Page 7 of Murder Mittens

Milo frowned, he narrowed his eyes, and he took his sweet time thinking about it. “You might want to take the car, Harri.”

What the hell kind of car had my father gotten? “Why?”

“It’s a convertible.”

“You’re too damned old to be having a midlife crisis, Dad.”

“My little kitten is mean today.”

“Just give me the keys to your truck, please. Maybe I want to go find a mud puddle on the way and splash the truck through it.” Mud puddles made excellent excuses to clean out bloody evidence from the bed.

“You’re going to return my truck filthy, aren’t you?”

“I’ll wash your truck lovingly before returning him. I’ll even wash him by hand, and I’ll wax him and tell him sweet nothings in his ear. If you give me the keys without a fight, I’ll clean his interior, too. If you’re nice to me and hand over your lunch money, I’ll polish the chrome and do the tires while I’m at it.”

My brother snickered and went back into the house. “Harri is here, and she’s stealing Dad’s truck.”

I held out my hand for the keys and smiled. “I love you, Daddy.”

He scowled but handed over the truck’s keys. I removed the keys to my piece of shit from my keychain, gave them a parting kiss, and handed them over. “Have fun trashing the asshole. Just make sure you clean out the glove box and the trunk before you go to town. Milo’s right. I don’t want a Toyota unless it’s their truck, because their trucks are pretty solid right now. But that’d have to be a new truck, and nobody can afford that. Get me something reliable with rust proofing.”

“So, a Toyota.”

Damn it. “Fine. I’ll deal with an antique Toyota, but I’m going to decorate it, and a t-rex will eat our stick family.”

“You’d blow your entire budget getting the stickers needed if you tried that.”

“That’s true. When are you having the next litter?”

“Your ma’s two months in and happy as a clam, if you must know.”

Damn. No wonder Dad had wanted me to come visit. At two months in, they would’ve gone to see a doctor within the past week or two. “Got a head count yet?”

“There’s four of the little rascals, and she’s already picked out names.”

After O came P, which meant my little brothers would be a matched set as usual. Knowing my parents, they’d pick the most common names they could think of to proudly carry on the family tradition. “Peter, Paul, Philip, and Patrick?”

“I see you’ve been paying attention to how your momma likes to name our boys.”

“I will be very unhappy if Philip isn’t actually a Paige.”

“I’ll make sure your momma knows you want a sister named Paige.”

“And if you get an entire litter of girls, they’re Paige, Patricia, Pamela, and Pandora.”

My father laughed. “All right, little kitten. I’ll tell your momma you’ve named the girls should we have a litter of them this go around. Seems only fair you get a chance to name them, as you’ve told us many a time we failed you most bitterly when picking your name.”

“Harri is a boy’s name, and my sisters deserve good names. But you can tell them what their boy names are if they want to use them, and then you’ll pay the legal fees to change them if they want.”

“We did too good a job of raising you,” he grumbled.

I pocketed his truck’s keys and waggled my fingers. “Lunch money.”

Muttering curses under his breath, my father dug into his wallet and handed me a twenty. “We ran the ATM machine at the gas station clear out of money today, I’ll have you know.”

I grinned. “Then you shouldn’t have used poor little Otis to have Uncle Henry attempt to dictate where I go on vacation.”

“Yeah. He’s already prepared to be mugged. He pulled a hundred for you, and he’ll even let you fight him for it. I suggested you might need to work out your virus’s temper, as you’d sounded pretty riled up on the phone upon learning he tried to interfere with your vacation plans.”