Mayor Buddy beamed at her in pride and said, “I guess I know better than to go against you when you’re riled,” as he headed out the door. He paused just long enough to give her a wink. He was followed posthaste by Sam Higgins, the firemen, and the medic. It took an additional glare from her and threatening looks from both Jesse and Patrick to get everyone else out. Miss Virginia Rose wore a stubborn expression, as if she wanted to be a holdout, until Loretta stood up and cleared her throat. “All right, all right,” Miss Virginia grumped as she went out the door.
As soon as the door closed and silence fell, Loretta humphed. “For a minute, I thought she would deliberately get herself arrested so she could see what all goes on.”
Bo jumped down from her desk and shook her head as she stared at the two miscreants. “I can’t believe this,” she muttered.
“It’s this old bitch’s fault,” Melody said, sneering at Miss Doris.
Miss Doris erupted again, her soft round body bristling with outrage. “I’d slap that stupid look off your face if it didn’t go so deep bleach and sandpaper wouldn’t take it off!”
Jesse turned his head into his shoulder and managed to turn a laugh into a cough.
“Okay, let’s get their statements. Jesse, Patrick, take them into separate rooms so they can’t hear each other, and, ladies”—when she paused, both Miss Doris and Melody looked at her—“remember, there are a lot of witnesses to what happened, and we’ll be talking to them all. What you tell us should be pretty damn close to what they tell us, because you don’t want to add making false statements to the list of possible charges.” If everything went the way she hoped, they wouldn’t need to talk to anyone else, but these two didn’t have to know that.
Miss Doris looked horrified at the idea that she might be charged with a crime, while Melody just looked contemptuous. Given that her father had been bailing her out of scrapes all her life, she likely didn’t expect this time to be any different. Nevertheless, both she and Miss Doris were obligingly silent as Jesse and Patrick took them to the tiny but separate interview rooms, which were side by side and had only drywall dividing them, which necessitated each officer turning on the noisy box fans in each room that had been bought to prevent eavesdropping. The solution was low tech, but it worked.
The statements didn’t take long. Patrick came out first, leaving Melody in the interview room. Bo and Loretta both looked expectantly at him, and he cleared his throat. “The gist of it is, the court proceedings were over, had gone off without a hitch though Kyle didn’t look too happy about any of it. On the way out, Emily and her mother and Miss Doris passed by a bunch of the Goodings, and Melody said, quote, ‘I’ll be glad when this is over and my brother can get a real wife instead of a whore’ unquote.”
As badmouthing went, that was typical of what was said in a lot of divorces, and not even original. Bo could think of a couple of her mother’s divorces that made Melody’s trash talk sound like the stuff of Sunday school classes.
“Emily and her mother didn’t pay any attention,” Patrick continued, “but Miss Doris blew a gasket. She got right up in Melody’s face and started yelling, ‘You keep your filthy mouth shut about my granddaughter or I’ll stuff my fist down your throat,’ again, quote and unquote.”
“Ouch.” Bo winced. Miss Doris was definitely guilty of assault—a misdemeanor, but still.
“Melody admitted to then saying, ‘I’ll wipe the floor with you, old lady. You won’t be so full of yourself when your house burns down.’ Which evens out the assault charges if we’re keeping score.”
Loretta grunted. “Huh.” She looked displeased that someone besides a Hobson was using house-burning as a threat.
Bo felt somewhat relieved. Things were looking up. With both of the women having committed the same misdemeanor, that gave her a place to start negotiating. If only one party was guilty, the other would undoubtedly press charges, which would keep this mess going likely for the rest of their natural lives—and beyond, because West Virginia didn’t breed people who easily forgot slights.
The trick was getting them both to not press charges because right now they were still fighting mad. There would be lingering resentment, of course, but at least there wouldn’t be rap sheets.
Jesse came out, and they all compared the two statements. At least Melody and Miss Doris had been truthful; they were almost word for word what each woman had said to the other.
“What do we do now?” Jesse asked, taking a peek out the front to where Kalie still waited patiently in his patrol car. At least she’d had the sense not to come inside and add to the crowd. Bo thought about reminding Jesse that he wasn’t supposed to have unauthorized ride-alongs in his patrol car, but they had more important fish to fry. Besides, she wouldn’t be telling Jesse something he didn’t already know, and she wasn’t going to carp about rule-bending when he’d bent a big one regarding Morgan.
Maybe she wasn’t any good at being a police chief because she seemed to have problems sticking to the rules. Well, that was a thought for another time because right now she had to deal with this.
“Why don’t you take Kalie home, and we’ll let those two sit and think for a while,” she suggested. “Half an hour, an hour—they need the time to cool down.”
There was a general nodding of heads; cooling down could only be good. Jesse took Kalie home; Patrick took his supper break. Loretta decided there wouldn’t be any more excitement and went home to cook supper for Charlie and bring him up to date. Bo sat at her desk and began catching up on the day’s paperwork. There wasn’t a peep from either of the two interview rooms.