“He’s back? Is he okay?” Uncle Mike pretended to have an adversarial relationship with Jack, which fooled nobody.
“He’s good. Listen, I’m pulling into the parking lot. I’ll ask him to call you. Love you, Uncle Mike.”
“I love you, too, kiddo. Hopefully, I’ll see you later. I have all my garage-building tools ready to go.”
We should probably put it off, but if we put off important stuff every time there was a murder in town …
Maybe it was better not to think about that.
27
Jack
“Whatisthat?”
“Oh. That’s Audrey.”
“Who?”
Tess laughed, which was strange considering an enormous zucchini plant was taking over her shop.
“When did you get that? No, strike that. Which horrible customer dumped their man-eating plant on you?”
“It wasn’t a customer, it was Ollie, and he’s not horrible. Jack, you were there when he gave it to me. And remember, Alaric put a whammy on it yesterday to keep it from growing out of control.” She frowned. “Although it was half this size yesterday. Guess his whammy doesn’t work on zucchini plants, either.”
I looked at her in disbelief. “Tess. It’s Thursday morning. Are you telling me that the tiny plant Ollie left on your counter Monday morning has become …thatin three days?”
“Sadly, yes. Luckily, I have pruning shears around here somewhere. I’ve been running a ‘free zucchini with every purchase’ promotion all week. But now that you’re here, maybe you could help me take this out and put it somewhere that’s not here. Maybe in the woods? Deer and rabbits eat zucchini, right?”
“They love zucchini.” I remembered Uncle Jed swearing a blue streak whenever the deer, rabbits, and other creatures got into our garden. I’d loved it when they went after the zucchini, though. I hated zucchini.
My phone rang when Tess went off to get the gardening shears. It was Deputy Andy Kelly, formerly the bane of my existence, and now a good friend. We’d been trapped together by some very bad people back in December. I’d gotten us out, but he’d been in bad shape by the time we got free. I still felt guilty enough about that to answer the phone, even though I was pretty sure I knew why he was calling, after the long and tangled story Tess had told me the night before about what was going on in Dead End.
I sighed. I’d donated that money to the town, so they didn’t feel like they needed to call on me as a spare deputy every time something went wrong. I’d had enough of being the one on tap when the world went to heck in a handbasket. Now, I just wanted to relax and enjoy life.
Well. Maybe not when Tess was in danger.
I answered the phone. “Andy. How are you doing, man? How are the ribs?”
Broken ribs are the worst. I’ve been there and done that far too many times. At least I had shifter healing to help me along. Andy was a plain-vanilla human.
“Ribs are okay. I’m good. Hey, I heard you were home. We’ve had a bit of trouble.”
“Tess told me. Susan stopped by this morning, too.”
“Listen. I know it’s asking too much, and you don’t want to be an honorary deputy, but if you could help look for Aloysius Phleabottom and keep an eye out for Henrietta Quirksley, it would be an enormous help. It’s like they’ve both dropped off the face of the earth.”
I looked across the shop at Tess, who was humming and harvesting what had to be at least a hundred zucchinis.
“Hey, man. It’s okay if you don’t want to—"
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“But I have one condition.”
“Name it.”
