by Maria Geraci
She eyed the crowd, most of which looked back at her with sympathy and support. “I’m sorry for the…bizarre tone this meeting has taken on, and as much as I’d like to ask Mr. Bailey to step down, I’m going to let him finish, because there isn’t anything he can accuse me of that will prove my unsuitability to lead as your mayor. But, I believe that’s exactly where he’s trying to go. Isn’t that right, Bruce?”
“Well… I hate to say it—”
“Oh, go ahead and say it. You’re a big boy.”
The crowd laughed.
“You’re right,” he sputtered. “That’s exactly where I plan to go.” Then under his breath so that only she could hear him, “You’re just a housewife, damn it. How in blazes did you ever get enough votes to beat me in the last election?”
“Good to finally have that out in the open,” she said, handing him back the mic. “Go on.”
He wiped the sweat off his brow and cleared his throat. “Thank you, Mrs. Grant, perhaps I did get too personal there. Let’s forget all about the next item on my list—the Bay Bridge incident. I’m sure there are many couples who get their thrills by having sex in public.” He let that sink in a moment.
“The real charge here,” he said to the crowd, “the one that simply cannot be written off is Mrs. Grant’s failure to provide adequate security at the festival. It was Mrs. Grant who refused to appropriate funds to pay the off-duty officers the festival normally employs, ensuring that the atmosphere would be ripe for thievery. As the wife of a police officer, you would think she would know better. When I first heard about this, I admit, I was skeptical. But now, it’s all come together. I don’t want to point fingers, but it’s been brought to my attention that the chief’s own father, who was seen wondering around the festival last night acting very suspiciously, has a police record. Can we really count on the two most important figures in our city government to put their personal feelings aside and investigate this crime with the due diligence it deserves? I think not.”
Mimi’s gaze flew to Zeke’s. He looked ready to strangle Bruce with his own two hands. If Mimi didn’t get to him first, that is.
Once again the crowd began to talk at once. Several people began shouting. Mimi recognized Pilar and the rest of the Babes. They were all sitting in the front of the bleachers, and they were all booing Bruce.
But that didn’t faze Bruce one bit. “I ask you good citizens of Whispering Bay! Do we let the wolf inside the hen house to count the eggs? No, we don’t! Therefore, I put forth this motion to recall Mimi Grant as mayor and to temporarily suspend Zeke Grant as chief of police until this matter is cleared up!”
The entire gym exploded. And so did Zeke. He stormed his way to the podium and ripped the mic from Bruce’s hand causing Bruce to recoil in mock terror. Mimi almost expected Bruce to begin shouting police brutality. Too bad, he didn’t. She’d love to see Zeke sock Bruce in the nose.
“People!” Zeke said, trying to calm down the crowd. “You all know me. And you know Mimi, too. I know you’re too smart to believe the crap Bruce Bailey has been trying to sell here this morning. But unfortunately, he has a point.”
Everyone stopped talking.
“I take full responsibility for the theft last night. I was dancing with my wife when I should have been helping with security. I promise you one thing, though. I will find whoever took this money. And I’ll make sure that they’re prosecuted to the full letter of the law. No matter who it ends up being. And if you find that I can’t fulfill that promise, I’ll turn in my badge.” Mimi sucked in a breath. “That’s all I’ve got to say.” Then he handed the mic back to Bruce and walked out the gym.
*~*~*
Mimi was on her way out the gym door to follow her husband when Claire came running up to her. “Mom, hold on a minute.”
What on earth was Claire doing here? Had she heard Bruce Bailey’s speech?
“Honey, I thought you were home with Cameron.”
“He’s twelve now, Mom. He’s old enough to not burn the house down. At least, not on a Sunday morning. Besides, he’s got Toby looking out for him.”
“Hello, Mrs. Grant.” Mimi had been so shaken to see Claire that she hadn’t noticed Adam. He took Claire’s hand. “I’m really sorry…about all that back there.” His face went pink.
“Not as sorry as I am,” Mimi said.
