Tumbledown

by Cari Hunter

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “And Margot St. Clare would know.”

  Her comment broke the ice, and Candice gave a surprisingly girlish giggle. Margot St. Clare ran the post office and was a legendary distributor of gossip.

  “She’s wicked, isn’t she?” Candice had lowered her voice as if her postictal son might somehow feed her opinion back to the woman in question. “I thought she was going to explode when she heard about you and Officer Hayes buying the old Gardner place, but I guess she underestimated most folks’ inclination to live and let live ’round here.”

  Sarah nodded, catching hold of a chubby hand as Grant Jr. rediscovered his curiosity and reached out to her. “I think he’s feeling a bit brighter,” she said. She took the bottle of children’s Tylenol from the coffee table and measured out a dose. “Okay, young man. Come on. Down the hatch.”

  It was a messy business, but the pink goop was eventually swallowed down and showed no sign of being returned with interest. Sarah accepted Candice’s offer of peppermint tea and found that she was able to relax slightly. She had only been a first responder for six months. This was the first febrile seizure she had attended, and although the seizure had stopped by the time she arrived, being confronted with a pale, unresponsive infant had been almost as frightening for her as it had undoubtedly been for his mother. The nearest ambulance was based in neighboring Ruby, a good fifty-minute journey away, and that was only if its crew wasn’t tied up on another call. Although there was always the option of LifeFlight, she knew from firsthand experience that the chopper needed to be reserved for the direst of emergencies.

  “You said yes to honey, right?” Candice’s question cut into Sarah’s thoughts, and she murmured her confirmation. She would have paid quite a lot of money right then for a proper cup of English tea, the sort that was strong enough to stand the spoon up in, but she took the proffered mug and made space beside herself on the sofa. Candice lifted her son onto her knee and held up a bottle of juice from which he slurped noisily.

  “Are you going to the potluck picnic on Saturday?” she asked, unconsciously stroking her son’s cheek.

  “Um, I’m not sure. Alex mentioned it, but we hadn’t decided.”

  The potluck picnic was an annual event held at the lake where Sarah had recently started up her own swimming classes. The lessons were already popular enough that she was able to meet her half of the household bills, something which her own sense of pride demanded, and which Alex knew better than to argue about. Sarah had inherited a considerable amount of money when her mother died, but it was tied up in investments back in England, and she and Alex had donated most of their FBI reward to the groups and individuals who had helped save their lives. They had kept just enough to fund a year of traveling and to buy their cabin. She knew that most people would think them stupid, but she didn’t care; she preferred to be able to sleep at night. If nothing else, going along to the picnic would be a good way to network for new students.

  She looked up from staring at the thin green murk in her mug when she realized that Candice was still talking about the picnic. She took a sip of tea to cover for her silence.

  “You should go,” Candice insisted. “Everyone’ll be there, and we have some real good cooks in this town. You could make something English and exotic.”

  Sarah coughed a little on her mouthful; the terms “English” and “exotic” seemed mutually exclusive when applied to her national cuisine.

  “I make a mean lamb hotpot and jam roly-poly,” she said, “but they’re winter comfort foods. We’re not exactly famed for our balmy summer climate.” She racked her brain but failed to think of anything remotely suited to hot weather. “Maybe I could do a curry and everyone could just drink plenty of cold beer with it. That combination is practically the national dish.”

  “Sounds great, I love—” Candice held her hand up in apology as someone knocked on the door. “Excuse me.”

  Sarah looked expectantly toward the hallway, where she could already hear a familiar voice raised in cheerful greeting. She smiled when Lyssa Mardell poked her head around the door.

  “Hallo, hallo,” Lyssa said, blithely massacring an English accent. “What brings you out of bed at this ridiculous hour?”

  Sarah indicated the toddler now dozing on the sofa cushions. She handed over as much information as she could to Lyssa and her partner and then stepped aside to watch the two paramedics assess Grant Jr.’s vitals.

  “He’s still a little warm. Breathing and pulse are elevated,” Lyssa told Candice when she had finished. “Probably just a viral infection, but with him having the seizure, we’ll run him in to Cary.”

