"No, we aren't. We don't fight." He keyed the ignition. "I'm not putting anything out on the radio about this SOS call. Once it's official, whatever Delbert's gotten himself into will be harder to get him out of. If I need backup, Marlin and Phelps are probably still at the Outhouse."
"That's very kind of you, Sheriff. Thanks."
The cruiser seemed to hover, then took off, gliding over the rutted dirt lane. Hannah said, "So what's with this 'we don't fight' bit? What do you think we've been doing for the past almost two hours?"
"Having a difference of opinion."
"The
New York Times
and the
Washington Post
have a difference of opinion. We're fighting."
"No. We. Are. Not."
The car slowed, then jounced onto Turkey Creek Road. "Great," Hannah said. "Now we're fighting about whether we're fighting or not."
"We don't fight. Okay?"
Something in his voice beckoned a sidelong look. The expression illuminated by the dashboard light was one she'd seldom seen. Henry David Thoreau wrote of quiet desperation. David Hendrickson's face could illustrate it.
He seldom spoke of his first marriage. Rarer still were derogatory remarks about his ex-wife, which put him in the bottom one percent of divorced males. Particularly those whose wives were sleeping with their second husbands before filing for dissolution from the current ones.
What Hannah gathered from random snippets and allusions was that when David and Cynthia hadn't been arguing, they'd been either apart, asleep or not speaking at all.
"We are fighting," she said. "We haven't before, but this one isn't over and we'll have more fights. Lots more." Hannah laid her hand on his thigh. "I'm not your ex-wife. You aren't the same David you were then."
He glanced at her warily.
"Yes, I know you've seen a jillion arguments turn into domestics. Some with fatal, or near-fatal outcomes. None of those couples are us, either." She chuckled. "And you're the one with the gun, not me."
David rolled his eyes. "You almost had me, then you blew it."
"Oh, lighten up. This isn't the beginning of the end, you dork. It's the beginning of the beginning. You're stuck with me for life and I promise, you're going to love almost every minute of it."
Another glance, this one with a touch of the ol' killer grin. "Don't expect me to ever like getting mad and yelling at each other, because I don't. Never have, except with Marlin."
"Well, I'm not super keen on it, either, except with Marlin. But it beats the hell out of
not
fighting, and pretending everything's hunky freakin' dory, when you're shriveling up inside."
"Good point."
"I thought so."
Tension ebbing, he cocked his head and boasted, "I didn't bull up and go silent on you, like I used to."
"Another good point. See? We're making progress."
Hannah angled her shoulders toward him, which was as close to a face-to-face discussion as manageable in a speeding patrol unit. "While you're captive, I have a few compromises to get us out of the trifreakin' fecta we're in."
His face rumpled, as if stricken with acute appendicitis. "Like you said, I do have a gun."
"I'll bear that in mind."
"All right. Lay 'em on me."
"Luke's insane, but a wedding in the park will draw the right kind of attention to you for once. Plus, we get married. A two-fer, as IdaClare calls them. Okay?"
Heaven forbid the man just agree with her. "The married part, I'm all for. The Sunday before the election is mighty short notice for my folks and my brothers."
Hannah flapped a hand. "Pfft. It's your wedding. They'll be here. It'd be great if the whole clan could stay until election night and help us campaign, too."
"Uh-huh. What's an extra thirteen, fourteen people hanging around the house on our wedding night? And the night after that."
"I'll reserve town houses for everybody at Valhalla Springs. Your parents already know IdaClare. She and June can get reacquainted and Ed will get a kick out of Delbert."
"Yeah." David chuckled. "Nothin' like a visitor to lift an inmate's spirits."
"No matter what he's up to tonight, he'll make bail long before then."
No comment.
"Luke will be thrilled to have your entire family in the trenches for the final push before election day."
She hadn't met David's three younger brothers, but had seen photos. As Delbert would say,
hot ziggety,
in triplicate. While Kinderhook County's female constituency would swoon en masse, in Hannah's opinion, she had the pick of the litter.
"I can see the
Examiner
's postelection headline now," she said. "David, Daniel, Darrin and Dillon. The Four Hendricksons of the Apocalypse Leave Elvis in the Dust."
"Wingate will never go for it," David said. "And damned if I can figure out how this is a compromise, but okay. You're on."
"
We're
on," she corrected. "Now, here's a real non-compromise. Win or lose, we aren't leaving Kinderhook County. Work with Marlin, the Sanity PD, the highway patrolthe CIA, for all I care. This is our home. We stay, no matter what."
David rubbed his jaw. Beat a drum riff on the steering wheel with his thumbs. Inhaled and blew out a massive sigh. "Deal."
From an arbitration standpoint, Hannah was confident the third leg of their conflict resolution was the easiest. She said, "As for selling out to Luke, here's a minor alteration. Sell him the A-frame and the land to more or less the middle of the valley. We keep the farmhouse and the rest of the acreage. He gets the new house, and keeps the view. We remodel and expand the old house, and keep the view. It's a win-win for everybody."
David's eyebrows met, then parted and rose. His mouth puckered and he shifted in the seat. With a snort, he said, "Not bad. Might even work. Luke mostly wants the land to look at, anyhow."
"And there are bonus amenities this way. He'll have an on-site sheriff, a rottweiler on patrol and a home-based advertising entrepreneur for a round-the-clock neighborhood watch committee."
"Yeah," David allowed, "but we'd also have to double the farmhouse's square footage. Maybe triple it. That'll take months, sugar. And we'd be back to sharing a bathroom."
"We'll manage. Our bathroom stuff will be in one place. So will the groceries. No to mention us. If the hammering gets too loud, I'll take the laptop I haven't bought yet and my cell phone out to the barn." She grinned. "You know, to conference with my partners, Malcolm and Rambo."