“Um, Mom, so…you know Adam,” Claire said uncertainly.
“Of course I do.” Mimi tried for her best smile. “I hear you and Claire are dating,” she said to Adam.
“Yes, ma’am, we are.” He glanced around the crowded gymnasium. “I know this isn’t a good time and all, but I wanted to say I’m sorry for the sneaking around. I want to date Claire openly. If you and Mr. Grant are okay with that.”
“We’re perfectly fine with that, Adam,” Mimi said. She wanted to add that they’d been perfectly fine with it all along. At least on her part. But the important thing was that Claire seemed to want to communicate again.
Betty Jean Collins caught her attention and came rushing up to her. “Oh, Mimi, this is…well, on the one hand it’s terrible! Zeke cannot resign as chief of police. He simply cannot. On the other hand, I’m happy to see that the two of you are back together!” She winked at Mimi, then paused. “You are back together, right?”
“Betty, this isn’t the best time to discuss this,” Mimi said, motioning with her head toward Claire and Adam.
“Oh! Of course. Just wanted to let you know I’m totally on your side! Team Mimi and Zeke all the way!” Betty said, running off to who knew where. For an almost eighty-year-old woman, she sure did seem to have a lot of energy.
“Okay, so that was weird,” Claire said.
“Tell me about it.” Mimi glanced back out toward the door. “Honey, I’d love to stay and talk, but I need to catch up to your dad.” Before he single handedly takes Bruce Bailey out. She thought it was best to keep that thought to herself, though.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. This whole thing is bogus! You and daddy work hard for this city. Honestly, Mom, no one believes you guys had anything to do with that missing money.”
“I know, honey, Mr. Bailey can get a little…emotional at times.”
“What can we do?” she asked.
“We?”
“Adam and I, and all our friends. We want to help you and Daddy.”
Mimi felt as if the clouds had suddenly parted and the sun was beating down on her head, warm for the first time in a very long time. “Oh, sweetie, just hearing you say that is all the help I need.” She reached out and hugged her daughter.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Claire whispered in her ear. “I know I’ve been a brat. I promise, I won’t lie to you anymore.”
*~*~*
It took Mimi a few minutes to make her way through the crowd to find Zeke in the parking lot. He was pacing the small area next to the minivan. “Hey,” she said, sounding out of breath. “Are you okay?”
“I will be when I kick that fucker’s head in.”
“Zeke,” Mimi glanced around. “Watch it. Someone might hear you who doesn’t understand that you’re just…kidding.”
“I hope the whole town hears me! Can you believe the nerve of that guy? Spouting off all our personal business in there?”
“I guess that’s just a part of being Whispering Bay’s number one power couple.”
He stopped his pacing to stare at her. “How can you joke about it?”
Mimi sighed. “I don’t know. I’m working on about five minutes’ sleep right now. All I know is, tomorrow is Claire’s graduation and your sister, who isn’t speaking to you, is getting married in exactly six days. And I have to find twenty thousand dollars or you’re going to quit your job. Having my sex life played out for the entire city doesn’t seem so important. Plus, you know, it’s not like the whole town didn’t know about it anyway.”
“You mean we have to find twenty thousand dollars.”
“Right. So where do we start?” sh
e asked. “We already interviewed everyone who was in the vicinity of the ticket booth at the time the money went missing.”
“Not everyone,” he said.
The house was a small brick ranch style home in a nice middle class Pensacola neighborhood. Modest, but well maintained, with a freshly mown green lawn and a flower bed under the front windows. Definitely not what Zeke expected.
Sam Grant answered the door on the second knock. He wore jeans and a chef’s apron with writing across the front. It said, The Last Time I Cooked Hardly Anyone Got Sick.
Zeke couldn’t help but stare at it.
“Zeke.” Sam looked stunned to see him. Not that Zeke blamed him. This was the last place he thought he’d ever visit, too.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Of course! Come in.” Sam wiped his hands down the front of the apron and opened the door wide.
