Ricki made a face so Charlie would know exactly what she thought of that. “Easy for TK to say. He’s not the one with the broken wrist.”
Charlie stuck his hands in his back pockets, his expression drooping into a mournful look. “I guess you’re here to see your jeep. I might as well tell you outright, she’s done.”
“Yeah. Clay told me.” Ricki pulled out the envelope she’d been carrying inside her coat. “But before we get to that, I hear that you’re a photographer?”
“I play around with it some.” Charlie took the envelope she was holding out and rolled back on his heels. “What’s this?”
“Some photos I’d like to have blown up. Carl Evans told me that you have a darkroom.”
He drew the pictures out of the envelope and studied them, making a humming noise as he peered at the smaller of the two. “These are pretty old.” He looked up. “And not the best quality, but I’ll see what I can do.” He glanced back down at them. “Are these the pictures you were showing around at the post last night?”
Ricki smiled even as she made a silent mental sigh. Living in a small town and talking with the biggest gossip around pretty much guaranteed every word they’d exchanged would have been out before she’d even made it home last night. “Yes, those are the ones. They were taken fifty years ago.”
Charlie set them down on the counter. He rubbed his hands together, and Ricki could see the red creeping up the back of his neck. The man definitely had something on his mind.
“Do you recognize any of those men in the pictures, Charlie?” she asked.
“No.” He added a shake of his head. “I wasn’t even out of diapers when those were taken. No. It’s something I remembered after that. More like twenty-five years ago, I guess. I was in the army so I wasn’t here, but I heard about it from Pop.”
She didn’t say anything, but stood, waiting, letting him get out whatever he had to say in his own way.
“You were asking about a car?” When Ricki nodded, so did he. “Well, I think I know where it is. Or I mean, I know what happened to it.” He lifted an elbow and leaned it against the top of the counter. “When I was in the army, I called home every week that I could. During one of those calls, Pop told me that they’d found an old car in the canal. Down at the far end, close to where it turns into Dabob Bay. That’s what Pop said, anyway.”
Ricki’s eyes narrowed. That was a very sheltered area, and at night wouldn’t have been well traveled. A picture began to take shape in her mind. “Go on,” she urged softly.
“The car was rusted out and a complete loss. Pop said it had probably been in there at least twenty years, from all the damage.” He looked over at her. “There weren’t any plates on it. Pop thought someone had deliberately taken off the plates and ditched the car. He said it must have been a pretty nice car at one point and couldn’t think why anyone would treat it that way.”
“Did he mention the make and model of the car?” Dan asked while Ricki held her breath.
Charlie snorted out a short laugh.“Oh yeah. Pop was a car guy down to his bones. He wouldn’t miss a chance to talk about an Aston Martin being pulled out of the canal. He thought it had been white with silver trim before it spent twenty years underwater.” When Ricki and Dan exchanged a look, Charlie straightened away from the counter. “It sounds like the car you were asking about at the VFW. Pete told me last night. I hadn’t thought about that old story from Pop until Pete mentioned the car.” He drummed a heavy finger against the countertop. “No one claimed it, so Dad sold it for scrap. I was still in the army, so I never saw it myself.”
“That’s fine, Charlie,” Ricki finally said, her mind still on all the deserted places at night along that stretch of highway. “That helps a lot. Thanks.”
The mechanic rested a worried gaze on her face. “Look, Pop didn’t know a ranger owned that car. He never would have sold it off that way if he’d known who had owned it.”
Ricki reached over and laid a reassuring hand on his arm. “Don’t worry about it, Charlie, no one is going to get excited about selling off a rusted-out car for scrap twenty-five years ago. Especially when the owner had been killed twenty-five years before that.”
“So it was that ranger you found up at the old lighthouse who owned that Aston Martin?” Dan asked. “Pete sounded pretty sure about that.”
Ricki rolled her eyes. “Yeah. I’ll bet he did.”
