Low Sided by A.J. Downey (best detective novels of all time txt) 📕

nodded, and frowned slightly, “Yeah, it’s weird,” I said.

He shook his head, “Naw, your world’s changing. For the better, but it’s still change. It’s only natural.”

I thought about that for a minute and finally nodded.

“Yeah, you know, you’re right. Thanks for that.”

He smiled a small thing and tipped his head down in a slight nod.

“You ready?” Glass Jaw asked.

I nodded.

“Ready.”

We went upstairs, and he unlocked my apartment door for me and oh, my gods…

I stepped into a living room with vanilla walls, light and airy, the smell of fresh paint assailing me. The floors had been stripped, sanded, and re-stained a deep golden oak, yet still retained enough scars and discoloration in places that it was honestly perfect. The character and the history etched in their surface.

I felt my hands over my mouth before I even knew they were there and edged further into the apartment. The kitchen was completely new, still lacking cabinets and countertops, but the backsplash was already so modern, glass thin strips of tile in grays, whites, and blacks. The floor set with black-and-white tile that was just exquisite.

The bedroom was done, the walls a light sage green, the bathroom so close just in need of faucets and fixtures.

“We’ll get it done, just needs a day or two for the tile to cure,” Glass Jaw declared and I rounded on him.

“Are you kidding me? It’s beautiful!” I sniffed, teary-eyed and looked from him to Mace to a track of ‘Awww’s’ from the doorway. Mace came to me and hugged me tight as I cried happy tears.

“Welcome home,” Glass Jaw said.

“More importantly,” Maverick interjected. “Welcome to the family.”

Home. Family. Yes… wasn’t it just?

Epilogue

Two years later

Glass Jaw…

“Gah! Damnit!” Mace cried, and I frowned, looking up from my call with one of my suppliers.

“Alright now, thanks,” I said and hung up the phone, calling from the kitchen down the basement stairs “What’s the problem?”

Laughter filtered up, and I rolled my eyes.

“Quit fuckin’ around down there and get it done!” I yelled. “The home buyer’s coming today, and I don’t need you all making us look like a bunch of fucking jackasses!”

We were working in the basement of a house built in the 1940s. It was a multi-tier repair, some foundational shit, new sump pump installation, mold removal; that sort of thing. The current homeowner? What a fucking bitch. I was hoping the buyer, who was coming in from across the country, would be easier to deal with since the repairs were going to overlap and go past closing which was supposed to be tomorrow.

I mean, honestly – who the fuck bought a house sight unseen from across the fuckin’ country like that?

“Hey, boss!” Mace called. “Come and look at this and tell me what you want me to do.”

“Fuck,” I muttered and went down the stairs into the unfinished basement. That wasn’t good, that was never good.

I went down to deal with whatever bullshit had come up and sighed.

“This cheap-ass white-trash fucking cunt ain’t gonna pay for it,” I said, looking up under the fireplace at the severely rotted wood. It wasn’t too bad of a repair, not bad at all, but I wasn’t about to do any more shit for this woman.

“What do you think?” Mace asked. “Point it out to the buyer after close and go from there?”

“Yeah, maybe.” I rubbed my chin and closed one eye looking up at the flaking dry rot going on. The whole corner of the beam was starting to come apart.

“Man,” Mace said shaking his head. “I don’t know what show this bitch watched to make her think flipping houses was a good idea, but she watched the wrong fucking one.”

I barked a laugh and said, “Who you telling?” Finally, I sighed and said, “Let me look at this inspection report again. The buyer’s inspector was really fuckin’ thorough – I don’t see how he could have missed this.”

“Yeah.” Mace nodded.

It was a real odd situation, this whole job. The buyer’s agent had reached out to me for one – which that almost never happened and after meeting the current homeowner, I understood why.

She wasn’t interested in anything except getting her money, period. Gold digging hooker. She’d even had the nerve to get up in my face about shit and I was fuckin’ trying to help her ass – giving her options. Not my fault she wanted top-tier everything at bargain basement prices. That wasn’t how this fucking shit worked.

“Jared?” a female voice called from upstairs, and I frowned and looked at my watch.

“Yeah, just a sec!” I called back.

“Holly?” Mace asked.

“Sounds like it, also sounds like she’s early.”

“Fuckin’ great.”

I huffed a laugh and slapped him on the back.

“Time to be the bearer of bad news,” I said and turned toward the stairs. Holly was the buyer’s agent – and thus, she was on our side.

“Hey, Holly,” I said as I came up the stairs.

Holly was the quintessential bubbly blonde, buxom, too – which I could appreciate both. She blinked wide blue eyes at me and said, “Uh oh, you don’t look happy. Homeowner or…?”

That was the other thing I appreciated about Holly – she was sharp as a tack. Today, that worked against me, some.

“I don’t know yet, give me half a second here,” I said and went over to the kitchen counter. That was the one thing they’d done right in this place – or at least on the surface. Granite countertops, gleaming white cabinetry, and brick facing for the backsplash, the kitchen looked sharp all except for the shitty, half-assed paint job in the same unrelieved gray throughout the whole fucking house.

I swear to God, the woman selling this place was painfully fuckin’ cheap. She probably had her fuckin’ kids paint the place.

Holly waited while I flipped through like the fifty-four-page printout that the fuckin’ inspector had handed her on the house. Yeah, it seemed like a lot, but a lot of it was penny ante shit. Nothing to write home about when just about every