  Somewhat forgotten in Candice’s rush to gather things for the trip to the hospital, Sarah stooped to pack her kit back into her response bag. Lyssa crouched beside her and offered her a fresh oxygen mask to replace the one she had used.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. You did a really great job here, Sarah.”

  “I was shitting myself,” Sarah admitted quietly.

  “Yeah, but”―Lyssa nodded toward Candice―“she didn’t suspect a thing, which is half the battle.” She patted Sarah on the shoulder. “You get those exam results yet?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Same time on Friday for study club?”

  “That’d be great, if it’s no trouble.”

  They stood together and ushered Candice ahead of them.

  “Bake me something chocolaty and it’s no trouble at all.” Lyssa grinned and opened the rear door of the ambulance. “You get back to bed, hon.”

  Sarah watched the ambulance as it pulled away and slowly negotiated the uneven track that led out to the main road. Birds were just beginning to chirp in the branches overhead, and she could see the light changing over the distant hills, faint traces of orange eating into the blackness. A yawn caught her unawares. She hefted her bag onto her shoulder and pulled out her cell phone. Her call was answered on the second ring.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” she said. “Everything’s fine. I’m coming home.”

  Chapter Two

  The town of Avery comprised a main street, a tiny schoolhouse, an even tinier station house, and a neat white church that seemed unusually happy to accommodate disparate denominations. The shops and buildings lining Main Street were mostly constructed from local timber, their facades faded but neat, their signage swinging gently in the breeze. A floral competition with the two neighboring towns had seen the locals decorating every conceivable free space with brightly planted ceramic pots, and the warm summer days had made for a spectacular display.

  A creek meandered alongside Main Street as it led down to the lake, neatly bisecting the town, so that people described themselves as living in either East Creek or West Creek. In winter, East played West at hockey; in summer there were rival softball and soccer teams. Agriculture was the main source of income for most families, while pretty much everyone else worked shifts at the lumber factory on the back road. By the time they hit their teens, the majority of the local kids were looking to leave, to move to Boston or New York or anywhere with a population numbering more than two thousand eight hundred and three. More often than not, though, they returned to Avery to settle and raise their own children, only appreciating what they’d had once they’d given it up.

  Alex waved at Jo and Syd Bair as she drove toward the station house. Jo, heavily pregnant and already looking uncomfortably hot, waved back and then appeared to berate her husband for not paying attention. Through her rearview mirror, Alex saw him raise his hand in a belated greeting. She drove carefully, keeping well below the already cautious speed limit. Three times in the last two weeks, a moose had wandered casually across Main Street and caused minor traffic collisions, escaping on each occasion unscathed and ignorant of the chaos it had wrought. She harbored a sneaking suspicion that Chief Quinn was hatching a grand scheme to shoot it in time for Saturday’s potluck spectacular.

  When she arrived at the station parking lot
, it was empty of civilian vehicles. She parked next to the solitary patrol unit, leaving plenty of room for Quinn to take the prime spot at the entrance. During his thirty-two years on the job, Bill Quinn had built up a capable, loyal workforce, but—as Esther on dispatch so succinctly put it—he had a “real bug up his ass” about his parking spot, and only an idiot would dare try to occupy it. No one had thought to warn Alex about this on her first day, but, not being entirely ignorant of workplace politics, she had parked right out on the edge of the lot. She and Quinn had gotten along just fine ever since.

  Working alongside Chief Quinn in the Avery Police Department were two sergeants, four full-time patrol officers, three reserve officers, and two dispatchers. Their only detective was currently off on indefinite sick leave, but with so few cases falling within his remit, the department was coping perfectly well without him. As the local population was so sparse, the Avery PD dealt with all the law enforcement functions arising from the three towns within its jurisdiction. Of the three, Avery was the smallest and seemed a strange choice to house the department, but its location was central to neighboring Ruby and Tawny Ridge, and it was undoubtedly the prettiest, something that Alex suspected was more to the point. Castillo had given her a heads up about the full-time vacancy there, after hearing of Quinn through a mutual friend. Thanks to his behind-the-scenes machinations, what had happened to her and Sarah in the North Cascades had never made it into her official records.

