Season of Change

It was as if Faith blinked and said, Dad’s such a loser.

And Grace twitched her nose and said, Tell me about it.

Slade’s cell phone rang. He answered, putting it on speaker while he ate. “What’s up, Flynn?”

“Our new sheriff rolled into town last night.” Slade could hear the smile in Flynn’s voice. “I guess the mayor handed him the keys to the jail without checking it out first. A pipe must have busted during a winter freeze. The floors are ruined upstairs. The walls and ceiling are ruined downstairs. And the jail-cell bars are rusted.”

“Sounds like the sheriff’s in need of a plumber.” Slade buttered his toast, feeling the stirrings of interest.

A few months back, Flynn had started doing small repairs for some of the elderly town residents. After the requests morphed into a regular weekly to-do list, Flynn had recruited Slade and Will, and sometimes Flynn’s father, who was a skilled construction worker, to help. As much as Slade wanted to leave town, fixing it up made it easier to stay.

“I put a call in, but the walls, floor, and ceiling need to be demolished so the plumber can see the damage.” Flynn paused, then joked, “I’ll lock you in the jail cell if you like, Slade, and we’ll see just how rusted those bars are.”

The twins blinked at Slade’s phone.

“I’d rather lock up the mayor. Isn’t that his building?” It was just like Mayor Larry to pinch pennies and lease the building to the county sheriff’s office without checking its condition. Slade spooned some egg and a slice of bacon onto his toast and folded it over like a sandwich. “Where did our new sheriff sleep?”

“Nate was lucky. He spent the night at Mayor Larry’s.” Flynn’s delivery was pitch-perfect deadpan. “Nate sent out his SOS this morning. If it was just Larry’s building, I wouldn’t jump in to help. I can’t help feeling responsible for Nate. Before my grandfather passed away, he recruited him.”

“Someday Mayor Larry will find out payback is indeed a cruel and itchy fleabag.” Slade chuckled. “What else is on the list today?”

The girls ignored their food and looked at each other, as if to say, There’s more?

In Harmony Valley, there was always more to do. The elderly population couldn’t keep up on the maintenance of their older homes.

“That wind storm last week blew down a section of Sam’s fence in the back. He said something fell into his Koi pond—”

“Sam has a koi pond? Snarky Sam? Sam who owns the pawnshop?” Slade couldn’t believe it.

“It’s an antiques shop, but business has been slow,” Flynn corrected him, reciting what Sam himself had told them several times. “And Geraldine Durand’s Saint Bernard saw a cat in her backyard and barreled through her screen door.”

The girls’ mouths hung open.

“It was one of Felix’s cats, wasn’t it?” Felix was a retired fireman who rescued felines.

“Yep. Those cats don’t always stay where they’re supposed to.” Flynn yawned. “I’ll meet you in jail in fifteen minutes.”

Slade disconnected and tried not to smile at the girls. “If you want to come help me this morning, you’ll need to eat up. There aren’t any fast-food restaurants or convenience stores in town. What you eat needs to last through jail cells, koi ponds, and large-dog damage.”

They exchanged looks. He couldn’t interpret what they meant. He was just happy he’d found something that might break their silence.

Slade finished his breakfast and rinsed out his dishes before they’d even started theirs. Whatever was going on with the girls, it was intimidating as hell. No wonder Evangeline had dumped them on him. He bet husband number three was spooked.

Slade liked to think he was made of sterner stuff.

* * *

“HAVE A GOOD DAY at work.” Christine’s grandmother waved to her from behind the screen door.

“Thanks.” Christine reached the sidewalk in time to see Slade’s truck take the turns in the town square, his daughters in the backseat.

He honked and raised a hand, presumably to Christine, a house away from the corner, but it might have been for the small old man sitting on the bench below the oak tree with a cane. He waved, as well.

“What was that?” Nana asked, still in her violet chenille housecoat.

“Slade. Headed toward the winery.” Drat. With the size of her to-do list and Slade’s objectives, she’d need to stay one step ahead of him. She’d wanted to get to work before he did.

“Down Main?” her grandmother asked.

“Yes.” Christine hefted her laptop bag higher on her shoulder and hurried off.

“He’s going to jail.”

Christine spun around. “What?”

“We have a new sheriff—well, not officially until the population tops eighty—but he arrived last night and found all kinds of water damage in the jail and the apartment above it.”

It was a relief to know her boss wasn’t being arrested or turning himself in for some heinous crime. “What’s he going to do there? And how did you know about it?”

“Slade’s partnership does minor repairs around town. I suppose they’re going to see what they can do.” Nana cinched her housecoat, looking slightly embarrassed. “As for how I heard, Rose called me this morning. Her granddaughter is engaged to Will, you know.”

Oh, Christine knew, all right. It was one of the consistently repeated mantras in her grandmother’s house: Rose’s granddaughter is marrying a millionaire. As if Christine needed to realize a similar catch was at her fingertips.

She waved as she left, determined not to fish in that pond. Someone tall, dark, with the power to sign her paycheck had showed up in an early-morning dream. Sometimes you just had to let the big fish go, especially when you had plans to be a big fish someday.

The jail was on her way to the winery and was housed in a converted store, with the front office visible through a large plate-glass window. Behind the counter in the back of the space was the jail cell. Daylight came through a large hole in the ceiling. Next to it a large water stain bulged the drywall, threatening to burst. The wall near the stairs was in similar disrepair.

Slade’s twins were sitting on a bench in the jail cell, looking SoHo cute and grinning like normal kids, while a smaller boy with ginger hair locked the door and said, “You’re not getting out until you tell me where the bad guys are hiding.”

“Hi.” Christine stepped inside and rested her laptop bag on the floor.

The little boy turned, clutching the key to the door behind his back. “Who’re you?”

She introduced herself, adding that she worked at the winery. “I’m looking for Slade.”

“I’m Truman.” He came forward to shake her hand, his expression suddenly too serious. “Uncle Slade and Uncle Flynn are upstairs with the sheriff. Do you want to be locked up with Grace and Faith and Abby?”

Christine double checked, but only Slade’s daughters were in the jail cell. “Abby?”

“She’s my dog,” the little would-be sheriff said. A small, mostly black Australian shepherd barked from beneath a bench inside the cell.

“I think I’ll pass, Sheriff Truman.” She made her escape before the boy came up with a reason to lock her up, taking the creaky stairs to the second floor.

Upstairs was a studio apartment—kitchen counter, appliances, small bathroom. A small table and chairs rested haphazardly on top of a small bed in one corner.

Flynn knelt in front of the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink, poking his hammer inside as if trying to bust through a wall. A man she didn’t know was next to him, ripping out floorboards with a crowbar. But it was her boss that Christine couldn’t pull her eyes from. A sharply dressed man on his knees, wielding a big tool. Couldn’t fulfill a woman’s fantasies any better unless he brandished a vacuum.

Slade introduced her to Nate, the sheriff-in-waiting. No one spared more than a glance her way.