"And pumpkin pie," I teased him.
"Ilovepumpkin pie."
"Any chance you're not tired of my company yet? You're welcome to come to dinner."
There was a silence. When he came back on the line, his voice sounded a little bit odd. "Tess. I don't think I could ever get tired of your company."
A wave of warmth swept through me. "Same right back at you. Will you stop and pick up whipped cream on your way?"
His low chuckle was positively wicked. "You might be my dream woman."
I blinked, and then I realized what he meant and heat washed over my face. "For the pie! Whipped cream for thepie!"
"See you in twenty minutes," he said, still laughing, and hung up, leaving me to finish my pie and think very interesting thoughts.
* * *
After we ate chicken and pie and cleaned up, we decided to go downtown and have a look at how the festival decorations were coming along. It was such a small town thing to do, though, that I started to worry that Jack would be bored out of his mind.
Jack glanced over at me when we were driving. "Are you okay? You've gone really quiet on me."
"I was just thinking about what Uncle Mike said. Dead End isn't a fancy metropolis or anything. Won't you be bored if you stay here for any length of time?" I stared at the window to avoid looking at him. "I mean, after all your adventures."
There was silence for a long moment, and then he started laughing. Loudly. In fact, it was pretty much a belly laugh. "Tess," he said, when he finally stopped laughing. "What part of the nine months since I came back to Dead End would you qualify asboring?"
He had a point.
"Yes, but hopefully it won't always be murders and stalkers and ghost pirates. And then what? We're left doing things like walking around town looking at decorations."
He reached out and took my hand and squeezed. "I spent ten years in some of the most dangerous situations imaginable. I would be perfectly happy to spend the rest of my life having dinners with you and walking around town looking at decorations."
Before I could answer that astonishing declaration, his phone buzzed. He handed it to me, since the truck was too old for Bluetooth, and I pushed speaker phone. It was Dallas.
"Shepherd."
"I'm here too," I said.
"Hey, Tess. How are you?"
"I'm good. Are you coming to the festival? Better yet, do you know anybody short who wouldn't mind dressing up as the swamp cabbage for the parade?"
Silence.
"Dallas?"
"We must have a bad connection. I thought you asked me to find somebody to dress up as a cabbage."
"Right. For the parade," I said helpfully.
Dallas chuckled. "Small towns are weird."
Jack broke into my important recruiting conversation. "Any news?"
"Yeah, you could say so. Brigham Hammermill the Fourth is definitely still alive."
15
We got nothing but speculation accomplished Wednesday night. We let Susan and Andy know, so they could pass the news along to the various state and federal officials who needed to know. And I called Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike to let them know, too. But no matter how much we discussed it, we still couldn’t figure out what Brig might have to do with me or with the missing Ann Feeney.
