Chapter Three #2
“Especially not her,” he said. Kel’s hand stopped mid-reach for Shithead, and he raised his eyebrow at Shepherd. “She’s mine. Nothing to do with the house.”
If Shithead had been on the list of responsibilities, the service fee would have been a lot higher. She was not an easy keeper.
Kel thought about it and pulled his hand back before his fingers touched Shithead’s dirty lace dress. At some point, Shepherd would pay for that. That was the job, though.
“Jesus,” Kel said as he gave Shithead a once-over. “And I thought I’d had a rough childhood.”
Marble Falls chief of police took his bifocals off and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Thank you for calling me, Mr…”
“Just Shepherd,” Shepherd said.
That made Chief Doncaster frown briefly, but he moved on to the reason he was here. Kel Laker. He frowned at Kel, who’d taken advantage of the wait to make coffee and fold himself into a chair at the kitchen table.
“So you’re related to the Maddens,” he said. “How come I’ve never heard about this?”
Kel looked innocent—or as close as he could get—as he took a drink out of his mug.
“We don’t talk about it much,” he said. “There’s a lot of bad blood under the bridge.”
It was a fair dodge. Shepherd took a drink of the coffee he’d half-inched from Kel’s pot as he watched the exchange from the sidelines. It didn’t actually tell anyone anything, but it did manage to imply it would be indelicate to ask for more details.
Shepherd would give it a solid seven out of ten, maybe an eight, but that point was for craft. Like a lot of Kel’s game, it relied on his confidence to breeze past any weak spots.
The sheriff folded the legs of his glasses closed and tucked them into the breast pocket of his uniform.
“Yet here we are,” he pointed out.
Kel smirked, the crooked edge of it peeking over the rim of his cup. “Well,” he said, drawing the word out. “It’s not my blood, and money on the table makes me chatty.”
“That’s true,” the sheriff muttered. He flicked through the paperwork that Kel had fetched from the car for him, licking his thumb to peel pages apart. He found a picture paper clipped to an envelope and paused as he looked at it. “So, your grandmother…”
“...and his grandfather,” Kel said. “That’s right.”
He paused as he cocked his head to the side, visibly rerunning that sentence through his head. “Well, my grandfather too, I guess. He just didn’t claim my dad.”
“Who would,” the sheriff said. He caught himself almost immediately and grimaced apologetically. “Sorry. It’s just…well, I knew him.”
Based on Kel’s shrug, that was a valid defense.
Shepherd hated to interrupt before match point, but he cleared his throat anyhow. Both men looked at him. He gave them a professionally bland smile.
“Sorry, but where does that leave us?” He gave his pocket a pat to make the set of keys stashed there jingle. “The company I work for has informed me we have to maintain custodianship of the property until told otherwise by the owner or his legally appointed rep. Should I assume that’s Mr. Laker?”
“Call me Kel.”
“No.” Doncaster paused and gave Kel an annoyed look.
He looked wrong-footed by Kel’s failure to press his claim.
After a dry little cough, he tried again.
“Obviously Mr. Laker’s claim will be…given due consideration…
but before we do anything, the sheriff’s department needs to confirm that he’s the closest living relative and that Mr. Madden didn’t have a power of attorney already set up.
Until that happens, do not let Mr. Laker remove anything from the property. ”
“You know, I voted for you,” Kel said. “And this is the thanks I get?”
“I was appointed by the mayor,” Doncaster said. “Law enforcement isn’t a popularity contest in Connecticut."
Kel pursed his lips like that was genuinely new information to him. It was to Shepherd, too, but he’d been homeschooled, so that was not a novel experience for him.
“Yeah, well, I voted for the mayor,” Kel said. He lifted his mug in a toast. “You’re welcome.”
Doncaster clenched his teeth. The muscle at the hinge of his jaw twitched visibly under paper-pusher pale skin.
He took a deep breath to say something sharp, but only got as far as “You’re not as clever—” before the house creaked.
It was a low, raw sound; it had the same teeth-on-edge timbre as popped knuckles.
Like something big and old had decided to stretch as it thought about getting up.
The noise made Doncaster flinch. He looked up, eyes searching the ceiling.
“Is there anyone else here?” he asked harshly.
“Just me and Shithead,” Shepherd said. He put his coffee down and stepped forward, casually getting Doncaster’s attention back on him. “That’s just the house settling. It’s got old bones.”
They were on shelves in the basement. Shepherd had to dust them once a week. Possession being nine-tenths of the law and all that, they were Madden’s bones now. Shepherd had no idea who they’d belonged to originally.
“Yeah, well, keep it that way,” Doncaster said absently, his attention still on the whitewashed roof.
His thumb tapped nervously against the thick leather band of his belt.
“I don’t want any unauthorised visitors in the house until we confirm a next of kin.
I’ll need to get someone in to do an inventory as well, for whoever we do find. ”
Shepherd blinked.
That would be…problematic.
“Of course,” he said. “If it helps, though, it’s part of the house-sitting contract for the owner to provide an inventory of contents and their condition before the service starts. I could ask the company to forward that to your office.”
Doncaster looked dubious.
“It’s notarised?” Shepherd offered.
Doncaster looked intrigued. Why not. Small town officials, especially those whose job was decided by committee, not popularity, loved a cost-saving, notarised-for-their-protection shortcut.
For that matter, there probably was an actual, signed-off inventory on list somewhere. It wouldn’t be what Doncaster would get, though.
When your clientele was mostly the damned and departed, laws didn’t matter so much. Legalities, yes. Laws, no.
“Well,” Doncaster said. “If it was recent and Madden signed off on it, that should be acceptable.”
He looked around the kitchen and gave a creeped-out shudder. It was actually the most mundane room in the house. Dio Madden had apparently drawn the line at letting the house’s ‘damned AND Victorian’ vibe deny him a lazy susan or Shaker-style doors, but Doncaster was unmoved at that.
“I’ll definitely be more popular if I don’t have to ask any of my people to spend hours in here.” He pointed at the range. “That? That was where they found Amy Culper’s fingers after she spent the night here, severed and baked into a pie.”
They all looked at the heavy, bakelite green appliance.
“What sort of pie?” Shepherd asked.