“Your house is set up to keep out intruders.” The sheriff’s voice made her jump before she looked over her shoulder at him. Since that hadn’t been a question, she waited for him to continue. “What happens if you need to evacuate?”
“Evacuate?” Even saying the word made her a little dizzy, but she tried to hide her overreaction. “Why would I need to do that?”
“Medical emergency, neighborhood gas leak or meth lab, fire…any number of reasons.”
She paused, a little taken aback by the way he was able to casually rattle off his list of possible catastrophes. The sheriff apparently wasn’t a glass-half-full kind of guy. If she had to guess, Daisy would say that Coughlin was more of a look-for-the-red-dot-from-the-sniper-rifle-on-the-half-empty-glass sort.
“Our first aid kit handles the minor medical stuff. If there was something major, I suppose I’d either be preoccupied by impending death or unconscious, so leaving the house wouldn’t be a big deal.” It felt like a lie on her tongue. Daisy couldn’t imagine not going full-out ballistic if someone tried to force her through the door, almost dead or not. “I’d probably take my chances that you guys”—she gestured toward his badge—“and the fire department could handle the gas leak or, um, meth lab. And I have fire extinguishers all over, just in case.”
He made another one of his short humming sounds, but he didn’t comment on her answer, even though it sounded weak, even to her own ears. Daisy was glad he dropped the subject. She didn’t need to hear about all the potential dangers that could befall her, since she had plenty of demons to deal with already.
“When’s your dad getting back?”
That was a good question, since Gabe should’ve arrived already. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and saw she’d missed a text. After she pulled up the message, Daisy made a face. “Not tonight, apparently. The job is going to take an extra couple of days.”
Disappointment spread through her. Not only had she been looking forward to seeing her father, but she had a bunch of out-of-the-house errands she was going to ask him to do. Daisy hated asking Chris. It made her feel so…needy.
The sheriff’s gaze seemed to penetrate right into her brain and pick out her thoughts. “Will you be okay for that long? Do you need anything?”
If she wasn’t going to ask Chris for help, she definitely wasn’t about to ask his austere boss. “Thank you, but I’ll be fine.”
Although he looked unconvinced, he just offered her his card. “Call me if you see anything else.”
“Okay,” she said, although his request had been extremely vague. By “anything else,” did he mean things related to a dead body, or did he want her to call every time Corbin Storvick had a tantrum? Daisy shook off her brief confusion when she realized that the sheriff was waiting for her to unlock the interior door.
“Good night, Ms. Little. I hope you’re able to get some sleep tonight.”
“’Night, Sheriff.” As she closed the door behind him, she muttered, “After your little pep talk, I doubt I’ll ever sleep again.”
Chapter 5
“The dead-body mystery is solved.”
Stunned into immobility, Daisy felt the jump rope smack her shins. “You’ve been here for twenty minutes.”
“So?” Despite the speed of the rope, his voice was conversational. Daisy wondered what it would take to make him breathless and then blushed as her mind jumped right into the gutter. Clearing her throat, she refocused.
“You’re just telling me this now?” She was tempted to use the jump rope to strangle the man. That might make him breathless.
He made a sound that was the verbal equivalent of a shrug. Daisy waited for a few more slaps of his rope against the floor and then demanded, “So?”
“So?” Although he turned his face to hide it, she caught a tiny grin and knew he was messing with her. She was leaning more and more toward strangling.
“Chris Jennings. Do not make me kill you.”
He laughed and finally stopped jumping. “Rob called the owners of the house. They’re living in Florida and said that they hired Angus Macavoy to clear out some junk in the back yard.”
“Angus Macavoy?” The name didn’t ring a bell. “Have you told me about him before?”
“Don’t think so.” Chris put both handles in his right hand and absently began swinging the rope in vertical circles. Eyeing the blurred rope, Daisy took a cautious step away from a potential unintentional slap. “He just started six months or so ago.”
“That was him yesterday morning, then? Why was he doing it at three thirty?”
“According to Rob, who had a little chat with Macavoy about using a department vehicle for personal use, all the junk he’d cleared wouldn’t fit in his compact car. Yesterday, after he’d worked the three-to-three swing shift, he decided to stop by and pick up the pile of stuff in the SUV. He hauled it to the junkyard and then went home to sleep.”
“Why wasn’t he in his uniform?”