Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Mark
“I wonder what your wife’s going to say when she finds out you arrested her brother,” Reid mused as we waited outside the room Cole was being treated in.
Sure, ordinarily, you wouldn’t leave the person alone. There’d be an officer in the room for the safety of the doctors and nurses and to ensure they didn’t escape, but it was Cole Townsend.
Plus, he’d been arrested for his own safety and would likely not have any charges pressed against him.
Feeling Reid stiffen, I followed where he was staring and just knew I’d be testing my ability not to shit my pants at some point soon. It was crude, but with the whole Townsend family headed toward us, the men looking even more pissed off at me, it was a fact.
“What the hell happened?” Colette, Cole’s mom, shouted when she was close enough. “Ebru told us this morning he had an emergency appointment at the dentist, and then we got a call saying he’d been arrested and was in the hospital? How is that possible?”
The most honest answer was because he was Cole, but I managed to hold it in.
“Uh, Mrs. Townse—”
My jaw snapped shut audibly when she held her hand up.
“Don’t start that Mrs. Townsend bullshit with me now, Mark Montgomery. I’ve known you since you were born, I even changed your diapers, and you’re married to my daughter.”
I could have done without her reminding the others of that colossal fact, given that they all glared at me even harder, and Jack mouthed, “ You’re a dead man, ” at me.
It was unlikely that Colette didn’t know the men would be doing something after those words, but she didn’t let it deter her. “You’ll call me Colette like you’ve always done. You’ll also be telling me what happened with my son.”
To be honest, this woman was much scarier at that moment than the men behind her were. Hell, they could be playing with a knife or polishing a gun, and I’d still be more concerned by her.
This was likely why my mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and the words never came to me, leaving Reid to explain instead.
“Uh, your son was found in the middle of the road, trying to make snow angels,” he began, sounding unsure instead of confident about what we’d seen.
“It’s over one hundred degrees out,” she snapped. “Why would he do that?”
“Well, see,” Reid scratched his chin, the stubble making a loud rasping noise that made me clench my fists. “The dentist gave him some medication.”
All the tension in the family visibly left at those six words, and there was a chorus of curses.
“We were called to help him so he didn’t get hit by a car. When we did, he jumped onto the roof of our vehicle and turned the flashlight on his phone on and said he wanted to be the ‘bad, bad, po-po warning lights.’” Reid choked out the words.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the worst of it.
Which Colette knew because her eyes narrowed on me. “Why aren’t you speaking?”
A genius idea hit me, and I pointed at the camera on my vest. “Why don’t we show you the footage so you can see it for yourself? It might be easier that way.”
“Easier on whom?” she ground out.
My voice was almost a whisper. “Us? Everyone?”
“Tell. Me.”
The sphincter test was truly underway.
“Don’t let them smell your fear,” Reid said under his breath. “Never let them smell it.”
Fucking hell, if I had to face off with Colette for much longer, everyone would be smelling it.
I cleared my throat. “Cole proceeded to turn the light on and off and made a screaming sound like a siren. We managed to get him down from the top of the car, but then he complained he was overheating and stripped off while he ran away from us. He was down to his underwear when he got to the main junction next to the bank.”
Damn it, I couldn’t do it.
Colette took a step closer. “And?”
I choked. “Reid knows the story better than I do.”
My colleague and friend—hopefully—gasped and hissed, “You bastard!”
Not taking my eyes off the pissed mom, I gestured at her with my hand and tried to smile. “Mrs. T—” I stuttered when I saw her glare intensify, “ Colette’s waiting.”
Ren coughed into his hand. “Pussy!”
Yes, yes, I was.
Making a frustrated noise, Reid exhaled loudly. “He twerked in the junction while he directed cars in the wrong direction, then he began running again and yelling at us to catch him if we could. Unfortunately, he looked over his shoulder while he was doing it and ran into a stop sign.”
There was no reaction from the family. Not a blink, not a gasp, not one word was uttered. They all just stared at us blankly.
Finally, Jack, Cole’s dad, moved away from them and joined his wife. “He ran into a stop sign?”
The irony wasn’t lost on me either.
“We called an ambulance because he lost consciousness, but then he woke up before they got here and demanded they bandage him up like a mummy.” The tone Reid was using could only be described as so dry, it was like a desert.
