Snakes Among Sweet Flowers (5 page)

Ruby nodded and said, “Thank you, Jackson. I don’t know what we woulda done.”

Junior looked like he was going to say something to that, but Jackson frowned at him and he shut his mouth. Jackson then stepped around him and walked out of the house, patting each of the three kids on the head as he passed them on the porch steps, heading to the car. He waved as he pulled out of the driveway and turned toward town. He hoped that Junior would be nicer to his family after being confronted, but knew that was probably not going to happen.

Jackson grabbed the handset again. “Jennifer, you there? Over.”

“Still Brian. Jennifer took the rest of the day off. Is everything okay out at Junior’s? Over.”

“As well as can be, I guess. Is Daddy in? Over.” Jackson felt for Jennifer and her husband. They seemed to be good people.

“Your daddy was here this mornin’, but he had a meeting with the mayor this afternoon, Jackson. I can leave him a message if you want, but I don’t know if he’s comin’ back or not. Over.”

“No, I’ll drop by the house tonight and see the chief. No problem. Any calls I need to respond to? Over.” Jackson’s father had been chief of police since Jackson was in middle school. He was getting close to retirement now, and most of the town expected Jackson to replace him when the time came.

“Hate to tell you, but Mrs. Montgomery out in that new subdivision called again. She reported someone down from her house for parking on the street without
special permission
and also mentioned that Mr. Jordon still hasn’t trimmed his tree where it hangs over her fence. Over.” There was amusement in Brian’s voice as he reported this to Jackson. The entire force hated getting calls from the woman. She seemed to have little to do other than watch her neighbors and report even the smallest problem to the police. Jackson had told her several times that the rule about parking on the street was not a law and needed to be reported to their homeowners’ association, not to the police, but it still didn’t seem to sink in.

Jackson sighed. “Then that’s where I’m headed now. If something more important comes up, let me know. Over and out.”

CAM CURSED
to himself as he closed up the garage for the day. No other customers had come by, which was not completely unusual but did make him wonder if that cop had warned people off of doing business with him. He went out the front way instead of the back door, since his truck was parked there and he still had some errands to run.

Tom slinked off around the building before Cam cranked the engine and headed out. He turned toward the interstate since he’d seen a sign for a neighborhood yard sale starting Friday afternoon in one of the new upscale communities in the area. There was still some stuff he needed for his house, and Cam figured he’d find some bargains this way.

A staked sign with glittery letters let him know he was at the right place. At first, he tried to drive through and look at what each homeowner had to sell on their lawn, but he soon found that was hard to do with so many people wandering around as well as cars parked everywhere. So he found a place to park and started out on foot from yard to yard.

At one house, he bought an old toaster for a dollar, tucking it under his arm as he headed on. At another, he found a stack of sheets and blankets that he managed to talk the lady into taking five dollars for. He asked her to hold on to those until he could bring the truck around.

When he found a stylized iron bed complete with mattress and box springs sitting out on the driveway of a house way bigger than any one family could ever need, he stepped closer to take a look. A small tag hanging from the headboard had a price of one hundred dollars. Cam frowned and leaned in to make sure he had read correctly.

“Can I help you?” asked a thirty-ish lady dressed in a tennis dress, hair and makeup done as if she was going to the club and not selling odds and ends in her front yard. The rock on her finger was bigger than anything Cam had ever seen in his life, and he wondered how she didn’t pull her knuckle out of joint just lugging that thing around.

“How much for this bed?” Cam asked, hoping he would get a different answer.

“The tag says one hundred dollars. It’s from Arhaus in Buckhead, but we—”

Cam stopped her right there. “Lady. This is a yard sale. If I could afford Arhaus, do you think I would be looking at the furniture sitting on someone’s lawn? How much will you take for it?”

“I… uh….” Cam was sure the woman had never had anyone talk that way to her. “Well….”

“What if I take all them lamps and the end tables?” Cam started walking and the lady followed. “I could use that ceiling fan, and how old is this paint?”

“Um… the paint is from last season. I bought more than I needed, but it was a special mix so I couldn’t return it.”

