Peach Clobbered by Anna Gerard

Author:Anna Gerard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Chapter Fifteen

Sliced the lounge chair webbing?

As a punchline, it was a letdown. My first impulse was to dismiss the action as petty vandalism. The culprit was probably someone who was ticked that Harry was hogging two primo parking spots. Except that I could see he believed otherwise.

“You think she did it.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“Lana wanted me to know she knew where I was,” he agreed, rubbing his temples as if he were in pain. “I mean, she obviously knew I was in town, but she wouldn’t have any idea I was camping in the bus unless she followed me back from one of my gigs. I mean, it wasn’t like I had a neon sign posted on it that said, ‘Here Lives Harry.’ ”

“I’m sure that was pretty unnerving,” I observed. “So what did you do next?”

“I tossed the chair in the dumpster, put everything else in the bus, and hightailed it out of there.”

“What about making a report? I mean, if it really was Lana, you need to document what she did … you know, a paper trail. Did you call the sheriff?”

He looked up again and nodded. “I took a few pictures of the slashed chair before I trashed it and emailed them to Connie.”

He pulled out his phone from his shirt pocket and poked at the screen a moment, then leaned forward to show me several photos of the vandalized lounge chair from multiple angles. Each section of once-taut webbing had been sliced in half, almost as if someone had run a circular saw’s spinning blade down the chair, leaving only ribbons of webbing hanging from the aluminum frame.

Disconcerting, to say the least. Though the revived skeptic in me noted that Harry could just as easily have done the damage with the Swiss army knife he’d told the sheriff he had.

Harry, meanwhile, gave an exaggerated shudder and stuck the phone back in his pocket.

“Connie called me back and said some out-of-towner probably was mad that I’d take up two parking spots and did it out of spite. But she did say that she’d put the pictures in the file. And then she made sure I remembered about the ordinance having to do with staying overnight in public lots, which is why I drove off.”

“So if you’re not there by the square anymore, where’s your bus parked now?”

“In your driveway.”

And there it was, the actual punch line.

I felt my mouth literally drop open as I stared at the man. True, I should have heard the bus belch and clank and squeak its way up the drive, but I hadn’t. All I could guess was that he’d made his move while I was in the shower. My fault for not keeping the driveway gate shut, though in my defense, regularly wrestling that iron barricade open and closed took a fair amount of strength.

When I finally could speak again, the sole question I could manage was, “How in the heck am I supposed to get my Mini

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