Sweet Justice (13 page)

“Wait, wait, let me tell it!” Maegan insisted. “See, Dad was big on chores. Every one of us had something we were supposed to do. Andrew—he was about four at the time—Andrew was supposed to brush Ranger every day.”

“I'm guessing he didn't?” Mallory asked. She brought a forkful of the coconut pie into her mouth and instantly realized why Katelyn had been gobbling it down.

“Nope,” Maegan said. “He'd brush the top of Ranger's coat, enough to smooth it out, and if you know anything about a collie's hair, you know it will mat up like nobody's business. It took about four days before Dad actually realized what was happening and found all the tangles in Ranger's undercoat, and, boy, was Dad hot! He told Andrew that under no condition was he to come home from work to find one single tangle in Ranger's hair...”

Mallory closed her eyes, but still she could visualize the disaster in the making. Scissors plus tangles plus a deadline to remove the latter? She could visualize Katelyn's solution to such a problem. “Oh, no. Tell me he didn't. Now I know what happened to Ranger.”

“Oh, gracious—that dog looked scalped!” Ma said. “I was angry, believe you me, but Andrew's dad was even madder, especially after Andrew told him—” Tears of mirth rolled down her cheeks.

Maegan got out what Ma couldn't manage. “Andrew laid Ma's best scissors down on the porch, put his hands on his hips, and said, ‘But, Dad, you didn't say I had to
brush
the tangles out!'”

Behind Mallory came Andrew's groan. Apparently their laughter had masked the sounds of his arrival. “Please, isn't there some statute of limitations on embarrassing-kid stories?”

He leaned over Mallory's shoulder and scooped up a piece of the pie. She glanced up at him. “What happened? Obviously you survived to tell the tale.”

Andrew shrugged his shoulders. “Only because my parents had some sense of mercy.”

“They let you off?” she gasped.

“Not on your life! I said mercy, not leniency.” He shook his head. “It took me three months to earn enough allowance to buy Ma a new pair of scissors, and about that long for Ranger's hair to grow back out. To make matters worse, it was the middle of the winter, and the poor old mutt didn't have a hair that was more than a quarter-inch long after I finished up with him. Dad made me go out every night before bed to the barn where the dog slept and put a blanket on Ranger. Dad would stand on the back porch with the porch light on, hand me a flashlight and tell me, ‘You were big enough to come up with your own solution to Ranger's tangles, so you're big enough to do this. I'll be right here when you get back.'” Andrew shuddered at the memory.

Mallory could picture the scene, the dark-haired kid with the cowlick traipsing slowly out across the dim yard to the barn that must have seemed a million miles away. It sounded like something her own dad would have done. “I take it you learned your lesson?” she asked.

He scooped another piece of pie and nodded. “After that, I was
crystal
clear on how to get tangles out of a collie's coat.”

Ma agreed. “Andrew became a stickler for the rules and regs, as his dad used to call them.”

A thought popped into Mallory's head before she could stop it.
He learned that lesson too well.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
HE
WORST
THING
about a firefighter's job, Andrew decided, was the waiting. With his pocketknife, he whittled on a single piece of wood, making a ball and cage and chain.

Jackson looked up from his video game. “How do you
do
that? You've got that ball almost perfectly round.”

“You should try it,” Andrew urged him. “It gives me time to think, you know?”

“And what have you got to think about, huh? Got a girl we don't know about? Man, you get the best-looking girls. How do you manage that anyway?”

Mallory's perfect features and glossy hair and understated but polished looks instantly filled Andrew's mind. “I'm giving dating a rest right now. And I'm trying not to date the glamour-girl types anymore.”

Jackson let out a bellow of laughter. “You with a plain Jane? This I gotta see.”

Andrew stood up and dusted off the wood shavings that had collected on his navy blue uniform pants into the trash can he'd been using to catch the shavings as he carved. “You won't see me with anybody for a while. Besides, take it from me, the really pretty ones tend to be superficial and self-absorbed.”

“It's because you go for the looks, man.” Jackson stretched out his arms, the video controller still in his hand. “You don't trouble yourself to see if you have anything in common with them. That last one you dated—whenever she came around here, it was obvious she was too good for a blue-collar kind of guy.”

This was exactly the conversation he didn't want to get into, especially with Jackson, who'd been dating a great girl for the past three years. Maybe he was right. But Andrew didn't want to stir around the ashes of his past mistakes.

Especially when it looked as though he was falling right back into the same trap with Mallory.

To his relief, Daniel came trotting through the fire station. “Hey!” he said. “About that idea you had, for the spring coat collection.”

Andrew waited for his big brother to trash-talk the idea, which was to gather coats for next winter's coat drive as people were clearing out their closets for the spring and summer.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“I got permission for us to use the county shop as a storage place, but you've got to set up the collection points.”

Relieved to have something to do, Andrew sprang from the saggy chair in the station's rec room. “I'll get started on it now. It's so—”

“Don't say it!” Both Jackson and Daniel spoke at the same time, alluding to the superstition that if any firefighter commented on how quiet it was, it would let loose a torrent of terrible call-outs.

