Page 3 of Housesitter

Shepherd had figured that would do it. Small-town economy. Sales or gossip, the principle was the same. No one wanted to let a competitor get first crack at one.

“We’re here,” she said, and doodled a blob that might have been a coffee cup onto the paper. A flick of the pen indicated the road outside before she went back to the napkin. “You want to drive down the road, turn on…”

Shepherd nodded his way through the ‘pink bench’ and ‘best burgers in town’ flourishes. Most of the middle bit went in one ear and out the other, but he’d always found that as long as you knew where to start and where to stop, the rest worked itself out.

“You can’t miss it,” Emily said as she narrowed her eyes at him. “It’s the one with an aura of evil… and the front door is cobalt blue.”

“Thanks,” Shepherd said cheerfully. He lifted the coffee in a toast. “See you tomorrow.”

“I don’t work tomorrow,” Emily said, with a sniff that implied she wasn’t sorry about that.

“I was talking to the espresso machine,” Shepherd said.

He turned to go and had just pulled the door open when Emily cleared her throat behind him.

“You know what they call that place?” she asked.

“123 Marble Road?”

“The Hell House,” Emily said dramatically. “Because there’s a portal straight to Hell in that place.”

“Yeah, well,” Shepherd said as he stepped out onto the pavement. “Unless it needs watered, that’s not my problem.”

And if it did, the services packet had better cover it. If it didn’t, Shepherd wasn’t taking responsibility for anything drying up, closing up, or getting overfed. He did what he was told. In his experience, no one thanked you for showing initiative.

He left Emily looking confused and headed back out to his minivan. As he got in, he realized that Shithead had gotten out of the crate and onto the passenger seat while he was inside. Flat blue eyes stared a dumb challenge at Shepherd as he got into the car.

“It’s up to you,” Shepherd said as he got behind the wheel and started the engine. “I’m not buckling you in, though. If we get in an accident, you go through the window.”

If Shithead could have given him the finger, he was sure she would have. Since she couldn’t, she just sat there. Ominously.

As ominously as an old-fashioned Victorian doll with a snatched-bald head, a frilly blue dress, and only one leg could anyhow. Which was, in fairness, quite a lot. It was probably the faint smell of mildew.

“Up to you,” Shepherd said as he pulled out in front of a purple Toyota. He dropped the window and waved one arm out in a vaguely conciliatory gesture when the driver honked the horn at him. “You’re old enough and ugly enough to make your own choices.”

Chapter Two

Hell House Client Brief: The reflection in the hall mirror always tells the truth, but it's very hurtful.

The pretzels were stale.

Free, though, and the salt was still crunchy and sharp enough to make Kel’s tongue itch. He popped another in his mouth. It gave him something to do with his hands between the occasional sips of the beer he’d been nursing the last couple of hours.

In his experience, fifteen minutes was the sweet spot. Drink any slower, and the bartender would try and pull a ‘let me get that out of your way.’ Any faster, and he’d need another beer.

And two beers in was when the words ‘whiskey chaser’ started to float through his mind.

The jury might still be out on whether or not Kel Laker was a drunk—he would argue he had the fucking right to be—but he wasn’t here to get drunk. Not today, at least.

Today he was here to eavesdrop on Jodie Tiller’s once-a-week Zoom call with her bestie back in Santa Barbara. It had been the talk of the town when Harry Tiller had come back from Bermuda with a buzz-cut and a stylish new wife. Of course, it didn’t take much to be the talk of Marble Falls.

Six months in and it had hit home for Jodie that good sex and island cocktails made a lot of things seem like a good idea. Like, for example, chucking in your career, condo, and Cali lifestyle to be a small-town banker’s wife.

That wasn’t speculation on Kel’s part; that was 80% of Jodie’s side of the conversation with her bestie. With the other 20% being what some (not Kel) might call the dissemination of privileged financial information. Apparently, Harry liked to talk about his day. In fact, he insisted on it. Even though Jodie didn’t care about whose mortgage was in arrears or whose dead husband’s estate had finally gone through probate.

That was OK, though. Kel could care for her.

Hell. Kel meditatively ate another pretzel as he thought about it. If he’d known this was the sort of information that Harry gave out for the low, low price of the occasional hand-job, Kel would have married the guy and saved him the cost of that Bermuda all-inclusive.