Perilous Poetry. Kym Roberts
pad. “Excuse me? What do you mean you can’t tell me what the product is? Is it legal?”
“Of course it’s legal! What the Sam Hill would make you think it wasn’t?” My moral outrage made my voice squeak.
“Then why have you been so evasive about the topic?”
“Because we’re having a very big reveal.”
It was his turn to be outraged. “And how am I supposed to find out if that has something to do with the shooting or not?”
“I can promise you, it doesn’t have anything to do with someone using the Barn for shooting practice.”
Mateo closed his eyes for a moment. When he reopened them, he seemed to have his patience in check. “What makes you think this was just someone out shooting up the town? No other stores got damaged.”
“How do you know? Have you checked?”
“My deputies are checking now. So far, none of the other storefronts have broken windows.”
I looked to Scarlet for confirmation. The look on her face said it was true. Yet I’d promised Jamal I wouldn’t reveal anything about the app until after the press release. If my dad was here, he’d be telling Mateo everything, but I really didn’t think it was my story to tell. I needed to talk to my cousin first. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust our Mateo to keep our business secrets, I just found it hard to believe someone would put their sights on the Barn for something like the Book Seekers app. It didn’t make sense. It had to be something else…or just a random crime.
At least I hoped it was a random crime.
Sensing my wavering feelings, Mateo added, “Matt Allen was killed in the Book Grove on Tuesday. So far it looks like an accidental death. But then tonight the only other bookstore in the county gets shot up. I don’t like the way things aren’t adding up.”
When he put it like that, I didn’t like it either. Princess squirmed on the counter. “I need to ask my cousin if it’s okay, before I tell you about the app, but can I take Princess to the vet first?”
Mateo nodded, but he was obviously displeased with me not revealing everything to him. “I’ll be here when you get done.”
I grabbed Princess’s bed from under the counter, gently put her in it, and carried her out to the truck. Scarlet jumped in the driver seat.
“I’m not sure I want you driving my daddy’s truck.”
“Should I take that as an insult?”
“You know how I feel about your driving, and how much I love this truck.” Her driving scared the living daylights out of me.
“O.M.W. Give me the keys, Charli Rae. I’m not about to hold a bloody animal. Look at the front of your shirt. Do you think I’m going to volunteer to look like that if I don’t have to?”
I glanced down at the bloody claw prints covering my shirt. My stomach looked like a scene out of the movie Alien, when the infant creature climbed its way out of its host body. It was kind of nasty.
“Okay, you can drive, but please be careful and slow down. The last thing I want to do is drop Princess on the floorboard.”
Scarlet agreed, and I called my dad on the way to the vet to let him know I was okay. I could tell from his voice that he was stressed. I reassured him that Princess and I were both okay and that I would see him back at the store. He finally agreed, but only after I put my phone on speaker and Scarlet assured him we were both in one piece.
A short time later we were at the emergency vet clinic in Oak Grove, miraculously with no further injuries from the drive. I was surprised at Scarlet’s ability to observe the traffic laws. It seems she was a pretty good driver when she wasn’t in her little two-seater BMW Isetta.
The vet cleaned Princess’s wound, but Princess was proving to be the type of patient who was a pain in the backside. She didn’t like it one bit and was probably the worst patient to visit the clinic in a long time. The vet was filling in a shift for someone else and had never seen a pink armadillo, nor did she approve of me having Princess as a pet. Especially when Princess scratched her. I tried to reassure her that Princess wasn’t a carrier of leprosy, but I don’t think she believed me. Especially when she started scrubbing with alcohol. I decided to avoid the moral issues of me owning an exotic animal. It wasn’t like I went out into the wild and snatched Princess from her mama. She was abandoned at birth when her mother and siblings were killed. I saw no reason to argue that point with a stranger. Princess had a good home, and we tried to make her as safe as possible while allowing her to be the wild animal she was.
“You might want to watch her diet. She seems to be getting a little too big for her shell. If she continues to gain weight, it could be dangerous for her health. What are you feeding her?”
I looked at Princess’s belly. It didn’t look too big to me, but I wasn’t in the habit of checking out other armadillos.
“She gets half a can of cat food in the morning and another half at night. Throughout the day, she gets mealworms or she goes outside to forage.”
“After her leg heals, I suggest you cut her down to half a can of cat food a day and supplement it with natural vegetables and bugs. She needs to forage more. She knows how, right?”
“Yeah. My dad taught her when she was a baby. The neighbors tend to complain when she digs in their flowerbed, so I’m pretty sure she’s eating them on a daily basis.” Princess had finally calmed down; her eyes were closed and she was completely submissive. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the vet had given her a sedative.
“Is there anything I should do for her leg?”
“Just make sure she keeps it dry for a while. After three or four days, she’ll be much better. She’s lucky it was just a graze.”
The vet gave me some pain medication to give Princess throughout the night. The next day, however, she was going to have to tolerate a little bit of pain to recover properly. I paid the hugely expensive bill and we headed home. When we pulled up to the front of the bookstore, the glass was cleaned up, the door was boarded and Mateo was standing out front with my dad. Crime scene tape still draped across the courtyard next to the Barn and attached to the antique lamppost on the other side.
We parked directly in front of the doors and as I was pulling Princess from the truck, we heard tires squeal as a vehicle turned onto Main Street, its engine roaring as it raced toward the Barn. Instinctively I tucked Princess into my body to protect her. I looked up in time to see a candy apple red vintage Camaro with the black rag top and oversized chrome wheels skid to a stop behind the truck. I recognized the car immediately. It took me back to the day he left me standing in the courtyard with the fountain bubbling—the same way my teenage emotions had been.
Cade Calloway jumped out of the driver’s seat and didn’t stop to close the door. He ran to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, inspecting every inch from my head to my toes—his gaze snagging on the blood on my shirt. Princess squirmed in my arms.
His hazel eyes were dilated as he towered above me. “I heard you were shot.”
“Who told you that?”
“Betty called my mom and told her ‘Princess was shot.’ I raced right over.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant. The man had been ducking me for two weeks, but when he thought I might seriously be injured, he came running.
“Princess Junior was shot.” I held up Princess and showed him the bandage on her back leg.
It didn’t seem to soothe him. “What happened?”
“Princess and I were heading up the stairs in the Barn and somebody started shooting up the front of the store. Some random crime.” I don’t know if I was trying to convince him or myself that it couldn’t be anything more than that. “Just some kids being stupid.” There was no other explanation.
Cade