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“I’ll add them to the list,” Jacob says.
She grins and says something we can’t hear, and they share a laugh. It’s damn good to see my brother laugh. I’d say it’s good to see him with someone, but that’s secondary. I just want him to be happy, and if he’s happy because he’s found someone to share his life with, all the better.
For now, Nicole and Jacob are staying in the lodge while April monitors Nicole’s pregnancy, but I suspect it won’t be long before they disappear into the forest to camp for a while before winter hits. I might be more comfortable in the wilderness, but I’ve also lived in a town. Jacob hasn’t, and he has no desire to, and I’m just glad he’s found someone who wants to be out there with him.
I wave the rubber boots. “Back on track, people. Someone left these sticking up from the ground beside our walking path.”
“Stumbling over dead bodies again, Case?” Will says.
When I turn his way, my deputy raises both hands. “Which doesn’t mean it was me, boss. I’m amused, but I don’t have time for that.Someonehas me doing supply-chain shit with this guy.” He jerks a thumb at Phil. “I’ve been chained to that table by a mountain of paperwork since breakfast. Nice that some of us can go for a walk, though. What’s it like out there? Any snow yet? If not, there will be by the time I get outside.”
I don’t point out that he volunteered for the “supply-chain shit.” It was that or liaison with the construction company owner—Petra’s cousin, Yolanda—and after two emails from Yolanda, Will decided helovedworking on the supply chain.
We haven’t even chosen a building site yet, and I can already tell Yolanda is going to be a pain in the ass. Unfortunately, she’s also the granddaughter of the woman bankrolling our new town.
Fine, that’s not entirely true. Casey and April’s inheritance is paying for the lion’s share. Émilie is contributing a decent portion, but the reason we aren’t already talking about firing Yolanda is that the woman is damned good at her job. Just a pain in the ass to work with. Course, people could say that about me, too. Hell, who am I kidding? They do say it—straight to my face.
“So no one’s owning up to planting fake dead bodies?” I say as I stride along the aisle between tables.
Phil doesn’t even look up from his tablet, as if the question couldn’t possibly be directed at him. He has a point. I never know what to make of the guy. It doesn’t help that, for years, he was my faceless enemy on the other end of a satellite receiver, as spokesperson for the council.
In person, Phil is no less annoying thirty percent of the time. Fifty percent of the time, though, he’s exactly what we need—a number-crunching detail-obsessed town manager. And the other twenty percent? That’s the part I can’t quite figure out. Personally, I’d be kinda insulted if everyone presumedIcouldn’t be behind a gag.Funis never a word anyone applies to Phil, though Isabel seems to think otherwise.
As for Isabel—Rockton’s tavern owner—she only flutters an elegant hand. “It is quite amusing, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish I’d thought of it first, but can you really see me digging holes in the woods?”
Nope, I cannot. Since we’ve been in the lodge, Isabel has spent more time in the hot tub than the forest. Like Phil, she was one of those who saw Rockton as a bubble one didn’t leave unless absolutely necessary. She’s taking full advantage of our eight months in a luxury lodge.
“It isn’t me,” April says, though I hadn’t so much as looked her way. “I find it quite distasteful. Murder is not amusing.” She pauses, the last serving dish in her hand. “Unless it’s in books. Then it can be quite amusing and certainly entertaining. But in real life, murder is never a joking matter. Casey needs a break from finding dead bodies. I’m sure she’ll be stumbling over them again soon enough.”
“I’m taking that as a joke,” Casey says.
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
I glance over at Casey, watching for that little tense. When it doesn’t come, I relax and nod to myself, satisfied.
I didn’t want April in Rockton at first. Yeah, she’s a brilliant neurosurgeon, and we desperately needed a doctor. But by then, I’d learned the language of Casey’s body, especially when she talked about her family—the discomfort and the stress and the sadness that she’d never been what they wanted, never had the relationships she longed for.
With her parents dead, there was only April to tie Casey to that old grief, and I sure as hell didn’t want that anchor in Rockton. But then something happened. Forced into close proximity, they began to understand each other. Kenny also helped them realize that April is on the autism spectrum, a fact her parents hid from April herself.
Casey still doesn’t put up with the worst of April’s bullshit—I wouldn’t let her—but she now understands it doesn’t come from cruelty, and April now understands that what she considers honesty can hurt her little sister.
They might never have the sibling relationship Casey longs for, but they also now seek each other out for company and even comfort, and that’s something.
“Before you ask,” Kenny says as he comes in on his crutches. “It wasn’t me. I’ve been in the kitchen all day, and I was gone for the last fake body, if you recall.”
I do. Our carpenter and militia head had returned home to see family after nearly three years away. A bullet to the back means he wears leg braces, and he’d been worried about explaining that, but it went well.
April had been a wreck the whole week. By that, I mean she was insufferable to the point where I had to sit her down and tell her if she kept snapping at Casey, I was going to make her call Kenny and admit she missed him and was worried he’d never come back.
April didn’t talk to me for a day after that, but she did stop snapping at Casey. Then Kenny returned, and she went back to being April with, as Casey joked, seventy-five percent less snapping. Again, I’d really like a hundred percent less. Hell, April can snap atme, if she wants to. I don’t care. But if that’s not happening, seventy-five percent less will do.
I glance at Diana, my number-one suspect.
“I have an alibi, Sheriff,” Diana says. “I went for groceries with Kenny this morning, and then I’ve been with April all afternoon.”
“Sono oneis planting the fake dead bodies?” I say.
“Have you talked to Storm?” Nicole calls. “She’s good at digging. Ask Casey and me how we spent our morning yesterday.”
