Crazy, VA
Page 18
“It’s a small office.”
He threw me a feral grin. “I meant the town.”
Boris hopped onto my desk, began ostentatiously washing himself, cat-language for you don’t worry me. Nelson Hunter drew back a little, then asked, “Is it true? She was seeing some Hispanic guy?”
I smiled into a mug of mint tea. “Yep.”
“Huh.” Then, with a shrug, he dismissed the whole subject. “Sheriff, I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
My answer shot out automatically. “Cops don’t do favors. It’s bad form.”
He laughed. “I meant, Miss Eller, will you do me a favor? There’s a fundraiser in a couple of weeks, and I need a date.”
My brain had nothing to do with my reply. “You’re shittin’ me.”
He winced a little. “I guess that’s a refusal. But it would’ve been fun.”
I couldn’t think of anything more boring.
“It gets very boring, you know,” he said as he rose. “All those women whose first concern is looking like they’re 25 when they’re not. Always worried about their hair and clothes. You remind me more of my mother,” he said, and clearly meant that as a compliment. “It would’ve been fun, to see them wonder if I was serious about you.”
“Sorry,” I lied, and sure enough, Boris’s tail twitched. “You’ll have to find another sacrificial goat.”
“Ah, yes. Melinda Wade.” He made a face, dropped the urbane mask a moment. “She’d make a dead man yawn, but she’s… appropriate.”
“We all live in a box,” I said, stroking Boris.
Clearly, I’d puzzled him.
“Y’know. People say to think ‘outside the box’. Well, we each live in a box,” I continued. “You just gotta be careful what box you decide to live in.”
“Ah,” said Nelson Hunter. “You’re suggesting I need to expand my box.”
“It’s a thought.”
He shook his head a little. “I worked too hard for this box. I’ve got to keep it.”
I gave a shrug. That was his tragedy. I had my own.
“Well, if that’s all, then I guess I’ll head back up to Wintergreen,” he said, and tipped an imaginary hat. “Sheriff.”
When he’d gone, Boris got up and made an elaborate show of scratching imaginary litter over the chair Nelson Hunter had used. I laughed until I cried.
***^***
That afternoon, Chief Rucker waddled in. I groaned. If he asked me for a date, I’d move to the Yukon.
Chief Rucker being Chief Rucker, he didn’t bother with a polite greeting. He merely grunted. “Harry been here?”
“Not today.”
He planted himself firmly into Kim’s chair. I heard something pop. In the chair, that is. “Huh. Well, he got the county board to give you a job.”
My jaw dropped. The county board of supervisors doesn’t have much money to go around giving out jobs with. “What?”
“You’re gonna be a special investigator,” he sneered. Somehow, he’d made those two words sound obscene. “Come in and take cases they think I can’t handle.”
Mystified, I let him run out of wit—it didn’t take long—and waved him out of the office with my brain in knots. What kind of job was special investigator? More importantly, why?
Lucky for me, Harry eventually showed up, not long before I was going to head home. Neat, spare, trim, and quivering with elation. “You have earned the reward of the just,” he announced, slapping down his briefcase. “Kim, I need coffee, please.”
He needed a sedative, more like. “How is working with Chief Rucker a reward?”
“Your cousin Jack assured us you had pursued his sister’s murder with a hundred times the diligence and ability shown by Chief Rucker and his department,” Harry chirped, accepting the coffee with a viper’s grin. “Made it quite clear that this county would do well to have you investigate its more serious crimes. And we have all been aware of Chief Rucker’s, ah, limitations.”
My day was getting too weird for me. I flopped back in my chair. “He’s a damn redneck joke.”
“Precisely,” said Harry crisply. “Times change. The county changes. There’s going to be a new development going up at Quarry. Quarry Estates. Single-family homes starting around a hundred and fifty thousand or so.”
People would flock to them. In flocks. “At the old quarry.”
“Yes. You know what it looks like.”
I did. The quarry had been abandoned after a few years, when they hit water, which now formed an irregular, shallow lake in the cup of a narrow valley. The only places for the houses would be around the quarry site, and down the road to the village. “How long,” I asked dourly, “before we see a Wal-Mart?”
Harry lost his sparkle. “I can’t say, but they’ve approved a new plaza where the quarry road meets the Gilfoyle road. Food Mart, Rite-Aid, the usual.”
I tried to block out mental visions of suburbia’s dubious advantages. “How many houses?”
“Seventy-eight.”
That’d triple the size of the village of Quarry. I shut my eyes, envisioning the future. “We don’t have the infrastructure.”
Harry sighed, set down the coffee cup with a sad clink. “I know. But we need the revenue. Your Uncle Eller made some very good proffers. Now, about your new position. There’s only a minor stipend, I’m afraid.”
I let the details flow over into me, struck by a very strange sense of sadness. I didn’t have any affection for either uncle, but I pitied Uncle Littlepage. It would hurt, to be outdone by a man he’d been raised to hate. Which meant, of course, the Littlepages would fire back with some grand gesture by Christmas.
Business as usual. Funny, how comforting that can be.
***^***
A few days before Thanksgiving, Boris and I were waiting for a tow truck to come get an abandoned car by the turnoff to the Country Rose when I spotted Eddie Brady. He was bicycling down the street at high speed, his flannel shirt billowing like plaid wings behind him. Not far behind, and gaining speed in her Buick, came his ex-wife, her head hanging out the window. I could hear her shouting a hundred yards away, over the noise of her car’s engine, and the wind of Eddie Brady’s rapid-pedaling passing.
“Eddie you son of a bitch you get your ass back here or I’ll run it down! You give me back my credit cards! You give them back! You get back here you shit!”
I turned my head. Eddie Brady didn’t slacken his pace, but a brown object flew into the air, landing smack in the middle of the street. Paula Rush Brady shrieked. “You fuck!” and slammed on her brakes. Her Buick screeched to a halt across two lanes of traffic not twenty yards from me. With a shrill yell, Paula burst out of the car and ran to get her wallet, utterly heedless of the oncoming traffic.
I put Boris in the car, then strolled to the yellow line, one hand up to remind people to stop. “Need a hand, Paula?”
“I’m gonna kill him! I turned my back one minute, one minute!” she fumed. “And he’s out the door on Sean’s bike! I mean, it’s bad enough he crooked my wallet, and then he took Sean’s bike!”
I looked down the road. Eddie had long since gone, but I caught the glint of cool November sunlight on the bicycle. “I think the bike’s safe. C’mon, now, move your car before you cause an accident.”
I stood calmly directing traffic until she’d gotten turned around and headed home, muttering curses at Eddie but refusing as usual to press charges. I slid into my cruiser, then sat back and laughed until my sides ached, and Boris nosed anxiously at my face. When I’d gotten myself back under control, I gave him a hug, and sighed happily. Okay, I was thirty-five, and single, and I’m the sheriff in a town of three hundred. I’m nearly six feet tall. I haven’t got a hope in hell of a decent love life. But I’ve got Aunt Marge, a good deputy, and Boris.
I can handle Crazy.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shannon Hill lives in Virginia and treasures her privacy. Connect with Shannon and l
earn about upcoming Boris and Lil books on Facebook.
25% of all the royalties from this book go to support animal charities around the country!
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
ABOUT THE AUTHOR