He hadn’t expected to be required to reimburse Vicki for the capital improvements she’d made on the property. He’d figured he could mess with her head the way he used to do and intimidate her into fleeing, stripped of every asset he’d conceded in the divorce settlement. But that damned attorney had been right there, looking at the paperwork, handling things, not giving him a chance to talk to her alone. She wasn’t even at the bank this morning. Ilya Sanguinati had met them, verified the bank Yorick had used for the cashier’s check, and deposited the check before handing over the keys.
So that money was gone unless he could talk to Vicki and convince her she didn’t deserve to keep all of it. But that damn bloodsucking attorney wouldn’t tell him where she was staying, wouldn’t even give him her mobile phone number. There couldn’t be that many places where she could stay, since he’d deliberately not given her any time to make plans. Maybe one of the cabins down on Mill Creek? Swinn had taken a look around there early in his investigation. Only one cabin was being used, but he hadn’t been able to get close enough to find out who was living there. Or so he claimed. He never did explain why he couldn’t drive to the end of the lane to poke around that last cabin. Vaughn thought Swinn and Reynolds were too spooked to be much good anymore, but for now they were better than nothing.
When they reached the main house, Yorick heard crows cawing but didn’t see any of them around the house. Something else nearby yipped or howled. He shivered, anxious to get inside and put a stout door between himself and whatever was out there. Small shifters would be a nuisance, but something big had killed Franklin Cartwright and the detectives on Swinn’s team.
He unlocked the door and they all walked into the large hall. Big enough space for cocktails and nibbles and other kinds of informal gatherings.
Would have to hire a cook. Maybe that girl who worked at the boardinghouse. He’d float that idea with Vaughn, Darren, and Hershel.
“Son of a bitch,” Vaughn said, focusing Yorick’s attention on the house.
“What happened to the curtains?” Trina said.
“Where is all the furniture?” Constance demanded.
Yorick hurried into the office. The desk and an old carpet were still there but nothing else. Not so much as a paper clip.
“Son of a bitch!” Vaughn shouted, his voice coming from the back of the house.
Yorick flipped on the light switch in the office, then looked up when nothing happened. What the . . . ?
CHAPTER 55
Vicki
Windsday, Sumor 5
“Tell me again,” Ineke said when we took a milk-and-cookie break from unpacking my things and arranging them around the cabin.
“The terra indigene that Ilya assigned to clear out the main house and cabins took everything that hadn’t been in The Jumble when I arrived. They even took the light bulbs.”
Ineke’s eyes gleamed behind her black-framed glasses; she looked like a child being told the Best Story Ever. “That is so amazing.”
“I know! I couldn’t believe it when they carted in the boxes of bulbs.”
“No, not that.” Ineke waved a hand dismissively. “Your attorney is literally a bloodsucker, so I expected him to wring everything he could out of your idiot ex. What’s amazing is that you kept the receipts for light bulbs to prove you bought them.”
I blinked. That wasn’t quite the reaction I’d expected. “I thought I was supposed to keep the receipts for everything.”
The attorney who represented me during the divorce made a passing remark about me keeping receipts since I would be running a business, and I’d been so afraid of not keeping something that would have a serious impact on my depleted savings when I had to send in my tax forms that I had saved everything, all neatly labeled in file folders.
Ineke leaned forward. “You kept receipts for everything? Even the paper products?”
“Well, you’re the one who told me I should do that because I would need to buy in bulk. And things like paper towels and toilet paper aren’t cheap anymore.”
“The Others took those too? Even the partially used rolls of toilet paper?”
I looked at the box marked paypurr and wondered if all the rolls of TP had been riddled by Cougar’s claws. “If I had a receipt for it, they took it.”
Ineke laughed so hard she almost fell out of the chair. When she regained control of herself, she took off her glasses and wiped her eyes. “Want to bet on which woman is the first to sit down and make that discovery? Or how long it will take them to stop arguing about it so that someone makes an emergency run to Pops’s general store or the grocery store in Bristol?”
“No bets.” Personally I was hoping it would be the second Mrs. Dane who made that discovery.
“Spoilsport.” Ineke took her milk glass and dish to the sink. “In that case, let’s get the curtains on the rest of the windows and the dry goods into the kitchen cupboards. You want me to help you with the books?”
I shook my head and went outside, distracted by the sound of . . . bells? Ineke followed me out and we watched the goats for a minute. Well, we watched the goats that were grazing on the grass between Julian’s cabin and mine, and the donkeys that were grazing between the cabins on the other side. There were even a couple of those chubby ponies grazing nearby.
“If the ponies aren’t really ponies, what do you think the goats and donkeys are supposed to be?” I asked.
“Organic lawn mowers?” Ineke replied. “They cut the grass and fertilize it at the same time.” She gave me a one-armed hug. “Let’s tackle the rest of the ‘need this done today’ items. Then I have to get back to the boardinghouse, and you should sit outside with a book and catch your breath.”
Catch my breath. Get my blood pressure out of the red zone. I liked that plan.
Besides, tomorrow was soon enough to start thinking about what I was supposed to do with my life. Again.
CHAPTER 56
Them
Windsday, Sumor 5
“You need to send someone out to unplug a toilet,” Yorick said.
“Do you have a plunger? Have you tried to unblock the toilet yourself?”
“No, I don’t have a flipping plunger.” And he wasn’t about to put his hands in a bowl full of floating turds.
Damn Pamella. She just plunked her ass down and pooped before realizing there wasn’t a thing she could use to wipe her ass. So what did she do? She used the scarf she was wearing! Why was the woman wearing a long filmy scarf in this heat? But that’s what she had, and somehow the scarf went down before the turds—along with enough water that the turds didn’t end up floating on the bathroom floor. But now the only toilet downstairs was blocked, and none of the rest of the bathrooms in the main house had any flipping toilet paper either. So he needed the damn plumber to get off his ass and come out here to deal with it.
“Is that the only toilet in your house?”
“Doesn’t matter if it is or not, I want you out here pronto!” Gods, what a place. Couldn’t get service from anyone.
“We’ve got a full schedule for the next few days, but I’ll send someone out as soon as I can. Where are you located?”
“The Jumble.”
“Oh.”
Yorick waited.
“You’ll have to find someone else. Word around the village is someone stirred up the terra indigene in The Jumble, and I won’t send my son out there until things calm down.”
What the . . . ? He couldn’t believe it. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“A guy who plugged up his toilet.”