Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Rita Zowkower had done the same with the eight-acre compound that was her domain.
If you didn’t know who lived there, you wouldn’t know this was the den of iniquity it was.
The house was essentially a massive log cabin broken up by a foundation of stone. Hearty landscaping was perfectly clipped and augmented by beds and borders of bright annual flowers.
He could see the fenced garden off to the side with late-growing pumpkins, squash and vegetables still verdant green. The fortified-against-predators chicken coop with fancy chickens right then pecking and tottering outside it. The pristine pole barn on the other side that Harry knew housed snowmobiles and ATVs.
Harry owned four acres south of town. He kept it shipshape, but it hadn’t been a home since Winnie died. And he had to admit, Winnie was no homemaker.
They’d had a deal. He did the cooking, because he liked it, she did the cleaning, because she enjoyed seeing the results of her efforts. He took care of the land; she took care of the animals.
But there would never be any pots of button mums on his porch, or fresh flowers on his kitchen table, not because Winnie wasn’t energy and adventure and light and love, but because that simply wasn’t her thing.
She’d loved daisies, so they’d had another thing: Harry bringing her daisies once a week. It could be a Monday. It could be Saturday morning when he’d run out and grab some for her. But Winnie knew, once a week, she’d get daisies from her man.
So it was Harry that put the cut flowers in their home.
He wondered now, with the Zowkower place spread before him, what Lillian could create with his land.
And that was entirely fucked up.
She’d just learned there was a good likelihood she’d lost her parents for good.
And he was an emotional disaster.
As he drove up and parked next to a shiny-clean, silver Ford F-350, he spied the woman of the manor walking out the front door.
He knew she’d wear no makeup, but she had skin of a woman ten years younger. At her age, her hair couldn’t be that healthy blonde naturally, but it looked it, and the attractive ponytail it was pulled back into appeared fashioned by a professional’s hand.
Over a tank, she was wearing an old, oversized flannel shirt that had probably been her husband’s, or one of her boys’. This topped jeans that had dirt on them, but they weren’t dirty. All of this covered the trim, fit, average-tall body of a woman in her early sixties, but if you didn’t know that, you’d think she was no older than her early forties.
He got out of his cruiser and started toward the walk, raising a friendly hand.
Rita crossed her arms and waited for him at the top of the steps but belied that closed posture by painting a welcoming smile on her face.
Or, maybe it actually was welcoming.
With Rita, you never knew.
“Well, sheriff, you sure know how to brighten a girl’s day,” she called when he got closer.
Rita Zowkower used everything at her disposal to keep her clan safe and free, including flattery and flirting.
He stopped at the foot of the front steps, wondering if he had rifles trained on him, though he didn’t reckon he did. Her boys might be pissants, even her husband, but there wasn’t a stupid bone in Rita’s body. She’d never make that kind of mistake, no matter if Harry was there to haul one of her kin away. She’d figure out how to get him back without landing her clan in deeper water.
Or, like the son of hers they caught, she’d sacrifice him for the greater good of the whole but get him the best attorney money could buy so he wasn’t away from the gang for long.
He already knew this visit was a wasted effort, but Harry was coming to terms with a lot of shit that day, apparently, including equating his mother’s constant lament at how stubborn he was with just how long he held on to losing his wife.
He shook off that thought and noticed Rita had work gloves sticking out of her back pocket, and he wondered if he’d interrupted her gardening or burying a body.
Harry launched in with, “You probably know why I’ve come out this way.”
“Told you before, don’t mind sayin’ it again, sheriff, my boy just upped and disappeared. Reported that to you months ago. Not sure he was even in this state when that assault occurred. Not sure where he is. Was hopin’ you’d find him.”
She did indeed file a missing person’s report on Willie.
She did that the day after twenty witnesses reported they saw Willie beat the absolute shit out of a man at The Hole, a bar on the outskirts of town.
He now had more information, about bigamy, about Willie leaving the country, he just had to be careful not to throw Lillian under the bus when he used it.