“Nothing against Internet shopping. I do a bit of it myself. But we’ve got plenty to offer right here in town. And she barely has a word to say. Always polite when she does, but barely a word. Spends nearly every minute of every day up there on her place. All alone.”
“Quiet, mannerly, keeps to herself. She must be a serial killer.”
“Brooks.” Kim let out a snort and walked over to her next table, shaking her head.
He added a little sugar to his coffee, stirred it lazily with his eyes on the market. No reason, he decided, he couldn’t go on over. He knew how to mosey. Maybe pick up some Cokes for the station or … he’d think of something.
Brooks lifted a hip for his wallet, peeled out some bills, then slid out of the booth.
“Thanks, Kim. See you, Lindy.”
The beanpole with the gray braid down to his ass let out a grunt, waved his spatula.
He strolled out. He had his father’s height, and given Loren’s post–heart attack regimen, they shared the same lanky build. His mother claimed he got his ink-black hair from the Algonquin brave who’d captured his great- great—and possibly one more great—grandmother and made her his wife.
Then again, his mother was often full of shit, and often on purpose. His changeable hazel eyes could shift from greenish to amber or show hints of blue. His nose listed slightly to the left, the result of a grounder to third, a bad hop and missed timing. Sometimes he told a woman, if she should ask, that he’d gotten it in a fistfight.
Sometimes he was full of shit, like his mother.
The high-end market carried fancy foods at fancy prices. He liked the smell of the fresh herbs, the rich colors of the produce, the gleam of bottles filled with specialty oils, even the glint of kitchen tools he’d have no earthly idea how to use.
To his mind, a man could get along just fine with a couple of good knives, a spatula and a slotted spoon. Anything else was just showing off.
In any case, when he needed to shop for groceries—a chore he hated like rat poison—he frequented the Piggly Wiggly.
She was easy to spot as she selected a bottle of the pricy oil, then one of those strange vinegars.
And though it wasn’t as easy to spot, he registered the fact she had a sidearm under her hooded jacket.
He continued down the short aisle, considering.
“Ms. Lowery.”
She turned her head, and he had a good full-on look at her eyes for the first time. Wide and green, like moss in the shadows of a forest.
“Yes.”
“I’m Brooks Gleason. I’m chief of police.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Why don’t you let me carry that basket for you? It must be heavy.”
“No, thank you. It’s fine.”
“I can never figure out what people do with stuff like that. Raspberry vinegar,” he added, tapping the bottle in her basket. “It just doesn’t seem like a workable marriage.”
At her blank stare, he tried one of his best smiles. “Raspberries, vinegar. They don’t go together in my mind. Who thinks of things like that?”
“People who cook. If you’ll excuse me, I—”
“Me, I’m a throw-a-steak-on-the-grill kind of guy.”
“Then you shouldn’t have any need for raspberry vinegar. Excuse me. I have to pay for my groceries.”
Though in his experience the smile generally turned the tide with a woman, he refused to be discouraged. He just walked with her to the counter. “How are you doing out at the old Skeeter place?”
“I do very well, thank you.” She took a slim wallet out of a zippered compartment in her bag.
Angling it, he noted, so he couldn’t get a peek inside.
“I grew up here, moved to Little Rock for a spell. I moved back about six months after you got here. What brought you to Bickford?”
“My car,” she said, and had the clerk smothering a laugh.
A hard shell, he decided, but he’d cracked tougher nuts. “Nice car, too. I meant what drew you to this part of the Ozarks?”
She took out cash, handed it to the clerk when he rang up her total. “I like the topography. I like the quiet.”
“You don’t get lonely out there?”
“I like the quiet,” she repeated, and took her change.
Brooks leaned on the counter. She was nervous, he noted. It didn’t show, not on her face, her eyes, her body language. But he could feel it. “What do you do out there?”
“Live. Thank you,” she said to the clerk when he’d loaded the market bag she’d brought with her.
“You’re welcome, Ms. Lowery. See you next time.”
She shouldered the market bag, slipped her sunglasses back on, and walked out without another word.
“Not much for conversation, is she?” Brooks commented.
“Nope. Always real polite, but she doesn’t say much.”
“Does she always pay in cash?”
“Ah … I guess so, now that you mention it.”
“Well. You take care now.”
Brooks chewed it over as he walked to his car. Lack of conversational skills or inclination was one thing. But the sidearm added an element.
Plenty of people he knew had guns, but there weren’t many of them who hid them under a hoodie to go out to buy raspberry vinegar.
It seemed like he finally had an excuse to take a drive out to her place.
He stopped in at the station first. He commanded three full-time deputies on revolving shifts, two part-time, a full-time and a part-time dispatcher. Come summer, when the heat moved in like hell’s breath, he’d put the part- timers on full-time to help handle the tempers, the vandalism that came with boredom, and the tourists who paid more attention to the views than the road.
“Ty’s being a pain in the ass.” Ash Hyderman, his youngest deputy, sulked at his desk. Over the winter he’d tried growing a goatee without much luck, but hadn’t quite given it up.
He looked like he’d smudged his top lip and chin with butterscotch frosting.
“I got him breakfast like you said to do. He stinks like a cheap whore.”
“How do you know how a cheap whore smells, Ash?”
“I got imagination. I’m going home, okay, Brooks? I pulled the night shift since we had that stinking Ty back in the pen. And that damn cot about breaks your back.”
“I need to take a run. Boyd’s due in about now. He can take over. Alma’s due in, too. We’re covered as soon as they get here.”
“Where you going? You need backup?”
Brooks thought Ash would like nothing better than if they’d had some gang of desperados scream into town, blasting at everything. Just so he could be backup.
“I just want to check something out. Won’t be long. I’m on the radio if anything comes in. Tell Boyd to try to talk some sense into Missy when she comes crying how Ty never touched her. It won’t work, but he should try.”
“The thing is, Brooks, I think she must like it.”
“Nobody likes a fist in the face, Ash. But it can get to be a habit. On both sides. I’m on the radio,” he repeated, and left.
Abigail struggled with nerves, with temper, with the sheer irritation at having a task she particularly enjoyed spoiled by a nosy police chief with nothing better to do than harass her.
She’d moved to this pretty corner of the Ozarks precisely because she wanted no neighbors, no people, no interruptions to whatever routine she set for herself.
