Halfway to Half Way (2 page)

 

 

Shrewd, milky-blue eyes rose to her brown ones, and the corners of Delbert's mouth quirked into a smile. In a tone both affectionate and crabby, he said, "Has anybody ever told you, you're nuttier than a fruitcake factory?"

 

 

"Uh-huh." Hannah laughed. "But you haven't for quite a while."

 

 

"I would have, if I'd known you were such a nature freak." He squatted to retrieve the screwdriver and chucked it in the toolbox. "Real air, my sweet aspidistra. Next you'll trade in that feminazi mobile for an ox team and a wagon."

 

 

He pondered the sunlight streaming through the French doors to the deck. "It's not as hot in here as you'd expect, though. Must be the shade—trees keep it cooler longer."

 

 

That and relative isolation. A stocked, spring-fed lake and the adjacent community center separated the manager's cottage from the residential area and Main Street's commercial district. Across Valhalla Springs Boulevard and a jog east was an eighteen-hole championship golf course. Any whisper of a breeze from any direction was Hannah's to enjoy.

 

 

With Mother Nature as her nearest neighbor, she should also have privacy out the wazoo. And mostly did, for about seventy-three hours after she moved in last April. Coming home to find the first gumshoe meeting in progress because
they
wanted privacy had significantly lessened her hope of having some.

 

 

Delbert pulled a chartreuse ball cap with Eat Well, Stay Fit, Die Anyway embroidered on it from his back pocket. "Since you've got bookkeeping to do, I'd best shove off. If you want, I'll mosey by Maintenance and report that bum thermostat."

 

 

"No rush, unless you're in one. I can't work a calculator without coffee."

 

 

A sly grin said her marginal math skills were gender-related, not caffeine-oriented. "One cup. Then I gotta get crack-a-lackin'."

 

 

Availing himself of a bar stool, Delbert shucked the rubber band from the county weekly newspaper he must have brought in with him. "I'm teeing off with Leo Schnur in a few minutes. Suki Allen's invited me over for lunch, then after my siesta, I've gotta decide whether to take Carol Flaherty or Pat Fortune to the square dance tonight."

 

 

His harem was a source of amusement and no speculation whatsoever. The childless, five-time divorcée was the George Clooney of Valhalla Springs—either in spite of, or because of, his pledge to never say "I do" again.

 

 

Hannah's mother never married, but her romantic learning curve was similarly steep. Caroline Garvey's lifelong quest for Mr. Right netted a parade of Mr. Couldn't Be More Wrongs, an illegitimate daughter, chronic alcoholism, incurable poverty and an early grave.

 

 

Avoiding that fate was simple. Never get involved with anyone other than a Mr. Wrong, whom Hannah wouldn't marry if she were comatose, or who had no desire to marry her. The bonus was the appearance of a committed relationship without the angst, complications and heartache. It also resolved a lot of trust issues. It's easy not to fear Mr. Wrong will leave, when you don't want him around forever, anyway.

 

 

As Hannah filled the coffee carafe with tap water, she thought David Hendrickson should have been the ultimate Mr. Wrong. A divorced, dedicated county sheriff seven years her junior? No threat whatsoever to her theory, much less to the vow of celibacy she took on her fortieth birthday.

 

 

They'd both put up a good fight. Well,
she
had. A whole seven, maybe eight days had elapsed from the time she fell in like to when she fell hopelessly in love with the tall, handsome, smart, smart-ass lawman.

 

 

Hannah flipped the coffeemaker's switch to Brew and took two mugs from the cabinet. She'd designed the Valhalla Springs logo and slogan embossed on the cups—a souvenir of her former life as a senior account executive at Chicago's Friedlich & Friedlich agency.

 

 

When exactly her dream career became drudgery was impossible to peg. The result was an "I quit" memo to the agency's fraternal CEOs. To this day, Hannah wasn't sure how a courtesy call to Jack Clancy, her longtime client and dearest friend, turned into the resident manager's job at his upscale retirement community.

 

 

Now all she had to do to become Mrs. Sheriff was plan their wedding, find her own replacement, leave the second family she loved, the only real home she'd ever had, and move to the house David was building twenty-five miles away.

