Page 43 of Engaging the Deputy

Dean had said that Angie had been restoring old furniture.Restoringdidn’t seem to be the right word. The old furniture was clearly being used to hide bagged drugs.

As he reached to close the door, he brushed something inside the room. An alarm went off. He slammed the door, the alarm still blaring—not that there was anyone around to hear it. Had the alarm been to scare people away?

Frowning, he shook his head. No. It had been to warn someone that the door had been breached. If he had worked here, he would know how to turn it off—or never set it off in the first place.

As he pulled out his phone to alert the DEA state boys, he wondered if the alarm was also set up to notify whoever was in charge of the operation. Angie? She apparently was long gone. Rob wasn’t being notified of the alarm. Clearly, someone else was involved in the operation.

* * *

When there wasno response on the other end of the phone line, Olivia asked, “Cody? Are you there?” She was beginning to wonder if he’d accidentally called her.

“Sorry, I had a customer,” he said. She could hear the sounds of the hardware store in the background. His father insisted on playing those old songs from the thirties and forties as background music.

“Is everything all right?” Cody sounded winded and she said as much.

“Just had to carry out a bunch of supplies to a pickup. I ran all the way back in. It’s getting cold out. That wind is brutal,” he said and seemed to catch his breath.

“I was surprised you called. What’s going on?”

“I get off work in thirty minutes. I was hoping I could talk you into going with me out to Starling.”

She glanced back toward the kitchen as she pushed out the front door, closing it behind her. Cody was right. It had gotten a lot colder, a sure sign that winter wasn’t that far off. Often it snowed by Halloween. It hadn’t this year, but now that it was November, the mountain peaks were snowcapped and there was a bite to the air.

Shivering, she said, “I was out there this morning. There’s nothing to see, believe me.”

“You went out there by yourself?” He sounded like her mother.

“No. The deputy went with me.”

“Really? What were the two of you looking for?”

“We weren’t looking for anything exactly,” she said. “I just wanted to see it in the daylight. I was surprised that the hole wasn’t as deep as it had seemed Halloween night.”

“Then you have no interest in going with me.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t now anyway. I’m helping my mother put up crab apple jelly.”

“You can’t get out of it?”

She glanced back at the house. “No. Maybe you can get Emery to go with you.”

“He’s busy.”

“Or Krystal.”

He groaned. “I told you, we aren’t together, not really.”

“And I told you, I don’t care.”

“Yeah, you’ve made that clear. You and the deputy getting back together?”

“I hope so.” Silence. “I should get back inside the house. It’s freezing out here and—”

“You have to help your mother make jelly… Getting pretty domestic, aren’t you. I remember when we were kids and you tried to make fudge.”

She smiled. “Chocolate glue, you mean?”

He chuckled. “Good times.”

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