But we all know who.
“Him,” Stratford says, tipping her chin at me. “Mr. Vaughn, you have been ordered to stay at least a hundred yards away from Vivian Lundin.”
“This is BS,” Daisy says. “He’s her father.”
“You’d be surprised how unfit men like him can be.”
Men like me.
That’s pretty much all she needed to say.
This is personal. There is no telling which of the many, many, many people in this town who hate our family is behind this, but one thing’s for sure—I am going to jail this morning. And there is no way around that.
So I open the screen door, let them cuff me in front of my daughter, and then walk compliantly through the family housing apartments as dozens of people watch me get shoved into the back of a police car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - DAISY
“Do something, Mommy!” Vivi is about to get hysterical.
But this is not the time nor the place for either of us to lose our shit. So I rally, bend down, and place my hands firmly on Vivi’s shoulders. “I would like you to go into your room and play quietly for a little bit while I have a conversation. Can you please do that for me?”
Vivi, ever the little genius, understands that my calm tone means I need her cooperation right now because shit is going sideways. It’s kind of a single mom thing. Our children are just different. They just… know things.
So even though Vivi doesn’t want to follow my directions, she does.
I wait until I hear her door click, sure that she is out of earshot. Then I turn to the CPS woman. “OK. I need an explanation. I was under the impression that the lawyer had sorted things out last Sunday after Vic came into the substation in Bellvue.”
“Well”—the CPS worker tilts her chin up, like she’s about to get defensive—“it seems that Judge Castian in the family court took notice of that Amber Alert, Daisy. Which you asked for, I might point out. And he felt further investigation was necessary.”
“O. Kay.” I’m counting to ten in my head because I want to scream at this woman. I take a deep breath instead. “That’s fine. But why wait an entire week?”
“We had to conduct an investigation.”
“Without my knowledge?”
“Why would we tell you? You’re the one under investigation.”
“Me?”
“Daisy. What part of this are you not understanding? You took your six-year-old daughter to work with you. She walked out of your restaurant, went across the street—to a tattoo parlor!” She pauses here to blink at me just to make sure I understand how trashy that is. “Then her would-be father mistakes her for a niece.” Another blinking pause. “And spends the entire day with her. Taking her to all kinds of inappropriate places. Meanwhile, you—”
“I was there.” And yep. That came out bitchy. “I don’t need a play-by-play of the day.”
“Apparently you do, because you have since taken up with the trashy tattoo artist and are now sleeping with him.”
“First of all, he’s not trashy. He’s a very nice guy.”
She guffaws as she opens her binder and takes out a pen, clicking it in front of my face. “I’m writing that down.”
“Go ahead. I spent the week with him and—”
“Oh, and that reminds me. Those people up there in Bellvue?”
“You mean her aunt and uncle? The famous Spencer and Veronica Shrike? Owners of Shrike Bikes? Reality TV stars? Those ‘people’?”
“Yes. Them. And their friends. Do you have any idea who they are? I mean, I surely hope not. Because if you do understand who they are and what they have done, and you still allowed your daughter to spend an entire unsupervised week with them, then I’m afraid you really are an unfit mother!”
Fuck you. I don’t say it out loud, but fuck her. “She was not unsupervised. All the children up at the farm were supervised.”
“Farm.” She huffs. “Compound is more like it. And that reminds me of my next point. Are you aware that Vicious Vaughn is running guns up in the mountains?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ll take that as a no. But he is. He’s got a militia up there.”
I laugh.
She clicks her pen again and starts writing in her fucking binder.
I take another deep breath and begin to count. “He’s not running guns. I don’t even know what that means, but he’s not doing it.”
“Mmhmm. Did he or did he not just buy a two-hundred-acre parcel of land in Weld County last week? Cash?” And yet another blinking pause.
“He did, but he had that money saved up. He was looking at that land for years.”
“How do you think he saved up seven hundred thousand dollars, Daisy?” She snaps her fingers in my face. “Wake. Up!”
And now I don’t know what to say. Because my actual knowledge of who and what Vic is goes back one week. And I don’t know anything about his family.