Lottawatah Repossessed

Brianna Sullivan Mysteries

vol. 12

LOTTAWATAH REPOSSESSED

EVELYN DAVID

Smashwords Edition

Trace Evidence Press

Copyright 2014 Evelyn David

Discover other titles by Evelyn David at http://www.evelyndavid.com

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. Thank you.

cover photo © Valentin Armianu | Dreamstime.com

Bulldog photo by Jill Harmon Smith

All Rights Reserved

ISBN-13: 978-0692320778

ISBN-10: 0692320776

Chapter 1

Put me down.

It's tradition.

I preferred to ignore the slight grunt when he swept me up in his arms, and even the little staggering two-step he had to take when he stepped over the threshold. Still it was enough to make me resolve to lose a few extra pounds before the big day.

Cooper stood in the foyer of the probably soon-to-be ours home, grinning like an awkward teen about to be awarded his Eagle Scout badge. I knew that smile because Sassy, my future mother-in-law, had a photo memorializing just that moment in history. The pride, the sense of accomplishment adolescent Cooper had felt, all oozing from the photo frame.

We stayed like that for a moment in our soon to be new house, me with my arms tightly around his neck, his arms holding me aloft, both kissing like teenagers at a drive-in. It crossed my mind that this wasn't the first time he'd carried me across a threshold, but I didn't count that ramble-shack lodge he'd purchased without telling me last year as our first house. Instead of being Cooper's dream home, it had ended up being a nightmare that he'd only just managed to void the contract on.

I think you have to actually own the place and be married before the tradition applies, I murmured, just after I had kissed that sweet spot on his neck, right below his left ear. We shouldn't be tempting fate again. This could be bad luck.

Not a chance. Forget about that other property. Totally different thing, he whispered.

Since I'm not a glass-half-empty type person, I tried to set my doubts aside.

This is the new Jackson family tradition, he said. We are going to have a great life here. Can't you feel it? This is the perfect house for us.

Cooper's not big on sentimentality, but apparently buying a home was enough to make him an in-touch-with-his-feelings kind of guy. I wouldn't tell anyone. It would spoil his image as the tough Lottawatah Chief of Police.

Sullivan-Jackson tradition, I had to add to keep up my feminist credentials.

Hell with that, he said, but still continuing to lightly feather kisses around my mouth.

Okay. I'd fight that fight another time. When I came up for air, I added, But I do think you have to actually be married before you do the threshold tradition. So we'll need to repeat this. I didn't want to jinx anything before the big day. And that's not for another five months.

He stopped with the kissing. What do you mean five months? I thought we had the date set for the fifteen of next month.

I tried to give him my sexiest, sauciest smile, but Eagle Scout Jackson was having none of it. He stared, waiting for an answer he didn't want to hear.

Honey, I just found out that my mother can't come until Christmas. She has plans to be in Southern Italy until then. What do you think about Valentine's Day for the wedding?

He dropped me to the floor like a sack of potatoes. I just barely managed to land on my feet rather than my ass.

Brianna, send her a picture of the happy wedding couple, who were married in October.

You know I can't do that. She's my mother. I was hoping that an appeal to family would be my trump card.

Apparently sentimentality be damned. He shook his head. Exactly. It's your mother, your crazy mother. We're not rearranging our lives for her.

I was hard-pressed to make too strong a case on the sanity of my mother because she was often, maybe too often, just plain too much. Still she was my mother.

Cooper, she's not crazy, or not so crazy. And there's no way I can get married without her there. She'd never forgive me and the ghost of my saintly grandmother wouldn't either.

I decided that the best offense was to switch focus.

But would you look at this absolutely perfect house. I grabbed my still fuming fiancé and pulled him into the living room. I saw a slight relaxing of his jaw and even a glimmer of a smile.

It really is perfect. He pulled me close and we savored every inch of the cozy room, but especially the brick fireplace with bookcases built around it.

