Blame It on the Cowboy (26 page)

Vickie's smile widened. “Well, of course. I have…things on Chucky, too. I'd be glad to give them to you for, well, let's just say services rendered.”

Logan nodded. “I'll meet you later with my answer.”

“Wonderful. Just know that if you double-cross me, I have those photos and articles hidden away. They're with a friend, and if I get arrested or if I disappear, the package will be delivered not just to the local newspaper but to everyone in the tricounty area.”

With that threat still hanging in the air, Vickie turned and walked out. If Reese had thought it would do any good, she would have gone after her, but her mother's favorite things were steak and desperation. Reese didn't want to give her either. So, she did the only thing she could do even though she knew it would do no good at all.

“God, Logan. I'm so sorry,” she said.

Reese could have added a whole lot more to that apology if Logan hadn't kissed her. Not a little peck, either. He really kissed her. When he had robbed her of her breath and seemingly the cartilage in her kneecaps, he pulled back.

And he was smiling.

“I have a plan,” Logan announced.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

6:00 p.m.

L
OGAN
SUSPECTED
THAT
some wars had been launched with fewer working parts than this plan, but if it worked, it would solve all their problems. Well, it would solve everything for everyone but Vickie and Chucky.

Of course, there was a big-assed “if” attached to all of this, and it was possible it could blow up in his face. He didn't mind some face-blowing every now and then but not when Reese could be hurt. And his family.

Hell, lots of people could go down if he screwed this up.

That probably explained why his stomach was doing some twisting and turning. But it wasn't all bad. He got that feeling a lot right before he closed a big sale. Maybe it was a good sign now, too.

Logan opened the back door to the Fork and Spoon, and once he made his way into the dining area, he spotted Chucky right away. The weasel had taken the far corner booth, and he was already doing that rat-twitch thing with his face. The twitching eased up just a little when he saw Logan. Probably because Chucky was relieved that he'd actually shown up.

Chucky was perhaps smiling about something else, too. He could see Vickie pacing in front of the grocery store across the street. That wasn't by accident. The woman was exactly where she was supposed to be, and she was waiting for Logan to show. Of course, she hadn't seen Logan go into the café because he'd been sure to use the back door.

“I made sure Reese wasn't here,” Chucky said right off while Logan was still standing. “Bert said it was her evening off. I also checked the table and booth to make sure it wasn't bugged. Now you gotta empty your pockets just like you said you'd do.”

Logan had indeed agreed to that since Chucky was afraid that Logan would record him saying something to incriminate himself. But that wasn't Logan's plan at all. He took out his wallet, phone, the small tape recorder, the pocketknife and his keys. Chucky didn't pat him down exactly, but he did motion for him to turn. Logan had purposely worn a tighter fitting shirt so the man would be assured that he wasn't wearing a wire, either.

“Okay, no recording anything until we finish the first part of this,” Chucky stated. He glanced out at Vickie again, who was now checking her watch.

Logan nodded since that was the deal. Chucky and he would work out blackmail payments from everyone involved, and then in turn Chucky would spill the dirt on Vickie.

“You made a smart choice dealing with me instead of that crazy she-bitch Vickie,” Chucky said as Logan sat across from him.

“Now you empty your pockets,” Logan insisted.

That was part of the deal, too, but in hindsight he wished he hadn't. There was no reason for Chucky to record this, especially the parts where he was going to say how much he demanded and the names of the people he'd be demanding it from. But Logan wanted to make it look as if he was being thorough.

He should have known, though, that abnormal people might have abnormal pocket contents.

A wallet. Keys. Phone. Handkerchief—well used. Two malted milk balls—unwrapped. A breath mint—unwrapped. Turtle decal stickers. Two wads of what appeared to be lint. Or perhaps fungus. A stick of gum also seemingly coated with fungus/lint.

Chucky checked the time on his phone—6:05. “We don't talk until Vickie's given up on you and leaves,” Chucky insisted.

Since that was part of the deal, too, they just waited. Vickie paced while she waited, and she was clearly on edge, her gaze darting to her phone and then all around. A couple of seconds later, she disappeared into the grocery store.

“Why's she going in there?” Chucky asked.

“Who knows? Now that she knows I'm not going to show, she might be buying rat poison or something.”