Colette pinched the bridge of her nose while Jack dropped his head back on his shoulders and looked at the ceiling.
A welcome voice at any point in my life, but especially now, broke the silence as Layla ran through the entrance to the ER. “Mom? Where’s Cole? What happened?”
Swear to God, I didn’t expect any of them to react like they did then.
“You tell her,” Colette whispered urgently. “It sounds better coming from an official.”
“My wife’s right,” Jack mumbled as he walked over to where I was standing and pushed me forward. “I’ll keep an eye out here, and you go tell Layla.”
Fuck that shit.
Reid and I took enough steps back until we were at the wall, and I—admittedly childishly—nudged Jack out of the way and put him back in the line of fire.
“Asshole,” he hissed, trying to get back into position. “She likes you and won’t lose her mind. I don’t want to do it.”
Turning to glare at him, I said firmly, “Your daughter doesn’t like me, which is why we’re in the predicament we’re in right now. Me telling her will just make that even worse when I’ve done nothing wrong. The only reason you don’t want to tell her is because you know you should have been with Cole when he went to the dentist in case something like this happened.”
He couldn’t call me a liar or say I was being rude when I was telling the truth. It was well known and documented that Cole had ‘sensitivities’ to medications, normally painkillers, which was why he had kids Tylenol and ibuprofen at home—for him .
In the past, he’d yelled he was a unicorn while standing on a hospital bed, done the ‘wee-wee windmill’ which no one wanted to see as it involved him whirling his dick around, and he’d gotten stuck in a tree just last year when he’d adamantly announced he was a squirrel.
I still couldn’t bring myself to admit what I’d seen when it came to him ‘gathering his nuts.’ Those nightmares had taken a while to go away.
And that was the tip of the iceberg of why he’d needed someone with him.
“I thought the dentist knew,” Jack sighed. “It’s on Cole’s file.”
I snorted. “Kingston Heart’s new in town, and you know it. Depending on what the emergency was, it’s unlikely he’d have seen a note dating back to when Cole was a kid on his file warning him. He’s also a great dentist and asks if you have any allergies, so this could have been avoided if someone had gone with Cole.”
“You’d think they’d have told him,” Jack whined. Yes, he literally whined it. “Shit like that’s the first thing I’d have yelled when I’d handed the practice over. Cole’s like a Gremlin, except you don’t give him medications without having a team to hold him down or handcuffs.”
“That’s pitiful, man. You know the old team in that practice retired when the dentist did because they were all well past retirement age anyway. If anything, it’s time for them to get a new system where you can put a red flag if a patient’s got allergies or sensitivities that make them act like an asshole,” Reid growled, leaning around me to glare at Jack.
“Forgive me for speaking so bluntly, but for the love of God, I’m already scarred enough because of the squirrel incident.”
Six of us had attended that call and had stood under the tree while the fire department had gotten the ladder out to get him down. What should have been a funny moment had turned into screams and trauma for everyone.
“You swore you’d never mention that again,” Jack hissed, leaning across my chest with his finger pointed at Reid. “That was a secret.”
“Everyone knows about it, Jack,” I sighed. “We don’t want to talk about it, but our body cams were recording, and it’s definitely been the topic of a lot of discussions.”
During all this, we’d tuned out to what was happening with my wife and her family. That was immediately resolved when she snapped loudly, “Jesus Christ!”
Yeah, she tooketh the Lord’s name in vain. Loudly enough for everyone in the area to hear, and not realizing the minister for the church was seated in the waiting room, obviously waiting for treatment if the bloody bandage on his hand was any indication. Fortunately, after an incident with my friend’s/colleague’s wife where the previous minister had been paid to give her shit, this guy was new and seemed to be a bit more relaxed than the former guy.
Seeing us all watching him, he waved his bloody hand through the air. “Don’t worry about it. He probably just thinks Layla’s asking him for guidance.”
He dropped his head and lowered his voice, but we still heard it when he added, “And I’m sure he’s well aware of the reason why it keeps happening.”
The door to the ER opened again, and some of the Townsend wives came through it with their kids.