Cooper and I had been house-hunting for months. Living together in Matilda, my motor home, was enough to convince me that while I adored this man, cramped quarters tended to exaggerate his flaws, like his habit of leaving his dirty clothes wherever he discarded them. Of course, he didn't particularly care for my tendency to sing show tunes in the shower on the days he finally had off and could sleep in. Our future happiness depended on getting more living space. So a large four-bedroom, three-bath, modified Colonial with a covered patio and large yard for Leon, my digestively-challenged bulldog, was in fact just the ticket to marital bliss.

You're sure this house is clean? Cooper looked at me anxiously. Do you need to check it again?

He wasn't worried about whether we could eat off the floor. In fact, we could. Old Mrs. Singleton, who had passed away six weeks earlier, was a meticulous housekeeper. Even in her 80s, she believed that the only way to clean a kitchen floor was by washing it on her hands and knees. That was one tradition this house was going to lose, that was for sure.

No Cooper wanted to make sure that there were no ghostly inhabitants that would preclude our buying this property. It was why we had made a second visit, sans realtor, to the house. No use buying a pig in a poke, or in this case, a house haunted by angry spirits.

Nope, nobody here but us chickens, I grinned. I'd carefully walked through the house, from basement to attic, when our realtor Bunny Angelos had shown it to us two days earlier. I had the same feeling when Cooper had just carried me over the threshold. A sensation of peace, comfort, light, love.

The house was six blocks from the nearest cemetery, so I wouldn't be bothered by any night murmurings amongst disgruntled spirits. But I might have fibbed about the totally clean part. The house wasn't new construction. People had lived here before and some had passed on in the due course of normal events. There were shadows living within these walls that a fresh coat of paint would never remove. They were benign imprints of past lives; memories of the happy times that had been lived in this well-loved home. These fragments of spirits would only reassure me that my life with Cooper would be happy here too.

Which just goes to show you that I don't know everything. My name is Brianna Sullivan. I'm a psychic, but obviously not much of one. I had no premonition at all of how things could change so quickly.

***

It was a couple of weeks later before things started to head south. I'd never been to a house closing before. Cooper and I had arrived at Bunny's real estate office a few minutes later than the appointed time. Okay, maybe a half hour late. The line for a table at Tiny's had been long–it was all you can eat wings Monday and Cooper had set his heart on at least a dozen for lunch. When I couldn't reach Bunny on her cell phone to tell her we'd be delayed, Cooper had grudgingly agreed to a couple of to-go orders. It was faster, cheaper, but of course without that magnificent all you can eat allure.

I looked on it as a reprieve. After the paperwork was done and the large check delivered, I had to go back to work at the funeral home. Late summer and the week leading up to Labor Day was our busy season. Speedboat collisions at nearby Lake Eufaula and the 100 degree temps in the hay fields had contributed to Doc's, and as a consequence my, uptick in income. Still, I wasn't anticipating working on the propeller accident victim after over-indulging in barbequed chicken.

Try her phone again, Cooper ordered, tossing chicken bones into a paper sack and drinking down about a quarter of his super-sized diet Coke. Can't believe she's standing us up. Bunny Angelos is all about staying on schedule and dotting all her i's. Maybe she's had an emergency.

We were sitting in Cooper's truck in the parking lot in front of Bunny's locked office building, air-conditioning running full blast to keep the heat at bay. Regretfully I'd had one of those super-sized drinks too. I'm going to have an emergency if we don't find a ladies room in the next five minutes. Let's go to the Police Station and you can ask Beverly to put out an all-points thing on Bunny while I freshen up. Or maybe we could reschedule.

Cooper finished off another wing and frowned. You're not getting cold feet about the house are you?

No, my feet are fine, but my bladder is not. I wasn't lying to him. I was more than 70 percent sure that buying the house was the right thing for us at this stage of our relationship. And according to Cooper's dad, Wayne Jackson, interest rates were going to start going back up any day.

My fiancé motioned for me to hand him a few of the wet wipes he keeps in his glove box. Okay. but as soon as possible, we need to get this done. You have to sign too since it will be in both our names.

I nodded. We're busy this afternoon, but I'm sure Doc would let me have some time off tomorrow.