Zeke let Mimi go inside first, hesitating just briefly over the threshold. As a cop, he was accustomed to taking in his surroundings and analyzing them quickly. Family pictures hung on the light beige colored walls. A vase of fresh cut flowers sat on the entryway console. There was even a piano.
The place was…clean. Respectable. What next? A wife wearing pearls and a couple of kids and a dog? No. Not a couple of kids. Just one.
Jeremy.
“Please, have a seat,” Sam said, motioning to the couch. “Would you like something to drink? Iced tea, or soda? Water, maybe?” He was nervous.
Because he was facing the son he’d abandoned twenty-four years ago? Or because he had something to hide from the chief of police of Whispering Bay?
Zeke’s cop instincts told him it was the former, not the latter. The realization helped ease some of the tension that had been coiled inside him ever since this morning’s fiasco.
“I’m good,” Zeke said.
“Me, too,” Mimi replied.
“Sam? Did someone knock on the door?” A woman in her mid to late fifties, maybe, walked into the room. She was on the short side, with light brown hair that reached just to the edge of her chin. No pearls, but she looked…nice.
She took one look at Zeke and Mimi and stilled. “Oh!” Her gaze flew to Sam. “I didn’t know…that is.” She shook her head. “I’m Janet, Sam’s wife.” She reached out her hand. Mimi immediately shook it, leaving Zeke no option but to follow her example. It was clear from her expression that no reciprocal introduction was necessary.
“How did you find me?” Sam asked. Then he blinked and looked embarrassed. “You’re a police officer. Of course you’d be able to find me.”
“We need some information about last night.”
Janet took a seat across from the couch. Sam took off that ridiculous apron, then sat next to her. His chair was close enough to hers that she could reach out to hold his hand. Was this the woman who replaced his mother? How long had they been married? He shouldn’t give a crap about any of it. But…
“What do you need to know?” Sam asked.
Zeke filled them in on the missing money.
“And you think I might be responsible?” He said it matter-of-factly, without any rancor.
“No, of course not,” Mimi jumped in to say. “But we interviewed everyone we could find last night and we’ve come up with nothing. Any little detail you could remember might help.”
Sam rubbed his chin. “I’m afraid I wasn’t paying much attention to anyone, except…you,” he said to Zeke.
The thought of Sam Grant covertly watching him as he’d walked around the festival grounds was...what? Disconcerting? Creepy? Oddly confusing?
“Have you watched me before?” Zeke asked.
Sam glanced away. “Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Maybe a dozen or so times over the years,” he admitted.
Over the years?
Mimi crossed her legs. Her right foot began to jiggle the way it did whenever she got nervous. It distracted Zeke enough that he didn’t hear the front door open until it was too late.
“Hey! I’m home. Who does that minivan belong to?” A tall kid with dark hair and light-colored eyes asked. He wore basketball shorts and the laces on his sneakers were untied. He was sweaty, like he’d just finished a workout.
Zeke tried not to gawk. This kid was his…brother. Or, half-brother. He looked eerily like Claire. More so than Cameron did. Driving over, the possibility that he’d run into the kid had never occurred to Zeke. Mostly because he thought they’d find Sam drunk in some bar or passed out in an alley. The cozy little family in front of him wasn’t what he’d pictured.
“Jeremy,” Janet said calmly, “We have guests.”
The kid immediately honed in on Zeke’s uniform. “Hey, I didn’t do nothing,” he said, laughing nervously. No one responded. Then his gaze slowly took Zeke in and his features hardened. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Jeremy!” his mother admonished. “Don’t be rude!”
“What?” Jeremy said, his focus still on Zeke. “Am I in some kind of trouble? Is that why you’re here?”
“That depends,” Zeke said, “Have you done anything to be in trouble for?” If it wasn’t for those blue eyes, Zeke could have been looking into a mirror from his past.
Jeremy raised his chin defiantly. “Like I said, I haven’t done anything wrong. And neither has my mom or dad.”
Zeke tried to not laugh. Karma was a bitch, all right. Hell. Jeremy didn’t just look like him, he sounded like him, too.