“Sorry to bring them to the hospital, but we were worried about Cole,” Maya called as they got closer. “Mrs. Anderson said he was unconscious after a traffic accident, and Mrs. Mayhew said she’d heard he had brain damage.”
Ebru, Cole’s wife, pushed through them until she was in front of us. “How bad is it? Is he in surgery?”
Hurst appeared, pulled her into his side, and said softly, “No, he had a reaction to some medication.”
Ebru’s body stiffened, and her concern morphed into a glare at the door next to us, where her husband was. “He did some stuff and hit his head on a stop sign. He’ll be just fine.”
Before she could say anything, the door opened, and we heard the doctor and nurses shouting. “No, Mr. Townsend, we need you to stay on the bed, please. You can’t go out there!”
Cole came running through, dressed only in a hospital gown and stopped when he saw his family there.
“It’s a reunion! How great is this?” Then, throwing his arms up in the air, he let out a battle cry. “ Viva La reunion .”
As he continued to walk forward, the family parted and began backing up until they were all crowded around the wall I was leaning against.
“Do something,” Colette hissed, pinching me on the arm. “You’ve got cuffs, use them.”
Grudgingly, I moved away from my safe haven, pulling Reid with me. “Uh, Cole, man, we need you to go and lie down again.”
Cole turned at my voice, looking surprised to see me. “Marky Mark, you’re here, too? You know, this guy married my sister,” he announced to everyone, turning his back to the reception desk and where some nurses and doctors were gathered.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some of them covering their mouths and heard some of the others clearing their throats, but I didn’t take my attention off Cole fully. It paid to be aware and alert when it came to him when he was like this.
I ignored the gasps and muttered reactions from the people in the waiting room at what he’d just announced, and took a step closer to him.
“Cole, your head’s still bleeding because they haven’t been able to stitch you up. Why don’t we take you back and—”
“Yes,” he cried, touching his head and jerking when the pain registered. “Those stop signs are a fake. Did you guys know that? They’re meant to stop you, but they don’t do it. We have imposter signs, cheap knock-offs. Where’s the mayor? Who’s in charge of it?”
The people waiting all pointed behind us, likely to where Hurst was standing—Piersville’s mayor.
Cole glanced over his shoulder and pointed at his grandpa. “You! What say you about these fake signs that say stop when they don’t do that?”
“To be fair, they did get you to stop by knocking you out,” Hurst eventually answered. “Not so fake when they do that, are they?”
When Cole narrowed his eyes, I knew it would explode, so I closed the distance between us and brought his attention back to me.
“Hey, let’s get your head sorted out and get you home, man. You don’t want to be here for much longer, do you?”
I heard footsteps and chanced a glance over my shoulder to see that his family had moved away from the door to the treatment area and were now moving toward the waiting room with everyone else.
Cole sighed, and his shoulders drooped. “I feel like a duzzy fuck. Does he?”
Reid coughed and moved to join me where I was standing. “What?”
“The clouds. I want to be a cloud,” Cole said dreamily. “They all look so happy.”
This was where Reid went wrong. He incorrectly assumed Cole was on the placid side of his high, forgetting what’d happened after this moment last year.
“You’re probably tired after getting those drugs at the dentist, man. Why don’t you lie down and have a nap while they fix the cut on your head,” he suggested.
“Drugs?” Cole shouted. “I didn’t get any of those. I was cheated.”
I stayed quiet, watching and waiting while Reid dealt with him verbally.
“Yeah, you did, Cole. You’re as high as a kite right now. Try and touch your nose with the tip of your pointy finger.”
Cole did just that, missing and hitting his forehead and growling at the pain.
“See? I can do that. I can also do this.”
And it happened. Oh, shit, did it happen.
Lifting his hands, he put them on his head as he sang, “Head,” then moved to his shoulders, singing that word, too. It was when he got to his knees and toes that the shit hit the fan.
For some reason, he wasn’t wearing underwear under the hospital gown—which opened at the back. When he bent over, there were screams and gasps from the waiting patients and family members as they literally saw the darkest part of his lily-white ass.
“The children!” someone cried just as a chorus of adolescent sounding wails broke the air.
To make matters worse, either the concussion or the medication he’d been given caused Cole to slump down until he was lying on the ground, face and shoulders on the floor and ass in the air.
