Tymber Dalton by It's a Sweet Life Read Free Book Online Page A

lying, the best pastry he’d ever had. And he’d consumed more than his fair share during stakeouts while working his way up to detective.
    He glanced at Allan, who bit into his. His eyes widened. “Fuck, this is great!”
    Ben nodded as he devoured his. “Yeah.”
    Libbie returned a few minutes later with the papers and a pen. “So where are you from?”
    “Omaha,” Ben said, sticking to their story. “Born and raised there.”
    “Wow. That’s a long way to move, huh?”
    “We’re tired of the winters,” Allan said. “Been there all our lives.”
    “What made you pick Brooksville?”
    Ben started filling out the forms. The PO Box address he listed in Omaha actually was a generic drop-box used by the DEA office out there for undercover operations. “We stopped for the night over at I-75 and decided to explore before we got to Tampa. I can work from anywhere I have Internet.” He looked at Allan. “So can he. We sold everything, cashed out, and said good-bye to cold-ass winters and judgmental family.”
    “You’ll like it here,” she said. “Small town, very quiet.”
    “And great coffee,” Allan added as he sipped his.
    “Everyone loves Many Blessings,” she said. Her expression grew wistful. “We all miss Julie, the former owner. She was such a sweetheart. She was a good friend. We knew each other growing up.” She let out a sad-sounding sigh. “It was especially hard on Mandaline. She was even closer to Julie than I was.”
    “What happened to her?” Ben asked, his senses on alert at her tone.
    “You remember that horror writer, Stephen Corey?”
    Allan frowned. “The novelist? Didn’t he die a few months ago?”
    She nodded. “He killed Julie before he died. He went crazy.” She shuddered. “Actually, if you’re staying at I-75, you’re not far from where it happened. They lived in the Croom Motorcycle area there at the northeast corner of 75 and 50.”
    Ben remembered reading about that case in the news. It had made national headlines due to the brutality of the crime, as well as the fame of the guy. Corey didn’t just murder the woman. He raped her first, before almost killing his wife and friend in the rampage. The tabloids especially had gone nuts over the story. Autopsy revealed the guy was a severe alcoholic as well.
    “That kind of stuff isn’t normal around here,” Libbie said. “It’s usually very quiet.”
    Ben finished filling out the lease, signed it, and handed it to Allan to sign. “Here you go, Charles .”
    Allan shot him a glare, but signed it correctly.
    While he did that, Ben said, “We’ll run over to the hotel and get checked out. Then we’ll come back and help you all finish up with the moving, if that’s okay?”
    “Oh, sure. I appreciate that. I’m sorry it’s not ready right now.”
    “We don’t mind,” Allan assured her. “We’re just glad to find such a nice place so quickly.”
    She took them on a quick tour of the rest of the building before handing them a set of keys. “Those are for your apartment and the back door over there.” She pointed down the hallway to the door to the stairs where they’d come in from the outside. “You can park in back behind the building. There’s only room for one more car in the carport. I usually park in front of the door.”
    “We only have one truck,” Ben said.
    “Oh, okay. There’s a washer and dryer downstairs, in the utility room. The key is the same for the back door.” She led them outside and introduced them to everyone.
    Ben was glad to see his instincts were still sharp. Grover turned out to be the father, or father-in-law, of most of the others.
    Grover smiled as he shook hands with them. “Welcome to the family, guys. We have plenty of food left, if you’d like some.”
    Allan reached for a plate before Ben could stop him.
    What the hell, why not? Can’t hurt to be friendly. “Thanks, Grover,” Ben said. “We appreciate it.”
    By nine o’clock that night, the moving had been