Chucky made a sound of suspicion. “Don't think you can cook up something here with me and then head over there and do more cooking up with her.”

“Huh?” That was the best Logan could do with the info Chucky had just given him.

“I don't want you double-crossing me by meeting her after you meet with me. That's why I'll be following you when you leave here, and I'll keep right on following you until I got my money.”

Logan simply nodded, though he was slightly impressed that Chucky had thought to take such measures.

Chucky popped the breath mint in his mouth. “All right, now let's get down to business. I want twenty-five thousand each from Delbert and you. Another twenty-five from Helene. Another twenty-five from Reese and ten from Jimena. Now, I'm figuring Reese and Jimena haven't got that kind of money so you'll have to pony up for them.” He grinned, revealing a piece of lint on his teeth, probably from the breath mint.

Logan rubbed his forehead and appeared to be distressed about that amount. One hundred and ten grand. It was a lot of money, but Logan was betting it wouldn't buy much more than some sand itself on a Hawaiian beach. Apparently, Chucky's big ideas weren't so big, after all, but Logan wasn't going to point that out to him.

“And how did you want the payment?” Logan asked.

Chucky slid the stick of gum closer to Logan, and that's when he saw the email address written there. “For my PayPal account. Make sure y'all send it as a gift so I don't have to pay fees.”

In addition to teeny ideas, Chucky was also an idiot since the account could be traced. Of course, Chucky was counting on them never turning any of this over to the authorities or he would release all the crap he was holding over their heads.

“The money's gotta be in my account no later than 8:00 p.m.,” Chucky added.

Again, Logan pretended that would be a problem. It wasn't. Those kinds of payments could be made in under a minute.

“Now, to your side of the deal.” Logan turned the tape recorder. “Tell me everything I'll need to have Vickie arrested and put behind bars for a long, long time.”

Chucky smiled. A second piece of lint was now on his teeth. He started talking. And he talked and talked and talked. When he was done, Logan motioned toward the kitchen where Deputy Davy was waiting.

Davy didn't waste a second hurrying out to use his handcuffs on a gob-smacked Chucky.

* * *

V
ICKIE
COULD
ALMOST
feel that money in her hands, but she didn't like this little twist that Logan had added to their arrangement. For one thing, he was late, and that was going to cost him. It would continue to cost him for every minute he kept her waiting.

The second thing she didn't like about this was the meeting place. What the hell was a shitake mushroom, and why would Logan tell her to meet him there? Maybe because that's where he'd planted some kind of bug. Well, this wasn't her first rodeo, and they wouldn't be standing anywhere near the shitake when he arrived.

She meandered her way through the vegetable row and found something that wasn't spelled at all like it sounded. Still, this had to be it. There were no other mushrooms with a name that came close.

Vickie waited some more, glanced around to make sure Logan hadn't hired a stock boy or something to use some long-range recording device. But the only person who appeared to be in the entire store was a clerk and a teenager mopping up a spill in the milk aisle.

6:16.

Yeah, being late was going to cost him.

She pulled out her phone, ready to call Logan and blast him a new one, but then she finally spotted the devil himself. Too bad that he hadn't shown any interest in her because she wouldn't have minded a tumble in his hay.

“Give me your phone,” she insisted as he approached her. “And anything else you could use to record this.”

He obliged and gave her a small tape recorder. He also showed her the contents of his pockets—keys, a wallet and a pocketknife. That wallet, or rather his bank account, was going to be a whole lot lighter before this was over.

“I'll keep this simple,” she said, and Vickie handed him the routing numbers for an offshore bank account. “I don't care how you, Delbert, Helene, Jimena and my daughter divvy it all up, but in the next twenty minutes I want five hundred thousand dollars added to that account. In exchange I'll give you the password for the storage cloud where I'm keeping all the pictures, reports and such.”

“Does that include the dirt on Chucky?” he asked.

“No. As soon as you agree to the money, you'll hear all you need to arrest Chucky.”

Shit, she would have given him that for free. Anything to make Chucky fry, but it was a nice touch to tie it to their business deal. Except she had her own twist to add to the deal. One that these marks wouldn't know about until, well, until she ran out of money and needed more. Yes, she'd give him the copies of stuff she had in the storage cloud.

But there were three clouds.

Good thing she'd learned all about computers during her last stint in jail.

“So, do we have a deal?” Vickie asked.