He put the truck into gear and backed out of the parking space. Damn that Bunny. I've got roofers hired to start next week. The plumber is going to be there on Monday. If there's much of a delay, we'll lose them.

I started to remind him that Bunny Angelos was his pick, but decided to save that for another time. Bunny was Lottawatah born-and-bred, but she always dressed like she was about to attend a board meeting in Dallas. No one in Lottawatah had ever seen her in anything less than a suit, pumps, pearls, and full makeup ala Estee Lauder. A mover and shaker of the small town that I'd begun to think of as home, Bunny had one finger on the pulse of the community and nine in their pockets. A contemporary of Cooper's mother, word on the street, or rather in the local beauty salon where Bunny did not have her hair done, was that she'd just handled the sale of about 300 acres, some of it city-owned, to a private developer for some kind of religious retreat. The details were still hush-hush. Perhaps Bunny was too busy doing God's work to get us out of escrow?

Chapter 2

The next morning found me sitting in the conference room of Bunny's real estate office at 9 AM signing away my life. If I thought marriage was scary, it was piffle compared to buying a house. Sure Cooper had put up the money for the down payment since my savings totaled $146 in the local bank, but as I put my name on legal document after legal document, I realized that I was finally hog-tied to something, if not someone, in Lottawatah, Oklahoma. This house didn't have wheels and couldn't hit the open road should the mood strike me.

Cooper had finally tracked down Bunny about an hour after I left the Police Station to finish my shift at the funeral home. He had relayed her excuse to me, using his best imitation of Bunny's irritated high school principal voice.

I'm sure I left a message for you on Brianna's phone. The title company hadn't finished the paperwork so I had to postpone the closing. Didn't you notice that Jefferson Thompson of Equity Title Company wasn't there? Didn't that give you a clue? You both be at my office tomorrow morning at 9 sharp.

Out of curiosity I'd checked, but couldn't find any message from her. Of course I wouldn't have bet my last $146 on the trustworthiness of my phone which was a dinosaur in cellular devices.

Are you keeping your own name when you two get married?

Bunny Angelos pushed another paper in front of me. I counted on Cooper to listen to what each document we were signing actually meant. I just scribbled my name wherever she pointed her well-manicured bony finger.

Cooper looked up from reading some paper that I think promised his first-born in the event that we were late with the monthly payment and answered for me. No.

I hadn't actually given it a lot of thought, but wasn't about to let that one slip by. Maybe.

Cooper scowled. Does it make any difference in terms of ownership of the house?

Bunny scooped up the paperwork, divided it into three piles, one for her records, one for the silent man from the title company, and one for us, before answering. You might want to have the deed changed once you two are hitched.

Cooper nodded. I'll talk to Jed Simons down at the courthouse.

I started to object, but before I knew it, Bunny was handing Cooper one of the piles of papers and two sets of keys. She stood up, shook Cooper's hand, ignored mine, and hustled us out of the building.

Cooper was grinning like he'd just hit a grand slam homerun. Let's go see our house. His smile was infectious and I was grinning like a fool too. We almost made it out of the parking lot when Cooper's two-way radio started squawking.

Cooper, we've got a problem here.

It was Beverly, my best friend and the department's dispatcher.

Cooper frowned and grabbed the microphone. Hey, Beverly. Get Harry to handle whatever it is. I'll be at headquarters in about an hour. We just–

Yeah, I know you just bought your first house. Tell Brianna that my Momma agreed to make the curtains for the kitchen like she asked. Won't cost you anything but the price of the fabric. The thing is Cooper you've got to come down to headquarters pronto. Pastor Saunders and his wife are here. Their son Buddy Junior is missing.

Can't Harry handle a runaway kid?

Beverly lowered her voice. It's Pastor Saunders, Cooper. You plan on being married in his Church, you better show up now.

Cooper frowned. 10-4. I'm on my way in.

Personally I was more than willing for Pastor Saunders to nix the Church wedding that my future mother-in-law was planning. The religious man had made no bones about his complete confidence that I was going to burn in Hell for my witchcraft ways.

Can you drop me at the funeral home? I left my car there.

Cooper shook his head. "It's