“I’ll be pressing charges against you, missy!” Savage outrage thickened his tone. “You made threats against my son—”
“You mean that part about tearing his fucking head off?” put in Loretta, still hidden by her partition. There was a snicker. “Yeah, everyone took that real serious, considering he weighs about twice what she does.”
“Shut up!” he roared, pivoting and taking a threatening step toward the partition. “This stupid town is taking orders from two ignorant pussies and I—”
Loretta slowly stood up, all six-feet-one and two hundred seventy-two pounds of her rising from behind the partition. Her chin was tucked, her eyes bright as she eyed him as if he were steak tartare and she was a starving lion. “I’ll bet my pussy against yours any day, hoss. If you want to know who I am, the name’s Loretta Hobson, from out Lister Road. You’ve probably heard of my family? The Mean-As-Shit Hobsons? I’ll take you on any day.”
His head jerked back. Everyone in the county had heard of the Mean-As-Shit Hobsons. Cross a Hobson, and you were likely to find your house burned down—and that’s if they were in a good mood. The worst part of it was they were pretty damn smart and had never been caught at anything.
In a very level tone, Bo said, “Mr. Gooding, I think it would be best if you leave now. Just be patient, tell Kyle to act smart for once in his life, and let things settle down. I’ll forget this one time that you tried to bribe me, but if you try such a thing again, I’ll arrest you on the spot. Are we clear?”
He was still watching Loretta as if she were a cobra and had him hypnotized. Loretta barked, “Are we clear?” and he visibly jumped, his head swiveling toward Bo. His cheeks had lost all their color, but malice burned in his eyes.
“I’ll have your job for this,” he uttered almost soundlessly. “Wait until the town finds out you’re shacking up with some guy who turned up out of the blue.”
That hadn’t taken long, she thought. Morgan had been at her house for a whole four days. “Oh, you mean my old friend who just had open-heart surgery and can barely walk? That guy? Sure, go for it, but be prepared to be laughed at.”
That information was almost too much for him to process. He teetered on the verge of a violent explosion, but self-preservation kept him from going there because he seemed to sense that Bo and Loretta were a hair’s breadth from putting handcuffs on him. He couldn’t bear to admit defeat but had no other option. Finally he simply turned and stomped out, leaving the door standing open in his wake.
Blowing out a breath, Bo closed the door and turned back to Loretta. They grinned at each other and met halfway across the office for a high five and a fist bump. “I’m so glad you’re a Hobson,” she told Loretta.
“It comes in handy.” Loretta blew on her nails, buffed them on her shirt. “I can’t wait to tell my brothers. They’ll get a kick out of it. You really got a man living with you?”
“For now, poor guy. He just got out of the hospital.”
It was the description of “poor guy” that did it because no woman described a romantic interest that way. Losing interest, Loretta said, “Hope he feels better soon,” and dropped the subject.
The excitement over, Loretta returned to her cubicle and Bo sat at her desk. Tricks sniffed around before deciding to take a nap. After thinking the situation over for a few minutes, Bo called Mayor Buddy and filled him in on her encounter with Warren Gooding.
He sighed. From the sound, she could just see his face, homely but pleasant, settling into lines of concern. “I knew he was going to be a problem. Still—he did just give us leverage, and we might be able to work it to our advantage.”
“I’m torn,” she admitted. “I dislike him so much I’d love to file bribery charges against him, but overall that wouldn’t be good for the town. If the sawmills closed because he wasn’t there to run them, that would hurt some innocent families who depend on the jobs.”
“It’s your call. If you want to file charges, I’ll back you up.”
Letting go of the vision of Warren Gooding behind bars, Bo gave her own sigh. “Strategically, I think we’d be better off not filing charges, but not letting him know.”
“I agree. I’ll talk to the town council about this whole situation. I don’t want everyone getting sucked into what should be a private divorce situation. Bad blood can cause trouble for years. Harold Patterson”—that was the barber—“is already up in arms because he’s been sweet on Miss Doris for years, not that she’s having any of it, but he thinks he can impress her by taking up for her and Emily.”
Bo rubbed her forehead; she could feel a headache coming on. The way the lives of people in small towns were woven together was foreign to her, but over the years she’d gotten sucked into it anyway, and damn it, now that she knew these people, she cared, however reluctantly. It was disturbing that she even knew this many people. If she’d known this would happen, she might never have taken the job of chief.
“I need a vacation,” she said aloud.
Mayor Buddy chuckled. “I know the feeling. Small towns, huh?” He paused, then with a faint undertone of guilt said, “Come to think of it, have you ever taken one? Vacation.”
Mortified that he might think she’d been asking for paid time off, she said, “I was joking. I have too much on my plate to even consider a day off. Not only do I have a boatload of tech projects lined up, I have a friend recuperating at my place.”