Witcher Upper - Amy Boyles Page 0,42
to use pronouns and speak in caveman? If I ever doubted that using my power on him had been a bad idea, all that indecision was washed away simply because Buddy Junior. couldn’t even form a simple sentence.
Sluggs placed his hands on his hips and sighed. “Clem, what have you got to say for yourself?”
My gaze cut to Junior. The sneer on his face mingled with the look of triumph glowing in his eyes angered me. He looked happy that he had returned to the scene of the crime and managed to catch me, a woman, who had wounded his tender ego.
“What do I have to say?” I repeated to Sluggs.
Shane stared at me, and I could feel his gaze boring a hole in the side of my head. Okay, so more people than I ever imagined were magical in Peachwood, but that stopped at Shane. He wasn’t magical—I just knew it, and I didn’t want him to know that I was. End of story.
“Yes,” Sluggs said. “What do you say to these men’s allegations?”
All of them stared at me, even Hannah from the booth. The pressure to tell the truth weighed on me, but so did the pressure to protect myself.
“I will tell you what I told Shane, except I’ll give more details.” I cleared my throat and lifted my chin defiantly. “These two men started hitting on a woman in the bar. Buddy here”—I pointed at him—“was trying to get her to take a look at his rig, if you know what I mean. They kept pestering her and finally she had enough and she punched them both out.”
Buddy shook his head. “It wasn’t that lady. It was you. Now, Officer,” he directed to Sluggs, “I want her arrested for assault. You don’t get to go around hitting people and get away with it.”
Shane stepped in. “Sluggs, you can’t be serious. You know Clem. She wouldn’t do anything like that.”
Sluggs scratched his chin. “It seems to me some mighty strange things have been going on with you lately, Clem. You came into my office talking about Sadie and money. You don’t think Sadie’s death was an accident, and now I’m hearing that you’ve been going around punching men in the face, knocking them out.”
“For goodness’ sake, I’m below average height,” I said, which was true. I was only five-foot-three inches tall. “Do you really think I knocked out this guy who’s six feet?”
“What I think is—I might have to relook at Sadie. You might be more involved than I thought.”
Wait. What just happened? Chief Sluggs was supposed to walk in here and believe me when I said that truck driver was no good. He wasn’t supposed to turn around and somehow find a way to pin Sadie’s murder—a fact he didn’t even buy, by the way—on me.
Buddy Junior snarled. “I want this woman arrested, Chief.”
I did not think so. This man was not about to walk into my town with that stupid look on his face and come all up in my friend’s bar and think that he was about to get me arrested for assault.
I folded my arms and stared at Buddy, his friend, and Sluggs. “No way. I am not going anywhere. First of all, Chief, you don’t even believe that Sadie was murdered. You deemed her death accidental. I don’t know how in the ever-living universe a grown woman falls into fresh concrete and winds up dead without the help of another person, but somehow, in Peachwood, that’s what happens.”
“Clem,” Sluggs started to protest, but I kept on going. I had experienced one crap storm of a day, and I was not about to stop cutting off heads now.
Not literally, obviously.
“And you.” I turned my ire on Buddy. “You walked in here the other night all full of swagger, and you hit on that poor girl and wouldn’t leave her alone. You practically picked her up by the waist and was about drag her off to your rig when I stepped in.” I flared out my arms. “Okay, so yes, I may have been the one who punched you, I admit it. But you deserved it.” I shoved my finger close to his nose. “There are words for what you were about to do to that girl, and if anyone deserves to be arrested, it’s you and your sorry rear end, not me. No how. No way.”
I stopped talking long enough to breathe and waited for Chief Sluggs to drag me down to the pokey.
Instead,