Chapter Thirty
Dan pulled up in front of the Sunny Side Up and cut the engine, then looked over at Ricki. “You wouldn’t actually buy that jeep Charlie showed you, would you?”
“Why not? Jeeps do well out here no matter the weather, and especially on some of those unpaved roads leading into the park.” Ricki unfastened her seatbelt and reached for the door handle. “Not to mention on dirt roads going up to abandoned lighthouses.”
She stepped out of the SUV and shut the door while Dan did the same. He was still shaking his head as he rounded the hood of his vehicle and joined her on the sidewalk. “I’m sure you can find one that isn’t—”
“As expensive?” Ricki cut in. “Not likely. That’s a great price, and it’s only five years old. Decent mileage, too.”
“Okay, but it—”
She cut him off again with a wave of her hand. “It runs great. Charlie’s a mechanic, so if he says the engine is good and everything else works fine too, I’m good with taking his word on it.”
Still shaking his head, Dan followed her into the diner. Since they’d missed most of the breakfast rush, the dining room was only half-full and the hostess station was deserted. When the door opened, Marcie looked up from her position behind the back counter where she had a dozen sugar dispensers lined up in front of her. Her gaze skipped right over Ricki and latched on to Dan for a moment before bouncing back to her boss. She dropped the large container of sugar she was using to fill up the dispensers onto the counter and put her hands on her hips, a huge smile reaching from ear to ear.
Ricki stuck her hands in her pockets as she made her way to the back, doing her best to look as if walking into the diner with her assistant partner was no big deal.
“Hi, you two.” Marcie’s eyes fairly sparkled. “It’s good to see you made up.”
“We aren’t dating, Marcie. We work together,” Ricki muttered, slightly embarrassed that everyone in the room could hear the older woman.
“She apologized.”
Dan’s loud announcement had Ricki’s shoulders drawing in as she felt every eye in the place center on her back. “Nice of you to let the immediate world know about it.”
Marcie only looked amused as she leaned in and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Follow me back to the kitchen. You can apologize to me in there.”
“Is that so?” Ricki said, but it only bounced off Marcie’s back as the waitress was already headed for the double doors.
Not having a lot of choice, Ricki followed her through the doors, stopping when she spotted Anchorman at the stove. He looked over at the two women who were now facing each other and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Great. Am I here or not?”
“Not,” Ricki and Marcie said in unison.
Anchorman shrugged. “Fine.” He turned his back on them and stood with his arms crossed over his chest, watching the burger sizzling on the grill.
“You start,” Marcie said, then stood waiting.
Thinking she might as well get it over with, Ricki nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone off that way about you dating Dan.”
When she stopped, Marcie tapped a sturdy, sensible shoe against the tile floor. “And?”
Ricki sighed. Geez. Her friend wasn’t going to let her get off very easy. “And,” she started again. “He’s a good guy.” There. She’d said it. The non-wilderness ranger had grown on her over the past few months, and so far had not uttered one word of complaint about all the grunt work she’d dumped on him. She did appreciate that, even if she’d never told him so.
Marcie grinned. “N
ow, see? That didn’t hurt, did it?” She reached over and gently patted Ricki’s arm. “I apologize too. I shouldn’t have jumped all over you like that.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder in Anchorman’s direction. “Especially not in front of he-who-shall-not-be-named.”
“I’m not evil,” Anchorman called out without moving from his position by the stove. “And not so old I don’t know a Voldemort reference when I hear one.”
The waitress let out a boisterous laugh. “Not old. Just completely out of touch.”
Seeing an opening to needle her stubborn-to-the-bone cook, and get a little payback for him insisting she needed a babysitter, Ricki clasped her hands behind her back and gave Marcie a conspiratorial wink. “Some women like the old-fashioned type.”
Marcie’s head whipped around. “Is that so? Like who?”
Ignoring the warning glare from Anchorman, Ricki leaned in a little. “I hear there’s a new girl in town, who goes by the name of Merlin.”
