Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux’s voice filled my ear, but it wasn’t the soft, sweet, Southern drawl I expected. Instead, Jo-Jo’s voice was harsh, clipped, and angry. I opened my mouth to answer her, but a loud screech-screech-screech cut me off, followed by a series of bang-bang-bang-bangs.
I frowned. “Jo-Jo? What’s that noise? What’s wrong?”
She huffed in my ear. “Apparently, someone didn’t like the perm I gave her last week and is claiming that I burned her scalp and made all her hair fall out. A bunch of folks from the health inspector’s office are here, plowing through the salon, scraping paint off the walls, and making a mess of everything. Now they’re saying that I’ve got black mold everywhere, even though I just remodeled the entire salon a few months ago.”
My hand tightened around my phone. So Madeline had sicced the health department on Jo-Jo too, and from the sound of things, they were demolishing the dwarf’s beauty salon in the back of her antebellum home. I’d wondered why Madeline had spent so much time ingratiating herself with all the civic and other groups in town. Now she was making all those connections and all that money she’d spread around work for her.
“And, to top it off, I’ve got a bunch of stuck-up snobs from the historical association here,” Jo-Jo went on, her voice getting louder, sharper, and angrier with every word. “They’re claiming that I haven’t been taking proper care of my house—the house that’s been in my family for more than a hundred and fifty years—and that there’s some silly ordinance that says that unless I bring it up to code in thirty days, that the historical association can take ownership of it. Over my dead body, that’s what I say.”
“Jo-Jo, listen to me—” I started to warn her to just go along with them for now, but I didn’t get the chance.
“Hey!” she snapped. “There’s no mold on that wall. Don’t you dare punch that sledgehammer through my brand-new paneling!”
Thump-thump-thump.
Crash-crash-crash.
Bang-bang-bang.
More and more demolition noises rang out, along with the sharp, distinctive tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of breaking glass.
“Great. Now there’s a giant hole in my wall, and one of these idiots has managed to upend and break an entire tub of nail polish all over the floor. I’m sorry, Gin, but I have to go. I’ll call you back when I get these morons out of my salon.”
She hung up before I could tell her about the trouble Sophia was in—or how Madeline was screwing with all of us today, including her.
I thought about calling her back, but she probably wouldn’t answer. Besides, Sophia was in more danger right now than Jo-Jo was. Still, I sent a text to Finn, asking him to check in with Jo-Jo when he got a chance. I waited, but the phone didn’t beep back. Looked like Finn was busy dealing with his own problems. I sighed and put my phone down on the console in the center of the car.
Silvio cleared his throat. “I take it that Ms. Deveraux is having some trouble as well?”
“Another surprise visit from the health inspector,” I muttered. “And the historical association. Madeline hit her with a double whammy.”
“She has certainly been effective in planning her attacks to target all of you at once. A classic divide-and-conquer tactic.”
“I know,” I muttered again. “And I didn’t even see it coming. I thought that she would send a swarm of giants into the restaurant or hire a passel of assassins to attack me. This is Ashland, after all. Instead, the bitch is trying to legalese me to death.”
“The law can be as effective a weapon as anything else,” Silvio pointed out in an annoyingly calm tone. “Sometimes, even more so than direct brute force or overwhelming numbers.”
I slumped in the leather seat, put my head back, and closed my eyes, trying to rein in my temper and growing frustration. I didn’t do legal. I did black-of-the-night, launch-myself-from-the-shadows, cut-your-throat attacks. Not this . . . this political maneuvering.
It disgusted me that Madeline wouldn’t come right out and face me herself, elemental to elemental, but there was nothing I could do about it. Right now, she had the advantage, and my friends and I were scrambling to playing catch-up. No, scratch that. We weren’t playing catch-up. We weren’t even playing defense. Madeline had blindsided all of us, and we were sprawled every which way on the battlefield, flat on our backs, trying to find enough strength to shake off all the punishing, head-spinning blows she’d landed on us one after another.
I brooded the few blocks over to the station. Like many buildings in the downtown loop, the main headquarters of the Ashland Police Department was located in a large, sprawling prewar building made of dark gray granite that took up an entire block. With its columns, crenellations, and curlicued carvings of leaves and vines, it was a lovely structure, despite the ugliness that passed through the doors daily.
Silvio pulled into the lot attached to one side of the building and parked. But instead of getting out and going into the station right away, I sat in the car.
Thinking.
If there was one thing I’d come to know about Madeline, it was that she always had a backup plan, usually two or three or four or more. Dobson hadn’t been able to drag me away from the restaurant in handcuffs, but here I was at the police station all the same. If this was where she had planned to spring the next part of her trap for me, whatever it was, then I was sure that Madeline had already adjusted her scheme accordingly. Something bad was waiting for me inside the station—I just didn’t know exactly what it might be.
So I went through various scenarios in my mind, most of which ended up with me either being trapped in a jail cell or shot to death in the middle of the station while the crooked cops of Ashland looked on and cheered. But one thing was certain. I couldn’t go into the station armed. Not with all the metal detectors and scanners. That would be a quick way to get arrested and carted off to that cell that was sure to be waiting for me.
So as much as it pained me, I palmed first one knife, then the other, setting them next to my phone on the center console. I leaned forward, removed the weapon from the small of my back, then reached down and plucked the two knives out of the sides of my boots.
“Here,” I said, straightening back up and handing the three blades over to Silvio. “Take these, and keep them safe for me. Please.”
He nodded and took the knives from me, careful of the sharp edges, then picked up the other two weapons from the console. “I have a hidden compartment built into the bottom of the trunk. I’ll put them in there.”