Chapter 7
BODIE
The next day, I wiped my boots on the outdoor rug before knocking on the door and entering my dad’s office.
“Son, glad you could stop by.” Dad sat behind a massive desk, a cigar on the edge of the ashtray in front of him. Mom wouldn’t let him smoke in their showplace of a house, so he spent the majority of his time in the office he’d had built onto the side of the family home.
“You said it was important.” I crossed the Mexican tile to where the desk sat, centered between two giant picture windows overlooking the three hundred acres we’d had in the family for generations.
Dad gestured to one of the leather chairs. “Take a seat. Your pops and I want to talk to you about something.”
“Oh yeah?” I settled in the chair. “Like how the two of you decided to shut down the warehouse without even mentioning it to me?”
“Bygones.” Dad picked up the cigar, taking a few brisk puffs. “You said you weren’t interested in the family business, remember?”
Yeah, I remembered. I’d always dreamed of carrying on the family name.
For a brief period of time, I’d even considered following in the footsteps of my dad and my pops.
But then I found out some of their business practices leaned toward the dark gray side of my black-and-white world.
I couldn’t embrace the way they followed the laws that benefited the business and found a work-around for the ones that didn’t.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to know when you’re making decisions that affect the town. People depend on you for jobs, to feed their families.” My pulse ratcheted up at the thought of all of our employees going without a paycheck.
Dad returned his cigar to the ashtray, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air above us. “Relax, it’s a temporary thing.”
“What do you mean?” I leaned forward, my forearms resting on my thighs. If my dad planned on reopening the warehouse, that would solve a lot of my problems. Like having to work so closely with Lacey.
“Pops!” Dad called out over his shoulder. “Care to join us for this part of the conversation?”
My grandfather ambled from the back room over to the desk. “I can’t figure out twenty-seven across. Four-letter word for appealing.”
“Sexy.” The word left my mouth before I had a chance to stop it. Damn, that’s what thinking about Lacey did to me.
Pops scratched his pencil against the page. “That works, thanks.” He held out a hand to me. “Glad you could join us.”
I stood and took his hand, not resisting the half hug my grandfather pulled me into. “What’s up, Pops?”
“We’ve got a situation.” Pops took the seat next to me.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A business opportunity presented itself. We took it. But now we have a few, let’s say, loose ends, we need to wrap up.” Dad leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over the impressive belly he’d earned by eating too many tamales.
“Why did y’all shut the warehouse?” I asked. “I still don’t understand what prompted that decision.”
Pops leaned a sinewy forearm onto the desk. He was getting up there in years, but he still had the hard-earned physique of a man who’d worked the land for a large portion of his life. “We need you to drop the deputy title for this conversation. Think you can do that?”
I glanced back and forth between my dad and my pops. “What the hell did the two of you do?”
“Are we having a family conversation here, son?” Dad asked.
“Sure.” I settled against the back of my chair and drew in a long breath. His mantra of “family first” had been drilled into me my entire life. But I was getting tired of being guilted into looking the other way. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Buck Little made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.” Dad’s chair creaked under his weight. “Simple as that.”
“What kind of offer?” My stomach tightened. I had a feeling the kind of offer Buck made wasn’t exactly above the law.
“He wants us to move our operation over to Swynton.” Pops lifted his foot, placing his custom-made alligator boot on top of his knee. “Like your dad said, it was an offer we couldn’t refuse.”
“But Idont needs the business. How can you turn your back? Our family settled this town, it’s in our blood—”
“Business is business. Sales have been down. Buck is giving us some tax breaks we don’t get here,” Dad said.
“And free rent.” Pops rubbed his hand along the white whiskers on his chin. “We gave up the land the business sits on years ago.”
“What?” My gaze bounced between the two men. “What do you mean?”
“The land belongs to the town,” Dad said. “We’ve been leasing it back from them for over a decade. With sales taking a dip, we haven’t made a payment for a while. When Buck offered us a break, we decided to take it.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out, then.” I stood, eager for a breath of fresh air.
“Wait a minute.” Dad pointed to the chair. “Like we said, we have a few loose ends to tie up.”
I slumped back into my chair. “I don’t understand what this has to do with me.”
“We should have cleared out the inventory before we made the announcement to shut down.” Pops glared across the desk. “Your dad got a little trigger-happy spreading the word.”
“And?” I had lost just about all the patience I possessed. “I still don’t get what you want me to do about it.”
“Well, since we aren’t current on our rent, the town considers us in default. Now they’ve told us they’re going to seize our assets to pay off the debt. We need to get our stuff out of there so we can move it over to the new place in Swynton. Figure out a way to make it happen,” Dad said.
“Hold up. How exactly am I supposed to do that? You want me to help you break into the warehouse and steal back all of your stuff?” I stood again. I didn’t have time to listen to their harebrained ideas.
“Of course, we wouldn’t ask you to help unless there was something in it for you.” Dad pointed to the seat I’d vacated.