“I nearly did say it,” Andrew conceded. “What I meant to say was that I'll go around to different businesses and see what support I can drum up.”

“Yeah, but before you do, you need to go by Dutch's office and get official clearance from legal,” Daniel warned.

“For a coat drive?” Andrew scoffed.

“Hey, that's what the county manager said. We clear everything through legal, that's the rule.”

Andrew knew better than to keep grumbling. He put away the carving he'd been making, grabbed a radio in case he was paged out for a fire and headed for his truck.

Dutch was buried in about a thousand pages of contracts when Andrew showed up at his door. “Enter at your own risk,” his buddy told him. “If you knew anything about law, I'd shove a couple of these at you to review. What's up?”

Andrew moved aside a stack of folders from one of Dutch's office chairs. “I need clearance on a coat drive.” Briefly he described the plan and produced the form he'd filled out while he waited for Dutch to get off the phone.

Dutch listened to Andrew's spiel, then scribbled a signature onto the form and handed it back. “Sounds good to me—except make sure that the coats are dry-cleaned before they go into storage.”

“Why?” Andrew asked, bewildered.

“Liability issues. Any chemicals or pests on them could create a hazard and liability for the county. If we store coats with any sort of infestation or toxic substances, we're on the hook for liability and workers' comp issues from county employees.”

Andrew goggled at him. “Do they
teach
you to think this cynically in law school?”

Dutch grinned. “I learned the upside of pessimism when I was catching your pitches, buddy.” He shook his head. “You get used to it, you know? Thinking through the worst-case scenario? Don't you have a dry cleaner that partners up with you in the fall for the winter coat drive?”

“Sure, that's not a problem. It blows my mind, that's all, that
your
mind would even go there.”

“It blows my mind that you actually want to go running into a burning building. Hey, to each his own, right?” Dutch lifted his palm for a high five.

Andrew reached over and slapped palms with him. “Beats sitting around reading contracts all day. Thanks, man.” He turned to go, then hesitated. “You heard anything more on that possible lawsuit?”

“You mean the Blair gal?” Dutch was focused on the contract he had in his hand. He scribbled something in the margin, then looked back up at Andrew. “No papers filed yet, if that's what you're asking. But...”

“But what?” Andrew prompted.

“I got some more dirt on the lawyer.”

“Yeah?”

“Guess I should have told you already, given you a heads-up, but they landed all this—” he waved a hand to encompass the file folders “—on my desk and needed it yesterday.”

“What is it with the lawyer?” Andrew asked.

“Be careful what you say on the phone or put in an email. This lawyer usually hires a PI that engages in some pretty shady practices. Hacking into people's email accounts and tapping phones.”

“That's illegal!”

“Sure, but for this Chad fellow, it gets him dirt. And dirt's what he needs to force a defendant to settle. He may not be able to use what he gets in court—fruit of the poisoned tree and all—but he doesn't need that. He needs leverage.”

“That's blackmail,” protested Andrew.

“I agree, and if anybody can catch the slippery scumbag, that'll be the icing on the cake, not to mention one less ambulance chaser to have to contend with. Still, until somebody does, change your passwords, and don't put anything in an email or say anything on the phone that you wouldn't want broadcast in public.”

“I can't believe Mallory would hire someone as sleazy as that.”

“Mallory, huh?” Dutch twirled his pen in his fingers and regarded Andrew for a long moment. “When I did her background check, I saw her driver's license head shot. She looks to be exactly your type.”

“We're not dating.”

“You're keeping your distance like a good little professional firefighter would? No? Listen, buddy, cynical or not, I can see this two ways. She's either out to charm you into rolling over on the lawsuit and pushing us to settle—and if you admit you were at fault, she'll have us for breakfast. Or she's an innocent angel who loves everybody and has no clue about the junkyard dog she's hired.”

A sour taste filled Andrew's mouth. It wasn't anything he hadn't already thought of himself, but hearing it from Dutch made it seem more real and harder to ignore. “I take it that you don't subscribe to the theory of Mallory, pure as the driven snow?”

Dutch flipped his palms upward. “Hey, I'm paid to think the worst of everybody. You're paid to think everybody deserves to be rescued, regardless of whether it was a guy's own stupidity that led to the infinitely mind-boggling decision to fry a turkey in a propane deep fryer that subsequently results in him burning his house down.”

“But you're pretty certain. About Mallory.”

“Because I hear the doubts in your voice, buddy. If you were more at ease about her, I might be inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. The way you describe her—you've mentioned one or two times she's a fashion plate, and heck, I can see that even from her driver's license. High-fashion clothes don't come cheap.”

“She does seem to be focused on money,” Andrew admitted.

Dutch pointed the pen at him. “Bingo. You of all people know better than to play with fire.”

* * *

M
ALLORY
SCURRIED
AROUND
the apartment, pitching clutter into drawers, yanking up the multitude of plates Katelyn had scattered on their coffee table. It was Friday night, when Kimberly and Ma and the rest of the Monroe women were supposed to see the muslin.

