Sophie Oak - Sirens in Bliss

She would have to tell Lucas eventually. She couldn’t save them alone. Lucas had money stashed, too, and they would need it. But she dreaded the fact that he would have to know.

She heard the faint sound of her daughter crying from another room.

She took a long breath and forced herself to stop the tears that were poised on the edges of her eyelids. She couldn’t let anyone know what she was going through. She hadn’t kept this from her husbands just to let one of her friends in on her burden. It was hers and hers alone to bear.

She hurried off to get Chelsea before anyone heard her and thought to call Lucas or Aidan. Sometimes Chelsea wouldn’t let anyone but her parents hold her. The last thing she wanted was to interrupt their intimacy. It was all they had left. It might be all she had to give them.

She wrote happy endings for a living, but she feared she was going to cost them all theirs.

Rafe

Rafe walked back into the living room, a tray of coffee in his hands. Damn, but he needed Laura here. She could handle this motley crew. He’d been dealing with them for almost an hour and he still hadn’t figured out why they were here.

Now he was playing hostess. My, how the mighty had fallen. He was now serving coffee and tea cakes. He hadn’t even realized they had tea cakes until he’d looked through the pantry.

He set down the tray and hoped that someone would get to the point soon.

Polly and Long-Haired Roger sat on opposite sides of the room, staring each other down from time to time. They were long-time rivals, though their businesses had nothing to do with one another. Long-Haired Roger—not to be confused with Roger, who actually had some hair and was rumored to have named himself king of Rogerland, a separate country from the US that existed only on his ten acres—was a mechanic. He had a shop and employed two mechanics, Rafe’s neighbors, Jesse and Cade. Polly ran the local hair salon. As far as Rafe could tell, their long-term feud had started over the Cut and Curl’s flashing neon pink lips that apparently gave Long-Haired Roger’s former dog seizures. They were always going after each other at town hall meetings. At one point in time the town had paid for therapy, but the poor therapist had fled after the second session and refused to come back.

So the fact that they were attempting to present a united front now made Rafe curious.

Stella had taken Sierra the minute she’d walked in the door, cooing and cuddling the baby girl as if she was her own. She paced as she talked, giving Sierra comforting little pats on her back. “This is serious, Rafe. Nothing like it has ever happened here before.”

Long-Haired Roger shook his head solemnly. “That’s because we only had one mayor. Hi’s been mayor for years. Forever it seems like. We’ve never had to deal with anything like this.”

“Something’s happened to the mayor?” Hiram Jones had been the mayor of Bliss since the moment the hippies who founded Bliss had realized that they needed someone who could deal with the surrounding cities. Rafe had heard the stories. Apparently Hiram had been elected because he was the only one who could deal with both the hippies and the ranchers.

Marie, the owner of the Trading Post with her life partner, Teeny, shook her head. “You could say that.”

“Hiram had a heart attack,” Zane explained.

Rafe was startled. Hiram seemed so healthy for a ninety-seven-year-old with nearly every ailment known to man. He could be seen walking the streets at least once a day, tipping his hat to everyone he met. “I am so sorry to hear about that. I genuinely like Hiram. How is he?”

Polly waved her hand. “He’s fine.”

“Polly, he’s dead,” Long-Haired Roger shot back. “Do you have a sensitive bone in your body?”

“Probably not.” A single shoulder shrugged up. “Well, I just meant that his body is fine.”

“How can his body be fine if he’s dead?” Rafe was a little stunned and utterly at a loss for why they were telling him this way. Were they going from house to house?

“We got to him quick enough. We shoved him in Zane’s freezer,” Polly explained as though she was talking about how she’d cut someone’s bangs.

Stella bounced Sierra a little. “It’s fine, Rafe. You know Zane. He has to buy everything completely oversized because he’s trying to outdo the rest of us.”

“Or I’m just not stingy with the cash and I like to make sure my customers get the best,” Zane replied.

He and Stella were friendly rivals. They each ran one of the two eateries in Bliss proper. Stella’s was known for having the best breakfast in Southern Colorado and Trio was a cozy tavern that apparently had a man-sized freezer that currently served as the former mayor of Bliss’s casket.

And none of this explained why they had come to talk to him. “If one of you needs a lawyer, you should go and talk to Gemma. She’s licensed in Colorado now. She can help you. Do you want me to call her?”

