Chapter 24 Mutiny
TWENTY-FOUR
Mutiny
Hutch
The next Thursday afternoon, Hutch was headed through town when his dash rang.
He looked at it, took the call and greeted, “Yo, Harry.”
“Was that your truck I just saw pass my window?” Harry asked.
“Yup,” Hutch told him. “On my way to May’s. Emma has the flu, and Abigail has to stay home with her. May is minding the store, but she had a certain window she had to pick up some stuff she won from an online auction. She couldn’t go. I got it and I’m takin’ it to the store.”
“Can you drop in when you’re done? We got a few things breaking. Thought you might be interested.”
“Fuck yeah, I can,” Hutch told him.
“See you in a few. Heads up, Cade is coming in too.”
Hutch didn’t wonder why Harry tapped into a local resource that might give them deep insights into what was happening at The Lion and The Lamb.
Cade Bohannan wasn’t just a retired FBI profiler. He was generally known as one of the best in their history, he had deep roots in MP, he lived there with his family, and as such, often volunteered his expertise to the Fret County Sheriff’s police.
He and Harry said their goodbyes, and Hutch pulled into the alley, backing in behind Mabel’s store.
He used the keys Mabel had given him that morning to open the back door (there were several of them, including her cabin keys, to which she’d said, “Just in case”).
Singing all the way, Tonks came to greet him, and she got a quick rubdown before he went through to the front of the store.
Mabel was doing something behind the counter. Moxie was curled up in a snug, little cat bed on the counter close to her momma (Barry at the feedstore had to be falling in love with Mabel, or at least her wallet, probably both).
Moxie was proving to be resilient.
Mabel had told him she wanted Tonks and Moxie to be like some cat and dog on some social media account she used to follow. Two animals that went everywhere with their adventure-loving mom and dad. Camping, hiking (the cat in a backpack), van life.
He knew she’d had cats before, but he still cautioned that not all of them could handle a constant change of scenery. It could get very stressful for them.
Her reply was to cup his jaw and say, “I know, baby. I just want to try it out and see where she’s at. I won’t push her too far. And if it seems like she’s not taking to it, I’ll stop.”
Moxie had sat in a cage for six months.
She knew what she had in Mabel and Tonks.
Whether it was for that reason, or just that she was a chill cat, so far, she’d taken to it.
From behind the counter, Moxie’s pretty momma looked his way. “Hey, honey.”
“Obviously, I’m here. I’ll unload.”
“I cleared some space in the back room for you. I’d help but I can’t leave the shop.”
“It’s not much, babe. No worries. I’ll be back when I’m done.”
She smiled at him.
He returned it and went to his truck.
With Tonks’s company, he unloaded, went back to throw up the gate on his truck, then he and Tonks returned to the front of the store.
“All in. Now I gotta be somewhere,” he told her.
“Do you have just two minutes?” she asked.
He had whatever she needed him to give her.
He did (and didn’t quite) communicate this by walking her way.
“What’s up?” he asked when he came to a stop across from her.
“Look,” she said and pointed her phone at him.
On the screen there was a professional picture of a very pretty woman, a tall, good-looking guy, and two cute kids walking through some palm groves. The man and woman were gazing at each other moonily with smiles on their faces. The photo had been filtered to the limit and looked like a dreamscape.
Problem was, Hutch had no fucking clue who they were.
He’d seen pictures of her friends…Mona, Kacey, Olivia, Marcy.
That woman was none of those ladies.
“That’s Tara,” she said.
“Tara?” he asked.
“That’s Tara and her new man’s engagement picture. Tara being Bryce’s ex-wife.”
Right.
Now he got it.
And he was glad for this Tara chick who looked like she’d moved on to good things, but he didn’t know why this required him to delay what he was doing.
“Babe, I got things to do,” he reminded her.
“Right, right. You don’t know Bryce, so you don’t get it.
Yes, Bryce was crashing out when he saw that video of you and me.
Now, how do you think Bryce feels after someone showed him that picture of his ex-wife and his kids, in all their filtered glory, smiling and walking metaphorically into their bright future.
Don’t guess. I’ll tell you. He’s lost his mind. ”
That made Hutch smile. “So he’s turned his attention from you?”
“My friend Kacey sent this to me. I called Tara to congratulate her. She told me Bryce had activated his premium plan of re-wooing. He’s showering her with gifts. Flowers. Begging. Groveling.”
Hutch didn’t like that. “He’s up in her shit?”
Mabel’s grin nearly split her face in two. “She’s having the time of her life.”