David's chuckle was downright lecherous. "Come to think of it,
we
haven't conferenced in the barn yet."
She laughed. "Does that mean yes, we'll split the place with Luke?"
"Affirmative, Miz Garvey." David took her hand and kissed the palm. "Does this mean we're through fighting?"
"For now, yeah." Her fingertips imitated a Dance of the Seven Veils on the back of his neck. "And if we didn't have to go save the Mod Squad from Chlorine Moodyor Chlorine Moody from the Mod Squadwe could be having our first makeup sex."
David's groan turned into a growl. "Compromise?"
Hannah glanced over her shoulder, then shook her head, albeit reluctantly. "Sorry. That'd be a first, too, but a quickie in the backseat isn't what I had in mind."
"Neither did I, darlin'. But after we save Delbert's butt, I'll do my damnedest to piss you off again, then we'll hit the daily double."
Heat licked up from Hannah's toes, concentrating in places he'd mapped so thoroughly and often. It was spreading to several lesser yet just as lovely principalities when the cruiser turned onto MacMillan Street.
Two Sanity patrol units with their lightbars flashing were parked nose-to-nose in the middle of the street. At the curb was an unmarked rustbucket of a Chevy sedan. Neighbors crowded the far sidewalk, gawking and pointing at Chlorine Moody's white bungalow. In the driveway, two uniformed PD officers were huddled with Marlin Andrik.
A shiver of fear eclipsed Hannah's reverie. "Oh, my God. I thought" Junior Duckworth's hearse wheeled around the opposite corner, sending her heart lurching into her throat. "Somebody's dead. Oh, God, oh please, don't let it be Delbert. Don't let it be any of them."
"There's no ambulance," David said. "The EMTs would be here before Junior if anybody was
hurt."
"Maybe it already
left.
"
He turned on the lightbar and parked behind the city car. "I monitored the radio all the way here. The only response from this address was about a prowler report."
Hannah hadn't heard any radio chatter. Then again, during previous ride-alongs, she'd rarely comprehended a word of it.
Marlin Andrik wasn't at all difficult to understand, even from a distance. The detective was smoking, but without benefit of a cigarette. "Cornelius, we've gone over this a hundred friggin' times. You're city. I'm county. The city's
in
the goddamned county, so it's my goddamned jurisdiction."
He pointed at David. "There's the sheriff. You want to bitch and moan, bitch and moan at him."
"Forget jurisdiction," David said. "I want to know what's going on. You first, Cornelius."
"Mrs. Moody called 911"
"Ah-ah-ah," Marlin said. "A female who
identified
herself as Mrs. Moody called 911. Phelps and I were interviewing her when your dispatcher caught the call."
Cornelius began again. "Nine-one-one received a prowler complaint at this address." He nodded at the other officer. "Me and Sheib responded. Public Works had the alley barricaded, so we split up and walked around there on foot. A couple of old gents out looking for a lost puppy reported seeing a guy in a billed cap shinny down Moody's garage roof and into her yard."
Sheib, the younger of the two, chimed in, "There's rose bushes grown up over the fence clear to the power lines. We couldn't get through, but I shined the flashlight into the yard."
He rocked backward and blew out a breath. "Lemme tell ya, when I saw that big hole with a corpse in it, I tasted my dinner all over again."
Cornelius chuckled. "Whooee. I guarantee, that gomer ain't prowled nobody's house in a month of Sundays."
Twenty-three years' worth was a closer estimate. Hannah hugged herself as a gruesome montage of every zombie movie she'd ever seen scrolled through her mind.
The old fart was right. Chlorine had murdered her husband and buried him in the backyard. How he'd resurfaced was a mystery, and would hopefully stay that way. So would the absolute certainty that IdaClare had placed the 911 prowler call, and that the helpful puppy hunters were Sam Spade Bisbee and his faithful assistant, Leo Schnur.
Feeling David's eyes bore into her, Hannah surveyed the other available directions for a glimpse of a gumshoe, or two or five. The gang had to be around somewhere. Delbert couldn't be dragged away from his moment of glory with chains and a flatbed tow truck.
Marlin said to Cornelius, "I rest my case. No prowler, no city presence necessary. Except for maybe crowd and traffic control, which you aren't doing any of."
"Prowler, hell. We've got a dead bodya
very
dead bodyto process back yonder."
"And we should all live long enough for your scene techs to roll in."
David looked hard at his chief of detectives, then asked Cornelius, "Are the backyard and the alley cordoned off?"
"Yes, sir."
"Your crime unit's en route?"
"Yes, sir. What's keepin' them, I can't hazard a guess."
"In the meantime, I'd appreciate you assigning somebody to disburse the rubberneckersshoo 'em indoors, if he can. Whoever else is available, station them in back to keep that grave site secure. I'd also suggest contacting your dispatch about a city crew to take out that hedge and the fence."
Cornelius nodded. "Will do, Sheriff. Good thinkin'. Access from the alley is easier, and easier to control."
Marlin, now smoking for real, watched the two city officers stride away.
"We'll sort out the boundary disputes later," David said. "I've had almost enough arguing for one night." He winked at Hannah, then returned his attention to Marlin. "But I am a mite curious about what brought you and Phelps here. Before the prowler call ever went out, no less."
As casually as he'd answer a question about the weather, Marlin said, "To arrest Chlorine Moody for the murder of Bev Beauford. Phelps and a city uniform are still inside, taking her statement."
Hannah and David looked at each other, then at Marlin. All three of them turned toward an approaching clickety-clack sound on the sidewalk. Ignoring David and Marlin, the newcomer said, "Jiminy Christmas, ladybug. How'd you get here so fast? I didn't figure you and Hendrickson'd make it here for another half hour."