Long Time Gone: Konigsburg, Book 4

by Meg Benjamin

  Kit grinned, giving Arthur’s head a cautious scratch. He opened one topaz eye but didn’t move. “Batten down the hatches, skipper, looks like we’re in for a bumpy ride.”

  The bikers came in waves, Morgan discovered. Sort of like locusts.

  They did buy a lot of stuff, she’d give them that—wine by the glass, by the bottle, by the case. They also ordered the pre-made cheese plates that were the only food Cedar Creek sold. By one o’clock, she’d had to send Esteban to Allie’s bakery to get more cheese and bread.

  Being this busy was actually a great way to keep from thinking about Erik Toleffson. Not that it really worked, given that she seemed to be thinking about him even when she wasn’t. She hadn’t really needed him to protect her from the jerks in the tasting room yesterday—she’d been doing her job long enough to know how to protect herself, with Esteban’s help of course. But there had been something sort of…reassuring about his presence in the room. She liked knowing he was there, and knowing he was ready to do whatever needed to be done to keep her safe.

  Not that she hadn’t been safe, surrounded by customers and winery workers. But still.

  She had a feeling that interesting things could have happened between them last night if she’d only been able to make it to the Dew Drop. The stupid bikers had a lot to answer for.

  She and Kit took turns running the tasting bar and serving cheese plates. One or two of the bikers complained because they didn’t sell any other food, but most of them were happy to sit on the patio and drink wine in the cool shade cast by the awning and the live oaks at the edge.

  Esteban still sat at his corner table, looking massive and sleepy. He only had to get up once, when a couple of the bikers got into a loud argument over the relative merits of Napa versus Sonoma. One look at Esteban’s biceps and they’d subsided into grumbling.

  Business finally began to slack off around four as the bikers headed back to town for a motorcycle show and dance in the city park. Kit and Morgan collected stray wineglasses and swept up crumbs and trash on the patio.

  “How’d we do overall?” Kit tied up the trash bags and added them to the stack already waiting for garbage pickup on Monday.

  “Good, I think. I haven’t added everything up yet.” Morgan wiped her arm across her forehead. “I know we sold a lot of cases. We’ll have to call FedEx on Monday to arrange for the shipping.”

  Fred waddled past, glassy eyed. Morgan shook her head. “Damn it. Those dogs are going to be sick as…well…dogs. They did nothing but beg all afternoon.”

  “Puppy eyes,” Kit mused. “Works every time. How’s Arthur?”

  “Oh geez.” Morgan turned back toward the tasting room. “I got so busy I forgot to check on him.”

  Arthur lay where they’d left him, curled in a listless heap near the doors. Morgan knelt beside him. “Hey, cat, how’s it going?” As she reached toward his paw, Arthur lifted his head.

  His mouth was wet with foam. “Oh, Jesus, Arthur!” Morgan gasped.

  Kit knelt beside her. “Looks like he threw up.”

  Morgan’s shoulders tightened. “I’ve got to get him to town. I’ll take him to Cal Toleffson’s clinic. They’ve got an emergency service.”

  “How exactly are you going to get him there? Has he ever ridden in a car before?”

  Morgan’s brow furrowed. “I got him to Horace for his shots a couple of times, but he shredded the plastic crate. I’ve got the carrier I used when I brought Fred from Austin. Arthur might fit in that.”

  Kit stood. “You’re going to put Simba here in a pet carrier? One that smells like a dog?”

  Morgan stared up at her, trying to tamp down the panic. “I’ve got to try.”

  “Right.” Kit sighed. “Just wait a minute until I find the iodine and bandages. Then we can have at it.”

  After the five drunks Erik arrested on the first night, the bikers began to settle down. He had a feeling the first five were sort of test cases, to see if he’d really throw them in the clink.

  He did. With relish.

  Given that he might actually need Konigsburg’s cells later on for more prisoners, he’d transferred the drunks to the county lockup later in the evening and then let their assorted friends, relatives and legal representatives sort it out. One of the biker-lawyers—it turned out there were several—gave him a lengthy speech about writs of habeas corpus until Erik gave him his best I-eat-lawyers-for-lunch look and told him to take it up with the judge on Monday. The lawyer, who was half-pickled himself, wandered away grumbling.

