"Honestly, I don't care what they do to each other, but not in my shop."
"Damage?" Susan asked, giving them all a hard stare.
"Not as much as there would have been if I hadn't pulled out my shotgun. You can be sure I'll be sending an invoice, Bubba."
Bubba, who absolutely didn’t want to go to jail, nodded furiously. "Yes! Send it to me. I'll pay right away."
Lola walked out just then. "Hey, Tess. I'd like to buy those opal earrings if you can find your way to giving me a good price."
"I'd be more inclined if you hadn't just busted up my shop," I said dryly. "But hang on."
"Do you want to press charges?" Susan asked.
I'd had ten minutes to think about it, and I'd decided not to. "Nope. Family trouble is none of mine. But I'd like to invite allMcKees to give me at least a week or two before they come back to the shop."
This time, it was me giving the hard stare, and I directed every bit of it at Cletus. "Andyou.Please consider yourself banned."
Susan caught the tension between the two of us but said nothing. She and Andy conferred, and then they sent all the McKees home.
"Gladly," Cletus growled, stomping off the porch. "I'll be perfectly happy to see the back of this worthless town after Friday and never come back."
"Dead End isn't worthless," I called after him, but he didn't even turn around.
I asked Bubba to hold on a second and then turned to Susan. She wanted to know more, especially about why I was banishing Cletus, but a wave of customers drove in just then. I told the sheriff and deputy I'd fill them in later, not sure I actually would, and then I sold Lola her earrings for twenty percentmorethan the tag.
"But—"
"Take it or leave it."
She took it, and then I pulled Bubba aside for a minute while my newcomers shopped. "Why?"
"Why what, Tess?" Bubba gave me his best innocent face, but I wasn't buying it.
"Why are you all so hot to beat up your cousin? What did he do?"
His face closed. "That's McKee business."
"Did he steal something?"
Bubba's eyes widened. "How did you know?"
I blew out a breath. "He had it here. Tried to sell it to me."
"What? That doesn't make sense, Tess." His forehead furrowed. "How could he try to sell you my cousin July?"
"What are you talking about?" we both asked each other at the same time.
Turned out, this branch of the family hated Cletus Senior for the money he stole from them with a fake investment scheme. But they hated Cletus Junior for running off with his fourth cousin July when she was only seventeen years old and then breaking her heart and leaving her, pregnant and alone, in a motel in Iowa.
"That's pretty bad," I said. "I never met July. Is she okay?"
He shrugged. "She stayed in Iowa. Met a nice guy who owns a feed store, got married, and he adopted her kid. Then they had a few more together. She's happy as can be now. But Cletus deserved a beating for what he put her through back then."
He turned to go when a customer came over to the counter to ask me about a laptop, so I avoided telling him about the diamond ring.
Which still left me with the question:
Wheredidhe get it?
