Savich started to nod, then thought of how excited she’d been about the trip, about going into a cave this time, and just wait until he saw what she brought back. “No, let her have her time off. There are enough of us here. She’ll be back on Monday.”
They looked up to see an older woman striding toward them, boots to her knees, a head scarf tied tight around her face, a thick wool coat flapping around her calves. She stopped at the cruiser, leaned in, and screamed, “What did you do, Raymond?”
Savich cocked an eyebrow. “Marlene, I presume.”
CHAPTER 4
MAESTRO, VIRGINIAFRIDAY EVENING
SHERIFF DIXON NOBLE shrugged into his leather jacket, pulled on his gloves, and left his office at Number One High Street just before five o’clock. It was colder than Brewster’s nose against the back of his knee in the dead of winter. Snow was coming, forecasted to dump a good one and a half to two feet. He really didn’t want to think about the phone calls it would bring, from downed power lines to car pileups, older citizens with no heat, sick folks without a way to get to the hospital—the list was endless. He’d learned a long time ago to have a solid number of what he called “disaster deputies” he himself had trained to handle the worst that bad luck and nature could throw at them. It had been a slow February anyway, he thought, except for Valentine’s Day. Will Garber had brought his wife, Darlene, a three-pound box of Valentine chocolates as an apology, but Darlene wasn’t buying it. She grabbed up a handful of chocolates and rubbed them in his face, at which point he slugged her, slammed out of the house, got drunk at Calhoun’s Bar, broke Jamie Calhoun’s nose, and ended up in jail.
“Hey, Dix, anything going on this weekend for you?”
Dix paused a moment, nodded to Stupper Fulton, owner of Fulton’s Hardware, as his father had been before him, and said, “Not so’s you’d notice, Stup. Me and the boys will be sledding down Breaker’s Hill along with half the kids in town if this storm coughs up enough snow. If it coughs up too much, I’ll be all over town with a shovel, digging people out of ditches.”
“Don’t think I’d want to sled in a storm,” Stup said. “At my age, I’d break bones if I hit a tree.”
Dix saw Stup was obviously cold but he wasn’t moving. “You got something on your mind?”
“Well, yeah, it’s like this, Dix. Rafer wants a job.”
“Rafe’s fourteen, old enough, but his grades in English and biology stink, and I’ve already told him there’
ll be no part-time job until he gets both of them to a B average. I’m trying to help him out myself, helping him build a model of the double helix for biology in the evenings and even reading Othello with him for English. The guy’s an idiot.”
“Rafer? He’s not an idiot, Dix, he just needs some good motivation.”
“No, Stup, not Rafer, this guy Othello. You know, the guy who murders his wife in Shakespeare’s play.”
“Oh, well then. Rafer wants a job so much he even promised me he’d work extra fast, do all I asked him to do in half the time it would take anyone else, and then he’d study.”
Dix laughed. “That kid’s always got a line. What did you tell him?”
“That I’d speak to you about it.”
“Tell him you pay by the hour, so if he does the work in half the time, he’ll only make half the money. Let
’s see what he has to say to that.”
Stup rubbed his arms and broke into a grin. “That’s good, Dix. He’s supposed to come see me tomorrow, so I’ll try it.”
Before he reached his Range Rover, Dix walked along High Street, as he usually did, and spoke to a half dozen more citizens of Maestro, including Melissa Haverstock, the local librarian, who asked him if he’d like to come with her to the First Methodist Church potluck supper on Saturday night. He kindly refused. When he pulled into his driveway eleven minutes later, it was already getting dark. He was getting real tired of the long winter nights. It was cold, the naked branches shuddering in the frigid air. He sniffed the air. Snow was coming, all right, he could smell it, heavy and moving closer. The house was all lit up, and that meant the boys were home or they had left and didn’t bother to turn the lights off. Who knew?
He heard Brewster bark, knew he was waiting beside the front door, his tail wagging so fast it was a blur. Brewster tended to pee when he got excited, so Dix speeded up, hoping to head off an accident. It was Friday night and he’d have to nag Rob to do the laundry. The three of them had lived through pink shorts and undershirts until Rob finally got clued in to colors running in the washer. Rafer had worn a bathing suit under his jeans for a good two weeks after the guys in gym class laughed their heads off at him for being a girlie-man.
Brewster, whose truly impressive bark exceeded his body weight by at least fifty pounds, tried to climb up his leg when he came in the house. “Hey, Brewster, you hanging in there, fella? Yeah, I’m home and we’re going to have a fine old time. And you didn’t even pee on my boots.” He picked up the four-pound toy poodle and laughed when he wildly licked his five o’clock shadow.
“Hey, boys, you here?”
Rafer sauntered in, shoulders slouched, yawning. “Hey, Dad. I’m here.”
“Where’s your brother?”
Rafer gave a trademark teenage shrug, Like ask me if I care. “Dunno, maybe he went over to Mary Lou’
s house. He said he wanted to get in her pants.”
“If he tries to get into Mary Lou’s pants her dad will skin off his face.”
Rafer grinned at that. “That’s good, I’ll warn him, but you know, Dad, he gets this glazed look in his eyes when he’s with her, like he’s a little nuts. Oh, never mind.”
“Yeah, you warn him, Rafe.” Of course Rob was nuts, he was a teenager. Given those raging hormones, it was a blessing there were fathers like Mary Lou’s. Her parents kept a tight rein on her, but he supposed he’d have to speak to Rob again, for the umpteenth time—the teenage boy and sexual responsibility talk, now that gave him a headache.
“Rob did the laundry,” Rafer said. Dix felt a leap of pleasure, but it folded when Rafer snickered.
“What color are our shorts this time?”
“A real pretty robin’s-egg blue,” Rafer said, “that’s what Mrs. Melowski called it.”
“Great. Wonderful. Why did you show Mrs. Melowski our blue shorts?”
“You know, she’s always coming by, wants to see you, and Rob was holding a pair of his shorts and she looked at them and started laughing. She showed Rob what he did wrong.”
“So have I, countless times.”
“Well, yeah, she said they’d need another couple of washings with lots of bleach and the blue would come out. She left a lemon cake for our dessert tonight. Hey, Dad, what’s for dinner?”
“Not pizza tonight, Rafe, hang that up. I made some stew Tuesday and froze it. I’ll make biscuits to go with it.”
“I’ll see if we’ve got enough catsup.”
“We do. I checked before I left this morning. Is there any of the lemon cake left?”
“I did eat a couple of pieces,” Rafer said.
Dix could easily picture the gutted cake. He pulled his cell out of his jacket pocket and called the Claussons’ house. Sure enough, Rob was there, playing Foosball with Mary Lou and her parents, who were killers at the game. They had the fastest reflexes Dix had ever seen. Rob must have been getting beat really bad because he didn’t sound at all sorry to come home to dinner. “Hey, Dad, can Mary Lou have dinner with us?”
Before Dix could answer, he heard Mr. Clausson say in the background, “No, Rob, Mary Lou’s aunt is visiting us tonight.”
“Come on home, Rob.”
“Yeah, Rob,” came Rafe’s voice loud in the background, “you don’t want Mr. Clausson to skin off your face.”
IT STARTED SNOWING about nine-thirty that night. Dix and the boys were watching TV, he and Rafe having buried Othello and Desdemona an hour before. Rafe, rightfully in Dix’s opinion, wanted to know why Iago didn’t get his guts ripped out, to which Dix replied, “Hey, Shakespeare gave us a body count of five. That’s enough, isn’t it?”
Rafe had finally said, “Yeah, I guess enough of the cast did croak.”
