Page 114 of Moonshine Kiss
When it came to Bootleg, I had my pick of gossipmongers. I picked Millie Waggle and fired off a text.
Me: Hey, Millie. You run into that Shelby yet? New in town. Staying for the holidays.
Approximately twenty seconds later, I had chapter and verse on Ms. Shelby Thompson who was currently in residence in the B&B part of the Bootleg Springs Spa. Apparently she was considering moving into a rental. She wore size seven shoes. And was often seen jogging in the early mornings like a crazy person. She preferred tea over coffee and “seemed genuinely interested in everyone and everything.”
My spidey senses were tingling. I did a nifty little search for Ms. Shelby Thompson, and when those results were too generic, I logged into the station’s database.
Well, well, well. Hello, Shelby Thompson, 28, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her record was squeaky clean. Not a parking ticket or traffic violation in the last five years. With the added information of her middle initial and hometown, I redid my regular search and found what I was looking for.
Little Miss Nice as Pie had graduated with a degree in journalism from West Virginia University. Oh, and lookie here. She was currently a freelance writer with credits in several newspapers, magazines, and blogs.
I thought of Jonah’s dopey “she’s so pretty” expression and felt a tiny bit bad that I was going to have to crush his crush. The oven timer zzz-ed to life. Both our kitchens could use a makeover, I thought, pulling the first two trays of hearts and trees out of the ancient oven and setting them on the scrap of table with cooling racks.
Imagine the space if we took the wall down and had one big kitchen.
The sizzling of my own flesh brought me back. I’d caught Bowie’s forever fever, I thought, sucking my abused thumb into my mouth. It was contagious. If it weren’t for my work situation, it would be real tempting to daydream a little about the future.
But what was the point with Connelly breathing down my neck and causing a ruckus? I needed a plan where that man was concerned. A way to change his mind about me.
Because the fact was, until the Callie Kendall case heated up or cooled off I didn’t have a future to plan. I popped the next two trays into the oven, reset the timer, and sat back down at my laptop, trying to ignore the sugary scents of awesome.
With Connelly still on my mind, I typed his name into the search engine.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I breathed.
54
Bowie
Ieased into Scarlett’s driveway and cursed when I didn’t see a delivery vehicle there. She’d invited me for dinner tonight to “strategize,” and I hoped to God that meant she wasn’t cooking. My sister was a lot of things. A passable cook who probably wouldn’t give her guests food poisoning was not one of them.
I let myself in the front door of the cabin and ran right into a clothing rack full of suits that was blocking the hallway. “Scarlett?”
Something smelled unpleasant in here. Like burnt meat and bad eggs. Why didn’t I offer to pick something up?
“Back here, Bow,” she called from the kitchen.
The house was doll-sized with one bedroom, a bath barely bigger than the tub, and a living-dining-kitchen space that was roughly the size of my living room. With its scrap of lake frontage and tree-filled yard, it suited Scarlett down to the ground. At least it had until Devlin the Clothes Horse moved in. There was a shoe rack on top of the coffee table that had been shoved up against the wall to make room for a folding table buckling under the weight of two laptops and a mess of paperwork.
“How do you like our home office?” Scarlett chirped.
She and Devlin were decked out in aprons and hot pads, trying to scrape something that looked like it could have been a meatloaf out of a pan.
“It’s real homey,” I lied, noting the books stacked up on the floor. Kitten Jedediah was unraveling a very nice-looking cashmere sweater stored in one of the half-dozen laundry baskets piled together blocking the patio doors.
Devlin looked up from the burnt gray meat. “They broke ground yesterday. Another six months and we’ll have some space to spread out,” he said cheerfully.
I scratched the back of my head. Every flat surface was buried under things that should have had a rightful place. I guessed that’s what you got when you took two independent lives and smashed them together in six hundred square feet. Now, Cassidy and I had an entire house to work with. We could take out walls and have plenty of room for rambling.
“Knock knock,” Cassidy called from the front door.
“What are you up to?” I hissed at my sister.
“This is between me and yoursecretgirlfriend who still hasn’t told me y’all are together,” Scarlett said wickedly. “In the kitchen, Cass,” she sang.
Cassidy came around the corner, narrowly avoiding a stack of law books, and stopped short when she saw me. She was in uniform, and her hair was pulled back in that slick bun.
“Isn’t this nice?” Scarlett asked sweetly. “I would have invited the others, but we’re plum out of room.”