Mallory had already been nervous about them coming to her apartment, but there was no help for it. All her tools were here, and it would have been too cumbersome to load up the muslin and her sewing paraphernalia for a couple of hours at Ma's, only to have to load everything again and haul it back here.

If the apartment were cramped and tiny and filled with furnishings that would mortify a college student, it could still be clean and neat. Poor but proud, that was Mallory's motto. Nobody need know a person was struggling to make ends meet if you were clever enough to cover up the fact.

She had even made snacks for them. Ma had asked her to fix some of those “fluffy balls you were talking about,” so Mallory had done her best to turn out a perfect batch of falafels and a tasty yogurt sauce for dipping. She'd even splurged on fresh cilantro for decorating the plate.

“Why are you so bent out of shape about them coming, Mal?” Katelyn asked, not even bothering to look up from her cell phone. “I mean, it's just Ma and Kimberly. Why do you, like, have to be so perfect? You put on this act.”

Mallory ground her teeth. “Katelyn, I wouldn't be bent out of shape if you straightened up the place while I was at work.”

Katelyn rolled her eyes. “Maybe because I'm in a wheelchair?” she retorted.

That was it, the straw. “Plenty of people get around in wheelchairs, Katelyn! Even those with paralyzed legs or no legs at all. You saw people at the burn center who were much worse off than you—”

“Oh, sheesh, don't start on that again. I'm trying, okay? So I didn't clean up to suit you—”

“You didn't clean up at all, Katelyn—in fact, it was worse when I got home than when I left. And that was the deal, right? I could stay at work for Eleanor, she could go to her doctor's appointment and you'd clean up and drive yourself to therapy and back.”

“Well, hey, I drove myself to therapy.” Katelyn bent back over her phone. Then, as an afterthought, she muttered, “Oh, by the way, you're on empty.”

Mallory groaned. Even short trips seemed to eat through a tank of gas. “I gave you money for gas... You know, if you honk the horn, the folks at Temple's have said they'd come out and pump the gas for you.”

“Yeah, but I was hungry. I needed a little pick-me-up before I went out to therapy, so I used that to go through the drive-through for a shake.”

That
was why the gas in the tank hadn't gone as far as Mallory had thought it should. Katelyn had spent it parked in a drive-through line smack dab in the middle of the after-school rush.

Mallory clasped her hands to her head in frustration. “Katelyn,” she got out in as calm a voice as she could manage. How had Mom and Dad not completely lost it when
she'd
been the one to make harebrained decisions?

She never remembered her dad being anything but calm with her, refusing to get riled. Her mom had been the same—and even though she recalled Katelyn testing her mom's patience to the nth degree, not even then did her mother raise her voice.

“Oh, good grief, Mallory! A shake! A two-dollar shake! I'll give you back the blasted change! You're like, rad about pinching pennies. Just once, can't I buy a shake at a drive-through without getting the third degree? I mean, I could have not even been here—bet you would have liked that better, huh? If I died, you wouldn't have to worry about what it costs to feed me?”

Katelyn yanked the chair around so hard that it tottered on one wheel, then she raced to her bedroom and slammed the door. Mallory collapsed on the futon and dropped her head into her hands.

She had never meant for Katelyn to feel as though she were a burden. Maybe Katelyn
was
worried about money. Maybe Mallory's obsession with penny-pinching was causing her sister to feel that if she weren't around...

Mallory crept to Katelyn's door and listened. Inside, Katelyn was crying, great, heaving sobs. It was always like this after a blow-up.

She tapped on the door. “Katelyn?”

Her sister said something in response that Mallory chose to interpret as “Come in,” so she pushed open the door. Sure enough, Katelyn had thrown herself on the bed, her yoga pants riding up to expose her scarred calves.

Now it was Mallory who felt tears threaten. She bit them back. Tears never helped. “Katie-bug...”

Katelyn scrambled up to a sitting position and held out her arms. Mallory dropped down to the bed and pulled her close. “You are not a burden, do you hear? I'm so glad you're here with me, and I know how close I came to losing you, okay?”

“I'm such a beast sometimes, Mal. I'm sorry. I knew I shouldn't have wasted the money on the shake, but...I'm so tired of being poor. I wanted to pretend.”

“I make a big deal out of it, I know. It was two bucks. I'll bet we could scrounge around and find eight quarters under the futon cushion,” Mallory joked.

“I'm sorry I didn't clean up and I made a mess. I'll do better, okay? Tomorrow you'll come in from work, and I'll have the place all magazine clean, and you'll be like, ‘Wow, is this the right apartment?'”

Mallory stroked Katelyn's hair. “It's hard for you, I know. I can't imagine everything you've been through, even though I've seen it. You're tough, Katelyn. You really are. I'm proud of you for all that you've accomplished.” Mallory bit her lip and sat back. Something about the mention of the futon niggled at her memory. “Oh! The other day I found a phone number you'd scribbled down. I think it got caught in the creases of the futon cushion. I meant to give it you.”