All right then.
And at least she was out of that fuckwad’s line of fire. For now.
“And before you ask, her new man not only knows what Bryce did to his fiancée, he knows he’s no threat, and he thinks it’s a scream,” she finished.
“Fantastic, baby,” he said through another smile. “Now gotta go. Kiss.”
They both leaned over the counter to touch lips.
“See you,” she called as he walked away.
“Oh yeah,” he replied, not looking back.
He made sure Tonks, who had followed him, didn’t escape, the door was locked, then he jogged down the alley and up a side street before he jogged to the sheriff’s office, because it’d take less time to do that then get in his truck and find another parking spot that might not be much closer.
At the end of it, he realized fucking was exercise, but he needed to diversify and definitely do what he’d been putting off because he’d been so busy: ease back into his normal routine. He wasn’t breathing heavy, but a four-block jog took more out of him than usual.
He pushed into the station, and Sean Stoll, one of Harry’s deputies, immediately noted him, caught his gaze, jerked his head to the swinging door, and after greeting Hutch, escorted him to Harry’s office.
Sean closed the door after Hutch entered.
Harry was behind the desk, Rus leaning his ass against the round conference table, legs straight in front of him and crossed, as were his arms, and Cade Bohannan was sitting in a chair in front of Harry’s desk.
There were greetings, chin juts, and Harry indicated Hutch should sit in the free chair in front of his desk.
“We’ll get right down to it,” Harry said.
Then, addressing Hutch, “As you know, we were coming up with nothing as to how to approach property owners on Stony Bluff to ask if they had any downed trees without raising suspicions which lead to questions and might lead to something else if people found someone was stealing their lumber.”
Hutch nodded. “I know.”
“Fortunately, that worry evaporated when Hugh Tidwell came in this morning, reporting he thinks someone is stealing his trees,” Harry said.
Fucking hell.
“He was out on his ATV, something caught his eye,” Harry continued.
“Got off, had a look, brushed some leaves, dirt and pine needles away and saw a somewhat fresh, clean-cut stump to a tree he did not fell. He got back on his ATV and did a closer scan. Dotted around about ten of his acres, he found nine stumps that had been covered to avoid detection. He quit looking then to come down here, but he’s concerned there’ll be more. ”
“So they aren’t clearing, they’re cherry picking,” Hutch surmised. “You’d miss a cluster of trees gone. You might not miss one here and the other there.”
“That’s what we think,” Harry said.
“So now…?” Hutch prompted.
“Now we got cause to send deputies up there to knock on some doors, and those deputies are already up there,” Harry told him.
Hutch smiled. “That’s a good break, Harry.”
“We’re not done,” Rus said from behind him.
Hutch glanced that way, but it was Cade who started talking.
“Had several requests from a police department outside Philly to do a talk for their officers,” he shared. “Been turning them down because they can’t afford my full fee. Seein’ as this place is about fifteen miles from the Amish community Lars Enstrom grew up in, I decided to accept a reduced fee.”
Fucking hell.
“Larue and I headed out, I did my thing, then she and I got in our rental car and took a drive,” Cade went on.
Larue was what he called Delphine, his partner, Misted Pines’s most famous resident, and she wasn’t famous because of bad shit, but because she authored one of the best American novels ever written.
Cade kept going, “We left the community alone. They don’t like outsiders and more than likely wouldn’t share anything. So we asked about Lars in town. Not a surprise, time has passed, and he didn’t live in town. No one knew him.”
Well, shit.
“Except one guy,” Cade said.
Hutch returned to alert.
“Guy said Enstrom was always trouble. He’d sneak out of his community, come into town, do stupid shit.
Graffiti, petty vandalism of cars and property.
Man said he didn’t know what Enstrom got done for during his Rumspringa.
But he reckoned the only people in his community who didn’t want him gone were his parents.
They got their shot to shun, they jumped all over it. ”
“Right,” Hutch said.
“The other thing he knew was that Enstrom had been back. Briefly. About five, six years ago. And he came back to pick up his long-time secret, by then not-so-secret girlfriend. A woman named Taylor Martin.”
Cade’s head turned Harry’s way, so Hutch’s did too, but his attention caught on Harry’s computer screen that now had two pictures side by side on it.
Left, definitely DMV.
Right, a grainy picture Hutch took, zoomed in and cropped, of the woman who he’d seen necking with Enstrom on the compound.
Even grainy, it was impossible to miss they were the same woman.
“Now there’s this,” Harry said as he clicked out of that, and another two photos came up.