by Jo Goodman
5
Ramsey appeared at the city building the following afternoon and took the stairs down to the police station. There was a smattering of applause as she walked in, which she would have ignored except the men kept calling out to her.
“Way to go, Ramsey,” Ron Ozimek said, putting his feet up on an open file drawer. “The DTF shut down your man’s meth lab early this morning.”
The DTF was the drug task force made up of city cops, county deputies, and a few men from the state police.
“I hadn’t heard that, Oz,” said Ramsey. “But you know, I thought he was planning a camping weekend.”
“Uh-huh.” Karl had his tongue firmly in cheek. “So we understand. Still, you be more careful. Those camping enthusiasts are a breed apart.”
Buddy nodded sagely. “Yeah. A half-breed apart.”
Oz pointed a finger at him. “Not sure you can say half-breed. You gotta watch yourself. Could be on the list of things you can’t say when we have company.”
“What? Half-breed? Are you telling me incest is off the table? Because that’s what I was meaning. Thought you were smart enough, Oz, to get the context.” Buddy jerked his chin at Ramsey. “You got it, didn’t you? Was it out of line?”
Ramsey held up a hand, palm out. “Not my conversation, Buddy. I’m looking for—”
Chief Bailey opened the door to his office, crooked a finger at Ramsey, and said, “Officer Day’s in here.” He stepped aside to let her pass. It was not strictly necessary because he was a slightly built man, and she could have slipped sideways through the opening without even brushing him, but he was also an old school gentleman and conduct was important to him. He was on the point of closing the door when he stopped, looked directly at Buddy, and gave him the stink eye. “Half-breed’s off the table, Buddy. Doesn’t matter the context.” Then he disappeared inside his office, shutting the door with an audible click.
Bailey was still smiling to himself as he lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. “He’s going to be scratching his head for days, wondering how I heard that.” He leaned forward, reached for the heavy black desk phone, and turned off the intercom button. “I can only remind him so many times to watch what buttons he’s pressing on his phone. He doesn’t get it. There are things I just don’t want to know.”
Ramsey nodded, smiled in return. She liked the chief. Out of uniform he was unassuming, everyone’s kindly grandfather. If he stood overlong near the entrance to Southridge, people thought he was a greeter, and he never minded that they did. In uniform, his narrow frame did not prevent him from wearing the mantel of authority. He commanded respect. It was more effective at managing his men than wielding power.
Bailey set his forearms on his desk and folded his hands. He spoke to Ramsey. “I’ve looked over the transcript of your recorded statement. It all seems in order. Buddy took it out to the store this morning when we got another call. Seemed convenient to do it that way. Paul signed, but that’s when we learned you had the day off.”
“Yes.”
“May I ask if it was scheduled that way or a consequence of your actions yesterday?”
“A consequence,” she told him. “But he hasn’t fired me. Just a day off for me to think about what I’m never going to do again. It was fair since he doesn’t really believe me.”
“Good thing we do, then.” He looked to Sullivan Day for confirmation.
“Yes, sir.”
Bailey nodded. “Blood tests at the hospital confirmed methamphetamine in his system. The doctor thought he’d probably been awake for better than seventy-two hours. John Doe, whose name turns out to be John Dolan, started talking out of his head. You heard Oz tell you about the bust.”
“I did. That’s good for you, for the community.”
“It is. You’re clear, right? No more following citizens with a buggy full of camping gear, especially when it contains half a dozen propane tanks. Call dispatch next time. You know the number? I can write it down for you.”
“Nine-one-one,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.
“Good. Now that was my lecture as chief of police. You want to hear the fatherly version?”
“If it’s all the same, I’d like to pass.”
Chief Bailey released a long breath. “All right, but just so you know, it ends with grounding you and no TV for a month.” He winked at her. “My daughters were a handful.”
Now Ramsey did smile, once more at ease. “Is that the statement?” she asked, pointing to the document on the desk in front of Sullivan Day.
Bailey nodded. “Go on, Sully. Give it to her.”
Ramsey blinked and then looked sideways at Sullivan. “Sully? You let him call you Sully?”
“You know he’s the chief, right?”
Bailey offered up a Cheshire cat smile. Sullivan Day simply grinned back.
Ramsey shrugged, shook her head. They had just communicated in some sort of man code that a Turing machine couldn’t crack. “May I?” she asked, sliding the document toward her. When they both nodded, she picked it up and began to read.
“I need a pen,” she said when she’d finished. The chief offered her a fountain pen from a stand on his desk. She shook her head. “I can’t use it. I know. I’ve tried. I’m left handed. I always smear whatever I write. A ballpoint will do.” She accepted the pen he pulled out of a drawer and signed the document. “Who gets this now?”
“I do,” said Sullivan. “I have to file it.”
She pushed it in his direction. “I suppose that’s all. Thank you.” Ramsey started to rise, but the chief waved her back down. She sat more slowly than she had when she first came into the room. Her chin lifted a fraction; her dark eyes registered curiosity.
“What you did out at Southridge got me thinking,” Bailey said.
“You mean following a shopper when I suspected he might not intend to pay?”