  After a while, Erik even began to get a kick out of the situation in a kind of sour way. Among other things, dealing with the bikers was a great test for Konigsburg’s cops.

  Linklatter was pretty much a wash, of course. Erik sent him to direct traffic, which he hadn’t yet managed to screw up and which kept him out of everybody’s way.

  Nando was as good as Erik had figured he’d be—calm, efficient and just menacing enough to keep the drunks in line. Peavey turned out to be a lot better than he’d expected—slow-moving but steady and incapable of panic. Those qualities might be the result of a complete lack of imagination and humor, but Erik would take what he could get.

  And one glance from Helen seemed to sober up even the most thoroughly plastered biker. Since he didn’t have enough cops to run the station and patrol the streets, Erik put her in charge of the building while the rest of them drove around in the cruisers. Somehow just having Helen stroll by the cell doors made the five prisoners much more enthusiastic about moving to the county lockup.

  Bert Rodriguez and another of Friesenhahn’s deputies showed up the first day and drove through periodically after that, checking out the campground and the more active bars, but they hadn’t been needed as much as Erik had feared they might be. Mel Hefner was apparently able to convince his troops to be on their best behavior.

  For the Saturday afternoon parade down Main, Erik had Peavey and Linklatter close off the intersections and then sat back to watch the line of bikes move up the street. For once, the noise didn’t make him feel like punching somebody in the face.

  The bike show that evening was relatively peaceful, along with the dance afterward. Linklatter and Peavey took care of the routine patrolling. Erik and Nando were stationed in highly visible positions at opposite sides of the park. Erik considered having Helen do a walk-through, but decided it would be overkill.

  The band for the dance specialized in fifties rock, yet another nod to the biker mystique. It didn’t even annoy Erik too much anymore, although the whole Brando thing was getting fairly old at that point.

  He leaned his butt against the side of his cruiser and listened to the band play “Rock Around the Clock”. The bikers were dancing on the cement square in front of the bandstand. Some of them had had enough sense to remove their leathers, but a lot of them were staying true to their personas until the bitter end. Erik wondered if he should have had an ambulance standing by for the inevitable cases of heat prostration.

  A sheriff’s patrol car pulled in behind him and Bert Rodriguez stepped out. His khakis looked freshly starched, as opposed to Erik’s drooping gray cotton. Erik liked the county uniforms better than Konigsburg’s, but it wasn’t his top priority at the moment.

  Bert had been one of the interim chiefs who’d filled in while the town figured out what to do after Olema had finally agreed to go. On the whole, he’d been a good substitute, although neither he nor Fred Olmstead, the other fill-in, had bothered to do much of the paperwork that had piled up in the chief’s absence. That was now Erik’s problem, which he’d have to deal with as soon as the bikers returned to their real lives.

  Bert leaned his six-foot-two-inch hulk against the cruiser beside him. “Quiet night.”

  Erik nodded. “Unless you count Sha Na Na over there.”

  Bert grinned. “They’re not so bad. It could have been country, after all.”

  “Not with this crowd.” One of the bikers flipped his partner over his should
er, staggering only slightly. Erik wondered again about ordering that ambulance.

  He stared up into the dark canopies of live oaks overhead. Some of the bikers were sitting at picnic tables, concealing their beer cans in koozies. Erik had decided to ignore them as long as they stayed at the tables. In the great scheme of things, violations of the city park regulations were minor.

  “Nice town you’ve got here, Chief,” Bert murmured. “Not bad at all.”

  “Yeah, it’s got its points.” Erik glanced back down Main, but no one seemed to be up to anything.

  “Everything seems to be working out for you.”

  “So far. ’Course if the mayor gets his way that won’t be how it ends up.” Erik peered across the park. Nando lounged against his cruiser. As soon as the dance was over, he and Peavey would do a final patrol of the streets, and Erik could head back home to sleep for several hours.

  “The mayor’s an oily SOB, but from what I could tell he’s not the most popular guy in town.” Bert grinned. “This isn’t rocket science here, Toleffson. Anybody who worked Baghdad and Kuwait City should be able to handle it.”