“I need them dishes and those glasses. Tell you what. I’ll give you two hundred for the lot.” Cam pulled out his wallet as if it were all settled.

“That’s—those dishes alone are worth that much.”

“Do they go in the dishwasher?”

“Well, they can, but—”

“Good to know. Here ya go.” Cam shoved the money at her and she took it, then tried to hand it back. He didn’t take it. “I’ll go get my truck. Get your boy to start taking that bed apart for me.”

He turned and wandered back toward his truck but down the other side of the street, looking for more bargains. The lady was left speechless, holding the two hundred in her well-manicured hand.

About three houses down, Cam noticed a police car in the driveway and a familiar police officer walking toward it with an uppity woman following him down the sidewalk talking to his back. By the set of Officer Rhodes’s shoulders, Cam could tell the policeman was not enjoying the encounter. Cam wondered if this was the officer’s house and he had a nagging trophy wife. That made him smile and hurry his step.

“Well, if it isn’t Officer Rhodes, and this must be your beautiful wife,” Cam exclaimed with a pinch of sarcasm as he neared the pair, taking the lady’s hand in his and giving a put-on smile.

“What the…?” Rhodes said.

“Excuse me?” the woman said, pulling her hand away from Cam as if he were a leper. “I am
not
married to a policeman,” she added with indignation.

That snotty, entitled answer really got his goat, so Cam decided he enjoyed messing with the lady more than Officer Rhodes and turned his full attention on her. “Well, he ain’t gonna marry the cow if he’s gettin’ it for free, my momma always said. Now, can you help me with a purchase over here?”

The policeman stood there for a moment, then saw his exit strategy and turned on his heel and got in his car. The woman looked back and forth between the two and seemed to realize her time with the policeman was at an end as he fired up the engine and began inching out of her driveway. She followed Cam as he meandered through her yard, picking up items and setting them back down.

After a few minutes of following Cam, the woman finally asked, “What
exactly
did you need my help with?”

“Does this vacuum cleaner work?” Cam asked as he examined where the cord attached to the plug.

“It works, but the maid brings her own so I don’t really need one anymore.”

“I’ll give you fifty cents for it,” Cam said without looking up.

“I’m asking twenty dollars.”

“All right, two dollars, but that’s my final offer. I can see here that the cord needs to be replaced and that’s a fire hazard.” He showed her a small black mark just below the plug.

She squinted at it, then shook her head. “Fine, take it, but I won’t accept less than five.”

“Sold.” Cam pulled out a five-dollar bill, tossed it to the lady, and scooped up the vacuum before heading on his way. When he’d made it back to his truck, he placed his treasures in the front seat, then drove carefully up the road to pick up his other purchases.

On the way home, he grabbed a cheese pizza and then stopped at a convenience store to fill up his tank. When he ran into the store to pay, he grabbed a cheap prepay cell phone off the rack next to the register along with a card good for a couple of hours’ worth of calls and added those to his purchase. He ripped open the packaging around the phone when he was back in the car and dialed a number he knew by heart, from having to actually memorize the full telephone number while in prison.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice answered.

“Hey, Mom. It’s me.” Cam slumped back in the seat. He definitely didn’t have the closest relationship with his mother. He blamed her for a lot of things that went wrong in his childhood, but still, she was his mom and the only real family he had. She’d even sent money to his account while he was in prison. That was a lot more than anyone else had done for him.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were even going to let me know you were okay,” she said. He could hear her take a puff off a cigarette and could just see her sitting on the couch in the living room, a big glass of iced tea on the coffee table and the entire room filled with the haze of smoke and the flicker of a television. It had been that way as long as he could remember. Even worse before his dad had died of cancer. The son of a bitch.

“I just wanted to lay low for a while, you know? Anyone coming around asking for me?”

“Yeah, a few. I told ’em what you said and they seemed to believe it.”

He nodded even though she couldn’t see it. “Good.” It was a plausible lie. He had rarely gone to see his mom, so it was believable she didn’t know where he was, and that since his car had been left in front of her house, she could only guess he’d gone back to jail.

