Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
“I know, baby,” he murmured.
“Did Ronetta tell you about my grandfolks?”
“Yeah, sweetheart. It’s probably for the best, yes?”
“This might sound weird, but I don’t think Mom or Dad would want them there. I don’t think they’d even want me, Ronnie and George or Shane and Sherise there. They weren’t about being sad. They were about…everything else other than that.”
“I definitely got that from what everyone says about them.”
“So I guess, in a way, this is working out as it should.”
“Good way to look at it.”
She put a line under that, asking, “What time will you be over tonight?”
“Gotta get the dogs, get some things packed. I’m aiming for six. Cool?”
“Definitely cool. See you then.”
“Yeah, sweetheart. See you then.”
They disconnected, and Harry was able to deal with some email before he heard a commotion out in the hall.
He got up and was heading to the door when he heard Polly say, “Now is not the time, Kimmy.”
Shit.
Kimmy wasn’t only the town’s lovable, nosy curmudgeon, she was their local conspiracy theorist.
Reopening old cases, dead residents being found a state away, was candy to Kimmy.
He hit the door to see Polly barring Kimmy in the hall.
“It’s okay, Polly.”
And it was because this was part of his job. He never had time for it, but he always had to make time.
Polly looked over her shoulder at him.
“Harry,” she said by way of protest.
He looked beyond her at Kimmy, who was wearing a green and red plaid sweatshirt with a headband in her hair that had a puffy Christmas tree sticking out of the top.
The tree illuminated, and he knew this because right then, the tiny lights on it were lit.
In this getup, especially seeing someone wearing it in late September, most people would have trouble taking the woman seriously.
Since it felt like he’d known Kimmy Milford his entire life, and he’d never seen her in anything but some incarnation of that outfit, Harry didn’t even blink.
“Kimmy, you have something to report?” Harry asked her.
Kimmy shot Polly a look and huffed by her. Harry moved out of the way so she could enter his office.
As he followed her, he was surprised to see she didn’t settle into a seat so she could share in detail her ideas about what was happening and put every effort into pumping Harry for information she could disseminate freely, doing this adding her own spin to anything Harry would say (not that he was going to say a damned thing).
He was also surprised when she started it off by stating, “I’m not gonna take a lot of your time, Harry. ’Spect you got better things to do.”
He stopped by the side of his desk and crossed his arms on his chest. “What you got for me, Kimmy?”
“I heard about the Rainiers. I kinda knew Av. She liked Christmas.”
Kimmy ran the local holiday shop, and no surprise to anyone, her specialty was Christmas.
“Her girl likes it too,” Kimmy went on. “She decorates some of the houses she looks after as well. I know her a lot better.”
Harry had no doubt Lillian put on a show at Christmas.
“I’m just gonna say, Michelle Dietrich always kitted out their place at Christmastime,” Kimmy reported.
That got Harry’s attention.
Kimmy kept going.
“She was always buying new gear to shake it up. But that year, the Christmas before the Rainiers went missing, and everyone was talking about them maybe stealing a bunch of stuff before they did, Michelle asked to do Christmas on account. Told me she’d pay me, just invoice her. I never did that kind of thing, but she was a good customer. She did it up big for Halloween too. So I made an exception.”
“And you invoiced her,” Harry guessed.
“Yeah, and she didn’t pay it. Like, months, Harry, she didn’t pay. I sent reminder after reminder, then I started calling her. She got pissy at me. Told me she was just busy. She’d get to writing me a check. She couldn’t believe how rude I was being when she’d always been such a loyal customer. Now, we’re talkin’ I delivered a truckload of Christmas to her house in November, and I don’t do deliveries either, and the next May, she still owes me thousands of dollars. It wasn’t like I demanded a check the next day, but just to say, I never sent Christmas on account to anybody. I did her a favor. She dragged her feet for six damned months.”
“Did she eventually pay you?”
“Yeah, she came in, nose right up in the air, handed me the cash and told me, since I didn’t value my customers, she was going to go to Spokane or Seattle to do her Christmas from then on. Woman never stepped foot in my shop again. Gotta say, it was a loss to my bottom line, but not my peace of mind.”