Chapter 20 Kipp
Kipp
I should’ve known better than to walk into the Wildwood Meadows community center on a Saturday morning. Of course, I hadn’t been given a choice in the matter. The text chat had been popping off all morning, and my siblings wouldn’t have let me rest until I dragged my ass down here to help.
Because we got so much rain, the town made sure to build places like this that were indoors.
The building was somewhat campus-like, with large meeting rooms, event areas, and even space perfect for specialty classes like pottery or woodworking.
The moment I stepped through the doors, the smell of cinnamon rolls and hot glue hit me like a wave, along with the sound of chaos.
Someone’s kid was crying. Someone else was arguing about how many string lights counted as a “tasteful amount.” I cringed.
Chaos brought back bad memories. It was one of the reasons I enjoyed the peace of the woods.
“There he is!” Janice declared, spotting me. She had eyes like a hawk and swung towards me with a clipboard, tapping the woman who raised me with her hand to get her attention. “Our resident lumberjack! Come here and lift heavy things.”
I groaned under my breath. Too late to back out. I should’ve pretended I’d thrown my back out or come down with some sudden male-only disease. Like the flu.
“Nice to see you, Janice. Hi, Mags,” I leaned in and gave Maggie a kiss on the forehead, where she and Janice were working on dominating festival organization. The two of them were a hot mess when they were together, but Maggie had fun, and that was all I cared about.
“Hi, Kipp.” She gave me a squeeze. “Thanks for coming. I know you were bullied into it.”
Maggie was an angel among angels. When my social worker took me to the Holt farmhouse at nine years old, I didn’t know what was going to happen.
My situation was bad, but it was something I was used to.
Maggie and Levi became the parents I never knew I could have, and they gave me three great sisters and two brothers on top of that.
Pains in the asses, all of them, but still.
Wade leaned against the refreshment table, grinning into his coffee. “Bad luck, brother.”
“Shut up,” I muttered, but there was no heat behind it. “Why aren’t you lifting heavy things?”
“I’m supervising, and I’m on duty.” He tapped his badge, as if that gave him a pass to not be bossed around by the council that organized the Wildwood Summerlights Festival. “I don’t have to lift heavy things. Should have brought your badge.”
“Kipp, we need the banners hung, the tents checked for tears, and Earl claimed he fixed the generator, which means it’s definitely broken.
” Maggie checked her clipboard. She was back to full strength now after her broken leg healed and had even started playing pickleball this summer, on her physical therapist’s suggestion, to help with her balance. “Wade, you can help him.”
Not even bothering to hide my satisfied smirk,” I said, “Perfect. I could use him.” I started digging in the tools that had been set over by the stacks of tables.
“I was going to anyway,” Wade grumbled as he helped sort through everything. “Dick,” he added under his breath.
“Yeah, yeah. Sure, you were. You’re such a martyr.
I think we have everything.” I’d shoved all the tools I thought we needed into a 5-gallon bucket we could carry along, but I just needed to find the tape.
Digging through the bag again, I looked for it.
The generator was always broken when Earl fixed it.
We needed to buy a new one. “Let’s just find the electrical tape, and we’ll get going.
Does anyone know where it is? And the sandpaper.
” I wasn’t going near the generator without those. The thing was on its last legs.
“On the table,” Sage called from across the room.
She was wrangling tablecloths like they were wild animals.
She pinned me with a hard look, whipping her braids over her shoulder while she did it.
“And don’t say I hoard it. I use it. There’s a difference.
Glad you could make it. Even if you’re late. ”
East walked by carrying a stack of festival brochures. “Nobody said a word about you hoarding, Poison Ivy.”
“You’re all thinking it,” Sage shot back.
We were thinking it. Sage was the hoarder of all the construction supplies after East, thanks to her craft projects.
If East didn’t have it, then Sage did, and they were usually ruined because she was typically using stuff for things they weren’t meant for.
Case in point: eight of the ten sandpaper squares in the packet were already crumpled and had paint on them.
Grumbling, I took one of the remaining scraps, stuck it in my bucket, and swiped up the tape roll.
Wade shoved a cinnamon roll at me. “You’d better get one of these before you miss out. Lila only brought two trays. Then we’d better get going before Maggie yells at us.”
She heard him. Of course, she heard him. Even when we were young, she had ears like a bat. “I don’t yell.”
The whole room made a collective hmmmmm sound.
Maggie scowled. “I project.”
“Sure,” Wade said. “That’s what we’re calling it.” I bit into the cinnamon roll, trying not to smile. “So,” Wade followed my gaze as it drifted to the open doorway, and I licked my fingers.
Ignoring him, I kept stuffing my face. Cinnamon Rolls from Chapter & Crumb weren’t to be missed, and I wasn’t a fool.
Lila was a phenomenal baker. Everything she made was on point, and most Sunday dinners, you could count on her to spoil us with a killer dessert.
Every once in awhile she disappointed me by not making one, and that was always a bummer. What could I say? I had a sweet tooth.
“Are you going to help me with all this stuff?” I asked grumpily, after polishing it off.
“So, tell me about Hattie. It’s been a few days since she’s been here. Did you ask her out?” He lifted his eyebrows suggestively.
There was no way I was going to tell him that Hattie and I definitely did more than first-date sort of things.
I wasn’t the kind of guy who kissed and told.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. My brothers and I had talked about women before, but Hattie wasn’t just any woman, and I wasn’t about to talk about her like she was just another notch on my bedpost. I aimed the empty cinnamon roll wrapper at his face. “You’re annoying.”
