“Neal Robert Huffman,” Oren told her, laying out all his evidence.
Piper whistled. “Wow. Old school.” She saw Oren cringe at the comment. “I meant, I’m impressed that you did it without computers. That you started with microfiche. I wouldn’t have thought to go that route.” She was also a little disappointed. Oren had won this race—at least in identifying the victim. Piper’s time had been torn between the old case files, the Mailbox Mauler, and Mr. Thresher. Oren had been able to concentrate solely on the bones. “Impressive,” she repeated, meaning it.
They drank Eight O’clock Dark Italian Coffee. Piper had laid in a supply, as Nang had given her a case at his cost. Now all she needed was a better coffeemaker for the department. Small steps, she thought.
“All those names you mentioned, the kids—”
“Neal Robert Huffman, Rory Martin, Edgar Killian.”
“The three who were said to have drowned that day.”
“Their buddies—Otto Benson, Chuck Schleevogt, and Trigger Holms. Chuck Schleevogt is in the county. I called him last night. He’s a member of the genealogy club, said he saw you at the library last week. They meet tomorrow at the main branch in Rockport. I’ll talk to him then. Trigger’s dead. Haven’t gone looking for Otto yet.”
“The old fart’s club,” Piper mused. “I have to go tomorrow, too.”
“Good, but I’ll drive.”
She shared her suspicions that Mark Thresher had been hacked by someone in the high school computer club, and that she needed to find out who was driving a dead woman’s Celica. She mentioned her threatening email, figuring he already knew about it through her father.
“I haven’t had any more email messages though, not the bad ones, not since yesterday’s.”
Oren scowled. “Electronics. People hide behind their gadgets.”
“I’m going to find him,” Piper said.
“Computer club members, narrow it, get some warrants and check bank accounts. See who among them has a windfall of cash.” Oren frowned. “Kids. I hope you’re wrong. That’d be a shame. But kids are connected to their electronics.”
“The genealogy club’s down three members in the past six months,” she said. “Four counting Mr. Thresher. We better talk to the ones who’re left before they die of old age.” She saw Oren’s eyes narrow. “I want to know if any of them are also missing money.”
Before she could elaborate, Sylvia D popped in to announce, “Gretchen Brown has been moved to Owensboro Health Regional Hospital. Her daughter’s got her in the psych unit, and they’re gonna keep her until the trial. Phone. Gotta run. Basil’s here. Early. Should I show him back? He’s a tall drink of water.”
Piper was going to miss Sylvia D, who had made it clear she didn’t want to keep the dispatcher job, but would be happy to fill in for emergencies. Meeting her was one good thing to come out of the old fart’s club.
Basil Meredith had a presence. He was six feet tall, lean, his skin a deep sienna and his eyes so dark she couldn’t easily discern the pupils. His hairstyle was a slow fade, about an inch on top and down the back, shaved close on the sides, complimented with a trimmed Van Dyke. Small silver hoops in both ears. Wearing a double-breasted English-cut graphite suit, he looked like he could pose for GQ. Sylvia D was right—a tall drink of water.
Piper caught herself staring. Recovering, she took him to the break room with Oren and closed the door.
“Coffee?”
He shook his head. “I avoid caffeine.” He had an orotund voice, and she detected no Chicago or Midwestern accent.
They started with friendly talk to learn more about him. Born in Puerto Rico, orphaned at sixteen, moved to Chicago to live with his aunt and uncle, joined the Navy right out of high school, and after serving four years became a Chicago patrolman. Went to school on the side and earned a two-year associate degree in criminal justice from City Colleges of Chicago, where he met his wife.
It was the five years as a detective, one with Major Accident Investigation Section, four with Gang and Narcotics, that iced all the cupcakes for Piper.
“You’re seriously qualified,” she admitted. “Commendations, recommendations. Your commander doesn’t want you to leave. You could probably go to any big city of your choosing. And yet you’re interested in Spencer County.”
Basil held his hands out, palms up. He lowered the right, giving the impression of the scales of justice. “It’s quite a bit less money than I make now.” He brought the hand up even, then raised the left. “Blitzen Lane, Santa Claus, less than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars buys a brick house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a two-car garage. Whirlpool, a deck, a half-acre. The kids could have a dog. We’ve looked at real estate, and drove around yesterday, stopping at For Sale signs. Chicago? Edison Park where we live, I’d have to pay a million for the same house. And there wouldn’t be a big yard.”