“I’ll stand.” I crossed my arms over my chest. What could they possibly offer me that would make me consider breaking the law I’d sworn to uphold?
“Suit yourself.” Dad shrugged. “But Buck is willing to guarantee you the sheriff’s position in the next election if you help us out.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why would he want to do that?”
“Buck knows how things work around here. He scratches our back, we scratch his.”
“He must want one hell of a back scratch in return for rigging an election.” Of course, it had been done in the past. Rumor had it Lacey’s dad hadn’t won the mayor’s seat fair and square when he’d been elected. But to so blatantly be offered the bribe . . . something didn’t add up.
Pops grunted. “You don’t need to worry about that part of the negotiations. Just figure out a way to get in and grab our stuff and you’ll get yourself a promotion. Why the hell you want to work in law enforcement boggles my mind, but isn’t that your dream job? Sheriff?”
I’d enjoyed learning the ropes in the tiny town of Idont, but my career aspirations didn’t stop at playing deputy sheriff for the rest of my life.
Sure, I wanted to move up. Even more than that, I wanted to move out.
I’d always had my eyes set on a bigger town.
One that would get me far out from under the thumb of my meddling family, making it impossible to get myself wedged into a situation just like this.
“I don’t know, Pops. Who else knows about this?” I scrubbed my hands over my cheeks.
“You, me, Buck, your dad. Probably whoever takes care of payments down at city hall. But we don’t want to cause a scene. Just get our stuff moved over to the new place in Swynton before anyone notices it’s gone. Should be easy enough.”
“I’m gonna have to think about this.” I should leave my dad’s office and head straight to the sheriff.
But was I willing to rat out my family and sever those ties once and for all?
My dad and granddad had caused a stink over the years, but they’d always managed to find a way to come up smelling like the aromatic gardenias my mom had planted around the pool out back.
“We don’t have a hell of a lot of time, son.” Dad grunted as he levered himself out of his chair. “We’ll need an answer soon.”
“Give me until the weekend?” Three days. They could give me three damn days to think about whether or not I wanted to risk career suicide.
“You got it.” Pops stood, too, then lifted his arm so his hand stuck out in front of him. “Family handshake?”
Dad put his hand on top of Pops’s. Both men looked to me. Hell, why not? I put my hand on top of theirs, then the three of us lowered and raised our hands.
I shook my head as I stepped back from the desk. “Do you promise not to do anything until I have a chance to think this through?”
Dad bent over to pick up his cigar. “You have our word.”
Even though I knew their word wasn’t worth any more than the smoke-choked air I breathed in, I nodded. “I’ll be in touch.”
“See you, son.” Dad plugged his mouth with the cigar while Pops lifted a hand in a wave.
I retraced my steps to the door of the office, the pit in the bottom of my stomach growing. Something else was going on besides just needing their stuff out of the warehouse. Why hadn’t I heard about them not owning the land before?
I’d always known the Victorian house my ancestors lived in had been donated to the town years before I’d ever been born.
The town officials decorated it for the holidays and used it as a meeting place every once in a while.
But this was the first I’d heard that my family no longer owned the land the warehouse sat on. When had they given that up?
My dad and pops might be a stone-cold wall of silence on the subject, but I had other ways of finding out. Ways that unfortunately involved crossing paths with Lacey again. And it would have to be sooner rather than later. I didn’t have much time.
As I climbed into my truck, the sound of my phone demanded my attention. I jerked it to my ear without checking the number. “Phillips here.”
“Bodie, hey, it’s Zina over at For Pitties’ Sake.”
“Oh, hey. How’s Shotgun doing?” Something about that poor dog got to me yesterday. I couldn’t stand to see an animal in pain, especially when it was intentionally caused by some asswipe of a human.
“That’s why I’m calling. She checked out just fine. She’s underweight and will need someone to work with her to reestablish trust.”
Relief coursed through me. “That’s great. Thanks for letting me know.”
“You’re welcome. I have a favor to ask though.”
“What’s that?”
Zina cleared her throat. “We’re full here at the shelter. The two of you seemed to bond, and I was wondering if you could take her for a couple of days.”
“My place is pretty tight.” No. I couldn’t take on the care of a dog, not with everything going down with the business and Lacey.
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need the help. I really think she’d do much better in a home than at the shelter right now. She’s in a vulnerable place.”
Vulnerable. Why’d she have to use that word? An image of Lacey smiling as she held Shotgun on her lap floated through my head. “Just a couple of days?”
“A week at most,” Zina said. “She’s had a bath, and I can send her home with supplies so you don’t have to buy anything.”
I rubbed a hand along the back of my neck. “Fine. When do you need me to come get her?”
“Now? Think you could swing by in the next hour or so? I’ve got to head out for a bit, and I want to be here when you get here so I can go over how to tend to the sores on her muzzle.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll head over in a few.”
“You’re a good guy, Bodie.”
“Thanks.” Now, if she could just convince Lacey of that, I’d be in good shape.