Reid stared down at him in disbelief. “Welp, face down, ass up, that’s the way I like fu—”
“Why won’t it go away?” a male voice screamed, and I looked over to see the new minister covering his eyes with his bloody bandaged hand.
“I’ll get his head, and you get his….” Reid gestured at Cole’s ass.
Glaring at him, I pushed my hand under Cole’s left shoulder and the floor and nodded at the right side. “You get him that side, and we’ll drag him into the room.”
I can’t say it was worse than the squirrel incident, but it would be dubbed #starfishgate in the future.
It’d been a year since I’d bought this house, and I still hadn’t done anything to the inside of it. It was the property Layla had wanted to live in, the one we’d walked and driven past and made dreams about.
I think those dreams would have been very different if we’d seen the inside of it at the time, though.
From the outside, it looked like something out of the movies, like the one in Father Of The Bride . It was red brick and had white shutters and trim all over, and the front yard was filled with rose bushes and what had once been a perfectly manicured green lawn.
Now, the lawn was overgrown, and about two months past needing cut. The rose bushes weren’t so perfect but were still filled with beautifully colored flowers, and the rest just needed some TLC and to be repainted in the necessary areas. Once that was all done and the driveway had some cracks and holes filled in, it’d be perfect.
But the inside… Holy shit, the interior was some 70s monstrosity. What the owners had been thinking, I didn’t know, but my parents kept saying that at one point, the way it was decorated was fashionable.
There was a large living room with an impressive brick fireplace on the left as you walked into the grand entrance, one that could be filled with a sectional or multiple sofas, depending on your preference. At the back of it was a decently sized office area, where the previous owners had two desks with ample space for another couch.
The spiral staircase that greeted you as soon as you opened the front door took your breath away—for all the wrong reasons.
Wrapping around the outside of it, right under the handrail, were gold mirrors and different colored panels of glass that were attached to the rail. The wall had also been covered in matching mirrored panels from floor to ceiling, and the tiles they’d laid on the ground in the entrance were a deep green that clashed with everything else.
For some reason, the room they’d made a ‘formal dining room,’ which was on the right side of the entrance, had original wooden flooring and had been painted white. It looked normal compared to every other room and space in the property.
Still, I’d seen the furniture and crockery when I’d viewed the place—it’d all been golden and brightly colored glass, so they’d still managed to make it fit in with the staircase. They’d also had massive gold candelabras on the table with different jewels hanging off them, like table chandeliers or something.
Which mimicked the same chandelier they’d had hanging over the entrance, but fortunately, the owner had requested to keep it during the sale, and I’d been grateful. It would have given me nightmares.
All the other rooms downstairs were extravagantly decorated, except for the kitchen, which was an avocado, retro, chipped floor tiled nightmare. But, the appliances still worked, and it wasn’t falling apart, so I pretended I didn’t see it every night when I got home, much like the rest of the house.
Until you got to the upstairs.
In the main bedroom, every square inch of one long wall and the entire ceiling was covered in mirrors. In the bathroom, behind the toilet, were small mirror tiles, meaning when I pissed in the morning, I could watch the whole thing if I wanted to. The rest was covered in tiles with a jungle theme, complete with parrots, bright flowers, large leaves, banana plants, tigers, toucans, sloths, monkeys, and lions. Given that lions didn’t live in the jungle, it was strange, but that was the least of my worries when it came to that particular part of the décor.
Incidentally, the toilet and sink were both bright yellow, and the taps and shower were gold plated.
I’d planned on moving into one of the other four bedrooms, but all of them, bar one, were similarly decorated to the main bedroom but with different colored mirrors. In the end, I’d moved into the most normal one, which was painted in a purple so dark it was almost black and was probably used at one point for extra closet space, given all of the hooks and railings in it. I could fit my bed, a drawer unit, and a bedside table in it, and that was it.
Yet I’d still bought the place because Layla had been so in love with it. I wasn’t fooling myself when it came to the price, though. Had it not been for the fact that Mr. Marshall had died in the backyard while sunbathing naked, and Mrs. Marshall had decided to move to a retirement village in Florida and just wanted to get rid of the place, I likely wouldn’t have been able to afford it.