He went on with the balance. On the negative side. “Sleepy county.” On the positive side. “Sleepy county.” Negative. “I might be bored here.” Positive. “I might be willing to be bored.”
“We don’t have a gang problem,” Piper said. “Not really. And your commander says you shine dealing with gang crimes. But we have a meth problem. And I want to do something about it.”
“More than eighty percent of meth in this country comes from what we call ‘superlabs’ in Mexico and California. The cartels use safe houses on reservations. But meth is all over. A rural county like yours? Easy to hide a small operation, easy to transport the product to the big cities, using country roads. The small labs—the difference with small labs is the variation in recipes, hundreds of different recipes, always experimenting, difficult to get a signature to trace it back to any one spot.”
He scowled. “You know, it takes only a thousand dollars to make twenty thousand worth of meth. Manufacturing it has a huge financial upside. You can produce it in a kitchen, bathroom, shed, camping trailer, and the equipment would fit into a cooler. The price of a cocaine dose that would give you, say, a twenty-minute high? You could get buzzed for a couple of days spending the same on meth. Buying it is a cheaper rush for addicts, much more bang for the buck. Meth is the number one drug cops battle today. Burglaries and robberies have increased because of meth, domestic violence, assault. More than a million and half people are suspected of being regular users in this country, with twelve million having tried it. Okay, those are guesses, federal estimates, but I buy into the numbers. And the users—the repeated users—”
They talked for an hour and a half, Oren asking most the questions. Piper had wanted it that way; she wanted to sit back and listen. She was liking Basil Meredith a lot. But she wasn’t sure he’d be comfortable here.
Put it on the table. Piper leaned forward.
“Roughly twenty-one thousand people in the county,” she began. “Ninety-six, ninety-seven percent white. Blacks? Less than one percent. Maybe a hundred black people in the whole county.”
“Maybe less than a hundred,” Oren said.
“That bothers my wife,” Basil said. “A lot. We talked about that yesterday when we drove around. It’s a serious sticking point with her. She wanted me to call off this interview. She wants the kids to embrace their roots, and Chicago is diverse. But she also wants out of the city, and as much as I like my job, I promised her I’d look elsewhere. She says she worries every day I leave for work. I worry every day whether my daughter will make it home from school. Ten days ago, three blocks from our place, a two-year-old walking with his father was caught in the crossfire. Five o’clock. Broad daylight. His father, a teenager, was the gang member the rivals were after. But the shooters missed their target.” He paused. “Or maybe they didn’t.”
He crossed his arms. “I’ve applications elsewhere, and nibbles. I’ve an appointment for an interview a week from today for an assistant chief slot in Murfreesboro, right outside of Nashville. Good house prices there, too. My in-laws live in Nashville, and Esme wants to be closer. You’re about a two-hour drive from Nashville. I like my in-laws, but I don’t want to live down the street from them.” Another pause. “But we’ll see where the interviews take me.”
“We expect to make a decision soon,” Piper said. “Our investigator is leaving and we don’t want the job to sit open.”
“Well, you think about me,” Basil said. “And I’ll think about you. And my wife will throw in more than her two cents.” He glanced up at the clock. “She said she was coming by around eleven. I have an interview at one in Santa Claus.”
Piper figured her dad had serious competition for the police chief post.
“Can you recommend a restaurant there? In Santa Claus? The kids will be crying for something to eat. Esme’s been driving them around, said she wanted them to see the bluff.”
Oren and Piper looked at each other. Neither mentioned the bones that had been found there.
“I’d go with Brick Oven Pizza. They have a lunch buffet. St. Nick’s café is good, but a little slow for what you’re probably looking for,” Oren said. “We’d like to meet your wife.”
They did that at the dispatcher’s desk.
Esme Meredith was short and intense-looking, with waist-length hair in elaborate braids. Piper doubted she could get her hair styled like that in the county. Maybe it was a weave; she probably couldn’t get that done here either. A little boy and girl, both with close-cropped curly hair sat in one chair and were intent on paging through an oversized Sesame Street book. They didn’t even look up.
