The Tie Clip Club. People collected all kinds of rubbish, and in school there had been all kinds of clubs. Who would suspect that the movers and shakers in all kinds of businesses, and even in the police and government, formed their alliances by belonging to a club that collected tie clips? Who would suspect that the tie clip that had been specially designed for club members would have real significance when those young men left school and began working in their various fields? While they were in school, members who weren’t society boys endured being laughed at for belonging to such a dorky club—and never forgot the names and faces of the ones who had laughed when it came to awarding job contracts or hamstringing someone’s climb up the business or social ladder.
Members helped members. Saying no was not an option. And that was the catch. When a member asked for help, the rest of the membership was expected to provide whatever assistance they could. It was one reason why the founding members hadn’t stuck to their own social circle when they began recruiting a couple of generations ago. Rubbing elbows with young men who were attending the public university, the tech college, and the police academy hadn’t felt right, but when those men became the owners of their own construction companies, or owned the garages where you could get your expensive luxury car fixed, or became high-ranking members of the police force, putting up with them while you attended the private college along with your real peers made sense.
Just like marrying Vicki had made sense. She had been such a social nobody, it had been easy to dazzle her with the great future they would have together, and he had dangled that dream in front of her during the years when she’d worked to support them while he’d waited for his trust fund to kick in and dabbled with working whenever she balked at making a payment on his tailor’s bill instead of paying the electric company to keep them from turning off the service. She wasn’t the right wife for a man like him, but she’d been useful, and it had been so easy to convince her that his affairs were her fault because she wasn’t enough for any man when it came to sex.
A lot like Heidi, in fact. After he’d gotten Vicki off his back, Yorick hadn’t understood why Hershel hadn’t dumped Heidi years ago. But that was before he realized that Hershel sometimes needed to tune up his partner a bit in order to really enjoy sex, and Heidi was enough of a doormat to take it.
If he hadn’t needed to divorce Vicki and marry Constance in order to remain in good standing with Vaughn and the rest of the Tie Clippers, would he and Vicki have reached the point where foreplay included the back of his hand to make things good? Not something he could try on Constance, of course, with her being Vaughn’s cousin.
“If Vicki showed that attorney all the paperwork, he’ll wonder about me presenting this document now,” Yorick said.
“We’ll swear we saw it with the rest of the paperwork when you were working out the terms of the settlement,” Darren said. “She destroyed her copy in order to retain her hold on property that was no longer hers. Her signature is on the document, same as yours. And it’s notarized.”
“First thing tomorrow morning, you’ll go to the police station and insist that Officer Grimshaw, in his capacity as the chief of police, help you issue the eviction notice,” Vaughn said with a nasty smile.
Yeah. He liked that idea.
They discussed going out to eat, not that there was anything remotely adequate in Sproing, but the rooms included breakfast and dinner in their price, and not eating at the boardinghouse didn’t reduce the price of the rooms. Hershel had already checked.
Pamella claimed a severe allergy to dogs, so at least that beast wasn’t tormenting him while they ate dinner.
“Ms. Xavier,” Vaughn said when Ineke filled the coffee cups and set out plates of fruit, cheese, and chocolate at the end of the meal. “If we decide to stay a bit longer tomorrow . . .”
“Checkout is eleven o’clock,” Ineke said. “Other guests are coming in and we need to turn over the rooms, so I’m not offering extensions.”
“If we choose not to leave, what are you going to do?” Vaughn persisted. “Call the police?”
She stared at Vaughn for so long, Yorick began to squirm in his seat.
Then she smiled. “No, I wouldn’t call the police. There’s someone else I call when I need to eliminate vermin.”
CHAPTER 51
Vicki
Sunsday, Sumor 4
I had just finished washing the breakfast dishes when I heard a quick whoop of a police siren—a bloop of sound, there and gone so fast I wasn’t even sure I had heard it until Aggie ran into the kitchen.
“Jozi says Officer Grimshaw is here with those other humans,” Aggie said. “He flashed the lights and made the car howl, but just a little.”
Since Aggie was naked and had more feathers than usual in her hair and framing her face, I deduced that she had been in her Crow form when Jozi gave the warning. Or maybe it was more accurate to say Jozi was passing along Grimshaw’s warning.
Grimshaw didn’t make idle warnings.
Trembling, I hurried to the kitchen phone and called Ilya Sanguinati.
“I’ll be there,” he said when I stumbled out the reason for the call. “Make sure the porch door and kitchen door are unlocked. Take your time answering the front door. Make some excuse.”
Doing the dishes. Had soapy hands. Wasn’t sure I’d heard the bell with the water running.
Since I’d seen Ilya flow through a screen door, I figured unlocking the doors was for the convenience of someone—or something—else who would deal with a lock by ripping the door off its hinges. Wanting to save myself the expense of repairs, I made sure the back doors were unlocked before heading toward the front of the house. The doorbell rang again, immediately followed by someone pounding on the door.
“Damn it, Vicki!” Yorick shouted. “Open this door!”
What was he doing here?
“Miss Vicki?”
Had I stopped moving toward the door because I had stopped to respond to Aggie? Or had I frozen the moment I heard the anger in Yorick’s voice? But he couldn’t shove me against the wall and tell me how angry I had made him, not with Grimshaw right there. Could he?
“Better if you’re not here right now,” I told Aggie. “Not undressed in human form.”
She shifted to her Crow form and flew up to the railing at the top of the stairs—not in anyone’s line of sight but able to see and hear everything.
In Crow form, there wasn’t much she could do against a human—not much she could do against a grown man in her human form either—but I felt braver knowing Aggie was there as a witness.
I opened the door and saw Yorick’s fist coming toward my face before Grimshaw grabbed his wrist and stopped the movement.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was washing dishes and didn’t hear the doorbell.”
“Ms. DeVine, we need to come in,” Grimshaw said.
His police-issue sunglasses made it impossible to see his eyes, but I had the impression he was either really ticked off about being here or had a vicious case of indigestion and needed some seltzer. Either way, he wasn’t asking permission to come in; he was telling me I didn’t have a choice.
I backed up and kept moving back as Yorick, Darren, Vaughn, and Hershel strode in, followed by their wives and, finally, Grimshaw, who didn’t fully shut the door.
“Ms. DeVine,” Grimshaw said, coming to the front of the group, “it is my unpleasant task to serve you with this eviction notice, effective immediately.”
“Eviction?” I wanted to wiggle a finger in my ear like they do in movies to show that the person couldn’t possibly have heard what they had heard. “How can you evict me? I’m the legal owner of this property.”