“It’s okay,” Zeke said to Janet, who was giving Jeremy the universal look of parental mortification. He turned to Jeremy. “Don’t let yourself be intimidated by a cop, kid. If you haven’t done anything wrong, then look ‘em in the eye and be firm. Just don’t cuss at us or take off running. We cops kind of hate to get sweaty that way, you know?”
Jeremy fought it, but he looked Zeke over with reluctant interest. “You look like you’re in pretty good shape.”
“I run a few miles every day. That helps.”
“Oh, yeah? How many?”
“I aim for at least three a day. Then I do a ten mile run once a week.”
“Ten miles, huh?” He shrugged, the way kids do when they wanted you to think they didn’t care about something. “I’m going out for cross-country next year at school. I’ve been training but I haven’t gotten up to ten miles yet.”
There was an awkward moment of silence as all the adults in the room took in the exchange. “Okay, well, I’m going to shower,” Jeremy said to no one in particular, then took off down the hallway.
Zeke waited till he was gone to say, “I take it he knows who I am.”
Sam nodded. “He found you. Just like you found me all those years ago.”
Ballsy and smart. Zeke couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride. He cleared his throat. “So, about last night,” he said to Sam. “When we first saw you, we were near the ticket booth. You remember that?”
“Of course I remember.”
“Anything stand out in your mind? Anyone who looked like they didn’t belong there?”
“Sorry. Like I said, I wasn’t paying much attention to anything except you.” Sam looked sheepish. “And the other cop, of course.”
“What other cop?”
“Medium height, red hair? He was standing watch over the ticket booth, making small talk with some of the people around. I only noticed him because I figured he must work for you.”
Mimi smiled. “That’s Rusty. Do you think you could describe anyone he might have talked to?”
“That would probably be the whole damn town,” Zeke muttered.
“Most of the time, he was talking to a woman. I remember that because they made a date to meet after the festival and then she made him promise not to tell anyone. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but…” Sam shrugged.
Zeke sat up straight. “Can you describe her?”
“Medium height, long hair. She had on a Whispering Bay police T-shirt. I remember that specifically because I wo
ndered if she might be a cop, too. Except, she had these long red fingernails, which I thought would be odd for an officer.”
“That’s Cindy,” Zeke said. “She’s our receptionist.”
“Rusty and Cindy are dating?” Mimi said. “I guess it all makes sense now. Betty Jean Collins is going to be so disappointed.” She giggled. “But why the secrecy?”
“It’s against department policy for two employees to be involved in a romantic relationship,” Zeke answered.
Huh. Rusty and Cindy. Atta boy, Rusty. Zeke hadn’t thought Rusty had it in him. Maybe he could get the department policy changed. He’d look into it first thing tomorrow morning. If he was he still chief of police, that is.
“Anything else?” Zeke asked Sam.
Sam frowned, like he was trying hard to remember. “I’m sorry. The rest of the people, I just didn’t notice…. That cop and his girl, that’s what I was focused on. Especially because there was this other guy who seemed interested in the girl, too. For a second, I thought he and the cop might get into it. But then it all blew over.”
“What do you mean?” Mimi asked.
“The other guy? He was flirting with her. That’s when…Rusty, you said? He came charging over to mark his territory. The girl seemed flustered by this other guy’s attention, but once the cop came over, the guy took off.”
“Came over? What do you mean?” Zeke said.
Sam thought about it a moment. “When I first noticed the cop, he was standing right by the ticket booth, but then this other guy was hitting on his girl, so he walked over to put an end to it.”
“Exactly how far away from the ticket booth did all this happen?” Mimi asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe twenty or thirty feet.”
Zeke exchanged a look with Mimi. “Far enough that someone might have gotten into the ticket booth without my officer noticing?”
Sam nodded slowly. “Definitely.”
*~*~*
“Promise me you won’t yell at him. Rusty can be very sensitive, you know.” Mimi readjusted her seat belt for the third time since they’d gotten back in the car. The damn thing seemed to be stuck or something.