 

 

No problem, as long as she ignored minor qualms, such as not wanting to quit her job and a severe reluctance to move to "the corner of East Jesus and plowed ground." David's new house wasn't as far from Valhalla Springs as Nepal, but his closest neighbor was miles away and her love of nature was somewhat selective.

 

 

Fresh air and crickets, good. A surrounding forest, a meadow teeming with wildflowers, bunnies, birds, squirrels and deer, very good. Snakes, skunks, ticks, chiggers, poison ivy, probably bears, maybe wolves, not good.
Way
not good.

 

 

Newspaper pages rattled behind her. "This county rag gets skimpier every week," Delbert said. "If I subscribed, I'd cancel."

 

 

"You did," Hannah reminded him. "The day I started mine."

 

 

The aroma of bubbling Tip of the Andes followed her to the utility room. She filled Malcolm's food vat, then let him in the side door. Reverse the order and he'd dive into the kibble can and eat his way out.

 

 

"Hey, ladybug. Get a load of this."

 

 

She detoured to the coffeemaker, filled the mugs and set Delbert's in front of him. He sucked down a healthy swig as he tapped a three-by-four photograph below the fold. "Looks like Chlorine Moody's got herself between a rosebush and a bulldozer."

 

 

Hannah realized the picture's blurriness was the fault of her forty-three-year-old eyes, not the photographer. She hiked a shoulder, preferring not to admit her presbyopia to a retired unhandyman who didn't need reading glasses.

 

 

Delbert went on. "The caption says Chlorine is fighting the city over a new natural gas line being laid in the alley behind her house."

 

 

Hannah's nose wrinkled, remembering her one, thankfully brief, encounter with the woman. "If anyone can beat city hall, it's her. Saying she's rude is almost a compliment."

 

 

Delbert harrumphed. "Near as I can tell, that pickle-puss of hers would stop traffic on I-44. This picture was taken last Friday. I'll bet that bulldozer driver still ain't sleeping through the night."

 

 

They both jumped at a
zing,
like lightning striking a telephone line. "What the—" Delbert glanced around. "What was that?"

 

 

Hannah's eyes riveted on the breakfast room's damaged wall, expecting it to burst into flames. Then from the great room came a faint and rather cheesy rendition of "Me and Bobby McGee."

 

 

Her cell phone. The secret cell phone that allowed her to maintain the appearance of being on duty in Valhalla Springs while she was at David's. It was still in her purse on the desk where she'd left it.

 

 

"What was what?" she blurted, praying Delbert's ears weren't as sharp as his vision.

 

 

"That noise," he said, coinciding with the cell phone's second ring. "Now it sounds like an ice cream truck going by."

 

 

Delbert slid off the bar stool just as Malcolm the Wonder Dog streaked from the utility room.
Burfburfing
like a maniac, the dog blew by, nearly knocking Delbert out of his sandals. "Glorioski zero, this
is
a goddamn fruitcake factory."

 

 

For once, Hannah was thankful that Malcolm was genetically predisposed to
burf
at the front door when the phone rang, and
burf
at the phone when the doorbell rang.

 

 

"Malcolm, hush up!" she yelled.
Louder, boy.

 

 

A pause, then a fresh blast of
burfing
indicated the mutt was slow on the telepathic uptake, or the stupid cell phone was singing again.

 

 

Muttering something about muzzles, Delbert stomped over to fetch his toolbox, then past Hannah and out the utility room door. Her relief that another guilty secret was safe didn't offset the shame of having so many.

 

 

Sneaking around behind Delbert's and everyone else's backs was over. He hadn't given her engagement to David a seal of approval, but that wasn't the problem. Even grouchy father figures don't believe any man on earth is good enough for their daughter figures. What he'd never forgive was finding Hannah gone, if an emergency arose.

 

 

Strange though it was that Valhalla Springs residents slept better knowing she was there, they did. As if the development were a horizontal apartment complex and Hannah was the doorman—an omniscient, easily ignored presence vital to their peace of mind.

 

 

Malcolm gallumped into the kitchen, a triumphant knight in shaggy armor who'd saved the fair maiden from…The nobody's home look in his eyes said he wasn't sure what, but bravery with or without a clue should be rewarded.

