“How so?”
Melody ran her hand over the back of her neck—why did it have to be so darn hot in June? “He has no plans to put down roots in Bluelick. Not enough action for a city boy.”
Ginny brought her head up, straightened her spine, and propped her hands on her hips, reminding Melody of an agitated kitten. “Not enough action? Please. This town’s got more action than he can handle. Flaming bags of dog poop. Burning barns. Who knows what we’ll light up next?”
“I know you’re joking, but he suspects someone of lighting that barn fire.” She paused at the corner and waved to Mr. Cranston, driving by in his land yacht.
“Really?” Ginny waved as well, and then turned wide green eyes on Melody. “Maybe it’s the same person who torched the poop? Maybe we have an arsonist right here in little old Bluelick?”
“Yes, but that possibility is also part of his frustration.” She stepped into the crosswalk and kept pace with Ginny as they headed toward the square. “He’s not very impressed with the services of the county sheriff’s office. They’re the ones in charge of investigating arsons, and he says they’re dragging their feet because the barn fire caused no injuries. In their minds, it’s minor, so we’re last on their priority list.”
“He’s dead-bang-on about the services we get from the county.” Ginny stepped closer to Melody to let a couple of hand-holding teenagers pass. “The sheriff’s department never comes out here. They patrol once in a blue moon. Our fine mayor renews the contract every year, at ever-increasing costs, which means my taxes keep going up, even though their response times and follow-up continue to suck. At what we’re paying now, we ought to be able to fund our own small but dedicated Bluelick Police Department. But will Mayor Buchanan consider the proposal? Noooo.”
“Why not, if it’s a better, less expensive option?”
Ginny shrugged. “If you ask me, he’s been too busy with his personal life to give anything else much attention. I get the impression divorce number two was a knock-down-drag-out.”
“He kind of had it coming, don’t you think?” She rolled her eyes heavenward, but a canopy of late-blooming magnolias blocked her view. “When a man files for divorce and moves his twenty-three-year-old cocktail-waitress girlfriend down from Rabbit Hash, he’s got to know things are going to get ugly.”
“No argument.” Ginny lowered her voice a notch as a young couple walked by pushing a stroller. “But Monica took ugly to a whole new level.”
Melody shooed a memory of last night’s broken condom out of her head and focused on what her friend had said. Trust Ginny to have the story. “What did you hear?”
“She came into the salon for a trim and root touch-up a couple months ago while they were in the thick of it. She’d had at least three martinis beforehand, and was feeling chatty. Said stuff about how she wouldn’t settle for a penny less than a quarter million dollars a year for the rest of her natural life, and her payment had better arrive promptly on the first of every month, or he’d wish he never met her. She took him to the cleaners.”
Another couple with a baby approached. Jeez, is there something in the water? This time the little one stared out at the world from a carrier strapped to her father’s chest. She smiled at the cooing infant, and said to Ginny, “You can’t put too much stock in the words of a tipsy, angry, soon-to-be ex-wife. Monica wasn’t a nice woman on her best day.”
“I know. And I felt the same way about what she said. I hear a lot of things while cutting people’s hair…especially from mad-as-hell ex-wives and pissed-off girlfriends. I take ninety-nine percent of the stories with a huge grain of salt. But Monica sounded serious about the money. If that really is her settlement, being divorced from Tom Buchanan pays a lot better than I ever imagined.”
Melody stopped at the corner and leaned against a wrought iron lamppost. “I don’t care how much it pays. It’s not a job you’d be interested in.”
Ginny shuddered. “Absolutely not.”
“Tom Buchanan does have a job you should consider.”
“I’m not interested in working for him. Come on.”
“I mean his job.” She followed Ginny to the crosswalk. “You should run for mayor.”
“Me?” Ginny glanced over at her as they crossed to Magnolia Street. “Are you stoned? I don’t know anything about being a mayor.”
“You know Bluelick ought to have better law enforcement than we get from the county, and you have a solution in mind. What’s the problem? Are you chicken?”
Ginny stopped and folded her arms over her chest. “You’re playing the chicken card? Really? The woman who’s too chicken to call a man she had amazing sex with and ask him if he wants to go on a date for fear of appearing, and I quote, ‘slutty’?”
Ouch. Score a point for redhead. “Okaaay. If I call Josh and ask him out, will you at least do the research on what it takes to run for mayor?”
“You’ve got a deal, slut.”
…
“Would you want to go out Friday? With me?”
Josh held off on answering because two firefighters hauling burned-out trash bins back to their home behind the hardware store caught his eye. “No,” he shouted.
“No? Um, fine. That’s fine. You don’t have to yell, by the way. There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.”
What? He shook his head to clear it, and gestured to Rusty to leave the bins alone. “Sorry, I wasn’t talking to you. We just put out fires in the Dumpsters behind the hardware store and my firefighter was helpfully rolling the burned-out messes back to the building. I yelled ‘no’ because I want the sheriff’s department to come collect evidence first.”