  “Good morning.” Esther looked up from her Sudoku as Alex walked into the station. “Sarah get home okay?”

  Too little sleep and synapses firing solely on caffeine made Alex take far longer than she should have to work out how Esther knew about their predawn wake-up call.

  “Oh,” she said slowly. “You passed her the emergency.” She shook her head at her own ineptitude. “Yes, thank you, she got home a few minutes before I left.”

  “Lyssa said she did real good.”

  “Yeah?” Pride made Alex’s voice soft. “I’ll be sure and tell her.”

  There was a rustle as Esther sorted through the papers on her desk. “Not much else going down last night. Barrel Charlie is in cell one.”

  “Great,” Alex said through gritted teeth. Barrel Charlie was Ruby’s most notorious drunk, so called because of his propensity to howl the lyrics to “Roll Out the Barrel” in the town square at three in the morning. Often belligerent, not to mention doubly incontinent, he was usually transported home by the officers to avoid the stench he left in the cell block. “What did he do this time?”

  Esther made a show of reading from the paperwork, even though Alex knew she could have recited the details verbatim. “Sergeant Emerson apprehended him at 2:27 a.m., drunk, incapable, and naked from the waist down.”

  “Is he still naked from the waist down?”

  “No, Sergeant Emerson found him some sweats. Charlie claims that a group of local kids stole his belt, and that when his pants fell down it was easier just to step right on out of them. He had chosen to ‘go commando’ due to the hot weather.”

  “And where might Sergeant Emerson be now?”

  “Uh.” Esther winced. “He clocked off over in Ruby a half hour ago.”

  “Of course he did,” Alex muttered, and Esther gave her a sympathetic look. No matter what Alex did, how hard she worked, or how pleasant she tried to be, Scott Emerson consistently treated her like crap. She had yet to figure out why. Fortunately, they usually worked opposing shifts, which meant she was able to tolerate the snide comments and disdainful looks in the little time they were forced to spend together.

  “Tell the chief I’ll deal with Charlie as a priority before it gets too warm down there.”

  “Coffee first?” Esther was already pouring out two mugs.

  “Oh God, yes, please.” Alex breathed in the rich aroma, half-convinced that that alone would be enough to prepare her for extracting a statement from Charlie’s hung over, incoherent ramblings.

  “You have a good day now,” Esther told her without a trace of irony.

  Alex raised her mug in salute and walked slowly toward the cells.

  *

  The rough granite of the diving rock was almost within touching distance. Swimming steadily, no more than five yards away from her young pupil, Sarah saw him fix his sights on the rock and set his jaw. She didn’t need to say anything to encourage him; they had been working toward this for almost three weeks now, and for a twelve-year-old, he was incredibly motivated. She watched him stretch out, putting all his energy into a final kick and then grinning as he slapped a hand on the rock.

  “Holy fucking shit sticks.” For a twelve-year-old, he also had an extremely varied and imaginative vocabulary when it came to cussing.

  “Bradley!” Well accustomed to teaching adolescents, Sarah struggled to sound outraged. She hid her laughter by diving low, only breaking the surface when she saw the rock loom large in front of her.

  “You did brilliantly,” she said, treading water as Brad climbed out. He was small for his age, and severe asthma meant that he had spent a significant portion of his childhood in the Cary Medical Center. She hoisted herself up to stand beside him and they both waved at his mother, who was waiting anxiously on the shore. Brad’s skinny chest heaved, the skin sucking in between his ribs as he tried to catch his breath.

  “Let’s have a minute, huh?” Sarah tugged his hand to make him sit down. “Then we can get back.”