But she’d known how much Layla loved the place because she’d always told Mrs. Marshall when she saw her, so maybe she wanted me to get my dream at the same time Layla got hers?
Because of that, I hadn’t touched a thing in the house décor-wise. I wanted Layla to do that, to make those decisions together, and that left me facing a house that looked like the love child of Skittles and Liberace and some sex/porn palace.
After the day I’d had, though, it brought me some comfort for once. It didn’t matter how bad my day or life was, the knowledge that the house had it even worse was comforting.
I’d just pulled a beer out of the fridge when I heard the sound of a lawnmower at the front of the house. Confused, I made my way back to the double doors at the entrance and opened them to see what was going on.
My dad was on his ride-on lawnmower, cringing as he drove it through the overgrown grass and weeds.
“Dad?”
“Your father’s going to do the grass while Luke puts the weed whacker to good use,” my mom said beside me, making me jump. “Sorry, I was looking at a patch which looks like something’s been digging in it. Do you have raccoons? They have rabies, you know. If you have kids or get a dog, you’ll have to get rid of them so they don’t spread any diseases.”
I blinked. “What?”
Waving a hand through the air, my mom continued. “Anyway, we’ve been around the back and saw the state of the pool. Good Lord, that thing needs some work on it. Why would you put mirrored tiles in a pool?”
She had a point. The walls of the pool had the same small mosaic-sized mirrored tiles as the bathroom, and the bottom had larger gold ones. It was freaking awful.
“Because they were continuing with the theme from inside the house?”
Taking a break, Luke leaned on the weed whacker and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “How are you doing sleeping in their kinky playroom? I have to hand it to you, I wouldn’t be able to do it. The nightmares alone would wreck me.”
“Kinky playroom?” I repeated, wondering why everything seemed so surreal right now.
“Yeah. Just thinking about what they hung on those hooks and rods…” he shuddered and gagged as that sinking feeling in my gut turned into a black hole. “Who do you think was the top? I think it was Mrs. Marshall. I mean, she did go to live in that swingers retirement place.”
I hadn’t taken even a sip of my beer by this point, but as it all clicked into place, I did the only thing I could to get me through it. I lifted the bottle and downed it in one.
“Luke!” Mom snapped, then gasped when I burped. “Mark!”
Hitting my chest with my fist, I released the rest of the gas with a loud, long, and admittedly grotesque burp. Hey, this was my property, and I had a right to do what I wanted on it, even if it meant making poor old Mrs. Keegan jump as she walked past with her tiny dog.
Then again, I wasn’t raised with no manners, so I smiled apologetically at her. “Sorry, Mrs. Keegan.”
“That was a ten if ever I heard one,” she shouted back, waving at Mom and Dad. “Grew up with eleven brothers and had five sons, Mark. Never heard a true ten out of any of them.”
Not knowing what to do, but admittedly kind of impressed by her reaction, I raised my bottle to her. “I’ll note it down for the historians to celebrate.”
“You do that, son, and while you’re at it, have another one of those and then one for me. I heard you had an interesting day.”
She chuckled and shook her head. “Hell of a thing shit like that happening to Cole Townsend. Just wish I’d been able to see it. I missed out on squirrelgate, too.”
Filled with sudden gratitude for my neighbor, one I hadn’t interacted with much before now, I offered, “Come into the precinct one day, and I’ll show you the body cam recording. DB won’t mind, and we keep it for the days we need to laugh on.”
Remembering one vital piece of advice, I added quickly, “Just don’t eat before it. There are bits….” I shuddered at the choice of word and the mental image of the ‘bits’ in it. “There are moments that really test your gag reflex.”
Mrs. Keegan beamed at me. “I might just do that, Mark. Thanks for the invite. You know, I make the best weenie roast in the state. I’ll bring some of that with me.”
I’d never had a weenie roast and could only guess what it was, but given that Cole’s weenie was flying in the breeze in the footage and there was that gag reflex issue I’d just mentioned, I grimaced.
“Probably best not to have anything weenie related when you watch it, ma’am.”
“Ah!” she nodded understandingly. “I’ll bring my meatballs, then. They’re big, and I fill them with gorgonzola.” She made a circle with her hands like she was, showing how big the meatballs were.
