. That Penelope Fines is getting stranger by the day. I asked your father why he hired her and where she came from. You know what he did? He basically hustled me out of the room! That’s strange, don’t you think?”
I rolled my eyes, but the smile came just hearing my mom’s voice. “Sounds like you need to let Dad do the detective work.”
She made some clucking noise only mothers of