  They sat together, toes dipped into the cool, clear water. Avery Lake was vast, stretching for almost thirty square miles. Here and there small boats bobbed on the water, but mostly it was an uninterrupted expanse of aquamarine that only began to taper in width as it reached the craggy hills at its southernmost edge. Sarah had spent almost a year traveling with Alex and seeing some of the most beautiful places imaginable, but she didn’t think she would ever tire of sitting on the diving rock and looking at this view.

  “Miss Sarah?” Brad’s voice was still breathy, but he appeared to be recovering well.

  “What’s up? You want to start back?”

  “No,” he said. “No, not yet. I just…” He shook his head, pretending it was nothing important, but he couldn’t seem to look her in the eye. “How did you hurt your leg?” His question was quiet, imbued with the awe of a boy young enough to think all scars were cool.

  Sarah leaned back on her hands. She no longer made any attempt to cover up the long scar where her femur had been fixed back together, or the scattered pattern of scarring across her abdomen where internal bleeding and more lately a gunshot wound had been treated. With her surname changed, anyone attempting to Google or research the finer details would be disappointed.

  “I was in a car accident a few years ago,” she said, and Brad nodded solemnly. “I, uh, it was pretty bad.” She took a deep breath, staring out at the blue-green water and waiting for the rush of grief to fade. A drunk driver had plowed into her mum’s car, killing her mum and her little sister instantly, but Brad didn’t need to know that.

  Chilly, damp fingers patted awkwardly against her own.

  “That’s really shitty,” Brad said.

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought too.”

  He scrambled up and held his hand out to her, having apparently thought of something he was sure would make her feel better. “Wanna dive in with me?”

  She laughed, forcing back the sadness as she took his hand. “Okay. On three. Ready?”

  *

  Alex’s patrol unit drew up just as Sarah’s toes touched the smooth rocks at the shore. Brad was already chasing Tilly through the shallows, and they both looked around when they heard the car engine. Tilly barked excitedly, racing toward Alex, who let out a yelp of her own as thirty-five pounds of wet dog closed in on her.

  “Uh oh, are you gonna get arrested, miss?” Brad asked Sarah in a singsong voice.

  “I doubt it, but you never know.” She winked and steered him over to his mom, who thanked her before wrapping Brad in a thick towel an
d leading him back to their station wagon.

  With Tilly running rings around her, Alex stooped to collect Sarah’s towel. They met in the middle of the beach, and she draped the towel around Sarah, using it to pull her close, but the romantic gesture was ruined somewhat when Sarah hesitated, crinkling her nose.

  “Alex, what have I told you about rolling around in the drunk tank?”

  Alex grimaced. “It’s not me. I took a shower at the station. It’s the car.” It was only then that Sarah noticed all four of the car’s doors were wide open. “I’m trying to air it out.”

  “Barrel Charlie?” With one hand on Alex’s elbow, Sarah steered her upwind toward a sheltered spot close to the water.

  “Yup.”

  “Oh dear. Well, never mind. Got time for lunch?”

  Alex rustled a paper bag that had been concealed beneath the towel. “I’m all yours for the next hour.”

  Eyeing the familiar blue and white bag hungrily, Sarah wriggled into her shorts before sitting on the sand and pulling Alex down beside her. “If that’s from Barnaby’s, I’m all yours forever.”

  Alex laughed as she handed her a generous greaseproof package. “In which case, it’s a good thing you’re cute and I kinda like you,” she said, unwrapping her own roll.

  Despite being some distance from the coast, Barnaby’s had fresh Maine seafood delivered to its kitchen every morning. The diner was an Avery institution, its lobster and shrimp rolls selling out as fast as they could be prepared.

  Embedding her toes in the warm sand, Sarah took a huge bite of her roll, just as she remembered that she had something vital to tell Alex. Barely able to breathe, let alone speak, she nudged Alex’s shoulder to get her attention.

  Alex turned slightly and her mouth dropped open when she saw how little was left of Sarah’s lunch. “You skip breakfast?” she asked, gesturing at the scant remnants.

  Sarah held up a finger in apology as she finished chewing and swallowed. “No, I just worked up an appetite,” she said with a grin. She nudged Alex again. “Guess what came in the mail this morning.”