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“I do need to take the tater tots out of the oven though,” Laura said.

The cops all shared a look with each other for a moment as Laura went to the oven. It was clear they were a little surprised that the Kingsleys ate frozen tater tots with their burgers just like they were normal American human beings.

They went to the master bedroom next. It was a huge room, the biggest in the house in fact. Their bedroom set was the centerpiece. It was a King-sized bed and two large, mirrored dressers. Nightstands sat on either side of the bed. The bed itself was made up, but not as neatly as Elsa did it (you could literally bounce a penny off a bed that Elsa had made). Jake noticed Clark looking in the laundry hamper with particularly keen interest. He took a glance inside and saw that a pair of Laura’s panties were sitting on top of the heap of laundry within. They were the lime green ones with the white polka dots. He knew instinctively that if Clark had been alone in the room he would have picked them up and taken a sniff.

“Here’s the master bath area,” Jake said, leading them around the partition wall. Here was the glass-enclosed shower, the large jacuzzi tub, and the marble dual sink. He opened the door to the throne room for them so they could be sure there was no tranny hiding in there. He then led them back out to the walk-in closet, which was as big as an entire secondary bedroom in one of their houses.

“All right,” Jake said. “How about we check out the other guest rooms next? If we were, in fact, harboring a sex slave, that would be the most likely place to keep her, right?”

“Right,” Stivick agreed.

They went through all four of them, one by one, and then he took them to the composition room where he worked on his music. The deputies were all impressed by the room, looking at the guitars in their racks on two of the walls and the multitude of gold and platinum records that took up the entirety of another wall. Jake saw with alarm that Laura’s sweep of the house had not come through this room. His stashbox, which was a Cuban cigar box that contained a quarter ounce baggie of excellent pot, a pair of small scissors, and some rolling papers so he could get himself in the proper composition mood, was sitting on the desk amid the clutter of musical score sheets and notepaper, right in plain view. Thankfully, however, the ashtray, which was also on the desk and which often had a roach or two in it, had been dumped by Elsa before she had left on vacation (Jake had long since gotten over her throwing roaches away and she had subsequently discarded probably a thousand dollars worth of weed over the years). That ashtray was the only thing on the desk that she was allowed to touch. All three deputies noticed the box—they had cop eyes that missed little—and undoubtedly knew what it was for, but none made any comment on it. After all, the contents of the box were not in plain view and therefore they had no right to open it—a now clear legal precedent thanks to Matt Tisdale and his attorney a few years back.

“This is where you write your music?” asked Stivick.

“Ever since we’ve moved here,” he said. He pointed to the battered old Fender that sat in a place of honor on a tripod stand next to the desk. “That’s the guitar I always use. It’s the first acoustic I ever bought back when I was in high school.”

“That’s pretty cool,” observed Clark.

“I bet that will be worth some serious money someday,” put in Maxwell.

“It will never be for sale,” Jake said sincerely. “At least not in my lifetime or Laura’s lifetime.”

Next, they went to the office with its video monitors and computer screens that watched over everything. They were particularly impressed with his setup.

“Wow,” Stivick said, looking at everything. “This must have cost you a pretty penny.”

“More than twenty grand for everything,” Jake told him. “I need it though. There are lots of people in the world who would like to try to rip me off or attack me or my wife. I get letters from them sometimes. Nothing moves on this property without being seen on the cameras. The doors are all steel-reinforced and secured with security bars. The windows are all fitted with bullet-resistant glass that you can go at with a sledge hammer and they still won’t break.”

“Do you have guns?” asked Clark.

Jake shook his head. “So far, I haven’t felt the need for one.”

“You might want to think that over,” suggested Stivick. “You’re a ways off the beaten path here on this cliff. Our response time to your house on a busy night might be as much as fifteen minutes, maybe longer depending on where our units are. A lot can happen in fifteen minutes.”

Jake nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll take that under consideration,” he said.

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