For some reason, my stomach clenched, and the familiar pressure signaling I needed to burp returned. Pressing my fist against my mouth, I let it out. It wasn’t as long or loud as the last one, but the end sounded like I was about to puke—which wasn’t entirely a lie.
“Lemme guess, meatballs with melted cheese inside aren’t a good idea,” Mrs. Keegan sighed. “Well, damn.”
“What about meatloaf?” Luke suggested, then grinned evilly at me. “Or is there enough of Cole’s meat in the video, too?”
I groaned and leaned back against the wall. “Stop.”
“Say, Mark, how’s the refurb on the inside going?” Mrs. Keegan asked, jerking when her little dog yanked on its leash.
Concerned that she was going to get pulled over and seeing she had many questions to ask, I asked, “How about you come sit with us?”
I had some camping chairs that I sat on in the living room and one of those grossly oversized beanbags, so it wouldn’t be too hard to get her one.
“I’m good.” She waved a hand through the air. “Rex just has a lot of power in his little legs.”
Dad cut the lawnmower at that point, which allowed her to do some sort of whisper-yell thing. “Plus, I never know what they sat on or touched in there. I’d need a hundred gallons of Lysol and some of that medical-grade disinfectant to go in there.”
“Told you,” Luke sang, smiling smugly at me.
I was rethinking spending another night there until a hundred gallons of Lysol and some medical-grade disinfectant were delivered.
My dad got off the mower and joined us. As an architect, he was in love with the layout of the house. Also as an architect and as a normal human being, he hated the décor inside it.
“Do you really think two people require that much sanitation? Surely if you just remove those damned mirrors, redecorate, change the flooring, and things like that, you’ll get rid of their… taint .”
I hated the word ‘taint’ when we were using it in relation to something that’d likely involved a lot of Mr. Marshall’s taint.
“What do you mean just two people? The Marshalls were notorious for kinky parties. People traveled from all over the country and the world for them. When my husband was still alive, he went over to complain about the noise and amount of cars parked everywhere,” Mrs. Keegan told him.
“It wasn’t either of the Marshalls that opened the door, and my Wayne said there were so many naked people, you couldn’t see even an inch of the walls behind them. They were just standing there, necked as the day they were born. They even had special glass cleaners who came to wipe down the mirrors for them because there were…” she looked to the side, and I swore she blushed “…body part outlines on them.”
“I’m burning it down,” I ground out. “I don’t care that Layla loves it. I need a blowtorch, gas, and paper. I’m insured. Mrs. Keegan can tell the insurance company what she just told us, I’m sure they’ll understand.”
“Why not bring some of that stuff from work which shows up bodily fluids,” Luke suggested, with the biggest grin I’d ever seen on his face.
Okay, I’ll hold my hands up—part of me went ‘hell, yeah.’ I don’t know if it was my career or just the fact I was a curious asshole, but the prospect of seeing what they’d gotten up to kind of tweaked my curiosity. The other side of me, the homeowner who didn’t want to know, became more resolute about burning it all down at the mental image of all the glowing marks around the place.
“Oh, I know,” Mom cried. “Take swabs. I watched this program on Netflix just last week where they submitted DNA into a database, and they tracked a murderer through samples people had submitted looking for other family members online. I forget what it’s called, but how clever was that?”
In all honestly, this was another situation I wasn’t sure about. For the sake of the murdered victims, yes, it was a great thing. For the safety of the public, again, awesome. But in terms of rights, misusing something designed for people who wanted to know their roots or track down the rest of their family members? Well, I was squarely on the fence.
Mrs. Keegan, however, wasn’t. “I saw that, too. It’s outstanding what they can do these days, isn’t it?”
Luke moved until he was leaning on the wall next to me. “Mrs. Keegan has Netflix?”
I scowled at him. “That’s all you’ve got out of this whole discussion?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Well, yeah? I mean, she never struck me as the type of person to Netflix and chill.” He was quiet for a moment but then added, “Although, the Mitchells were probably pros at it.”
I shuddered and groaned. “I think it’s cool she’s got Netflix. It means she has something to fill her time at night.” Just as Luke opened his mouth to say something likely to do with the Mitchells, I snapped, “Don’t you dare!”
