Read Swift Justice for Free Online Page B

the oil landed on the ranges, and it started smoking. Next thing I knew, you couldn’t see anything and people were screaming and running and—”
    “Bernie saved my life,” put in a new voice. I turned to see a teenaged girl wearing a Buff Burgers uniform, her raven hair in braids. She looked like Pocahontas wearing pink Crocs. “I got turned around in the smoke and started to choke—I have asthma.” She pulled out an inhaler to prove it. “She came after me and pulled me out of there.”
    I glanced over at Officer Venetti, glad to see he’d conquered his laughing fit enough to start taking notes.
    “That’s great . . .”
    “Caitlyn. Caitlyn Carruthers,” she supplied.
    “I didn’t
assault
him,” Gigi put in. “I had to butt him to make sure he didn’t run off.” She lowered her head and made a motion like a charging buffalo. “I only knocked him on his keister.”
    A tiny seed of hope that Swift Investigations was not ruined sprouted. If Caitlyn would tell her story to the reporters I saw crowding into the parking lot in their antenna-topped vans, and no one filed charges—
    “You assaulted me. My dad’s going to sue your butt back to the Stone Age, Grandma,” Jody said, getting shakily to his feet. “I hope those orange prison jumpsuits come in extra-large, buffalo breath.”
    Wow, that boy had a real mouth on him and knew how to aim for the jugular. He’d hold his own in juvie until he mouthed off to a bigger kid with a shiv.
    Gigi gasped in outrage. “Bison! And I’m not a grandma. I couldn’t be . . .” She paused, doing some mental math. “Well, I’m not. And a size fourteen is
not
an
extra
-large, and you’re . . . you’re nothing but a rude, incompetent thief!”
    “I am not! I got away with more than four hundred—” He cut himself off as he realized what he was saying. Twisting out of the EMT’s grasp, he hobbled away from the restaurant.
    “Yea, Bernie!” someone yelled. I heard a spattering of applause as Officer Venetti trotted after Jody, handcuffs in hand. Looking around, I saw that most of the audience wore Buff Burgers uniforms. Jody clearly wasn’t in the running for Mr. Congeniality.
    As Venetti led Jody, arms cuffed behind his back, over to a police car, I asked Gigi, “Why’d you ever decide to confront that delinquent on your own?”
    She used her tail to dab at the sweat running down her forehead and widened her eyes at me. “Well, you said to wing it.”

     
    The media and police consumed most of the rest of the afternoon. A young reporter interviewed Gigi in her one-horned buffalo head after Caitlyn told everyone about “Bernie’s” heroics. Exactly fourteen seconds of the interview made thelocal news. The anchors snickered in the studio as the reporter summed up, “What a moooving tale! Back to you, Jed.” It was almost enough to make me heave, but Brian Yukawa was so pleased with the free publicity for Buff Burgers that he and I came to an agreement on our own that didn’t involve our lawyers. I waived Swift Investigations’ fee, and Brian agreed to take care of the restaurant damages, most of which were from smoke and water. I offered to replace the stained and ruined Bernie costume, but he laughed it off, saying they had plenty of others in storage somewhere. Gigi brought Bernie’s head back to the office and propped it behind her desk, a massive trophy. It gave off an unpleasant odor of rancid grease, smoke, singed plastic, and french fries, but I didn’t have the heart to banish it. Maybe if we got it dry-cleaned and mounted, glued the horn back on . . .
    What was I thinking? I’d give it to Gigi as a going-away present, because surely she wouldn’t want to continue working here after the day’s traumas. On that hugely satisfying thought I locked up and headed for home, having persuaded Gigi to leave early. “You deserve some time off. And a long shower,” I’d told her.
    As for me, I deserved a long soak in my hot tub, but