He Chose My Sister, So I Left Him With Nothing novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: The Marshal

I didn't argue with her.

I took out my phone and dialed the county fire marshal's cell, the number I'd had memorized since I was twenty-three.

Mom's arms dropped a few inches.

"Who are you calling?"

"Hi, it's Nadine Buckley at Blue Hour," I said into the phone. "I've got about thirty-six display shells under a tarp in full sun at Buckley Marina, six feet from a gas pump. Stolen from my magazine. I need you here now."

I listened.

"Twenty minutes," I said, and hung up.

Mom stared at me.

"You called the fire department on your own mother?"

"I called the fire marshal on a pile of explosives."

I turned to the dock.

"Everybody, I'm sorry. I need you to walk back up to the parking lot. Bring the kids. It's probably fine. I want it to stay that way."

People moved. Fast. A man scooped up the boy with the fishing rod.

Dad came out of the bait shop yelling.

"What the hell are you doing? I've got customers!"

"Not on this end of the dock, you don't."

"Nadine, you get off my property!"

"As soon as these come with me."

I got the hose from beside the gas pump and soaked the tarp, slow and even, so the plastic stopped cooking.

Mom stood there with her mouth open.

The fire marshal's truck pulled into the gravel lot in eighteen minutes.

Behind it came a sheriff's cruiser, because that's what happens when you say the word "stolen" on a recorded line.

The marshal was a big quiet man who'd inspected my magazines every spring for six years.

He'd once told me my storage was the cleanest in the northern counties.

He walked down the dock, lifted the tarp with two fingers, and stood there.

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