Page 11 of The Hard Way (The Kinky Bank Robbers #5)

“I didn’t notice the plug itself out of the wall,” Andy said.

“It was when I opened the cooler to pull out the delivery that I saw the light didn’t go on.

That’s the delivery staging cooler, and I saw it was dark.

And the crate of labeled ready-to-ship cheese was not at all cool when I pulled it out.

I set the crate on the table and went around to check that the unit was turned on, and that’s when I saw the plug was out from the wall. ”

“Kicked out,” Zeus said .

Andy shrugged. “Nobody would’ve intentionally unplugged it.”

“Had it happened before?” Thor asked.

“Yeah, but we were moving a table at the time. I don’t know how it got kicked out this time, but it was out, and I put it back in, and I texted Vanessa.

She came down from the house with the girls and pulled out the rest of the cheese and checked it.

She figured the cooler had been off all night, and she told me to toss all the cheese. ”

“So that’s what you did.”

“Of course. I threw it all into the dumpster. Usually we’d use it for composting, but it was all wrapped and labeled so we put it in the dumpster.”

Zeus took that moment to tip his clipboard toward me. He traced some words with his finger, as though to underline them. Vaginal stimulation with a porcelain cupid statue.

I swallowed, trying not to look shocked. Then he moved his finger, and the next line was revealed. We will then hold you down, hold open your legs and rub you with the plastic cupid-head doll from Thor’s room until you beg. You will be begging us to let you come. You will do anything.

I widened my eyes, unsure what to say.

“What?” I looked up to find Andy staring at me. “What?”

“We’re just taking notes, lining up the facts,” Zeus said.

“Well, that’s the story. I dumped the warm cheese.

Vanessa wanted me to change a light bulb in the main barn, and when I came back, she showed me the cases she wanted to send to the Pig.

She said she stuck labels on them and cased them up.

So I delivered those ones to the Pig. One of them must’ve taken them from the dumpster. It’s the only explanation.”

“Was Vanessa around when you loaded up the truck?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything. I’m asking if she was around to see you load the truck. ”

“No, she went into town with Kaitlin. To the hardware store…what?”

“So she didn’t watch what you did.”

“I delivered the cases she directed me to deliver. I took them to the Piggly Wiggly. Why would I lie?”

“Your family put an offer in on their farm.”

Andy backed up. “We’d be idiots not to. If they’re going to sell. I’d think they’d rather have it go to us. Not everyone would keep that land nice.”

“But it is a stroke of good fortune.”

“You think I pulled those cheeses out of the trash and put them in the case?”

In a flash, Odin was on him, pressing him to the wall. I made to move at him, break them up, but Zeus had my arm in an iron grip. I looked up at him wildly.

Zeus shook his head at me. Let him do the work .

Odin said, “Are you telling me those girls pulled the cheese out and sold it?”

“It didn’t walk there itself.” Andy was trying to act tough, despite literally having his back against a wall, but I could smell his fear.

“Is that funny?”

“Fuck,” Andy said. “I’m not lying!”

“So you think the girls did it.”

“Honestly? Yeah. It was thousands of dollars’ worth of cheese. They were pretty fucking upset.”

There was this silence where Odin just watched his face.

“I swear to you,” Andy said. “I wouldn’t want their land that way.”

“And there’s the dead man, don’t forget that.”

“I’m not forgetting the dead man,” Andy gasped. Thor intervened now, pulling Odin off. “What kind of insurance investigators are you?”

“The kind that prefer the truth,” Zeus said .

“I’m sorry that’s not what you want to hear,” Andy said.

“That cooler of cheese represented weeks of work. It’s not like whichever one of them switched the cheese was being malicious.

They’re not bad people. Losing power to the cooler like that—you know those regulations are redundant.

If the cheese is well made and you’ve kept shit clean, cheese getting warmed up shouldn’t be a problem.

And we really keep shit clean in there. So there was a moment where we were all looking at that brie, thinking, ‘This cheese is probably fine, and nothing would happen if we shipped it.’ Just standing there thinking about that cheese. Candy crying.”

I gritted my teeth. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that my sisters would never ship warmed brie, even if they were sure it was good.

“It was a big issue because they were planning a vacation to Mexico this year. Vanessa developed this farm co-op ring between us and them and these other neighbors, the Schneiders, where we handle a week per winter on each other’s farms. But you toss that amount of cheese out, and your vacation plans are pretty much toast at that point.

We’re standing there looking at it, and Vanessa goes, ‘We have to toss it.’ So I tossed it and went out to the barn. ”

“So it’s your theory that Vanessa switched in the bad cheese?”

“She was the only one there the whole time. Anyway, one of them had to because I didn’t load it in from the garbage.

That would not happen. Period.” He swept his hands against each other as if to say, I wipe my hands.

“I don’t know how it got in there, but there were three other people who knew it was tossed. ”

I looked from Thor to Zeus to Odin. I couldn’t read them. I couldn’t read Andy, either.

“You have a theory,” Odin said. “Let’s hear it.”

“It wasn’t Vanessa,” Andy said. “But Kaitlin…she’s just a kid.”

I stared down at the ground, heart pounding. Kaitlin was seventeen—she knew better. She wouldn’t .

Five minutes later, we were back in the car, bumping out of the Miller’s Acres gate .

“I didn’t like him,” Odin said.

“But did you think he was lying?” Zeus asked.

Odin looked back at me. “Ice?”

“Fuck yeah, he’s lying.”

“What about his theory? Candy or Kaitlin?”

“No way. Vanessa would know if one of my sisters was lying, and she’d make it right.”

“Could their lawyer be advising them to deny, deny, deny? Could Vanessa be willing to take the fall for a sister?”

My heart pounded. Good people did stupid things all the time.

Did one of them fuck up and Vanessa was protecting her?

But then I remembered the newsletter. “No. In the newsletter, Vanessa said an employee lied. She said it to you. She wouldn’t slag somebody like that if she suspected it was Kaitlin or Candace.

No, it had to be Andy. Or maybe Andy was working with somebody.

Something happened there. It wasn’t my sisters. ”

Thor studied my eyes.

“You have to believe me,” I said.