Page 4 of Housesitter

Cut out the middleman, or woman, in this case, entirely.

Maybe after the divorce.

Until then, he’d just have to mine the nuggets of financial misconduct from the background soap opera of From Cali to Connecticut: Who Could Have Guessed it Would Suck?

As Jodie grudgingly rolled the credits on today’s episode with her signature sign-off, “...but enough about me…” Kel finally drained his beer. It tasted of two hours in a warm room, with an after-bite of too many stale pretzels. Not bad, but not as piquant as the day a fly had drowned in it.

He finished and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. The sour taste lingered in the back of his throat as self-loathing squeezed up out of his chest like a yeasty burp.

At least she did something. At least she took a risk. She didn’t just sit around eating stale pretzels and looking down on people.

Kel snorted at that as he put the glass down on the bar. Seriously? That was the best he could do? OK, so it was only one beer in, but still. That was the sort of thing he knew about himself stone-cold sober.

What next? That he spent so much time avoiding an honest day’s work so he could keep the dream that somewhere out there was a coach willing to take a chance on a nearly-thirty-year-old wide receiver with a bum knee? If that’s the best he could come up with, it wasn’t even worth the whiskey.

He pulled out his wallet to pay his tab. As he thumbed through the notes, he heard the door to the bar open.

“Hey, Kel,” someone yelled.

The voice was vaguely familiar, but it was a small town and, like his self-hatred had tried to point out, Kel had been here his whole life. Everyone sounded a bit familiar. He tossed a ten onto the counter and turned around as he tucked his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans.

He matched the voice to the face and the face to a name.

“Reggie,” he said. “You need something?”

It was a safe bet. Kel had been the town’s favorite cautionary tale for a while. When people didn’t want something, they mostly avoided him for fear his bad luck would rub off.

Reggie, who’d dated Kel’s cousin once—it hadn’t ended well, and no one had expected it to—took his cap off and raked his fingers through hair that wasn’t long enough to make the gesture worth his time.

“Not me,” he said. “Cops are looking for you.”

Well, shit. Kel paused with his hand still in his back pocket as he ran through how far he could get with roughly $300 in cash and a sparkling personality. It wasn't far, but Marble Falls’s police force wasn’t known for going out of their way to solve crimes. A couple of counties over might do the job.

“Something about Dio Madden,” Reggie finished his sentence before Kel had committed himself to the plan. “What you done this time?”

Huh.

“Nothing,” Kel said.

Reggie scoffed.

To be fair, that was what Kel would have said either way. This time, though, he was telling the truth. The fallout from the roofing swindle had been a bit more intense than he’d expected, so he’d planned to lay low for a bit.

“Well, that ain’t what the cops think,” Reggie said. He came over to lean against the bar and raised a finger at the barman to indicate he wanted to be served. “They’re over at your garage now.”

That was…Kel was going to be honest, he was a little bit annoyed at the idea someone else was making Dio Madden’s life difficult. People had no loyalty these days.

“I guess I better go and see what they want,” he drawled as he put his plans to run aside. “But whatever happened to Dio, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fella.”

Dio Madden’s dead,” Marble Falls chief of police, John Doncaster, said bluntly.

Oh.

Well, shit.

That news made Kel feel something about saying the guy deserved it. He wasn’t sure what the feeling was, but it was something.

“I didn’t do it,” he said.