“This is Campbell’s best. I hope you like it, my boys sure do. How many miles do you run a week?
”
“Not more than fifteen miles a week, you don’t want to blow your knees out and—” She slapped her spoon on the tray. “I’m a runner and my name is Madonna. Just great. Swell. Hey, maybe I’m even rich since it looks like I own a Beemer, you think?”
“Could be. I try not to run more than fifteen miles a week either.”
She ate some soup, set her spoon down. “Sheriff, is there anything of interest around here? You know, tourist interest? I guess I’m the outdoorsy type. Is there something I could have come to see?”
“Beautiful scenery, which means you could have come to hike, or camp out, or maybe you came to go antiquing in some of the towns around here. If you do drive one of those SAV Beemers it’s got lots of room to lug stuff around in it. The only thing is, this snowstorm has been forecast for a while now. I can’t see you wanting to hike in a blinding snowstorm.”
“No, I suppose not. So that’s not why I was here.” She finished her soup, sighed, and set down her spoon again. Dix put the tray on the coffee table and patted his knee. Brewster jumped up on his lap and nuzzled against his hand. Madonna turned to look out the wide window across the front of the living room. “I don’t think it’s going to snow anymore.”
“Don’t bet the Beemer on it. I was just outside and the clouds to the east are nearly black, really fat, and rolling this way. I think it might actually be pretty bad later on tonight. You warm enough?”
“Yes, I’m fine. How long have you been sheriff here in Maestro?”
“Nearly eleven years now. I was elected when I was twenty-six.”
An eyebrow went up. “Oh? And how did that miracle come about?”
He laughed. “Actually, I married the mayor’s daughter when I was twenty-two and newly assigned to the Twenty-seventh Precinct in Manhattan. After five years in New York, we decided to move back here. Christie’s father, Chapman Holcombe, or Chappy as he’s called by everyone, offered the best inducement by backing me as sheriff. He owns half of Maestro, along with fistfuls of other business interests in Virginia, so winning wasn’t that hard.”
“So you call your father-in-law Chappy?”
He looked down at his low-heeled black boots for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure. The boys call him Grandpa Chappy.”
Sounded like there was something going on there, something beneath the surface the sheriff didn’t want to talk about. Maybe something to do with his wife, Christie?
“Chappy has a brother he calls Twister, the only person who does.”
She laughed. “Twister, that’s a good one. However did he get that name?”
“Seems he was feet first in the birth canal. The doctor had to grab his feet together, turn him around, and then pull him out. Hard going, nearly killed his mother before they got him out of her. She was the one who gave him the nickname. Only his brother and mother ever call him that. She lived with Twister until last year when she died in her sleep at the age of ninety-six. Chappy still calls him that. He hates it.”
“Do you ever regret coming here?”
“As in leaving New York? Sometimes. I loved the Mets games at Shea Stadium, always saw myself taking my boys to the games. I took Rob once to the Garden when the Knicks played the Boston Celtics, but he was only two. He threw up all over the guy sitting next to me.
“For the most part, though, I think this is a great place for the boys to grow up. We’ve got only a smattering of drugs, no gang stuff to speak of. Teenage boys drinking and joyriding and keeping the kids away from Lovers Lane are usually the biggest teen problems we’ve got. Fact is, we don’t get a whole lot of crime out here in the boonies, but there’s enough to keep our department busy and me on my toes. With Stanislaus here, we get a fair number of out-of-town visitors.”
“What’s Stanislaus?”
“Stanislaus School of Music, a university with about four hundred music students in attendance, nearly year around. It’s known as the Juilliard of the South. If you drive anywhere near the campus, you can hear singing and musical instruments blending together, so beautiful you think you’ve died and gone to heaven. The director of Stanislaus is Twister—real name, Dr. Gordon Holcombe, Chappy’s younger brother.”
“Hmm. Two Holcombes and they appear to run lots of things around here. Stanislaus—something makes me think I recognize the name.”
“It’s pretty famous. Maybe you read about it before you came here.”
She shrugged, reached her hand out to Brewster, who was lying on Dix’s legs on his back with his paws in the air, and scratched his belly. “You’ve got what? Twenty deputies?”
He looked at her closely as he nodded.
“How many women?”
“Nine.”
“Not bad, Sheriff.”
“You’re on the pale side again. Your head hurting?”
“Not enough for another pill.”
“Fair enough. I know it’s hard, but try not to worry. Dr. Crocker said your memory should right itself soon enough, and in the meantime, our deputies are showing your photo around everywhere. It makes sense you were staying somewhere around here, and chances are you had to buy gas. We’ll know pretty soon who you are. Or maybe I’ll know by tomorrow morning, if your fingerprints are in IAFIS.”
She sighed. “I can’t stop wondering what I was doing here. Maybe it was to hike, camp out, and I ran into the wrong people at some campsite.”
“We’re checking all the campsites out as well. But again, there’s the weather, not at all conducive to anything outdoors, except for snowmobiling or cross-country skiing. Do you ski?”
She paused for a moment, frowned down at her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe. But you know, I doubt that’s it.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure, really, but I feel like there are lots of people in my life, that the last thing I’d ever do is go off somewhere alone.” She shrugged, smiled at him. “I guess I could be wrong though.”
“Probably not. Why don’t you rest, nap a bit. Dream about dinner—I’ve got really good stew left over from last night.”
“Lots of catsup?”
“You and my boys,” he said, and laughed.
MADONNA FELL ASLEEP at nine o’clock Saturday night in Rob’s bedroom, wearing a pair of his pajamas. They looked brand-new, which Rob told her was true because neither he nor his brother wore pajamas, for the simple reason that their father didn’t, even in the dead of winter. The pain pills put her into a deep sleep where dreams came in hard and fast. She was standing in a dark place, so dark she couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face. Wherever she was, she couldn’t get out, though oddly, it didn’t seem to bother her. She stood cocooned in blackness, waiting for a man who was going to give her a million dollars. Why in the dark? she wondered, but again, it didn’t seem to matter. She waited patiently, wondering idly if the sheriff wore boxers or jockeys, an interesting question, but then the image was gone, and she was still standing in the middle of nowhere, wondering where the man was. She couldn’t see her watch so she didn’t know what time it was. She heard something and felt her heart speed up because he was finally here, the man with her money, a million bucks in gold bars, and it was all hers, she’d earned it, worked her tail off. She wondered how she was going to carry the gold bars, but she knew she’d manage it. She had a plan, didn’t she?
Otherwise why was she so happy and excited in the middle of a black pit?
She heard something again. Was it footsteps? The man carrying all those gold bars? But she realized in that instant that it wasn’t a man’s footsteps, it sounded indistinct, too hollow for that. She jerked awake, shot straight up in bed, and looked toward the window. All she saw was a veil of white snow falling thick and straight down. She looked closely at it.
The house was cool, but not uncomfortably so. She was wearing a pair of Rafer’s socks, his donation to her, nice thick wool socks, so she didn’t feel the cold of the oak planks beneath her feet as she walked to the window and looked out, thinking about the dream. She heard a scratching sound coming from below the window. She tried
