Page 1 of The Pocket Pair

CHAPTER 1

Chevy

“Any chance you want to put that weapon down, Mrs. Fleming?” I ask, patient as can be.

Even though this is the fourth time in as many months I’ve been called out to her house for disturbing the peace. Such is the life of a police officer in a small town like Sheet Cake, Texas: lots of domestic calls, sadly (same as anywhere else), the occasional car or tractor accident, and then a whole lot of weird. Like today.

“This isn’t a weapon.” Mrs. Fleming has on what my mama used to call a house dress, curlers in her pouf of white hair, and she holds a tire iron loosely in her weathered hand. She’s chewing gum with the vigor of a woman who still has all her own teeth.

Oh, and she also has a possum—sorry, technically an opossum—on a leash. As one does.

“Maybe I was fixing to change my oil.”

I ignore the ridiculousness of that statement because I’m sure even Mrs. Fleming knows you don’t need a tire iron for changing the oil. She also very well knows her opossum is not a cat, though she tells anyone who asks that Georgina is a special semi-hairless breed, like a sphinx. Its pink bedazzled leash is looped around one of Mrs. Fleming’s wrists while the thing stares at me with a deeply disturbing intensity. If we were to have a staring contest, I feel sure the possum would win.

“Come on, now. Let’s just put down the tire iron and have a chat.”

She tsks but does as I ask, leaning it against the front of her house. Almost immediately, it tips over, making a loud clang as it hits the wooden porch. The opossum falls right over, playing dead. Guess I won our staring contest by default.

“Oh, poor Georgina. Don’t worry,” Mrs. Fleming assures me, despite my notable lack of worry. “She’ll be all right in a minute. She suffers from narcolepsy, the poor thing.”

Is that what the kids are calling it these days? I bite back this response.

Mrs. Fleming switches gears, circling back to the reason for my visit. “Those horrible teenage vandals were stuffing trash in my cannons again.”

Her craftsman-style bungalow has two cannons on either side of the front steps. Yes—cannons. They’re rusted but real, and legend has it they were stolen off a pirate ship, though our town is hours from any ocean. Because we just moved into January, they’re both still wrapped in blinking white lights. And sure enough, I can see the edge of a crushed soda can glinting inside one of the two cannons.

“Next time, call me rather than making threats,” I admonish her gently. “We’ve talked about this.”

She blinks innocently and cups one hand around her ear. “What’s that?”

I raise my voice, despite knowing she has no problems with her hearing. Just as she doesn’t have the kind of vision problems or mental impairment that would make her think Georgina—who is now emerging from her fake death—is actually a feline. “You cannot make threats while holding something which could be construed as a weapon, even for dramatic effect.”

Her expression turns stormy, and I don’t miss the way her fingers twitch as she steps closer to the tire iron. “Did you call me dramatic, son?”

I place a hand over my heart. “I would never.”

I like to think of myself as a fairly smart man. Smart enough, anyway. And smart men know never to call a woman dramatic. Especially not a woman with a tire iron and pair of actual cannons on her front porch, even if they don’t—probably?—still fire.

“What, exactly, defines a weapon?”

I begin to tick off options on my fingers. “Weapons may include but are not limited to, tire irons, baseball bats, cannons, or firearms.”

“Did you say forearms?”

“Firearms.”

She sighs. “I love a good set of forearms. My Nate had lovely forearms. Not too much hair and a Navy tattoo.”

She pauses, chewing her gum with a little more vigor as her eyes cloud over with memory. I listen, because at times, listening is an easy kindness to offer. Especially to someone who’s lonely.

“Is that right?” I ask.

“He didn’t get the tattoo until after he was out of the service. The Navy didn’t allow them below the elbow until 2016.” She frowns, managing to look angry and sad at the same time. “Nate would have hated that. The man didn’t like change.”

“Your husband and I both.” I clear my throat as I hear my watch beep, signifying the start of a new hour and, more importantly, the end of my shift.

“When are you going to settle down for good with a nice girl?” Mrs. Fleming asks.

---