Page 25 of Welker

Sabira snorted and Callie beamed, but before they could misinterpret any further, Moira set them straight.

“We had a problem at my house.”

“That’s too bad. Structural issues? Bat infestation?”

Welker almost choked on a laugh. Leave it to Callie.

When they’d begun buttoning up the barn that would eventually be Callie and Sabira’s home, they’d found the winged-interlopers and had to call a wildlife expert to get the bats—of which there were several dozen—to move out and stay out. The process involved nets hung from the soffits but left loose at the bottom, so that the critters could fly down and out, but not back in. It had worked like a charm.

“Neither,” Moira told them. “I got some unexpected MC visitors who decided to trash my place for putting their club president behind bars,” Moira provided, straight-faced.

Callie’s eyes grew wide.

The more timid of the two, Sabira, looked shocked. “Uh, Honey?” she stammered to Callie. “Maybe we should get inside to talk about this?” Sabi glanced nervously down the driveway.

Moira backed up and reassured them as they both stepped in.

“There’s nothing to worry about, Ma’am.” Moira closed the door behind them. “We covered our tracks. Nobody knows we’re here except our SWAT boss and a few people on our team, so there shouldn’t be any trouble.”

Sabira calmed a bit, giving Moira a little smile. “Please, call me Sabira, or Sabi. And uh, that’s good to know.”

“You two want eggs?” Welker called from the kitchen, attempting to put off any more questions until food was in their stomachs.

“Sure. Why not,” Callie agreed. “We haven’t had lunch yet. I thought maybe we’d order subs. But eggs will work.”

“I’ll help.” Sabira went around Moira, came into the kitchen, and gave Welker a quick hug. “Pancakes and bacon with those eggs sounds pretty good.” She immediately had her head buried in the refrigerator, pulling out meat and the necessary ingredients.

Welker chuckled. “Sounds good to me, too, but we’ll need to make it kind of quick. We have to be back at Moira’s house by three. The rest of the team is convening there to help with clean-up.”

Callie came in and took a seat in one of the four swivel-back bar stools at the dividing bar. “It sounds awful. How about you tell us what happened.”

Moira went to the counter, retrieved her now cool coffee, and took a huge gulp, grimacing.

Did she want him to explain, or would she take the lead. Welker waited…

“I’ve been working a case involving the 227 MC.”

“I’ve heard of them. They’re bad news,” Callie nodded.

“They are,” Moira agreed. “And the entire club needs to be disbanded, especially after what I uncovered.”

“Which was?” Sabira asked, then backpedaled. “Unless you can’t tell us, of course.”

Moira scoffed. “The closed-door trial where I was the lead witness ended yesterday, so I’m sure there’ll be a lot in today’s papers. I have no problem filling you in if you haven’t heard any of the particulars, yet.”

“We haven’t,” Callie told her.

Moira walked to the microwave and stuck her cup in, hitting two minutes, which would heat her coffee back up. As the oven purred, she turned back to their company.

“Over the winter last year, there were an unusual number of break-ins in the empty mansions down in Bar Harbor. You’re probably aware that a lot of them are summer homes.”

Callie and Sabira both nodded.

“Well, we’d been called in any number of times by neighbors and caretakers that the places had been entered, and stripped of valuables. And I’m not talking just TVs and computers. Whoever was doing the jobs, made a point of demo-ing the places, stealing copper wires and pipes right out of the walls, destroying the majority of the interior finish. To say the places were left a mess, is an understatement.” She snorted.

“You might imagine that the insurance companies weren’t happy to pay up on the damage, so they leaned hard on my boss at the Sheriff’s Department to do something about it, and I was assigned to patrol the area every night until we mitigated the problem.”

Welker hadn’t known that Moira had been put on the night shift. She hadn’t shown any signs of fatigue on the numerous call-outs they’d had for SWAT over the winter. His opinion of her went up a few more notches.

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