14 Fire And Ice by J A Jance

Author:J A Jance [Jance, J A]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

It was close to midnight before we finally got back home after our side trip to Black Diamond and our late-night dinner. Mel fell into bed and was out like a light. I love the woman dearly, but the truth is, she snores. Most of the time it doesn’t bother me, but it did that night, mostly because Tom Wojeck’s hairy-chested coffee, combined with indigestion from our late-night dinner, left me tossing and turning. Finally I gave up on sleeping altogether. I climbed out of bed and went into the room that’s now our combination family room/office.

I spend a lot of time there now that my recliner has been permanently banished from the living room. I don’t blame Mel for insisting that if I refused to opt for a new one, the old one would have to disappear from the living room. The furniture she bought for the living room is stylish and surprisingly comfortable. And, much as I hate to admit it, the recliner no longer measures up.

For one thing, the poor old thing lists badly to one side these days. I had it recovered with leather a long time ago, but even good leather doesn’t last forever. It’s developed a certain sway to the cushions. And the last time the kids were here, I caught Kayla jumping on it. By the time the grandkids went back home, the recliner had lost the benefit of full motion. It no longer goes all the way up or all the way down. In other words, the recliner is a bit like me—a little butt-sprung and with a hitch in its get-along.

I sat there for a while looking at the city lights playing off the low-lying clouds and thinking about Mama Rose. Finally I picked up my laptop and logged onto the Internet, put in my LexisNexis password, and went looking for Rose Marie Brotsky. And found plenty. Her recent history wasn’t nearly as colorful as her earlier history, but as the owner of the Silver Pines Mobile Home Park, she was in the news. A lot.

Somewhere along the way, Mama Rose had missed the memo about not fighting city hall. Just as she had told us earlier that evening, she and her lawyers had taken on the local city council and city manager and had won one round after another. The city had tried to shut down Silver Pines based on the fact that the place harbored registered sex offenders—although, for the most part, former hookers are sex offenders in only the broadest sense of the word. The city next claimed that the mobile home park was too close to a local elementary school, even though the school had been built long before Mama Rose became the owner of the property. But that hadn’t worked either. A new survey, conducted at Mama Rose’s expense and using modern GPS technology, had determined her property was 2.3 inches to the good. After that, the city had tried to condemn the trailer park under eminent domain so they could sell it to a developer.

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