AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER 65
In case you care, Cash didn’t die.
He fell two stories into the back of my Gladiator, landing with his back square on Big Red, breaking both legs and his hip because when you go out a second-floor window, there are consequences, and the bear only took up part of the fall. The Gladiator inflicted the rest of the damage and hopefully Liz will appreciate that and call it by its correct name henceforth.
He ended up in the prison hospital, where he babbled too much under his pain meds, bragging about hiring Mickey Pitts to go after Thacker and chasing down Jim Pitts. In a way, even there, body busted up, he thought he could smile his way out of it. But the DA wasn’t having any of it. Johnny Cash Porter Junior was going away for a long time.
The senator repudiated him, his brothers and sister disowned him, and his mother plans to visit him every week. Patsy is suing him to get the Red Box mortgage money back, and Liz is refusing to pay for most of the stuff he did in the factory since it wasn’t what she wanted. We also sent him a bill for the damage to her house, but I’m not expecting much there.
The big thing? We’re back to normal, no more surprises, no more big changes.
Okay, maybe one.
Oh, and yeah, Big Red is fine. Crys washed it very carefully at the fire station to get dog pee and Cash blood out of it, then used three huge fans to dry it out and we returned it to Peri in a solemn ceremony.
She was thrilled and promised to keep it away from Veronica in the future.
CHAPTER 66
After a week of cleaning up all the messes, physical and psychological, that Cash had left behind, we had Peri back working on her bears and sleeping again, I think because Vince and Mac had been there at the end, telling her it would be okay, and then it was. It had taken longer to get my cottage back in livable condition, but Olivia stepped up, refusing to repair the ratty old kitchen counter and putting in new cabinets and a quartz countertop instead, and Jason was on the windows and I think they were both being driven by Anemone who was so outraged at what Cash had done that she’d have built me a new cabin if Olivia hadn’t stopped her.
Which is why when I got a text from her telling me to come to JB’s one night, I dragged Vince there without a question. Not that it took much dragging. Earlier in the week, he’d whispered his thanks to me late one night for taking care of Cash because he really, really hadn’t wanted to kill him in front of Peri. I think the only thing that had concerned him was the in-front-of-Peri part.
When we got to JB’s, the place was buzzing, and Anemone and George were sitting at a table with a bottle of champagne while people going past shook George’s hand and pounded him on the back.
“We missed something,” I said.
“Good,” Vince said. “We’ve handled enough.”
“It looks good, though,” I said. “Champagne.”
We went over to the table, and when Vince asked, “Okay, what happened?” Anemone said, “A miracle occurred.”
She looked smug, though, so I was willing to bet it was an Anemone miracle. An Anemacle.
We sat down and Anemone dropped her bomb.
Patrick O’Toole had resigned on his lawyer’s suggestion, so then the town council had to figure out what to do about his replacement. When they looked it up in the town charter, it turned out that the state of Ohio had already put it into law: The president of the town legislature automatically became mayor pro tem until the next election.
George was president of the town council.
George was now mayor.
“Did you know that?” Vince asked.
“No idea,” George said, looking minimally shell-shocked after copious quantities of champagne. “I’ll still have to run in November, of course.”
I looked at Anemone, who smiled back at me, innocent as all hell, patting George on the back. She’d been the one who’d pushed George into that presidency.
I didn’t say, “Anemone knew.” The moment was too perfect as an out-of-the-blue win to spoil it by pointing out the little blonde behind the curtain.
“But now, I have a problem,” George said, and I looked at Anemone and thought,You have no problems, you have Anemone.“Bartlett resigned as police chief. He said he’d like to stay on as detective and go to detective school—”
“Detective school?” Vince turned to look at me, suspicious as all hell, probably remembering that he’d left me alone with Bartlett at lunch.
“—so I need to appoint a new police chief,” George said. “That’s you.”
“No,” Vince said.
