I take a sip to get my brain in working order before I reply, but sadly, it tastes like the bottom of someone’s shoe and does nothing for my brain activity.
“Sorry, I know it’s not Liquid Crack, but it’s the best I could do without driving into Louisville,” Leo adds with a smile.
He’s trying to make a peace offering and butter me up after what went down last night, but I’m not falling for that shit. I don’t care if he DID come back here after he had a laughing good time with Jed, probably yucking it up about silly little women, parking his car across the street to keep an eye on the house. I don’t care if he called Emma Jo when he came back to tell her he planned on staying there all night, just to make sure Jed didn’t come back to the house and that he’d explain everything in the morning. He’s a lying liar-face, and I am not about to let how good he looks in a uniform mess with my head. Or his dimples. Or his bright blue eyes. Or how nice it was that he went out and got me coffee even though it tastes like what Bo Jangles pee smelled like.
“Um, Sheriff, you’re gonna want to come to the backyard….”
I lean to the side to look around Leo and find another man in uniform standing at the bottom of the steps with a worried look on his face. He’s about the same height as Leo and looks around the same age, with a cute face, short brown hair and a lean build, unlike Leo’s in-your-face-I-can-squash-you-like-a-bug-muscular one.
“Payton Lambert, this is one of my deputies, Buddy Lloyd. He just moved to Bald Knob a few months ago. I thought it would be a good idea to bring him out here with me this morning since he’ll probably be coming here quite a bit when more neighbors start complaining about you,” Leo says with a soft chuckle.
“It’s nice to meet you, Deputy Lloyd. Pay no attention to Sheriff Hudson, he was dropped on his head a lot as a baby,” I inform the man, still standing at the bottom of the steps, wringing his hands together nervously.
“It’s nice to meet you too, ma’am,” he says, his eyes darting behind me and his hands quickly coming up to smooth down his hair. “G-good morning, Mrs. Jackson. H-how have you been?”
I look back and forth between Emma Jo, who came up behind me, and Deputy Lloyd, who is suddenly nervous for a whole new reason and I can’t hide my smile when he trips over his words and keeps trying to make sure his hair looks good as she moves up next to me in the doorway.
“Payton…” Emma Jo whispers, completely ignoring poor lovesick Buddy Lloyd and saying my name in the same, worried voice as before when she came back into the living room.
“What’s going on?” Leo asks, suddenly noticing the look on Emma Jo’s face and remembering what Buddy said when he first walked up to the porch, turning away from Emma Jo to look back at him. “What’s in the backyard?”
Buddy looks at me and Emma Jo, then motions for Leo to come down off the porch with his hand. As soon as Leo walks down the steps and he and Buddy start speaking in hushed voices, Emma Jo’s hand wraps around my arm and she squeezes so tightly that I let out a little yelp of pain.
“We killed him!” Emma Jo whispers frantically, her eyes wider than they were before in the living room.
“What the hell are you talking about? Killed who?” I ask in a soft voice, glancing down at the two men to see that they’re still deep in conversation and not paying any attention to us.
“I went to the laundry room at the back of the house and looked out the window to see what Bo Jangles was barking at, and…oh, my God, we killed him,” Emma Jo whimpers.
I can still hear the damn dog barking up a storm at the back of Starla’s house, and I take another sip of the shitty coffee Leo brought me. I need the caffeine right now more than something that tastes good if I want to be able to make sense of anything that is coming out of Emma Jo’s mouth right now.
“Sheriff, did you get a look at what’s in the backyard? Is it a deer?”
Emma Jo whimpers again when Starla comes waltzing over from her house, walking much faster with her cane than I thought humanly possible.
“Hey, Mrs. Godfrey! Hello Sheriff, Deputy Lloyd,” a teenage boy shouts in greeting, walking across the street and into Emma Jo’s yard to join the party. “My mom sent me over to see if everything is okay with Bo Jangles. We’ve been hearing him barking all morning.”
I squint to get a good look at the kid and smile when I recognize who it is.
“Caden Jefferson? I used to babysit you! Holy shit, you’re all grown up now. It’s me, Payton Lambert. Do you remember me?” I yell to him with a smile and a wave of my coffee cup, even though Emma Jo is now clutching onto my other arm with both of her hands now.
Caden’s happy-go-lucky smile dies when he sees me, and he stops in the middle of the yard before quickly starting to take a few steps back toward the street.
“Sorry, Miss Lambert!” he shouts. “My mom heard you were back in town, and she said I’m not allowed to talk to you because you’re a bad influence.”
“Oh, for the love of God,” I mutter as I watch him turn and flee, running across the street and into his house like the devil is on his heels.
I realize Leo and Buddy have stopped talking and are both staring at me.
“Honestly, it’s not my fault that kid was a parrot and wouldn’t stop calling his mother a whore after I watched a movie with him one night. It was years ago. Don’t people ever forget anything around here?” I complain.