“Where are you? Are you okay?” She didn’t sound too concerned, more curious. She never had been overly concerned about him, even when his dad beat him as a kid. But she had at least let him go over to his grandmother’s house to keep it from happening as often as it might’ve otherwise.

“I’m okay, Mom. But no need to know where I am. Just save this number under some weird name and call me if you need to.”

“Okay. You take care now.”

“You too, Mom.” He hung up and tucked the phone in his pocket, then cranked the engine and headed toward home.

LATER THAT
night, Cam lay on some of the softest sheets he’d ever felt, in his new—well, new to him—bed, but getting there hadn’t been easy. He’d come straight in the house and put the sheets in the washer, then unloaded the entire truck by himself, washed dishes and glasses, and placed end tables. Then he’d taken apart the bed already located upstairs and moved it along with the mattress and box springs down the stairs and into the largest bedroom on the first floor. After that was done, he’d moved the sheets to the dryer and started toting the heavy-as-living-hell iron bed, plus a king-size mattress and box springs, up into his bedroom. He’d had to run over to the garage twice for tools but finally got the job done. He’d then taken a shower, gone down and eaten his cold pizza, and finally got his clean sheets, which just happened to be the right size, to make his bed.

He’d definitely made up for not doing much during the day. It felt good to just lie on the bed and relax, although he couldn’t much lie still, since he was having trouble getting over how soft the sheets were. Cam finally got up and took off his sleep shorts, underwear, and T-shirt, then dropped back down on the bed in nothing but his bare skin.

Cam sighed. He was in heaven. He could not only stretch his arms and legs out as far as they could go and still be completely on the bed, but he also could do it in such luxury, he couldn’t quite believe it. He began moving his arms and legs like he was making a snow angel, enjoying the feel of the sheets against his skin.

“Okay, ultimate test,” Cam announced to no one but himself, and turned over onto his stomach. He lay still a moment, then thrust his hips forward against the smooth sheets. “Oh God, that’s nice.” He laughed. “But no, I ain’t messin’ up these fine sheets.”

Cam rolled back over and got comfortable against his pillows, then took himself in hand and gently stroked from base to tip of his hard cock. “Yeah, that’s nice.” Closing his eyes, he searched for an acceptable image in his mental spank bank, only to jerk his eyes back open when his brain regurgitated a familiar image: that of Officer Jackson Rhodes, complete with khaki and dark green small-town cop uniform.

“Shit. What am I gonna do? Jack off to him beatin’ me with his baton or something?” But Camden’s cock had not gone down a bit, even at his disgust at himself. “Okay, I admit, he’s a fine man, but no, no, no.” Despite his reproof, his hand again started stroking his straining cock.

With a groan, he closed his eyes again, imagining Rhodes slowly taking off his uniform. Revealed beneath his shirt were wide shoulders and narrow waist, bulging pectorals, defined six-pack, a smattering of golden hair—then the utility belt came off and his pants unbuttoned.

Cam gasped for air, giving a gentle twist of his wrist on each upstroke. “Oh shit. He wears tighty-whities.” It took no more than that and Cam’s hand was speeding over the velvet skin of his cock, no longer needing instruction from his brain. A good thing too, since the thought of sexy Officer Rhodes in nothing but his BVDs and SWAT boots had short-circuited any higher intelligence he’d had.

Cam gulped and grunted, his hips arching up as he cupped his hand around the head of his cock, deftly catching his release before he made a mess of his clean body and nice soft bed. At least he’d had that much of a mind left. He lay there a moment or two, gasping for breath and trying to make sense of what had just happened.

After he’d cleaned up, he found himself feeling especially dirty for using the officer to get off to. There was a strange sense of being betrayed by his own body, but mostly he just felt really good, so he went with it, pulling up the covers, closing his eyes, and then drifting off.

CAM WAS
in a good mood as he walked through the sliding doors of Gordon’s Market. It was still pretty early, so the day hadn’t turned hot and the store was fairly empty. Just the way he liked it. After testing a few buggies, he settled on one that didn’t have a crazy wheel but still pulled to the left a bit. Cam was pretty sure they made the things that way just to annoy people like him.