 

 

She peeled open a can of Vienna sausages and dumped them in his bowl, then popped an English muffin into the toaster for herself. She'd buttered it, topped off her coffee and sat down at the bar before she realized the old fart had taken the newspaper with him.

 

 

 

2

D
avid Hendrickson rolled a stubby pencil back and forth across his knuckles. His other hand held the telephone receiver away from his ear. Truth be told, he could have laid it on the desk and not missed a word of Mrs. Bumgartner's weekly 911 call.

 

 

"That roofer charged me a hundred-and-sixteen dollars just to fix some loose shingles," she squawked. "Stole me blind, he did. Now, you get off your duff and arrest him. Right this very minute."

 

 

"Ma'am, I can't—"

 

 

"What do you mean,
can't?
You're the sheriff, aren't you? I'll have you know, my taxes pay your salary."

 

 

David's taxes paid his salary, too, but he doubted that she'd appreciate the irony. Nor did she want the roofer arrested, any more than the pharmacist who'd allegedly shorted her a pill last week, or the mechanic who'd worked on her car the week before that.

 

 

Sad, how often the world's lonely and alone alienate the few friends they have left, then manufacture excuses to call strangers just for somebody to talk to.

 

 

David looked out the door to his office. Chief Deputy Jimmy Wayne McBride was munching a slice of cold pizza and staring off into space. The understaffed, underfunded Kinderhook County cop shop wasn't blessed with slow days. David's second-in-command only appeared to be lollygagging. And he ought to know better than to do it in plain sight.

 

 

"Tell you what, Mrs. Bumgartner," David said into the phone. "I'll send a man over to take a complaint report. But don't you go to baking cookies or anything. He might be obliged for a glass of sweet tea, but he can't stay longer than ten, maybe fifteen minutes."

 

 

Judging by the hum on the line, that wasn't the response the Macedonia Free Will Full Gospel Church's organist had expected. David grinned. All's fair in love and law enforcement. Jimmy Wayne wasn't expecting to waste an hour writing a report destined for the shredder, either.

 

 

Mrs. Bumgartner sniffed, then sniped, "It's about time you did something about the scoundrels running amok from one end of this county to t'other. I'll have you know, Clara Haines told—"

 

 

"Beg pardon, ma'am, but the quicker I hang up, the quicker I can send that deputy."

 

 

"Of
all
the—Uh, well, all right, but you tell him to wipe his shoes on the mat. I won't abide him tracking in dirt on my fresh-mopped floors."

 

 

David was still chuckling when he shut his office door on Jimmy Wayne's verbal resignation. An estimated thirty seconds would elapse before he passed off Mrs. Bumgartner to the handiest rookie.

 

 

His oak banker's chair squeaked and groaned as David sat down again. It and the massive desk were relics of an era when Sanity, the county seat, was a one-horse town with the ugliest courthouse in Missouri. The century-old, three-story brick box disproved the notion that no-bid government contracts and construction kickbacks were modern inventions.

 

 

David's gaze lowered from a top-floor view of the square's west side to a farm truck nosed into the curb. A bumper sticker affixed to its rear window was a smaller version of the yard signs that leaned against the office gun safe.

 

 

On both, the message spelled out in bold red ink was Reelect David Hendrickson for Kinderhook County Sheriff on August 3. Brief and to the point, he granted, but a skosh shy of accurate.

 

 

Technically he wasn't an incumbent. The governor promoted him from chief deputy when the duly elected sheriff, Larry Beauford, died in office. And August 3 marked the county's primary election, not the general one.

 

 

It might as well be, though, David admitted. He'd filed as a Republican because Beauford won three terms from that side of the ballot. David's nemesis, Jessup Knox, filed the same way, for the same reason. Whoever won at the polls in three weeks had nobody to beat in November, except a Democrat who once ran unopposed and lost to a write-in candidate.

 

 

All politics is local, they say. Whoever
they
were, David fervently believed that sheriffs should be hired, like chiefs of police. Being a "come-here," not a native Kinderhook Countian, he might not get the job, but in a place where everyone seemed to be everyone else's Cousin Bob, it was a neat trick to arrest scofflaws and win a popularity contest at the same time.