“Ricki.” Anchorman’s voice cracked out, which had both women smiling even more.
“Like the magician?” Marcie asked. She glanced over at the glowering cook. “Wasn’t he a male magician, like a wizard or something?”
“Marcie.” Anchorman’s tone had gone up a notch or two. “No. She’s not a male and stop with the Harry Potter references already.”
The waitress only sniffed and turned back to Ricki, mischief dancing in her eyes. “So. It’s confirmed. He does know this Merlin person. Who is she?”
“A former army ranger.” When Marcie’s eyes widened, Ricki nodded. “Who, according to no lesser authority than Pete, has the hots for Anchorman. She was stalking him at the VFW last night.”
“She was not,” Anchorman huffed out.
“And was he interested?” Marcie asked as if the target of their conversation had suddenly gone invisible.
“I don’t know. He fled the scene before I was done.”
Marcie slapped her hands against her cheeks. “No! Our decorated hero and former sniper ran away from a woman?”
“Ha, ha,” Anchorman said as the two women broke into laughter. “I want you both to get out of my kitchen.”
“Which I pay for, so it’s my kitchen too,” Ricki retorted, grinning at the bright red splashed across his face. It was the first time she’d ever seen him so embarrassed, and she was rather enjoying it.
“He actually has a good idea,” Marcie put in. “I need to get out there and give some attention to Ranger Wilkes, and you need to do the same for your guy.”
Ricki turned her head and followed Marcie’s gaze. Through the large cutout in the wall separating the kitchen from the dining room, she saw Clay sitting in his usual seat, reading a menu. And he didn’t look particularly happy. She swiveled on her heel and pushed through the double doors, walking along the backside of the customer counter until she reached the far end. Clay had put down his menu and was watching her but didn’t say a word when she stopped and put her elbows on the counter between them.
She didn’t bother with any polite small talk, preferring to immediately get to the heart of whatever was bothering him. “What’s up?”
He kept his gaze on hers as he let out a slow breath. “The city council mostly.” His voice was low enough it didn’t carry beyond the two of them.
She blinked. The city council? Aside from listening to the amount of money raked in from traffic tickets, the council didn’t usually do much at their monthly meetings except drink coffee. But apparently last night they had, because the look on Clay’s face was inching beyond annoyance and into angry frustration. She frowned as she looked around the diner and the lingering customers. Not a good place to have a discussion neither one of them wanted to get out into the gossip mill.
“Want to talk about this in my office?”
Clay smiled. He knew she was talking about the back alley and not the small closet in the kitchen that held her desk, a small floor safe, and absolutely nothing else. Because that was all that could fit in the minuscule space. “That would be good.” He stood up and nodded toward the back. “Let’s go.”
They passed through the kitchen, with Ricki leading the way, not stopping until they were standing next to the dumpster that served the two buildings on either side of the alley.
Ricki faced Clay, her feet spread apart with her good hand cradling the splinted one. “So? What happened?”
Clay stuck his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and frowned. “It seems the council members have been talking among themselves and are questioning the budget for the police department.”
Of all the things she’d imagined, that had not even made the top ten on her list. Budget? The police department covered most of its expenses through a combination of the rent money for the National Park Services space inside the building that also housed the police, and the mountain of traffic tickets given out to unsuspecting tourists every season.
“I took a look at the tri-city budget when it came out last year,” Ricki said cautiously. “The money the department brought in pretty much covered its expenses.”
“Yeah. I pointed that out,” Clay said. “Then it was pointed out to me that a good piece of that money, and they were talking about the traffic citations, comes in during the high tourist season over the summer. Not nearly as much comes in during the winter.”
“Because there aren’t as many tourists.” Ricki’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “That’s perfectly natural, so I’m not seeing their point.”
Clay held out both hands in front of him as if they were two sides of a weighted scale. “Summer revenue and cost to run the department.” He dropped one hand lower than the other. “Winter revenue and the cost to run the department. It seems the department costs the same no matter what month is on the calendar, but the ticket revenue doesn’t cover it in the winter.”