  “Baghdad and Kuwait City weren’t exactly ideal preparation for Konigsburg. The city fathers might get upset if I started patrolling with an M-16.” And the insurgents he’d run into in Baghdad had nothing on Pittman in terms of sneakiness. Erik squinted at the far side of the park. Was that actually Pittman talking to Hefner at the picnic table under a stand of pecans?

  Bert shrugged. “Like I say, you seem to be handling it from what I hear. But you know, if you don’t stick around, I may think real hard about applying for this job myself.” Bert grinned again. “Somebody’s got to save the town from Linklatter.”

  “I’ll keep you posted,” Erik growled.

  The band swung into a middling version of “Not Fade Away”. “Ever hear Joe Ely do this?” Bert asked. “His version is great. This version sucks.”

  Erik watched the dancers hopping around, feeling unreasonably annoyed. Why should it matter to him if Bert decided to apply for the chief’s job? If he didn’t hang on to it, he wouldn’t have any stake in whoever took over after he left.

  Except that he’d begun to think of Konigsburg as his town, for better or worse. And Linklatter would definitely be worse.

  The dance broke up around nine, a lot earlier than he’d anticipated. Some of the bikers clearly needed to go back to their lush accommodations and collapse, assuming they had someone to help them out of their leather pants.

  He watched the bikes move out, their engines making considerably less noise than they had when the first ones had rolled down Main. The noise ordinance was now being enforced, maybe for the first time in recent memory. He told Nando to get a cup of coffee and then check the campground one more time since that was where the serious drinking was liable to go on. Not that most of the bikers looked in any shape to be drinking anything stronger than iced tea. Bert and the other sheriff’s deputy promised to make one more swing along the highway before heading back to their regular beat.

  Erik drove back through town after the last of the bikers had left the park, stopping at the Silver Spur and the Faro to check for problems. Everything seemed relatively quiet. The Silver Spur had a folk singer in their outside garden who was putting the drunks to sleep. Not Erik’s choice of music necessarily, but a nice option for the drunks. The Faro was livelier, but the Faro also employed Chico Burnside, a former pro wrestler, as their bouncer, to say nothing of the owner, Tom Ames, one of the few imposing men in town who wasn’t also a Toleffson. Erik figured his own presence wasn’t required.

  He came to the end of Main and circled back on one of the side streets. The lights from Cal’s animal clinic illuminated the parking lot. Erik slowed—he hadn’t realized they were open this late. Normally, Cal was home in time for dinner, particularly on a weekend when Docia was due to deliver within the next month. The parking lot beside the clinic was empty except for an SUV.

  Morgan Barrett’s SUV.

  He pulled his cruiser in beside it, locked up and headed for the clinic’s front door.

  Morgan sat huddled in a chair in the waiting room. When he walked in, she glanced up, her mouth edging into a small smile. “Hey, Chief. What are you doing here? I thought you had bikers to police.”

  “They’re policing themselves right now. What’s happening?” He took a seat beside her in a hard plastic chair that seemed designed to reject his butt. Probably Cal’s secret weapon against anyone who might want to spend too much time at the veterinary clinic.

  “It’s Arthur.” She stared at him with luminous eyes.

  He was suddenly afraid she might start to cry. Then he’d have to do something about it, and he didn’t have a clue what that should be. He usually ducked crying women. “Arthur?”

  “My cat. You saw him a couple of times.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He rubbed his jaw. “The bobcat. What happened to him?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know exactly. He’s been limping and throwing up. I was afraid maybe he’d been hit by a car. Cal’s checking him over, but they had to sedate him to do it. Arthur’s not exactly a good patient.”

  He figured that was an understatement—Arthur was probably a vet’s worst nightmare. Better Cal than him. “How long have you been waiting?”

  “It’s been about a half hour since Cal got here. They had to call him in since it’s after-hours.” She blinked back tears again. “Poor man, I must have ruined his weekend.”

  She chewed her lip, and Erik felt a sudden, largely unwelcome flash of arousal. “Don’t worry. Cal’s probably used to it.”

