Page 46 of Hottie on Her Shelf
Chapter Ten
Fitz’s phone pinged. Pinged again.
And then so many times in a row that it sounded like a damned pinball machine.
He pulled over under the shade of the bookstore’s green and white striped awning, then had a quick flashback to what a clusterfuck it’d been to get the awnings. Nothing changed in the historic downtown without a lot of discussion—aka,arguing—and going in circles in more laps than the Indy 500.
What drove him up a wall was that everyone wanted the awnings. All the fighting had been about the color, and then solid or stripes. That was a month of his life he’d never get back.
Before he walked out the door of city hall, he’d informed Derek that he’d be out for a bit. He’d walked a total of five blocks, and now Derek had texted him twelve times and sent two emails.
As far as Fitz knew, a cruise ship hadn’t missed hitting the brakes and plowed into their marina. No smoke hung in the air. Nothing was literally on fire. And if aliens were invading D.C., well, it could all wait until he finished his errand.
The text buried among Derek’s dozen was, however, worth a response. Because when someone saved your ass on a daily basis, you didn’t ever ignore them.
He sat on the green wrought-iron bench in front of the planters bursting with flowers. Mainers weren’t patient about waiting to get their spring color going. If a late frost hit, they’d just buy more. The boxes in front of every store had more than one tourist framing a photo of them.
The phone only rang once. “Hey, David. Got your 911. Did you catch someone embezzling?”
The town accountant let out a choked-off gasp. “No! Do you think city funds are being embezzled?”
Fitz kept drilling down, trying to uncover a sense of humor in the guy. So far, the only thing he’d discovered that reliably made David laugh were GIFs of pets talking. “It was a joke. If they were, I sure wouldn’t notice.”
David did all his work—and carried a hefty chunk of the mayor’s fiscal load, too. Fitz gave him an enormous bonus every year, from his personal bank account, for…well, doing his homework for him.
Fitz wasn’t lazy. He also wasn’t great with numbers. Swan Cove deserved better than his ham-handed attempts to wade through it all. He still put in the due diligence, scowled over every spreadsheet, but then had David sit with him and make sure everything was really on the up and up.
“Last I checked, which was fourteen minutes ago, our accounts were secure and unchanged.”
“Great. So what do you need from me?” There was a slight pause. Fitz could picture the ultra-precise David checking the task list on his Outlook before answering.
“It’s payroll day.”
“Yep.”
“I need you to sign the checks.”
Archaic nonsense. He had to approve the checks being printed in the first place. Forcing him to hand-sign them was a waste of time. The secretary of the treasurer sure didn’t sign the checks for every federal employee from GS1 to GS15.
Fitz had suggested a stamp of his signature. You’d think he’d suggested the Devil sign the checks by sticking his forked tongue in blood.
That wasn’t how things were done in Swan Cove.
If one person had said it to him, a hundred people had said it. Including people who weren’t even on the town’s payroll.
“Yeah. I do this every two weeks, David. By noon, so they can hit the mail.” The lack of direct deposit was another fight for another day.
“Derek said you were gone when I dropped the checks off on your desk. I was concerned.”
For fuck’s sake. Anger spiked through him like a heated pitchfork to his brain stem. Not at David. The guy was just acting on the information he’d received.
But Derek. Trying to micromanage him every second of the day. Obviously pissed that Fitz had taken unexplained time for himself and put the whole building on alert in a passive-aggressive play to get him back.
Campaign manager. Not a minder, not a jailer. The man thought he owned every inch of Fitz during campaign season. Probably because that’s what his dad had told him, and because he was an officious little prick.
One problem at a time, though.
“David, have I ever missed signing payroll?”
