In Safe Hands (Search and Rescue #4)(65)

“I love milk,” she said, adding more to her bowl. “I think that’s what I miss the most when Dad’s delayed. No, lettuce. All fresh veggies, actually.”

He frowned. “That’s why I talked to Mr. Lee about getting your groceries delivered. If you want milk, then you should have milk.”

“I told you,” she said, poking him with the handle of her spoon, “I think it’s a great idea. I just wish you’d talked to me about it first. When you make decisions for me, it makes me feel like a kid—a stupid kid who needs to be taken care of.”

After a short pause as he chewed, he nodded. “Sorry. I’ll work on that. I’m just used to doing what needs to be done. Hazard of the job.”

“So, what you’re saying is that I’m basically just another dead elk in the road you need to deal with?” She tried to narrow her eyes in warning, but her mouth kept wanting to curl upward.

“Sometimes. Other times, you’re a domestic. Occasionally, you’re a disorderly conduct.”

Instead of her spoon, she used her fist to connect with his arm that time. Her fingers stung at the contact, but she refused to shake them and show it, especially when he just laughed.

“Speaking of disorderly conduct,” she said, “has the psycho-in-training across the street taken his revenge on the red-haired girlfriend yet?”

“Not yet.” He chewed with more force than the cereal required. “Her parents called a couple of nights ago when they heard voices outside. By the time I got there, the daughter was in the tree outside her bedroom window, hysterical. She’d been trying to sneak out to meet the Storvick kid but hadn’t thought through her escape route.”

Since her mouth was full of cereal, Daisy just raised her eyebrows in a request for him to continue.

“There weren’t any branches lower than twelve feet off the ground, so she was stuck.”

Her laugh came out as a snort. It took an effort to hold in her amusement until she’d swallowed. “How’d you get her down?”

“I couldn’t. She was screaming and clinging to the trunk. Her parents’ tallest ladder was only six feet, so I climbed up on that, but she was still above me. If she’d cooperated, I could’ve managed it, but I ended up having to call Fire.”

“So they took a break from getting cats out of trees to get a girl out of a tree. Were Rory and Ian there?”

“Yeah. They weren’t the ones to climb up and get her, though. Those two aren’t the most…” He paused, as if thinking of the right way to put it. “They don’t have the most…delicate touch of the firefighters, especially Rory. She would’ve been more likely to tell the girl to knock off the crying and get her butt out of the tree or else Rory was going to go get the tranquilizer gun.” The image made Daisy laugh again. “Two other firemen, Soup and Steve, were elected. Steve has two girls of his own, and Soup—I don’t know why Soup was picked. Maybe because of his teasing big-brother vibe? Whatever the reason, it worked. They eventually calmed her down enough to get her to release her death-grip, and then it was pretty easy from there—at least as far as I could tell. I was on the other side of the yard, talking with Ian and Rory.”

“Did that convince her to dump Corbin for good?” Daisy’s bowl just held milk, so she dumped in some more cereal.

Chris’s shrug was doubtful. “Hope so. That kid is a problem.”

“Do you think he was the one looking in the windows of the empty house?”

“Probably.” He lifted his shoulders again. “There are a couple of other kids he hangs out with who cause just as much trouble as he does. It could’ve been one of them, too.”

“Or a completely random kid who was bored and in the area.”

“Yep.”

Thinking of the teenaged trespasser made her brain jump to the possible dead-body disposal and then to the murder case. “Did you find out anything new about Willard Gray?”

He absently tapped his spoon against the rim of his empty bowl. “Just more questions, especially if the arsons are somehow connected. Thanks for recording your meeting yesterday—and for the pictures and notes. I’m planning on going through all that and trying to put it together in a somewhat coherent report before presenting it to Rob.”

“Do you…” Feeling awkward about broaching the issue, since she knew her feelings about Chris’s boss were much different than his, she hesitated. Curiosity made her finally just ask. “Do you have any idea who the sheriff suspects? Or if he even has a specific person in mind?”

“No.” He reached to place his spoon and bowl next to the sink, and then he did the same with Daisy’s. “It’s making me crazy and paranoid, though. I’m looking at everyone suspiciously.”

Since Chris was the only deputy she knew, Daisy didn’t feel like she could be much help pinpointing who at the sheriff’s department might be the murderer. “Any luck getting ahold of Macavoy?”

His mouth went tight and flat with frustration. “None. He won’t return any of my calls or texts. Even though he said he was quitting because of a family issue, I called his mom—his emergency contact—and she didn’t know of any ‘family issue.’ Also, she hasn’t heard from him since he quit and took off. She gave me some names of friends and relatives of his, but they’ve all been dead ends so far.”