The Redneck Detective Agency (The Redneck Detective Agency Mystery Series Book 1) by Phillip Quinn Morris Read Free Book Online

boat. I could recognize the way you hold an outboard throttle if I were up in the Space Shuttle. The tenants in 204 and 404, the ones with the broken windows almost called Homeland Security.”
                  “Homeland Security, hell. They should call Homestyle Construction, the shit asses who put those cheap windows in that condo. They want to call some government agency they ought to call OSHA.”
                  “You never did like that Yamaha outboard did you?”
                  “Never.”
                  “In our divorce settlement the judge ordered me to give you a like kind boat and outboard for the one you claimed I sold out from under you.”
                  “And I took it just to get the thing settled and get on with our lives.” Rusty couldn’t believe that. That he’d said: Get on with our lives. Next thing he knew he would be saying things like things happened for a reason. And all that other muddy shit people picked up from those Oprah-esque shows.
                  “I didn’t come here to talk old times,” Jenny said.
                  “I can imagine.”
                  “I wanted you to hear this from me. I wanted to tell you face to face,” she said. “Robert and I are getting married.”
                  “I heard. But thank you for telling me face to face.” He hoped that didn’t come out snide because he meant it.
                  “I owe you that much.”
                  “You don’t owe me anything,” Rusty said.
                  “And you don’t owe me anything. Consider our slates clean with each other.” Jenny stood up and wiped the butt of her pants off.
                  “Agreed. We’re clean. Don’t owe each other anything. No bad guys here.”
                  “Yes,” Jenny said. They shook hands.
                  Somebody observing this might have thought Jenny got up to leave. Got up to officially shake hands. But Rusty’d been married to the woman three times. She did it so she was not sitting lower than he. So that her head was actually higher, him sitting on the pier railing. It was one of those, call it one of those alpha-animal things, where the domineering animal gets higher on the tree limb or the rock than the others. Or speaking of Art of War, that was more like it, she had to get higher on the hill, ready for an attack.
                  “Just one other thing, Rusty.”
                  Here it came. He knew it. He stayed seated on the piling.
                  “Do me a favor.”
                  “What’s that?” Rusty asked.
                  “Don’t get rid of your office.”
                  “What you want it for a real estate branch office in Dolopia or something?”
                  “No. Just you keep it. You could get rid of that door glass and put that one in that we had made. The one that read The River Clay. Do you still have that?”
                  “Yeah. It’s still in the closet there. You trying to run my life? I think micromanage is the exact word.” He thought that would set her off—not that he intended to—but she started pacing back and forth, like she was making him wonder when she was going to pounce on him, but good.
                  “No, Rusty. I just don’t want you to stay off to yourself down here on the river all the time. You know stay connected to the world.”
                  “Oh, now I get it! You worried about me going crazy. You think I’m going to start howling at the moon like my daddy did. Yeah, that wouldn’t look good for you when your name comes up to be on the board of the Alabama Arts Council or some shit. ‘Oh, Jennifer Compton. Yes, I know who she’s married to now. But wasn’t she married to that