Sylvia D had been talking to Esme. She reached to her side and pulled up a cardboard box and started taking paperbacks out. The temporary dispatcher had apparently come to work prepared to meet Esme Meredith.
“I have all your books,” Sylvia D said, acknowledging Piper and Oren with a curt nod, then turning back to Esme. “All of them. Every. Single. One. Under both your author names—Esme Meredith and Meredith Maguire. You sure have written a lot for being so young.”
Esme beamed. “I write fast.”
“Like lightning. How do you do it?”
“Well, I’m a full-time writer, and these romance books are only seventy to seventy-five thousand words. It takes about three months to write one, four with the rewrite and page proofs. So I put three a year on my schedule. If I didn’t have the kids to manage, and him—” she pointed to Basil, “I could probably write more. I had to come up with a penname—Maguire is my maiden name—because the publisher wanted three books a year. He just didn’t want all of them with Esme’s name on the cover. So I started the cozy series.”
Sylvia D smiled broadly. “I have these—Born of Desire, The Love of a Stranger, The Heart’s Embrace in first-printings. Mint. I don’t bend the spines when I read.” She pushed each book forward as she named it. There were two copies of The Heart’s Embrace. “A Heart Can Dream, and your Daisy Remington Western series Love Takes a Holiday, Love Rides a Pale Horse, Rainy Days and Romance—that was my favorite, and Loving My Life Away.”
Sylvia D took a pen out of the drawer and handed it to her. “I think your Western romances are so…real. The Stranger and the Cowboy. Where the heroine wakes up on a ranch with no memory of who she is or how she got there, and falls in love with the hero, who is struggling to make his ranch work. I cried at the end.”
“Thank you. Do you want me to sign these, or may I inscribe them to you?”
“Oh. Oh. Oh. Make them out to ‘my friend, Sylvia D,’ if you don’t mind. Except for one of The Heart’s Embrace. I’m going to send that to my sister, Chantelle. Make that out to her C H A N T E L L E. I’m usually not much into period fiction, but your Velvet Kisses, set in 1700s England, I loved that. Innocent girl from a good family, rescued from thugs by a dashing mystery man called the Velvet Bandit because of his fine clothes and gentlemanly ways. I’m a third into Harrington’s Way. Case Harrington has just hired a pet store owner to pose as his fiancée for an after-hours gala. He wants to throw off all the women who are trying to wed him. I bet he falls for the pet shop girl. Doesn’t he?”
“That would be telling. I don’t want to spoil it for you.”
“I’m in a book club, Mrs. Meredith. Next month we’re doing romances. I picked your Love’s Blistering Embrace for a group read.” She pushed that book forward. “The back here says its set in 1800s America, another period piece. ‘A young woman of ill repute uses her charms to seduce her way into wealth. She learns along the way that if you dare to play with fire, you can get burned.’” Sylvia D looked up. “Do you write the cover copy, too?”
“Sometimes.”
“Would you be willing to come to our book club next month? We could make a party out of it! I’ll make sure it gets into the local paper. Oh, and sign these Meredith Maguire books, please. Everyone in my club will go nuts if you can come.”
Piper noted the Maguire titles—Love Me, Love Me Knot; Heart Strings; Threads of Love; and Knit Me Another Lover. Definitely cozies, the Meredith Maguire tagline in script that looked like yarn.
“I hope Sheriff Blackwell offers your husband the job. It would be wonderful to have a famous author like you in Spencer County.”
Piper and Oren looked at each other. Maybe Sylvia D was making Esme like Spencer County at least a little bit.
“We have that Skype interview,” Piper said softly to Oren. Sylvia D and Esme continued to talk about books. “Would you show Basil and his wife around the department? See if they have any questions about the county. I’ll take the interview solo.”
Oren nodded, and whispered, “You should offer him the job.”
“Yeah,” she whispered back. “No question. But whether he’ll say yes—”
Piper slipped into her office and opened the laptop. Time to interview Jefferson Polanger, see if Teegan was right about the Yooper accent. Jefferson probably would not be bored in Spencer County, and would fit in easier with the stark white population.
She fit in better in the Army; the life had suited her.
But maybe fitting in didn’t have to be a requirement.
Maybe Spencer County could land that round peg from the big bad city.