“Yes.” He said the word slowly and after a pause that held certain significance. “Yes, that’s what got me thinking. Have you ever considered becoming an officer, Ms. Masters?”
The question was so unexpected that she twitched like a tweaker. “What? No. Never.”
Bailey went on anyway. “You’d have to apply, take a test, and demonstrate that you’re physically capable. I don’t anticipate that either the exam or the physical demands would be a problem for you. Once you’re hired, you’d go to the academy for sixteen weeks of training. You would return as a probationer and be assigned to a field-training officer for five months. Once you’re through the levels you’re off probation.”
Ramsey stared at him. She couldn’t help it. “You’re serious.” She hardly knew if she were asking him or stating a fact.
“Of course, I’m serious. I’ve been talking to the council and the mayor for months about hiring more women. Detective Heidenreich took maternity leave and then chose not to return.” He shrugged. “It happens. I always thought we were fortunate that she came back after her first child was born. The second one was just too much of a pull to stay at home—at least for the foreseeable future. Officer Glaspell didn’t work out. So now we have no women. A few have applied but I won’t hire just to hire. How long have you lived in Clifton?”
“Four years. The same amount of years that I’ve lived in West Virginia.”
“So you’re not a native. We wouldn’t hold that against you.”
“That’s kind of you,” she said because no other response came to mind.
“This is something you can think about, isn’t it?” Bailey asked. “Now that I’ve planted the seed?”
She nodded dumbly, not trusting herself to speak.
“Probably need to give you some time. Can’t say that I can tell if you’re stunned or overwhelmed.”
She managed to push a single word past her hammering heart and the lump in her throat. “Both.”
“That’s all right, then. You give that seed some time to sprout. See what comes of it.”
That damn seed was going to turn
out to be a pumpkin. She just knew it. Her head was going to explode. “Yes, sir. Chief.” She stood quickly, and turned, not waiting to see if Bailey gestured for her to sit again, then she was out the door and out of the station as if she were being chased by the K-9 unit.
Sullivan caught up to her in the parking lot where she was just opening the door to her Ford Escape. “Wait,” he said. “Can we talk for a minute?”
Sure they could, she thought. Once she caught her breath. It wasn’t her quick exit that left her lungs short of air. It was the panic attack. She couldn’t quite get it under control. She held up an index finger, signaling she needed a moment. A deep breath in through the nose and a count of ten to exhale through her mouth. That’s what she’d been taught and that’s what she practiced. She closed her eyes, not caring what he thought, and repeated the breathing twice over. She kept her hand on the door handle, felt the shape of it under her fingertips, absorbed the heat into her palm. It grounded her. Kept her in the moment.
She opened her eyes, stared into Sullivan Day’s smoky gray ones, and nodded. “Sure. We can talk.” She paused, and added, “Sully.”
A dark eyebrow kicked up and the smoke left his eyes as they narrowed ever so slightly and turned gunmetal gray. “You’re not the chief.”
That steely-eyed stare kept Ramsey immobile until she realized his features were set too stonily to be serious. Unfortunately, understanding seized her only a nanosecond before implacability collapsed under the weight of his juvenile humor.
“Had you,” he said unapologetically.
Ramsey offered him a humorless smile. “Yeah. You had me. For all of a second.”
“Serves you right. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to tug on Superman’s cape?”
“Jim Croce.”
He chuckled. “Okay, so you know your oldies. I’ll keep that in mind.” His features changed again, neither hard nor soft, just concerned. “Are you all right?”
“Did the chief tell you to come out and ask me that?”
“No. I’m showing initiative.”
A genuine smile made the corners of her mouth twitch. She nodded. “I’m fine.” Another pause, then, “Now.”
“You didn’t have much color in your face back there.”
“I’m sure.” She touched a cheek with her hand. There was heat again so she supposed that meant there was color. “Was it your idea? About applying to the department.”
“No. That was all the chief. He might have talked to some of the other guys about it since they’ve known you longer, but he didn’t ask my opinion.”
“Do you have one?”
“I do, but I’ve been thinking about asking you out, so I don’t know if sharing that opinion will improve my chances of you saying yes or ruin them for all time.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes?” Now he was stupefied and unable not to show it. “You mean it? You don’t even know what I had in mind.”
“Is it dinner and movie?”
“No.”
“Are you going to get drunk?”
“No.”
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Then it’s still yes. Now tell me. I want to know what you think.” Ramsey saw he had to get his feet under him. She guessed she’d pulled pretty hard on that rug. He probably thought he was lucky, or that he was going to get lucky. He didn’t know she only had bad dates.
“Well, I thought it was a pretty good idea when the chief proposed it, then I watched your face as he was talking and reconsidered. It’s only a good idea if you think it is. No one should be a cop who doesn’t want to be, and I don’t think you want to be.”
“Do you think I should feel flattered that he chose to plant his seed in me?”
“I don’t know about flattered, but you sure as hell need to find another way of saying it.”
Ramsey heard the echo of her question in her mind and had to laugh. “You’re right. That did not come out the way I meant it.” Heroines in Regency romances, even those in full recline on their chaise longues, had better lines than that. “I’ll work on it,” she promised. “And your opinion’s been duly noted as they say.”