“And so?” Ricki prompted, not seeing where this was going.
“Since four of the six council members are convinced most of our work is writing out tickets, and that doesn’t happen as much in the winter, they think we could pare down the expenses by cutting our manpower from January to April.”
Ricki’s mouth formed into an O as she watched Clay run an agitated hand through his hair. “They want you to cut your hours?”
He shook his head. “Not mine. My deputy’s.”
Knowing Jules’s paycheck as a deputy was his only source of income, and how responsible Clay felt for him, this wasn’t a good situation at all. She knew Clay, and he might try to make up the shortfall out of his own pocket. Or look for other work himself and leave Jules on as full-time. Neither prospect was very appealing. The Bay only had one competent, experienced law enforcement officer, and that was Clay. Which was likely the reason the council wanted to reduce the deputy’s hours and not the chief’s.
“Then we need to find Jules a side hustle,” Ricki declared.
“A what?”
She smiled. “A side hustle. It’s like a part-time job, more or less. Something to make a little extra money.”
Clay’s smile was on the glum side. “Great idea. But most of the businesses in the area cut back in the winter themselves.” He stuck his hands back into his pockets and glanced toward the diner’s kitchen windows. “Even you have reduced hours in the winter, and all the staff you need.”
“Then we invent a side hustle,” Ricki repeated. “I just happen to be really good at that.” When he looked a little more hopeful, she smiled. “Let me give it some thought. I’ll come up with some possibles, and then you can talk it over with Jules.”
“Okay. It’s definitely worth a shot.” He shifted his weight and looked around. “Where’s the truck?”
“I hitched a ride in with Dan.” When his lips twitched, she gave him a cranky look. “Yes, I apologized to him. And to Marcie. And I gave them my blessing to date, or whatever it is the two of them are doing.”
“Yeah?” Clay’s mouth formed into an all-out grin. “That was very adult of you, Agent J
ames.”
“Uh-huh. Nice of you to notice, Chief.”
He took a step forward until he was standing right in front of her. He cupped a large hand around her cheek and leaned in for a soft, lingering kiss. “Thank you for helping out with Jules.”
“You’re welcome.” She looked up into the warmth of his gaze and felt it gently flow between them. It was a little unnerving to have that feeling again after so many years. She reached up and took his hand in hers, keeping it there as she took a small step back, putting some space between them. “Want to hear about the case?”
He seemed to accept her withdrawal, but he held on to her hand as he nodded. “Sure. But there’s something I want to talk to you about first.” His grip tightened as if he expected her to try to snatch her hand away. “It’s about Eddie.”
A nerve in her gut twitched, and her voice went a little cooler. “What about Eddie? You aren’t going to press trespassing charges on the boys, are you?”
Clay chuckled and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “No. As a matter of fact, though, this does involve all three of them.”
She relaxed, thinking he was about to suggest community service, which wasn’t a bad idea at all now that school was out. “What about them?”
“I know they’re still grounded, and that’s strictly up to all the parents, but I think the kids should be able to test out that bot of theirs.”
“Their bot?” For the second time since they’d stepped into the alley, he’d taken her by surprise. “What about the bot?”
“I talked to the manager at the St. Armand, and he’s agreeable to them using the staircase, provided the parents pay for any damage that might happen. He doesn’t have any events scheduled during the last week of this month, but they’re pretty well booked the rest of the summer, so this would be a good time to give it a test run, and still leave enough time to fix anything if it doesn’t go smoothly.”
“You’ve already talked to the manager about this?”
He held firmly on to the hand she’d started to tug at. “Yeah. But not to any of the other parents, or to Eddie. You’re his mom, so I’m bringing the idea to you first. If you don’t like it, I’ll call and let the manager know his staircase is safe.”
One Last Scream (Special Agent Ricki James Book 2) Page 22
