Chapter Six
Hell House Client Brief: Don't bury any bodies in the rose garden. They're on a diet.
“You’re in a good mood,” Ruby said. She sounded suspicious.
Kel stopped mid-whistle and slid out from under the Firebird. He wiped oily hands on the front of his overalls as he sat up.
“I got laid,” he said.
“You get laid all the time,” Ruby said. She offered him one of the coffees she’d made. “It doesn’t make you whistle.”
Kel shrugged as he took a ginger sip of the coffee. It was too hot to tell whether it was bad or not. That had always been Ruby’s trick when she worked in restaurants.
“Yeah, well…” He trailed off before elaborating.
It would just make Ruby antsy if she thought he was ‘getting attached’.
Even though he wasn’t, it was just kind of…
fun to fuck someone who saw you for who you really were and was OK with it.
Usually when someone really got Kel, it was just before they told him they never wanted to see him again.
He didn’t want to spend his morning explaining that, though, so he pivoted to the other reason he was in a good mood.
One that would cheer her up too. “I also heard that the bank wouldn’t extend the deadline on the Milligan farm until after the big machinery auction. ”
Ruby stopped mid-drink of her coffee. She lowered the cup and frowned at Kel.
“Are you thinking of taking advantage of the old man’s daughter?” she asked, one eyebrow raised. “It’s only two weeks since she buried her dad, and she hasn’t been on a farm since her mom divorced Milligan and moved to Woodstock.”
Kel nodded. “Exactly,” he agreed. “She’s still in shock from finding out her inheritance is debt, and she’s got no real idea what that machinery would go for. Now she’s desperate too, so I’m pretty sure I can lowball her on Milligan’s combine.”
Ruby snorted as she leaned back gingerly against a work table. She took a drink of coffee, smudging lipstick over the chipped rim.
“You’re welcome to try,” she said. “But I remember her mom. Ellie Milligan was no one’s fool, and…well, let’s just say that no one was surprised when she turned up pregnant just as Ben Milligan was losing interest. Don’t put money on her daughter being an easy mark.”
Kel held his coffee out to the side as he braced his free hand against the Firebird’s tire to lever himself back up onto his feet.
“Good, I like a challenge,” he said. “And greedy people are even easier to con than desperate ones.”
That got him a look of disapproval. “Really, and who told you that?” Ruby asked.
“...you,” Kel conceded.
“Thank you,” Ruby said tartly. “So listen to someone older and wiser, and keep your expectations in check. God knows, we both remember what happened the last time you got your hopes up. Don’t we?”
Kel grimaced and reached down to rub his knee at the reminder.
“Learning to walk again isn’t something you forget,” he said. “Don’t worry, Ruby. I learned my lesson.”
“Which was?” she prodded.
“The shit will always hit the fan,” he said. “Expect it, and it won’t get in your mouth.”
Ruby gave a short nod of approval. Then sighed as she looked at Kel’s face, and her expression softened.
“You know I don’t bust your balls just for fun?” she checked. “But you and me, kid, we’re the same. And it was shitty enough living through my mistakes once. I don’t want to see you making the same ones.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Kel said.
Ruby snorted. “I don’t?” she said. “I remember whistling after spending the night with someone. It didn’t end well. For anyone.”
She looked at him pointedly. Kel drained his coffee and walked over to give her a peck on one powdery cheek.
“Trust me, I know better than that,” he said. “I won’t make the same mistakes. I promise.”
Kel could still run.
It hurt like fuck, but he could still run.
At least he could when a pissed-off orphan with a sawed-off shotgun and whiskey breath was behind him.
Kel crossed the distance between Milligan’s and the fence fast enough that his old coach would actually have cracked a smile.
He dodged behind the oversized wheel of Milligan’s rusty tractor and leaned back against it.
Sweat itched the back of his neck as he tilted his head back against the sun-baked rubber and grimaced as he breathed through the pain in his legs.
“I told you to get the hell off my property,” Sandra Milligan yelled from the porch of the old farmhouse. There was the distinct schlick-click of another round being chambered into Milligan’s old gun. “And I can still see you.”
Kel had a beat to decide whether to duck or dodge. He went with duck. It was the right call. The blast from the shotgun took a fist-sized lump out of the tire just above his head and sprayed chunks of rubber across the ground and over the fence.
Milligan’s old sow, pink and bored, with a belly to the mud, grunted in annoyance as it bounced off her back.
“Oh, you think you have it bad,” Kel muttered at the animal as he shook tire out of his hair. The sow gave him a bored look, flicked a mud-caked ear, and turned to wade to the other side of her pen.