Logan nodded.

That was a half-million-dollar kind of nod. So, Vickie decided to help him out a little. She turned on the recorder for Logan and started telling him all the dirty little secrets that she knew about Chucky.

When she was done, Vickie heard the footsteps and saw the chief of police making his way toward her.

“Vickie Stephenson,” he said. “You're under arrest.”

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” Vickie howled.

Logan smiled. “Double-crossing you.” He handed the recorder to the cop. “Thanks, Luke,” he told him.

“Anytime, Lucky,” the cop answered, and he hauled Vickie away.

* * *

R
EESE
HAD
NO
idea how the rest of the plan was going, but she felt as if she were juggling cats. Everyone was talking at once, and the poor newspaper editor, Marlene Holland, was trying her best to write everything down.

Operation Dirt Sweep was in full swing.

For Marlene, it had to be like Christmas, her birthday and Fourth of July all rolled into one. She'd have enough stories for the newspaper to last for weeks. Maybe months.

“Everybody get quiet for a second,” Marlene finally shouted. Surprisingly, everybody did. “All right, now let's do this alphabetically so I'll make sure to get it all down.” She looked at Cassie. “That means you go first.”

Cassie pushed her way through the others to get to Marlene's desk. The editor's office was the size of a broom closet so it took some doing.

“I'm two months pregnant,” Cassie announced. “So yes, that means I got pregnant before getting married and before Lucky and I got custody of our girls.”

All in all, it wasn't big news, but it was something Cassie probably would have preferred to spill at a family gathering rather than to the town's biggest blabbermouth. Still, it needed to be said so that it couldn't be used as gossip fodder against her.

Claire was up next, and Riley was right by her side. “I'm pregnant, too, and I was trying to keep it a secret so I wouldn't steal Cassie and Lucky's thunder what with their wedding.”

Again, not a big revelation, but judging from the dog-with-a-bone look Marlene gave her, it was still news that Marlene could use.

“Delbert?” Marlene called him up.

Unlike Cassie and Claire, he didn't charge forward. He stayed in the corner. “I slept with her mother.” He flung a finger at Reese. “Vickie.” Said like venom. “And now she's blackmailing me.”

Surprisingly, Delbert had managed to get through that with only mumbled profanity, but no matter how he went with this, it was going to cost him. This way, he would just pay money to his wife in a divorce settlement rather than paying it to Vickie as hush money. Either way would eventually bleed him dry, but Delbert had been the one to cheat, and he wasn't exactly blameless in this.

Reese motioned for him to finish up. It wasn't called Operation Dirt Sweep for nothing.

“I, uh, told Logan I couldn't do business with him,” Delbert went on, fessing up to Marlene, “but that's because Vickie told me to say that. I'll keep doing business with Logan if he'll let me, and I'll tell everybody to do the same.”

Reese wasn't sure how much clout Delbert would have with those friends after this. Then again, maybe the publicity would actually help.

Helene was up next, and this was where Reese held her breath. Unlike Cassie and Claire, whose secrets would have soon “shown,” Helene could have kept hers buried if she'd wanted to keep being blackmailed.

“There are sex pictures of me with two different men,” Helene finally said after a long silence. “Greg and another man who worked for Logan.”

“Elrond, my ex,” Jimena piped up.

Helene gave her a sharp look. “He was only your ex after he was my ex.”

It was a valid point, and Jimena shrugged, nodded.

“I also located a man, Chucky,” Helene went on, “and told him that Reese was here in town. And I did that with the hopes that he'd pressure her into leaving. I also tried to bribe her to leave. I'm really sorry about that.”

Reese hadn't expected the woman to confess that last part since only Helene and Reese knew about it, but maybe Helene had thought it would come back later to bite her in her perfectly shaped butt.

“One final thing,” Helene went on, “I paid off Elrond because he was blackmailing me with those sex pictures.”

Marlene looked up from her writing. “Is that everything?” she asked when Helene hushed. “Nothing about Logan and you maybe having some ex-sex on the side?”

“No. Logan's choice, not mine. Trust me, I've thrown myself at him enough times, and he's turned me down. That's why I'm leaving town and finding some new adventures.”

Reese and she actually shared a smile. She wanted to tell Helene that she was proud of her for doing this, but the words weren't necessary. Helene appeared to be proud of herself.