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“Good for you!” Heidi squinted up at the clock. “Go ahead and do it now. I’ll wrangle Kevin and get some lunch into him. You’ve got a conference call about boats at three. I’m supposed to be on it, too, but this gives me an excuse to use my time for something that will be productive, if not satisfying.”
He gave her shoulder a nudge and stood. “I see. Throw me to the wolves with the meeting but pick up the slack here.” He chuckled, feeling genuine amusement for the first time in a week or more. “You are one calculating woman, Heidi Dowd.”
She turned her hands over in concession. “I learned from the best.”
“Hey, I learned plenty from you, too.”
“We make a good team, huh?”
“Yeah, for most things,” Tim said, smile fading. “Just not—“
The chamber door swung open, and Kevin shuffled out and gave his pants a yank at the waist.
Heidi growled, walked over to him, pulled his pants up, and fastened his belt so that six inches dangled off the end, which she had to tuck into his belt loops. “You are driving menutswith that. You’re skinny. Wear pants for skinny people and not this optical illusion crap you wannabe ballers insist on buying.”
Kevin rolled his eyes.
Tim opened his mouth to follow up on what Heidi had said, but before he could get the words out, the judge said, “I gave him two choices.”
Tim turned to face the judge and Heidi stopped tucking Kevin’s shirt into his newly tightened blue jeans.
“I told him he could spend six weeks in jail, or he can keep the house arrest cuff and I’d have his probation officer loosen the restrictions so he could work during the day.”
“You want us to take him to work with us?” Heidi asked, incredulous.
“Naw,” the judge said. “I actually think the ingrate needs to spend less time with you, not more. I’ve got a nice list of folks who’ll take on special cases onto their crews for a while.”
“Special cases?” Tim asked drolly.
“Yep. Unfortunately, the sewer treatment plant didn’t need any workers and I couldn’t get him a spot at the fishery, either. I next tried my friends who do road construction, thinking maybe six or seven hours out in the sun every day holding up a heavy stop sign would be a special treat for him.”
Kevin groaned.
Tim nodded in agreement.
“What happened?” Heidi asked.
“My guys are working too far out of the area for the next month, and I don’t want him traveling that far from work—especially since he doesn’t have a valid license.”
“So, what’d you come up with?”
The judge held up a couple of fingers. “Like I said, his choices came down to two things. He’d either work with the field hands harvesting beans out at Perry’s—the migrant workers oughtta get a real kick out of that—or he’d do some hard construction labor. Plenty of that around here.”
“And you have a contact, I bet,” Heidi said.
Judge snorted. “Y’all aren’t the only ones around here with deep roots. I’ve got a finger in every pot in six counties. Kevin chose the construction, so my cousin Frank is gonna be putting him to work out at Shora. New place. Have you heard of it?”
Now it was Tim’s turn to groan.
Shora? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
It was like the universe was taunting him for his inability to reel Valerie in.
“They’re about to dig the foundation for a house out there, and Frank’ll pick him up and drop him off every day until it’s done, starting tomorrow.
World’s too small. I just can’t catch a damn break.
And Frank hadn’t said a word.