“They say that? I hadn’t realized.” His head tilted as he studied her contemplative expression. “You’re going to think about it, aren’t you?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. No.” She offered the last denial with more finality than she had offered the first one and then changed the subject. “So when’s the date? And what’s the date? I might need to ask for time off depending what shift I’m working.”
“Saturday two weeks away. I think that’s the tenth. Prepare yourself. It’s my mother’s half-sister’s daughter’s wedding.”
“Your cousin, then.”
“Half-cousin. My half-Aunt Kay prefers the distinction. Never said aloud, of course, but always in the back of her tiny mind. She and my mother were not close, but Linda and I get along just fine, mostly because we ignore her mother. Are you still in? I have to RSVP. I should have done it already but I was trying to decide about the plus one. Linda called me yesterday and told me she could wait until Monday to hear back from me. Aunt Kay wanted an answer a month ago so I can hardly make her pissier than she is.”
“I’m still in, although this has bad date written all over it.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s on the invitation,” he said dryly. “Keep your expectations low and we’ll be fine.”
“I can do that. What time is the wedding?”
“Four. I’ll check again to be sure and let you know if I’m wrong.”
“And where?”
“Cumberland State Park. The ceremony and the reception. Do you know it?”
“Yes. I hike there.”
“Huh. So do I. Bike and swim too. Anyway, the whole thing is mortifying for Aunt Kay, although you won’t be able to tell. Botox. She wanted the ceremony at Heinz Chapel on the Pitt campus and the reception in the Carnegie Music Hall. Aunt Kay and Uncle Mark are making good money—very good money—from the fracking boom. Kay wants to show it off. Linda’s having none of it, but it’s impressive that she’s been able to get her way. Elopement was a factor, I believe. Could have been a threat.”
“What is appropriate dress for a wedding in the park?” She watched him frown, clearly bewildered. “You haven’t given it a thought, have you? You can’t wear your uniform, you know.” More’s the pity, she told herself, because he looked extraordinarily fine in it, and that was hard to pull off in a polyester/cotton blend and Kevlar.
“And you shouldn’t arrive carrying concealed.”
She laughed. “Never mind about the dress code. I’m sure I can find something that will suit. Unless it rains. Then it’s my yellow slicker, duck boots, and a golf umbrella with the Ridge Group Stores logo on the canopy.”
Sullivan cast his eyes upward to the cloudless cerulean sky. “Please, Lord, let it rain.”
Ramsey did not know what came over her, but she poked him in the chest with her forefinger. He might not have felt it under the Kevlar, but he definitely saw it. He grinned like a fifth grader who’d just taken a punch from the girl in pigtails who told everyone she didn’t like him. In the language of eleven-year-olds everywhere, the punch said otherwise.
She let her hand fall to her side, curled her fingers into a fist. There was no point in apologizing and calling more attention to it. Instead she said, “I’m beginning to feel a little sorry for your Aunt Kay.”
He sobered. “We’ll see how you feel after you meet her. I’ll pick you up an hour before the ceremony. That will leave us plenty of time to get there, park, and give relatives, friends, and complete strangers an opportunity to talk about us.”
“Please, no more. You’re getting my hopes up.” She reached behind her and pulled on the SUV’s door. “Wait? Do you know where I live?”
“I ran your license, remember? Twenty-four nineteen Keenan Avenue.”
She nodded, stepped closer to him as she opened the
door wider, and then retreated to slip neatly inside. She removed a silver sunshade from the front window, tossed it on the passenger seat, and started the Escape. She couldn’t say what possessed her to raise her hand in farewell as she drove away, and it was only when she was out of the municipal parking lot that she realized she left without knowing the answer to the question she’d meant to ask him. She was philosophical about it. After all, there was a bad date in her future. She would find out about the speeding ticket and his nonappearance in court then.
6
Sullivan thought he would see Ramsey at least once or twice before the wedding, but other officers were closer when calls came in from Southridge. They weren’t all from Ramsey anyway. The store employed eight loss prevention specialists, generally working in pairs on one of three shifts. If dispatch knew Ramsey’s schedule, they could predict within one incident how many calls they would get from the store during her rotation. The Ridge Group Stores took asset protection seriously. The number of specialists per store was predicated on the local crime rate, particularly as the crime was related to drugs, the population of the town or cluster of towns, the distance from a major highway, and the store’s history of theft.
Ridge stores located south of a town’s epicenter were Southridge stores. Those to the north, Northridge, and so on. It was the Ridge Group’s way of making the store more personal to the town, or at least that was the business model. Although it was categorized as a big box store, that description chafed Ridge executives. The Group went to some lengths to develop stores in a style that fit the community, sometimes taking over abandoned properties and breathing new life into them through remodeling rather than razing buildings and erecting modern fortresses. It was not cost effective in the short term, but by taking the long view, Ridge stores usually won the community over. They did not offer the cheapest prices. They couldn’t afford to. But neither did they drive out the local small business owners. What they offered was the convenience of a large inventory in one location coupled with the design sense of last century department stores.
