Miss Doris looked horrified at the idea that she might be charged with a crime, while Melody just looked contemptuous. Given that her father had been bailing her out of scrapes all her life, she likely didn’t expect this time to be any different. Nevertheless, both she and Miss Doris were obligingly silent as Jesse and Patrick took them to the tiny but separate interview rooms, which were side by side and had only drywall dividing them, which necessitated each officer turning on the noisy box fans in each room that had been bought to prevent eavesdropping. The solution was low tech, but it worked.
The statements didn’t take long. Patrick came out first, leaving Melody in the interview room. Bo and Loretta both looked expectantly at him, and he cleared his throat. “The gist of it is, the court proceedings were over, had gone off without a hitch though Kyle didn’t look too happy about any of it. On the way out, Emily and her mother and Miss Doris passed by a bunch of the Goodings, and Melody said, quote, ‘I’ll be glad when this is over and my brother can get a real wife instead of a whore’ unquote.”
As badmouthing went, that was typical of what was said in a lot of divorces, and not even original. Bo could think of a couple of her mother’s divorces that made Melody’s trash talk sound like the stuff of Sunday school classes.
“Emily and her mother didn’t pay any attention,” Patrick continued, “but Miss Doris blew a gasket. She got right up in Melody’s face and started yelling, ‘You keep your filthy mouth shut about my granddaughter or I’ll stuff my fist down your throat,’ again, quote and unquote.”
“Ouch.” Bo winced. Miss Doris was definitely guilty of assault-a misdemeanor, but still.
“Melody admitted to then saying, ‘I’ll wipe the floor with you, old lady. You won’t be so full of yourself when your house burns down.’ Which evens out the assault charges if we’re keeping score.”
Loretta grunted. “Huh.” She looked displeased that someone besides a Hobson was using house-burning as a threat.
Bo felt somewhat relieved. Things were looking up. With both of the women having committed the same misdemeanor, that gave her a place to start negotiating. If only one party was guilty, the other would undoubtedly press charges, which would keep this mess going likely for the rest of their natural lives-and beyond, because West Virginia didn’t breed people who easily forgot slights.
The trick was getting them both to not press charges because right now they were still fighting mad. There would be lingering resentment, of course, but at least there wouldn’t be rap sheets.
Jesse came out, and they all compared the two statements. At least Melody and Miss Doris had been truthful; they were almost word for word what each woman had said to the other.
“What do we do now?” Jesse asked, taking a peek out the front to where Kalie still waited patiently in his patrol car. At least she’d had the sense not to come inside and add to the crowd. Bo thought about reminding Jesse that he wasn’t supposed to have unauthorized ride-alongs in his patrol car, but they had more important fish to fry. Besides, she wouldn’t be telling Jesse something he didn’t already know, and she wasn’t going to carp about rule-bending when he’d bent a big one regarding Morgan.
Maybe she wasn’t any good at being a police chief because she seemed to have problems sticking to the rules. Well, that was a thought for another time because right now she had to deal with this.
“Why don’t you take Kalie home, and we’ll let those two sit and think for a while,” she suggested. “Half an hour, an hour-they need the time to cool down.”
There was a general nodding of heads; cooling down could only be good. Jesse took Kalie home; Patrick took his supper break. Loretta decided there wouldn’t be any more excitement and went home to cook supper for Charlie and bring him up to date. Bo sat at her desk and began catching up on the day’s paperwork. There wasn’t a peep from either of the two interview rooms.
The phone rang once. She prayed it wasn’t a call that the remaining family members on both sides were in a brawl. The caller was indeed a Gooding, but she lucked out on the purpose of the call. “I need to know what’s going on,” Mr. Gooding barked. “Do I need to send our lawyer in?”
“I’m trying to talk both of them into not pressing charges so everyone can walk away clean,” Bo said calmly. “Just be patient.”
“Oh.” He sounded surprised by her position. He paused. “Thank you, Chief. If it’ll help, tell Melody I said to go along with your suggestion.”
“I will. Thanks for checking, Mr. Gooding.” If he could be polite, so could she.
Then she waited some more. Finally she got up and went into the interview room where Melody sat, probably bored to death because there was no TV, no magazines, nothing to look at other than her manicure.
The pretty young woman had a sullen expression, but beneath it all she was also beginning to look tired. Burning that much adrenaline took a lot out of a person. Bo pulled out the only other chair in the room and sat down. She waited until Melody looked up at her before saying, “Here’s the deal. Miss Doris won’t press charges if you don’t. You can both act pissy if you think it’ll get you anywhere, but I can tell you up front that all it’ll get you is a rap sheet. Your dad called a while ago and said to tell you to take the deal.”
Melody opened her mouth, likely to say something smart, but then she closed it again and considered her options. “Okay,” she finally said, no arguing, no threats.
Well, hallelujah. Relieved that it was so easy, Bo said, “Where’s your car?”
“At city hall.”
“You want to walk? I can have one of the officers drive you if you don’t.”
“I’ll walk.”
As Bo was showing Melody out, Jesse arrived back at the station from taking Kalie home. He stayed silent until Melody was gone. “Everything work out?”
“Halfway there. I still have Miss Doris in the other room, but Melody’s agreed not to press charges.”
He sat down. “I’ll wait and take Miss Doris home. I know she didn’t drive because Kalie said that Emily picked her up.”
How on earth had Kalie known Emily was picking up her grandmother? Even though Bo had lived here seven years, small-town ways still sometimes baffled her. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. Was the information passed on by some weird osmosis?
“Kalie and Emily are Facebook friends,” Jesse explained with a grin, having noted her expression. “Emily posted about it.”
Social media to the rescue; at least that made sense. She didn’t do Facebook herself, figuring her life was no one else’s business. It wasn’t as if she had a ton of relatives who kept track of her or were interested in what she was doing.
Finally she went in to Miss Doris. She’d chosen Melody first because she’d judged Melody the most likely to press charges, in which case there would be no deal-making with Miss Doris. Again, she pulled up a chair and sat down. Miss Doris looked both guilty and angry, which meant she could tip either way.
Bo said essentially the same thing she’d said to Melody. “Melody has agreed not to press charges if you don’t.”
Miss Doris’s mouth opened in astonishment, closed, then opened again. “She did?” she squeaked.
Bo shrugged. “She’s guilty of the same thing. It makes sense for both of you to drop it and walk away.”
“Well, my goodness.” Miss Doris paused for maybe half a second. “All right. If she’s dropping it, so will I.”
“Good deal. Jesse said he’ll take you home.”
“That’s sweet of him. I imagine it’s dark by now.”
“Yes, it is, but we wouldn’t let you walk home anyway.”
And that was that. Jesse and Miss Doris went out the back door to his cruiser just as Morgan and Tricks came in, meeting them on the way. They stood in the door for a minute or so, saying hello and exchanging small talk, then the first two were gone and the second two came on into the station. Tricks went immediately to Bo, smiling her doggy smile and putting her paw on Bo’s knee.