Free Cry Baby Hollow by Aimee Love

before you got here.”
    “Not fixtures,” she explained, growing impatient. “PVC pipe.”
    “I can drive you in if you want,” he offered genially. “I don’t imagine you can fit much more than a teakettle in that trunk of yours. Now what do you need pipe for?” he wondered aloud.
    “Forget it,” she snapped, realizing it would be faster to go look herself than get a straight answer from him. She pulled open the door to her car and threw her purse into the passenger seat with enough force to launch her iPhone out and send it skidding onto the floor. She climbed in, retrieved it, started the car, and waited.
    Joe stood watching her, a bemused expression on his face.
    “She revved the engine and when this didn’t elicit the desired results, she popped the stick into neutral, pulled the emergency brake and opened the sunroof. She stood up on her seat, sticking her entire upper body out the sunroof and turning at the waist to face him.
    “I can’t get out unless you move your truck,” she pointed out.
    “I figured as much,” he agreed.
    “Then why didn’t you do it?” She asked.
    “Well,” he grinned again, showing off his white, straight teeth. “I thought it might be fun to watch you try.”
    She dropped back into her seat, slammed the car into gear, and cut the wheel as far as it would go. It took several minutes of surging forward and reversing, wrestling with the steering, but she managed to maneuver the car out from behind the truck and face it in the other direction. She pulled up beside him, coming as close to his foot as she could without hitting his side mirror.
    He knelt down so that his face was even with hers, completely unphased.
    “Every time I see this thing I expect a mess of clowns to come pouring out,” he told her with a boyish grin.
    “Really?” She asked archly. “The only thing I expect to come pouring out of yours is empty beer bottles.”
    She slammed down the accelerator and the tiny car leapt forward like it had been shot out of a canon.
    “Those are for the recycling,” he called after her. “I’ve gone green.”

CHAPTER TEN

    She was only half a mile away when her phone rang. She punched the hands free button on her steering wheel before she realized that it was still in her pocket. She dug it out and accepted the call.
    “Yes?” She answered warily.
    “That how you answer your phone?” Joe asked from the other end. “Whatever happened to ‘hello’?”
    “Hello,” she said sweetly, making a rude gesture at the phone. “What do you want? Wait. Where are you calling from?”
    “Your place. I haven’t had time to get home.”
    “You can’t just break into my house and use my phone without permission, Joe.”
    He was silent for a moment and she pulled the phone away from her ear and glanced at the screen to make sure she hadn’t lost the call.
    “You mind if I use your phone?” Joe finally asked.
    “No Joe, go ahead.”
    “I didn’t think you’d mind since I was calling you,” he explained apologetically.
    “It’s fine Joe. What do you need?”
    “And the door wasn’t locked,” he observed, “so I didn’t break in.”
    “Joe?”
    “Yeah?”
    “It’s fine. What do you need?”
    “I was just gonna let you know Burnett’s, that’s the hardware store, they still call it that even though Jim Burnett sold it… Hell, must a been five years ago now. Said he was gonna retire and fish all day, every day but that only lasted a week or so. All he does now is sit down at the laundry mat and watch talk shows.”
    “That’s too bad,” she told him. “Is it relevant in any way at all to my going shopping there?”
    “I don’t see why it would be,” he said thoughtfully.
    She counted to ten, waiting for him to come to some semblance of a point.
    “Is that what you called to tell me?” she finally broke down and asked.
    “Nope,” he said.
    “Then why did you call?” She asked, wishing her cell coverage was worse.
    “Thought you might need