Kel gingerly leaned forward and risked a look around the side of the tractor.
Sandra Milligan didn’t look much like her dad. Too polished. Too much hair. Now that she’d tried to shoot him, though, Kel could see the resemblance.
It was around the jaw.
“Yeah, well,” Kel yelled back at Sandra. “My health insurance isn’t great, but my car insurance is even worse. So…”
It was a joke.
Apparently it wasn’t a good one.
Sandra cracked the gun open over her arm, smoke wisping from the barrel, and fumbled two shells out of the pocket of her blazer.
“Fucking vulture,” she muttered, then pitched her voice to carry again. “You’ve got to the count of five to get off my property, or I’m mailing you back to the bank in a fucking flask.”
OK.
That was both a window of opportunity and Sandra’s opening bid in the negotiation. Kel could work with that.
He took a deep breath, brushed the splinters off his knees, and limped from behind the tractor.
“I don’t work for the bank,” he said, hands held up so she could see them. Once she’d checked them out, he relaxed his posture and gestured at his grease-stained overalls. “Do I look like someone that sits behind a desk?”
Sandra glared at him.
“In this shit stain of a town?” she shot back. “Who knows.”
She finished loading the shotgun and snapped it shut. The ragged end of it looked ominously black as she lifted it to her hip and aimed.
“One.”
Four seconds. Kel gave in to the itch at the back of his neck and edged toward the fence even as he racked his brain for the right lie.
He nearly tripped over an old rut, worn down into the hard-packed dirt.
That did not feel great, but it did remind him of something that had set Jodie Tiller off a few weeks ago.
She’d wanted a new Range Rover to take her photography equipment to venues.
Harry had gotten her a second-hand pick-up he’d pulled out of an auction…
“Look, lady,” Kel said. “I was just going to ask what you wanted me to do with your dad’s pick-up.”
“Tw–” Sandra stopped. She lowered the gun slightly, the weight dragging it down, and squinted at Kel. “You’ve got my dad’s truck?”
“Yeah,” Kel said. “It needed a new camshaft.”
They stared at each other.
In case she hadn’t followed, Kel added, “I’m a mechanic.”
“I got that,” Sandra said. She lowered the shotgun more, letting it dangle against her leg. “You got my dad’s truck?”
“Yeah,” Kel lied. He was pretty sure the truth was that Milligan had either sold it or left it crumpled against a tree somewhere. That wasn’t what mattered, though. It wasn’t here, and it should have been. “It’s in my lock-up. Your dad…ah…owed me money.”
Sandra snorted. She put the gun down and pulled a joint from out of her shirt pocket. “Take a ticket,” she said. “And don’t hold your breath. The government and the bank get their cut first. Once they’re done, there’s not going to be much left.”
She sat down hard on the steps and started to pat herself down for a light.
“Let me,” Kel said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of Ruby’s lighters that she’d left in his garage. One step forward, and he hesitated long enough to give the shotgun a wary look. “If that’s OK?”
It was.
The fight had drained out of Sandra, and she’d remembered she was tired.
She waved him over, and Kel went. He leaned down and scraped his thumb over the wheel.
The smell of gas tickled his nose, and then the flint sparked enough to ignite it.
As the flame flickered to life, Sandra leaned in, one hand up to scoop her hair back out of the way, to light the end of the joint.
Her cheeks sucked in as she drew on the slim cylinder, the thin, ashy paper singeing as it caught. She gave a short, hard cough as the heat hit the back of her throat and spluttered smoke out in grey puffs.
“I found Dad’s stash,” she explained as she plucked the joint from her lips and regarded it blankly. “I guess it was for the pain, but the taste would not help with the nausea.”
She offered it to Kel.
He took it from her and lifted it to his mouth.
It was practically medicinal, after all.
He waited for the familiar soft blur to take the edge of…
him. Instead, he just felt hot as the smoke lay spiced and heavy on his tongue.
Instead of sliding down into his throat, it filled his head, cedar and spice thick in his nose and threaded through his sinuses.
“Not that bad,” he said.
Sandra took it back off him. “What do you know about good weed?” she asked, no real heat to the jab. “Around here you probably smoke corn cobs for fun.”
She took another hit off the joint and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand.
“Sorry I tried to shoot you,” she muttered grudgingly.
“You missed,” Kel allowed.
“Not on purpose.” She rested her temple on her hand, fingers threaded through her hair, and looked up at Kel. “Are you going to tell the cops?”
“That get me my money?” he asked.