Page 10 of The Hard Way (The Kinky Bank Robbers #5)

Chapter Eight

Maybe it was the giant steak-and-potatoes meal at the Cobblestone under the eerily watchful eyes of dead woodland animals, or the chubby little cherubs staring at us from all corners of Margie Mason’s Bed I guessed he hadn’t slept.

It was bad for him to be in a room alone; it was so much better in giant hotel suites, because even though he refused to let me sleep with him, he wasn’t shut up alone with cupids.

I thought about what he’d said about that prison.

The abuse. People always watching afterward. It tore me up to think about.

There was a couple from Galveston, Texas, also staying at the B we were farm people, so we washed our own vehicles.

A few new places had sprung up—a kitschy little coffee shop next to a new Vietnamese restaurant—though I was shocked to see the town’s favorite ice cream parlor, Blue Deer Ice Cream, had closed.

The Millers had a little wooden sign at the end of their gravel drive: Miller’s Acres.

A lot of farms took names like that. My parents had come up with Sunny Sisters just before Kaitlin was born.

It was a name I’d always loved. Tarnished now, thanks to Andy or whoever had pressured him to pull that warmed cheese out of the dumpster and blame my sisters.

We pulled up.

“You’re sure he’s not going to recognize you?” Zeus and the guys still had this idea that Andy and I were somehow close.

“I promise. They weren’t in our circle of family friends, and he was a grade older than me and just…too cool for me, as it turned out. ”

My guys looked at me like I’d uttered that last bit in Urdu. I loved them for it.

“I can’t believe he’d do this,” I said. “I can’t believe anybody would. A man died .”

“That’s probably why,” Thor said. “Whatever he was up to, maybe he didn’t count on somebody dying. So he lied to cover it up. At this point, he’ll stick hard to his story.”

“He’ll try, anyway,” Zeus said.

I got out with my briefcase; Odin had brought one, too. Thor was our official note-taker. Zeus had bought a clipboard. Props were important to my guys, but still, the clipboard made me snort. “Who uses a clipboard anymore?” I teased.

“I do.” Zeus turned and headed up the walk to the farmhouse, a traditional white Victorian with a front porch that had been glassed in during the 1970s to create that special architect-on-crack look. “I’m going to be writing all the things I plan to do to you on this clipboard.”

“Shut up—don’t!”

“That’s what I’ll use the clipboard for.”

“You have to concentrate. This is serious.”

“I’ll be concentrating, don’t worry. I can do two things at once.” He gave me a hot little backward glance. “You yourself have witnessed that many times.”

My face went red, because of course he meant it in the dirtiest way possible.

“This is a small-town kid,” Odin said. “We’ve questioned hardened fighters and warlords. I think we can get the truth out of a small-town kid without much trouble.”

“Who broke up with who?” Thor asked.

“It wasn’t even like that. We weren’t going out enough to have an official breakup. It was more of a fizzle.” I lowered my voice, because we were nearing the door. “He was a cute but not-too-bright guy on the football team who dated everyone. ”

“And he thought you weren’t cool enough?” Zeus growled. “Did he break your heart?”

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you anything. Because you’d be freaks about it. But no, no broken hearts.”

“But he fizzled on you,” Odin said.

I shook my head hotly, but it was true. Andy dumped me once we fucked. He was that kind of boyfriend. A dolt and a cad, if you wanted to get technical. But I didn’t need my guys knowing that. Andy was in enough trouble already.

Mrs. Miller came to the door wearing a terrycloth track suit and a look of great suspicion, because who comes to anybody’s door anymore?

I lurked in the background during introductions, and she showed no sign of recognizing me.

It was weird, because I so recognized her.

But she hadn’t seen me in two years, she thought I was dead, and I seriously looked like Tootsie.

My guys explained they wanted to talk to Andy, and she texted him. He was in the main barn. She pointed the way, and we headed over. It was a cool spring day. Crisp. April in Wisconsin was always the best.

We hadn’t called ahead because Zeus didn’t like people preparing, but the text alerted Andy, of course. I could tell Zeus didn’t like that.

Andy came out of the main barn, wiping his hands on a rag.

He wore blue coveralls and dirty brown boots with red laces, just as he had in high school.

He looked mostly the same—same twinkly eyes, same really straight blond hair, though in general he was way thicker—his face, his neck, his whole body.

He had turned into a grown man, closer to thirty than twenty now, just like me.

According to the newspaper reports, Andy had graduated with an ag degree from the community college in Dieter’s Corners. Night classes. Night classes were big in these parts due to the daytime nature of farm work.

Zeus introduced us as insurance investigators who were looking into the Sunny Sisters salmonella outbreak, wanting to get the story.

Andy looked concerned. “I already talked to the FDA investigators and a zillion other people. You could probably get the story from them.”

“We need to establish the circumstances of the claim,” Odin said, which was just a bullshitty way of saying we were there to get the story, but Andy seemed to accept this more readily.

“Okay,” he said.

“You mind if we…” Odin gestured to the barn door. Wanting to get him back inside. My guys liked to question people inside of places when possible. Odin once said that when the subject looked at the door, that was a sign they were starting to get somewhere with their questioning.

Oh, how my kinky bank robbers loved their sneaky little tricks.

So did I, though I wasn’t usually on the world-of-hurt side of those tricks; I was usually on the world-of-pleasure side.

Not that I even knew all their tricks. I was fine with that.

Andy was back in the barn—it was the machine barn rather than the actual cow barn. From the looks of it, he’d been working on their tractor.

He tossed the rag onto the tractor seat.

“So,” he said. Our eyes met just then, but he gave no sign of recognition, and then Odin gave Andy a business card.

Maybe Odin didn’t like him looking at me too hard.

“When did you first learn about the cooler loss of power? Were you the one to bring it to management attention?”

“I already went through this.”

“You’ll need to go through it for us. It could get to be a long, drawn-out process if we have to push it through the court system.”

“This is going to court?”

“Are you surprised?” Odin asked.

“I thought…no, I don’t know.”

Zeus scribbled on his clipboard just then, like what Andy had just said was really significant.

Andy watched him, looking a little paranoid.

I got the feeling he was fighting with himself, wanting to ask something, but fearing a potential trap.

I was starting to feel a little bit sorry for him, cad that he was.

“Just go ahead and run through the story. There should be no problem.” Zeus said it as if there could possibly be a really fucking major problem.

Andy went though the story. Him getting in there in the morning and handling the deliveries. His family had a refrigerated truck, so it made sense to have him handle the deliveries instead of my sisters up keeping their own truck.

Under other circumstances, I’d be fascinated to learn about the systems Vanessa had instituted.

She had him doing anything that involved heavy lifting, as well as some of the mindless, time-consuming work, like the wine smear on the Swiss cheese.

I was very impressed by this last part. Vanessa was acting as the artisan and the main shepherd, Kaitlin was handling the marketing and the business end, and they had Candace in a really minor role because of school.

When I’d been there, I had been making Candace do the smear and feeding the sheep.

They were paying him kind of a lot, but when I made a few quick calculations in my head, I realized it was money well spent.

Vanessa was outsourcing like a pro.

God, was my little sister better at running the farm than I had been? Making better decisions?

Apparently yes.