They'd all love Rory.
She not only had a lifetime ahead of her with the Landry family, but she was going to have the Ryan family back in Iowa as well.
He grinned thinking about that. She was going to have an automatic group of friends with Piper and Ollie and Dax and Jane and the rest. She might actually regret wanting to have a whole big family and community around her. She was going to get two of them practically overnight.
Ellie approached the cell and stepped through the open door, handing him a bowl of gumbo and a cornbread muffin. “I can’t have you wasting away in jail. What would your mother say if I sent you home skinnier than when you got here?”
Drew patted his stomach. “That is not possible. But thank you.”
Zander chuckled as he dug into his own bowl of gumbo. “You know she's up here for the gossip. The gumbo is just a cover.”
“Hey, don't start without us.” Paige came through the door with Mitch right behind her. “I can't believe my friend from Iowa came down here and got arrested.”
“He didn't get arrested,” Zander said with an eye roll.
“Did you get our toys back?” Charlie asked, as she and Griffin came in behind Mitch. “I want whoever stole them caught and punished.” She turned to look at Mitch. “Do you think you could build stockades? We can put them in the town square like they used to.”
Mitch grabbed a muffin from the bag and nodded. “I'm sure I could figure something out.”
“We’re not building stockades in the town square,” Zander said.
“You can't tell me that that wouldn't be a great deterrent for crime,” Charlie said. “One guy spending a day and night in the stockades and I guarantee everybody else would think twice about messing with our petting zoo.”
Zander shook his head. “No one messes with the petting zoo. This is the first time anything has happened. The stockade would sit there and look stupid most of the time.”
“What if this crime goes unpunished?” Charlie asked. “Who knows what will happen? Maybe people will become emboldened. Maybe more things will start to happen. Maybe we will start losing merchandise on a regular basis. Maybe they'll start stealing animals!”
Zander sighed. “I don't think anybody's going to be breaking in and stealing visors and sunglasses and, trust me, if anybody takes one of those goats, they’ll be bringin’ ’em back within ten minutes.”
Drew was amused by the way Zander’s drawl got longer when he was talking to his family and bullshitting versus when he was talking official business.
Charlie frowned at him. “That's not very nice.”
“Neither are your goats.”
“That seems like the perfect answer,” Griffin said, dropping into one of the chairs across from Zander's desk. “Let's just keep adopting asshole animals and then nobody will mess with them.”
“You do not think our animals are assholes,” Charlie said to him.
Griffin's brows rose. “Don't I? I love them and I take great care of them, but that doesn't mean I don't think they’re assholes.”
“Anyway,” Paige said, coming through the cell door to join Drew on the bench. She sat down next to him, looped an arm around his shoulder and leaned her head on his upper arm. “Can I just say that I think it's hilarious that you're such a good guy, you couldn't even pull off a little middle of the night con.”
“How do you know I wasn't the one stealing the toys?”
Paige started laughing. “What is this? The Farmer Who Stole Christmas?” She patted his arm. “I’m sorry the bad guy tricked you, but I love that you’re the good guy.”
Drew sighed. “Okay, so I wanted to be the big hero. And it didn't exactly work out.”
“What you mean? We have the toys back, don’t we?” Charlie said.
“Well…” Zander said.
Everyone looked over at him, including Drew. What did “well” mean?
“We have most of them back,” Zander said.
“What?” Drew straightened. “They’re not all in there?”
“Nope,” Zander said. “Looks like Roger tried to set you up but couldn’t bring himself to leave them all. He kept ten.”
Now that actually made sense. “Fucker knew those things were worth five times now what they’ll eventually sell for when they’re released. He’ll get way more than the three grand he said he needed,” Drew said.
“That’s what I figured,” Zander said with a nod.
“Oh, he got way more than that,” Ellie said.
Everyone swung to look at her now.
“What do you mean?” Drew asked.
She was scowling but she waved away his question. “Never mind. I’ll take care of it.”
“Did you—” Zander started, then he held up a hand and shook his head. “You know what? The less I know, the better sometimes.”
“I got along just fine for nearly fifty years before you became a cop. I’ll let you know when and if I need you,” Ellie told him.
Zander nodded. “That’s perfect.”
Paige leaned over to Charlie and asked softly, “Does Zander seem less…Zander-ish lately? He’s really intense about work. And he seems a lot less annoyed about it in general.”
Charlie nodded. “Yep. And we all know why.”
The women shared a smile.
Drew didn’t know what that all meant, but before he could wonder about it much, Charlie turned to him. “Well, anyway, I don't know everything that went down, and I’m not sure I want to, but I have a feeling that if you hadn't gotten involved, all of those controllers would be long gone, right?”
He thought about that. That was true. Roger would have just disappeared with the controllers. Or tried to steal fifty empty boxes and then disappeared.
Instead, he’d left the controllers—most of them anyway—with Drew. As a warning.
On his drive back to Autre with the abandoned truck full of stolen game controllers and no sign of Roger, even before Zander had turned on his flashing lights, Drew had figured out what was going on. Roger hadn’t liked being pushed around and threatened. This was his way of telling Drew that if he was going to get involved in Rory's life, Roger was going to be a continual thorn in Drew’s side. It was a big, obvious promise—being involved with Rory was going to be a lot of work and a big headache.
Drew was still all in.
His three days in Autre had already been crazier than his last three years in Appleby.
And he wanted more.
13
Rory was pacing outside the Autre jail when Ellie Landry stepped out onto the sidewalk and nearly ran into her.
“Oh, honey!” Ellie exclaimed. “What are you doin’ out here?”
“Trying to decide if I should go in,” Rory said honestly.
“And why wouldn't you go in?”
“I'm not sure I should be in there. I’m not sure what I can do. About anything that’s going on.”
Ellie stepped close with a small smile. Then she reached up and cupped Rory's face between her two hands. “Santa's Village was not a test.”