“Mark?” Mrs. Keegan called, freeing Luke from the glare I was shooting at him. “I was just saying to your parents that it’s such a relief having a police officer living right across the road from Rex and me now.”
“If you ever have a problem or something happens, just shout. I’ll give you my cell number before you go.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, that’s also a perk, but I was thinking that, if I get murdered, I know you’ll make sure the investigation’s done properly. Make sure those CSI teams use the best nifty gadgets they’ve got to track down who did it. I know, I’ll get some of those cameras for inside the house, so you get the clues you need before it becomes one of those cold cases.”
Did I really need any more evidence that today was one of the worst in history?
“Um, are you talking about the stuff they have in the television series?”
When she nodded excitedly, I opened my mouth to tell her that most of them didn’t exist or that they were exaggerated for the audience's sake, but Mom shifted until she was standing behind Mrs. Keegan and shook her head rapidly. I knew why—she didn’t want me to disillusion the woman, either for her peace of mind or because she loved the show and technology.
“You should definitely get cameras for your own personal safety, Mrs. Keegan. Many of them have sensors you can put around your house that’ll go off if someone walks through the ‘beam,’ and it’ll set off an alarm. The cameras also help you check if someone’s been in your home while you’re not there.”
Mrs. Keegan looked so excited by the prospect that I had to laugh. “CSI your home, Mrs. K. But if you need anything, you know where I am.”
Mom’s purse appeared out of nowhere, and she pulled out the little notebook and pen she kept in it and scribbled something down on it. “Here you go, this is Mark’s number. You call him any time night or day.”
“Oh, I’ll get one of those police scanners,” Mrs. Keegan said excitedly. “I can learn the codes and give them directions if they get lost where the perp and victim are.”
My heart sank into my balls. “No, no, don’t do that. We know where we’re going thanks to all of our technology, and civilians listening to a police scanner can get problematic, especially if you also get something you can interrupt our communications with.”
“Okay, well, I’ll go and look up sensors and alarms and cameras. You order your Lysol and holy water for that place.”
Luke snorted, but I couldn’t hold that against him. She made a good point now. I’d been living in that crime scene nightmare for over a year. Fuck knows what I’d leaned on or brushed up against.
“You have a great day, and once I get to taking down the mirrors, if you need any for your place, just let me know.” I followed this with a wink and wave.
This time it was Mrs. Keegan who shuddered. “I’ll pass, but I’ll visit you at work to see squirrelgate soon.”
“Mind and bring the wieners, meatballs, Twinkies, cheeseballs, and anything else you can think of,” Luke added, shooting her an exaggerated wink, the asshole.
Both of us turned to walk into the house, looking at it with new eyes now.
“From the outside, I always assumed it’d be like a stately home inside, with crystal and art on the walls,” Luke mused. “Now that we know it was a sordid porn palace, I’m relieved I never put in an offer for it.”
“Fuck off.”
“Are you ever going to get rid of the semen stains and vagina juice?”
I could feel another one of the puke-burps coming on. I was never going to be able to touch anything again.
“I’m not doing a thing until Layla’s here. She loved this house and dreamed about us living here, so she gets to choose everything we do to it.”
That was my plan, and I was sticking to it. Then again, a lot of things had stuck to other things in this house by the sounds of it.
Would a deep clean and taking down the mirrors and more gaudy aspects before she saw them be that bad? What if Layla wanted the little mirrors so she could watch herself on the toilet? Granted, she’d be sitting down when she used it, but maybe she’d like to do her hair or makeup while she used it. Did women do that?
“Maybe you should tell her you bought it and get her to come and see the inside?” he suggested, slinging his arm around my neck. “Wait until we get the grass and shit under control, then wow her.”
I sighed. “That’s if she’s talking to me after today. I did arrest her brother, who was out of his mind on medication.”
Luke tipped his head back and burst out laughing, the sound echoing around the practically empty house. “There’s that. You never know, this house might be the best apology gift in the history of them.”
Holy shit, he might be right.
Jogging through to the kitchen, I put the empty beer bottle on the nearest surface and ran straight past where Luke was still standing and out the door.
“Right, here’s the plan….”
I was going to put their previous plan to get her back together with this one and get her back. Except it ended up being for nothing, because the Townsends got their first as always.