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“You must be da new ownah I heard so much about,” the police officer said. The man’s accent was thick and nasally.
He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart and his thumbs tucked into his leather duty belt.
Brody had heard the bell tinkle and stepped out from one of the book aisles where he was cleaning up another of the cat’s messes.
When he initially saw the police officer, he paused for a moment because that was his natural reaction when contacting an officer of the law. He then moved slowly toward the man, trying to make sense of him because he was unlike any cop he’d ever seen.
He wore blue tennis shoes, dark blue cargo shorts, and a white short-sleeve shirt. Over his left breast was pinned a silver badge. Above the right pocket was stitched a nametag that read Farnsworth.
The officer also wore a bicycle helmet that was strapped tightly under his chin. Even with a gun on his right hip and a radio attached to his left, he didn’t present an authoritative figure. Instead, he seemed more security guard than law enforcement officer.
“Excuse me?” Brody said.
Farnsworth waggled his finger in a circle. “The bookstore. You the new ownah?”
“Oh, sure.”
The officer stuck out his right hand. “Constable Emery Fahnsworth.” His accent was so strong that it seemed like he was mispronouncing his name.
Brody held out his hand, palm up, so the officer wouldn’t see the tattoo on the back of it. “Brody Steele,” he said.
They quickly shook hands. When they broke their clasp, Brody shoved his hands into the pockets of his khakis.
“Constable, is it?” Brody asked.
“Actually, I’m an officah of the law, duly commissioned by the great state of Maine, but I really like how constable rolls off the tongue.” Farnsworth smiled. “It sounds nicah, don’t you think?”
“Don’t constables have less authority than an officer?”
“What?” Farnsworth’s face scrunched in disbelief. “No.”
“Okay.”
“Do they?” the officer asked.
The big man shrugged. “I don’t know. Just making conversation.”
“I’ll have to look into that.”
Brody watched the officer. He had obviously stopped into the store for something more than a welcome-to-the-neighborhood discussion.
“You bought the store from Alice Walkah?”
“Word travels fast.”
Farnsworth stepped further into the shop, his eyes scanning the bookshelves. “Daphne told me.”
“You know Daphne?”
The officer moved toward the back aisles, checking for something. “Ayuh. She’s my girlfriend.”
Brody repeatedly blinked, taking in what the officer had just said.
“Magnum?” Farnsworth said as he hunched over as if searching for something. “Where you at, buddy?”
“Daphne’s your girlfriend?” Brody carefully asked.
The officer straightened. “Well... she was,” he said, his voice now filled with disappointment. “Where’s the cat? Daphne said Alice left him with you.”
“Was?”
“Huh?”
“Daphne was your girlfriend?”
“Ayuh, ayuh,” he said as if he sucked in words instead of speaking them. “She broke up with me a few months back.”
“I see.”
Farnsworth spun around. “You do?” he asked, hurrying toward Brody. “What do you see?”
Brody’s eyes widened. In his old life as the Dawg’s bookkeeper, he would have told the silly-looking cop to step back from him and pound sand. Here in Pleasant Valley, though, he was trying to learn a new set of rules and to abide by Onderdonk’s guidance to not call attention to himself.
“I don’t see anything.”
“But you said you saw something.” Farnsworth studied Brody’s eyes. “In fact, you said, ‘I see.’ That’s what you said, right? ‘I see.’”
“That’s what I said, but I was only being polite.”
“Polite?”
Brody nodded.
The officer frowned. “That’s too bad. I’m still trying to figure out why she broke up with me.”
Maybe it’s your little boy's clothes, Brody thought. And your plastic hat.
Farnsworth stepped back, and his eyes again swept over the store. “Did Alice tell you where she moved to?”
“Why would she do that?”
“She was well-liked around here, and folks are curious as to why she would leave Pleasant Valley so unexpectedly.”
“She didn’t tell me anything. I never actually talked with her, though. I bought the business online.”
It was the story that Onderdonk had given him for a plausible change in ownership. The marshals had taken care of all the paperwork making Brody Steele the new owner. If anyone bothered to check, they would see the sale documents were fully in order.
“About a month and a half ago,” Farnsworth said, “she started closing her bookstore in the middle of the day, which wasn’t like her. I stopped in one morning to ask if everything was okay. She said it was, but she didn’t look that way. She looked sort of flushed and harried. Know what I mean?”
“Not really.”
“She also seemed distracted. Like she was bothered that I was there. That also wasn’t like her. She and I used to have some good talks.”
“Maybe she didn’t want people poking into her business.”
“Here in PV, everyone is in everyone’s business.”
Brody frowned.
“One of the ladies in her knitting circle, Martha Cole, said she saw her in Manchestah a month ago.”
“Manchester, New Hampshire?” Brody asked, thinking about the newspaper he’d read at the Italian restaurant.
Farnsworth scrunched his face and pulled back slightly as if Brody had asked something stupid. “Of course, it’s in New Hampshah. Where do you think she saw her, Manchestah, England?”
“How far is Manchester from here?”
“Three hours,” Farnsworth said.
“And Martha saw Alice there?”
“Wait,” Farnsworth said, “that’s three hours by bicycle. It’s less than an hour by car.”
“You’ve ridden your bicycle for three hours?”
“Ayuh, it’s a wonderful experience.”
“Does Daphne ride?”
“I wish,” Farnsworth said, again looking at Brody as if he’d asked a stupid question. “I bought her a bike and everything. She didn’t even wanna ride to York Harbah. We could have done that in twenty minutes.”
Brody studied him. For a police officer, he was missing the most obvious clues.
“You live in Alice’s old place, the one upstairs?”
Brody nodded.
“It’s strange.”
“What is?” the big man asked.
“She was a nice woman,” Farnsworth said. “I would have thought she would have said good-bye to her friends. She’d been here almost forty years.”
“Some people just want to leave and start a new life,” Brody said.
“Ayuh, maybe,” Farnsworth said. He glanced around a final time. “If you see Magnum, give him a ruffle for me.”