Page 77 of Wayward

“No. You come find me if you want a kiss.”

The rakish grin was my reward. “Oh, I’ll find you.”

Thirty minutes later, he laid a kiss on me that rolled right through me and left me staring after him as he walked to his car.

“Well, now,” Pansy said as she walked up beside me. “I had no idea the deputy chief had that in him. I always found him to be a bit of a prude.”

I turned to look at her.

“Did you know there’s a hole in the ceiling in the living room?”

I nodded.

“How the hell did I miss that yesterday?”

Misha had gotten bored with hanging out with Ada, and since I was concerned that he’d just show up in the house that had iguanas in it, snakes in the front yard, and maybe even an alligator inside somewhere, I picked him up and went back to my place to find his leash. Ada was coming toward me from my house with what she called a sling.

“You’re just going to wear this like a cross-body purse.”

“What?”

“This way you can carry Misha.”

But I didn’t want to schlep the dog like a baby as I went about my day. However, this way he was safe, he didn’t whine since he was with me, seemingly quite content, and he could see everything, which he liked.

“I look like an idiot,” I told Pansy’s son, Sage, who showed up with his team to get the iguanas and check the front yard.

“No, man, you look like a dog dad. That’s how my girlfriend, Rue, carries our Westie.”

“Rue? Really?” What’s was with all the flower and herb names?

“Yeah. Why?”

“Forget it,” I said, and waved him toward the basement. Five minutes later, one of his team raced up to me and excitedly reported that there was a caiman in one of the pools.

“Is it okay if I take her? I mean, we’ll take such good care of her and—”

“Yes. Please. And if you could check all over for anything else.”

“Totally. There are several empty eggshells down there.”

I didn’t even want to know.

“You have the coolest house ever,” Sage gushed, his voice dripping with sincerity before he left to follow his colleague.

“Thanks?”

Misha passed out in the sling, doing nothing, tired from just being a dog, unlike me, who was supervising and carrying small random things out of the house to the enormous construction dumpster I’d rented. I was lucky that Ada was not overly possessive about her things because having her question everything that was thrown out would have made the task exhausting. She was attached to her art and the paintings and sculptures, which were in the gallery to the right of the foyer on the first floor. It was one of the few pristine rooms. She was attached to her jewelry too, but most of that was in the safety-deposit box at the bank, and she was fond of the Limoges in the hutch in the dining room. She didn’t care about old furniture, but I arranged for some of it—such as the Louis XIV pieces—to be picked up by a company that would restore it. It was good to see the rooms clearing out.

Around four in the afternoon, a big SUV with tinted glass pulled up to the front, and four people got out. The driver, who looked like a powerlifter with shoulders that could comfortably seat four and no neck that I could see, stood next to the vehicle and didn’t move. He did, however, smile at me when Misha stuck his head out of the sling, let it hang over the side, and yawned. The dog had no care in the world.

“Is cute,” he said with a thick, I was thinking Armenian, accent.

“Thank you.”

The others, a man and two women, began walking over to me. It had rained only briefly, but still, the women, walking in Louboutin pumps, were struggling in dirt that wasn’t quite mud but wasn’t hard and compact either.

“Hold on,” I called out to them and sprinted over. “May I help you?”