Mayor Buddy called the meeting to order, then gave Emily the floor.
Emily was young, just in her mid-twenties, but self-possessed. She said, “First, I want to apologize to everyone that my personal life is causing problems for the town.”
There was a rumble of voices assuring her that the fault wasn’t hers. She flushed and said, “I had the bad judgment to marry Kyle, so it goes back that far. This past week has been like a war. He and his daddy are threatening everything they can think of if I don’t just sign over everything to Kyle and drop the domestic violence charges. I have to tell you, some of those threats involve the town.”
Miss Virginia Rose, the cashier at the grocery store who was also on the town council, said, “What kind of threats?”
Emily twisted her hands. “Well, it isn’t just the people who work at the sawmills. Mr. Gooding said if he shut down the sawmills, the town would lose a lot of its revenue because the people who work there do most of their shopping here. And he’s right.”
“I doubt he’d shut down the sawmills,” Mayor Buddy said. “That’s his livelihood, too.”
“All I can tell you, Mayor, is that he’s always talking about his investments and how much money he’s got tucked away, and he said he can survive shutting down the sawmills for a few months, but the town and the people who work for him can’t.”
The meeting erupted into a flurry of angry comments until Mayor Buddy gaveled it back to order. This was indeed a problem because the town operated on a shoestring budget with no surplus to tide it over. The loss of those sales taxes for even a few months would be catastrophic.
Bo and Jesse sat quietly listening. Everyone had a different idea about what to do, including Miss Virginia Rose’s suggestion that some of the townsfolk take the Goodings out somewhere and beat the shit out of them. Bo could tell several of the council members thought that was a good idea, which was problematic with her and Jesse both sitting there.
Time ticked by. She checked her phone; this was taking far longer than she’d anticipated. She was glad Tricks had stayed with Morgan, she thought, because otherwise she’d have had to interrupt the meeting at least a couple of times to take Tricks out. Plus she would have had to go down to the police station to get some of the food she kept there. On the other hand, this might be the longest she’d ever been away from Tricks other than the one time when she’d had bronchitis and Daina had kept Tricks while Bo miserably waited her turn to be seen in a doctor’s office. Tricks had been about six months old and hell on wheels; easygoing Daina had been no match for her, and still wasn’t.
“We’re going to have to arrest most of the people here,” Jesse muttered to her because the talk had segued from prevention to vengeance, which included hiring the Mean-As-Shit Hobsons to deal with the situation. Considering Mr. Gooding’s reaction to Loretta, Bo thought that idea had some merit.
On the other hand, she also remembered how vehemently Mr. Gooding wanted Kyle out of this situation without a criminal record.
She held up her hand. Mayor Buddy banged his gavel and said, “Chief Maran has the floor.”
Bo got to her feet, and everyone in the room looked at her expectantly.
“Emily, which would you rather have, Kyle prosecuted for hitting you, or him signing the divorce papers and just going away?”
“Divorce and going away,” Emily said promptly. “I know I’m supposed to prosecute but I gotta say, he never beat me or anything like that, he slapped me that one time in the bakery and I’m ashamed to admit it, but I slapped him that morning before I left the house. He could file charges against me, too, couldn’t he? But he hasn’t.”
“Yes, he could,” Bo said. “I don’t know if the mayor has told everyone, but Mr. Gooding came to see me on Monday and he’s very concerned about Kyle having a criminal record. I think we can use that as leverage and work out something between the town and the Goodings, and that includes Kyle signing the divorce papers and leaving Emily alone.”
It took a while to hammer out a plan. As Mayor Buddy put it, the Goodings were bitter, vindictive sons of bitches who never forgot a slight unless “we make it in their best interests to do otherwise.”
The plan revolved around Emily, and she was all in. Only a week had passed, but she could push hard to have a divorce granted immediately, if not sooner. She could light a fire under her lawyer, they could get the papers ready, they could get Judge Harper lined up. The linchpin was getting Kyle to sign. The proposal they came up with was that if Kyle didn’t give Emily any more trouble, if he agreed to the divorce settlement, which was simply that he kept his stuff and she kept hers and they sold the house and split the profits, assuming there were any, the charges against him would be dropped. He also had to stay away from her and get on with his own life without interfering in hers. If he couldn’t do that, all bets were off. And if she started having any mysterious troubles, such as her car getting keyed or her tires knifed, the Hobsons would be sicced on him. That last wasn’t legal, but what the hell—maybe none of it was.
Jesse was the law-and-order person there, and he didn’t have any problem with it. He was for whatever served the community best rather than going balls-to-the-wall for the few misdemeanor charges that were all they had on Kyle. “I’m okay with all this,” he said. “Kyle didn’t get off without catching some good licks himself, including Brandy braining him with the chair. If everyone else is on board, I am too.” That pretty much sealed the deal as far as everyone else was concerned.