He tossed it back at me. “Are you smitten, Kippers?”
“Fuck you. Don’t call me that.”
Maggie clapped loudly to get our attention before I could argue. “All right, boys! Tents first. Then go fix that generator.” That was her best general voice, and there was nothing else for us to do but to get marching.
We started toward the equipment room, but midway there, Sage intercepted us with a stack of safety cones balanced on her hip. “Hey,” she said, lowering her voice. “Did you hear the new J & J Hour episode?”
“You listen to that podcast?” I asked. She gave me a look that said it was a stupid question. Sage was ecstatic about things she loved, but murder? I’d never known her to take a real interest.
Sage shrugged. “Sure. I love a good true crime podcast, and she makes them interesting. Anyway … I’m not sure you guys realize how good she is at her job.”
The whole Allison Finch case was thin in my opinion, just from what I’d seen.
The woods around here were dense and unforgiving, even for an experienced hiker.
There were soft spots where you could twist an ankle and never be able to call for help.
There were high mountain peaks and wild animals.
Most of the area around the vista area where her car was found abandoned was thick with berry bushes, too.
Apparently, they searched for a few days, but if I knew Galloway, it would have been lackluster at best.
I’d been keeping an eye out in the area where her car had been found every time I’d been over that way, but I hadn’t seen anything. We’d been mobilized on another case when the search parties had done the initial, but Galloway hadn’t called anyone in … like Wade had said — it was suspicious.
A young woman on foot wasn’t the best scenario.
It had been early spring when she disappeared, and there were still periods of heavy rain for a few days right after she went missing.
Of course, that was if… if she’d left on her own or met up with someone, then there were all the other possibilities.
Sage set the cones down. “I heard what Trent Finch said when he called into the podcast, and I nearly dropped Jeremiah. Totally suspicious.”
I squinted at Sage. “Jeremiah? That a plant? Better be a plant.”
Rolling my eyes, I moved back to the topic I cared about. “The husband?” I asked, suddenly interested beyond reason. I’d only listened to parts of a previous podcast, rationing it so I wasn’t being a total fool. “What’d he say?”
Sage watched me with that sister-knows-you look.
“Yeah. The husband. I guess you’ll have to listen to find out.
The first episode sets up the case. So, she talks about who the victim was.
” She winced. “Is. I mean, we don’t know she’s dead.
Anyway, she went over where Allison lived and where she worked.
That sort of stuff. Where she was last seen.
” She nudged my arm with her elbow. “She’s good, Kipp.
Really good. No wonder she’s got a following. ”
“You gonna help her out at all?” Wade asked.
“I’m not sure.” Both my siblings looked over at me in surprise. I adjusted. “Not yet.” There was a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach that I didn’t want to examine just yet.
Wade didn’t challenge it, but he gave me a long look.
“Hmm.” Sage stared at me long enough to make the back of my neck heat.
“Well, maybe she’ll actually get answers.
Cops sure didn’t.” She walked backward away from us as she spoke.
“You know, you men should take this as a lesson. Here is a badass chick circling back around to a cold case. Maybe she’ll put that police chief in his place. Guy is a dick. Him and his son.”
Sage was right on the money with that comment, but before I could respond, East shouted from across the hall, “Sage! One of the vendors wants to put their food truck next to the petting zoo again. Please go talk sense into them!”
She groaned. “Men’s brains are made of peat moss. All of you.” Then she jogged off, her rubber garden shoes clopping along.
Wade smirked. “Told you she likes that podcast. I’ll tell you what, though, that a-hole Galloway …” He clucked his tongue. “If he knows she’s looking into one of his cases, he isn’t going to like it. Maybe we should help.”
The guy in charge over there in Briar Falls was a dick, and there was something fishy about his operation.
His son and the husband had been searching, and they were friends, which wasn’t that weird, necessarily, that a husband was on the search party—but it did raise all sorts of questions once you knew who was involved.
Galloway liked being police chief, and there was nothing wrong with enjoying being in charge.
Some people like being their own boss or controlling a scene or a job, while others did it because they got off on it.
That was especially problematic in law enforcement because it twisted things.
It seemed like Galloway had been sliding further into that mindset.
He was older than Wade and me, and though we weren’t always in the same circles, since it’s all small-town stuff here, gossip traveled plenty.
Ignoring Wade, I concentrated on what I was doing, but my thoughts kept circling back to Hattie. Suddenly, I had the uneasy sense that lines were crossing—hers, mine, the case’s—and that none of us were walking back the way we came.
By noon, we had tents half-assembled, fairy lights strung through the rafters, and a generator that only shocked Wade twice—a success by Holt-family standards. Wade could take a few hits anyway, so I wasn’t overly worried even after he cursed me, my balls, and all future baby Kipps.
Maggie marched over with a walkie-talkie clipped to her belt, like she worked for the Secret Service. “Kipp, sweetheart, can you go pick up the raffle baskets from Chapter & Crumb? Lila said they’re ready.”
Biting back a groan, I managed to say, “Yeah, I’ll grab them.”
Wade elbowed me lightly. “Maybe you’ll run into your mystery woman.”
“She’s not—”
“Save it,” he said. “Your ears turn red every time someone says her name. Right there.” He poked the tip of one ear with his fingers even as I batted him away.
Wade was a fucker of the first order and loved to tease me, but he always said it was the older brother’s job.
No way would I admit to him that I secretly loved it.