Page 33 of Moonshine Kiss
I booted up my computer, ignored the red blinking message light on my desk phone, and plated up two pastries.
Dumping one on my own desk, I delivered the other one to Bex. She flashed me a grin and an eye-roll. “That does sound like something Detective Connelly would be interested in, Mrs. Varney,” she said into the phone.
I snickered. Mrs. Varney was eighty-seven years old and dressed like every day was someone’s funeral. She introduced herself as “Mrs. Varney of the Bootleg Springs Varneys.” Her husband’s family had been in Bootleg for four generations, and Mrs. Varney considered herself to be local royalty.
She was snooty, in a funny old-lady way. At least once a month, one of us deputies was dispatched to her home smack dab in the middle of town. Always under the guise of investigating a strange smell or sound. Every visit invariably ended with bitter tea and crunchy cookies and reminiscences of the good ol’ days.
“How about I pencil you in for four o’clock today? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oh, no, ma’am. I don’t think bringing your good pocket book would be too uppity. Great. We’ll see you then.”
Bex hung up and dove on the pastry.
“Mrs. Varney has a hot tip for Connelly?” I ventured.
“She feels she would be remiss if she didn’t report that her little doggie, Cleveland, had a barking fit the night Callie Kendall disappeared,” Bex explained through a mouthful of puff pastry. “Claims Cleveland was a good boy and never barked at anything.”
“Except the mailman, the UPS truck driver, anyone who walked past the house on the sidewalk, leaves blowing across the yard, and literally anything that ever moved in his line of vision,” I ticked them off on my fingers. I remembered the fluffy little bastard. He’d bitten about a hundred and fifty people in his fifteen years of ornery life. But, being four pounds two ounces, no one paid him much mind.
“Figured it wouldn’t hurt to dump her on Detective Snappy Fingers.”
Connelly had made the fatal error of snapping his fingers at Bex and ordering a coffee. She’d pointed him in the direction of the department’s ancient coffee maker and told him to pour his own damn coffee.
I’d seen my dad’s mustache twitch at that. Harlan Tucker was the most diplomatic man I knew in this life. But I could tell that even he was rubbed the wrong way by the state police detective who had elbowed his way into the case and acted like the rest of us were his maids, cooks, and personal assistants.
I did my best to follow my dad’s lead and treated the man with a cool respect.
I was real good at hiding my feelings.
“Is his highness in residence today?” I asked Bex.
She nodded her head in the direction of the conference room. The door was closed.
“He’s in there with the sheriff. I think your daddy dumped about sixty messages on him that came in after the press conference.”
“Mmm.” I had a lot of things I wanted to say about that press conference, but like a good deputy, I bit my tongue. The phone rang again, and I backed out of the property room as Bex answered with her chipper “Bootleg Springs Police Department, how can we help?”
I returned to my desk, casting a glance at the closed conference room door. Connelly had no idea the shitstorm he’d stirred up.
There was nothing Bootleggers liked better than rehashing every detail of Callie Kendall’s disappearance. And what was more salacious than a break in a missing person case that had baffled authorities for twelve years? There was no way the Bodines would come out of this unscathed.
I had a sticky feeling about that press conference. We’d no sooner gotten our first reporter calling in about the DNA results than Connelly was organizing a press conference.
It was like he hadn’t been the least bit surprised that the news had leaked.
My phone pinged from inside my jacket pocket. I pulled it out and unlocked the screen.
Scarlett: Potluck takeout. Pick up Bow and Jonah and meet us at the Red House tonight.
I felt something like unease skitter through my belly. With as public a stage as Bootleg had become, was it even okay for me, a law enforcement officer involved in the investigation, to be seen with the Bodines?
My phone pinged again. This time it was a different Bodine.
Bowie: Thanks again for the Stern Deputy routine this morning. I owe you one.
It was just dinner with friends, I rationalized. Of course I should go. A cop couldn’t be separate from the community they served, not in a town this small. Not when I knew about every resident.
“Cassidy? You’re on Mrs. Varney pickup for her very important meeting,” Bex said poking her head out of the property room.
Ah, hell.With that, I got to work.
