“Shouldn’t you wear gloves?” Sloane says to him as I’m walking away.
“Psst,” someone else says.
I pause.
“Over here,” they whisper.
The neighbor to Sloane’s right has her door cracked and is gesturing to me. She’s maybe four foot ten if she’s an inch, with tight white curls on her head, more wrinkles than an elephant, and the combination of her large glasses and the porch light makes her eyes seem larger.
I head up her walkway to her front door in the rapidly darkening evening. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Are you the guy marrying Sloane on Saturday?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I saw another guy at her house earlier, and?—”
Thank fuck for small towns and retired people. “What did he look like?”
She squints at me with watery brown eyes like she’s debating if she wants to tell me.
I actively suppress a frustrated sigh and pull my phone out. One quick search later, I hold it out to her. “That him?”
“Itis!”
Fuck.
“You know him?” she asks. “Ohhh, I’ve been reading these why choose romances where the woman hooks up with multiple guys. Is Sloane having the time of her life? Is she actually marrying two or three of you on Saturday, but they’re telling me it’s just one because they think I’m too old to handle how young people do things these days? I’m so jealous. These old bones can’t even handle my vibrator anymore.”
Sloane has at least four vibrators. Which I need to not remember, ever. “Maybe try a lower setting.”
She snorts. “Oh, you think I haven’t tried that? Almost broke my wrist even then. Take it from me, young man. Take your calcium and keep lifting weights.”
“Will do. Thanks. You willing to tell the deputy over there about who you saw?”
She squints at me through her glasses, then peers past me to Sloane’s house. “Is that the single deputy?”
“Is Chester single?”
She gasps. “Chester’s her third?I’m telling his wife. I’m telling his wiferight now.”
“Sloane’s house was broken into sometime today.”
She gasps again. “While she was having a threesome with all of her fiancés?”
I look over at Sloane’s house.
Can’t see as much now.
No porch light on.
But there’s a flashlight bouncing around the living room windows from the inside.
“Sloane,” I say.
“What?” comes the short reply from her porch.
I almost smile. That’s more like the normal cranky I appreciate out of her. “Your neighbor saw someone.”
