“Are you?”
“I’m not if you’re not.”
“Well, I’m not if you’re not. And besides, we got these babies.”
Hope turned her attention back to the boys and watched them load their plastic guns with rubber darts. Personally, Hope would prefer a legion of ghosts to one lone bat.
She glanced from one boy to the other. “How old are you two?”
“Seven.”
“Eight.”
“You are not.”
“Almost. I’ll be eight in a couple of months.”
“What are you going to do with those toy guns?” she asked.
“Protection,” Adam answered as he licked the suction end of the dart.
“Wait, I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” she said, but neither boy listened as they took off across the yard. She followed them to the foot of the porch. She’d never really been around children, and it occurred to her that maybe she ought to get permission from their parents before she sent them into a bat-infested house. “Maybe I should talk to your mothers first before you go inside.”
“My mom won’t care,” Wally said over his shoulder as the two climbed the steps. “ ‘Sides, she’s talkin’ on the phone with Aunt Genevieve. Probably be a couple hours before she’s off.”
“Can’t call my dad. He’s workin‘ on the mountain today,” Adam added.
The bats were probably long gone and her bag was probably just inside the door, Hope reasoned. The boys probably wouldn’t get attacked and die of rabies. “If you get scared, you run back out. Don’t worry about the purse.”
They paused in the open doorway an
d looked back at her. Wally whispered something about ghosts, which prompted a short-lived punching match. Then he asked, “What does your purse look like?”
“Bone leather with burgundy alligator accents.”
“Huh?”
“White and reddish brown.”
She folded her arms and watched the boys-guns raised-slowly move into the house. Lifting a hand, she once again shaded her eyes from the piercing sun and saw them move first to the left and then cross the hall into the living room. They were gone maybe half a minute before they ran back out, Hope’s purse in Adam’s free hand.
“Where was it?” she asked.
“In the big room with the antlers.” He handed her the bag and she reached inside for her sunglasses. She slipped them on, then slid two five-dollar bills from her wallet.
“Thank you very much.” In Hope’s line of work, she’d slipped money to doormen, doctors, and dwarfs. But this was a first. She’d never paid little kids for a favor. “You are the bravest guys I know,” she said as she handed them the money. Their eyes lit up and their smiles turned mercenary.
“If you need us to do anything else, we will,” Wally assured her as he stuck his pistol into the waistband of his shorts.
The dinner rush had hardly slowed by the time Sheriff Dylan Taber entered the Cozy Corner Cafe. The tint on the windows let a person see out, but from the street, they looked like silver foil wrap. If the sun hit them just right, they could burn a hole through your corneas.
On the jukebox next to the front door, Loretta Lynn sang about her Kentucky roots while Jerome Fernwood called out a pickup order from behind the grill.
The smell of fried chicken gravy and coffee assaulted Dylan’s senses and made his stomach growl. He tried to keep fast-food nights at his house to a minimum, but tonight he was tired and covered with dust and the last thing he wanted was to cook dinner. Not even hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, Adam’s favorite.
Finally off duty, he wanted to eat, take a long shower, and fall into bed. The shower was easily managed, but bed would have to wait for several more hours. Adam had a T-ball game in forty-five minutes, which always wound him up tight as a ball of string. Between the excitement of the game, the new puppy, and the “cool box” Adam had bought that afternoon for his special rock collection, Dylan doubted his son would nod off before eleven.
When he’d checked in with Adam earlier, his son had told him a strange tale of bats and ghosts and a woman in “bird boots” paying him five bucks to find her purse. If Dylan hadn’t already met the woman in question, he probably wouldn’t have believed Adam’s story. Adam had a tendency to make up a lot of stories, but not even Adam could have made up those boots.