They all looked positively horrified. Long-Haired Roger took off his hat and swiped his hand across his head. “You can’t tell Gemma. God, man. That’s a horrible idea.”

Zane was in complete agreement. “Gemma would lick her chops at the implications. That girl loves to complicate things with silly little laws and ordinances.”

“Like not putting the town’s mayor in a deep freeze? There has to be some sort of code against that,” Rafe said.

Well, he’d wanted his mind off his anxieties. He definitely wasn’t thinking about his family trouble or finding a job. He was wondering if he was going to have to call Cam in to arrest the members of the Bliss Chamber of Commerce. Had one of them killed the poor mayor? Somehow he just couldn’t see it. He’d profiled the worst of America’s serial killers and while the five people in front of him might be clinically insane, they weren’t truly violent.

Well, Long-Haired Roger wasn’t. The rest…

Marie rolled her eyes. “Well, Rafe, if we didn’t put him in the deep freeze, he was going to start to smell. Or he would attract animals. I took a vow a long time ago to not allow another animal to take a chunk out of Hi. Oh, we were shit faced from Mel’s tonic at the time, but out here a vow means something. Why do you want to let a bear eat Hi? Or a deer?”

“A deer?” He wasn’t quite following the conversation, but Rafe found himself utterly fascinated to see what would happen next.

“Oh, are you one of those liberals who think deer are all like Bambi?” Marie asked, her eyes narrowing in accusation. “Don’t you believe it. You haven’t stared into those doe eyes and just known that if you lay there long enough, a deer will eat you, too. This is the wilderness, Kincaid. This ain’t some namby-pamby suburb where neighbors don’t watch out for each other. Do you know how embarrassed Hi would be if he was eaten by a deer?”

“More or less than having his body stuffed into a freezer?” Rafe asked.

“It’s a really comfortable freezer, Rafe,” Zane said as though that was a completely sensible thing to say. “So look, we’re kind of flying by the seat of our pants here. It was all a shock when Bambi called Polly up and told her Hi was dead.”

Maybe he was dreaming. That would explain it. He’d fallen asleep, and he was having the oddest dream. “So a deer did get Hi.”

Zane sent him a look that let Rafe know he was a dumbass for not following along. “No, Bambi is a hooker.”

Marie shrugged. “But I think she’d probably eat a person, too.”

Polly sent Marie a fierce frown. “For a woman of your persuasion, you are very intolerant of alternative lifestyles, Marie.”

“Hooking ain’t an alternative lifestyle. It’s just a way of spreading venereal diseases and body glitter all over the place.”

“Well, Bambi is one of my best customers and you are just showing your ignorance, Marie. Bambi wouldn’t be caught dead in body glitter. You’re thinking of the strippers from the club two towns over. No, Bambi is all about her nails. That girl has to hook just to pay for her nails.” Polly looked down at her own briefly. “So much bling on a couple of little nails. I swear when the lights hit her hands it’s like a disco club from the seventies just pops up all around her.”

“Wait. We have strip clubs?” Long-Haired Roger asked, his brows climbing up his face. “When the heck did that happen?”

“Roger, it’s a rural strip club. You do not want to go there. You can’t unsee that shit.” Zane leaned forward.

“Could someone explain what happened?” It was like dealing with a group of toddlers. They all chased the shiny objects.

Zane continued. “So Bambi calls and Hiram’s dead and Polly flips out.”

“I did not flip out, Zane Hollister.” Polly pointed her extremely long fingernail straight at Zane. “I had a perfectly reasonable and rational reaction to the world ending. You know damn well what’s going to happen. We’ve plotted and planned and it all went up in smoke and cheap, knockoff perfume because no one wanted to step up to the plate and Hiram was too stubborn. I swear that man thought he would live forever.”

Rafe held a hand up. “Did this particular Bambi—hooker Bambi—murder Hiram?”

Maybe she’d taken off and they needed Rafe to track her. It had been a while, but he could do it.

Stella gasped a little. “Rafe, Bambi is a pacifist. She would never be violent unless a client paid her to. You know you’re sounding a little intolerant, too. Maybe we should rethink this whole thing.”

It was Rafe’s turn to sigh. If he didn’t watch it, someone would tell Nell he wasn’t honoring all peoples’ rights and she would chant outside his door. “All right, so Bambi is a sweet woman who loves her nails and peace on earth and gives blow jobs for a living. What did she have to do with Hiram’s death?”