  The door to the examination area opened with a whoosh and Cal walked toward them. Erik realized suddenly he’d never seen his younger brother actually being a vet. With his beard and shaggy hair, he looked like a grizzly in scrubs, sort of a professional grizzly.

  “Hey, Chief.” Cal grinned knowingly. Great. Now he’d probably go home and tell Docia his big brother was hooking up with Morgan.

  Morgan stood up. “What’s wrong with Arthur?”

  Cal shrugged. “Bad case of motor oil, as it turns out. Looks like he must have rolled in it. And he walked in it too, which made his paws swell up. That’s why he was limping.”

  “Motor oil?” She stared at him. “Where would he find that?”

  “Maybe around some of the equipment at the winery. Tomorrow you might want to see if there’s a pool of oil somewhere. You wouldn’t want the dogs getting into it too.”

  “A pool of oil?” She still stared. “We wouldn’t have anything like that around Cedar Creek. We have to be extra careful about contamination, what with the grapes and the wine. Particularly now that we’ve got the harvest going on.”

  “Well, maybe Arthur wandered into some oil at one of those ranches on the hillside. The thing is, it’s all over his fur and his paws, and he tried to clean himself, which is what cats do.”

  She gasped. “Oh god, is it poisonous?”

  “Not the way antifreeze is, but it’s not exactly good for him.” Cal pulled a plastic bin from underneath the counter. “That’s what made him throw up. The main worry now is pneumonia, that and getting him cleaned up.”

  Erik frowned. “He can get pneumonia from motor oil?”

  “When animals with oil on their fur throw up, sometimes they inhale the motor oil and that causes pneumonia. We’ll need to keep him here overnight to make sure he doesn’t develop respiratory problems.” Cal rummaged through the bin. “Plus we need to give him a bath.”

  Morgan stared at him, aghast. “You’re going to use water on Arthur?”

  Cal smiled thinly. “Yeah. I’m not all that excited about it myself, but we need to wash the oil off. Armando’s going to help. We can probably do it while he’s still sedated.” He pulled out a bottle of dishwashing liquid. “Here we go. Advanced grease-fighting properties.”

  “Should I wait?” Morgan was squeezing her fingers together, her eyes in full-on Bambi mode.

>   Cal’s voice was kind. “It’s okay, Morg, I think he’ll be all right. But he does need to stay overnight, so we can keep an eye on him. You don’t have to wait.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want to leave him. He may be frightened.”

  Cal looked about as nervous as Erik felt, men confronting a potential weeping woman. “It’s okay, we’re used to frightened animals. We can deal. And you can come back first thing tomorrow morning to see him. I’ll make sure Bethany knows to let you in early.”

  Morgan nodded, biting her lip again. Erik’s body went back on high alert. He took a deep breath. “You can stay at my place. Then you can be here as early as you want to be. It’s the apartment over Docia’s bookstore.”

  Morgan smiled up at Erik gratefully. “Thanks. I’ll take you up on that.”

  Cal looked like he was trying not to grin. “Yeah, that apartment is fairly close to the clinic. I used to hike over every morning when Docia was still living there.”

  Erik gritted his teeth. “Thanks for the tip.” He really loved being an object of amusement for his little brother. On the other hand, his little brother deserved as much revenge on him as he wanted, given the amount of bullying he’d had to endure from Erik when they were younger.

  “Okay.” Cal let the grin break through. “I’ll see you in the morning, then. Have a good weekend. What’s left of it.”

  Erik ushered Morgan out the clinic door. Maybe there was only a little weekend left, but the chances for a good one were suddenly looking up.

  Chapter Ten

  Erik helped Morgan into the front seat of his truck, trying to pretend that he really was concerned about Arthur’s health. He was also trying to pretend his temperature hadn’t risen five degrees just from being in the same room with her.

  True, they’d both had a demanding couple of days dealing with the bikers, and they both could probably use a little relaxation. Stress release could take a lot of different forms, including sex, and he could definitely provide something along those lines. Then again, taking the lady home so he could jump her when she was worried about her cat didn’t exactly qualify as honorable behavior. And, he reminded himself, he was trying to be an honorable man.