shop tucked into a side block behind the bookstore.
Old-timers had made one of two choices: cash in on the newcomers by catering to their whims or slink back and mutter about them behind the closed ranks of old friends.
Lia’s hometown had negotiated a similar clash twenty years earlier; the result was an ambiguous and somewhat uneasy truce, where the old-timers held on to the low-level political and business positions and the transplanted city people ruled everything else.
Lia’s mother and father had feet in both camps, and regarded the transition with mixed feelings. It was not always easy to predict their views, however. As she parked behind the village hall, Lia thought of her father, ostensibly a member of the old-timers’ camp, with eight generations in the local graveyard. He viewed the local police chief, whose family had been in town since the mid-1800s, with twice as much skepticism as he would have shown a newcomer.
Pine Plains’ police chief was about the age of Lia’s father, but there the resemblance ended. Tall and still fairly trim, Christopher Ball had a narrow face set off by a graying brush cut and a tight-lipped smile. He greeted her with a crusher of a handshake.
“I’m with the marshals’ ser vice,” said Lia breezily, showing him the credentials. “I’m following up on the Forester case.”
“So my dispatcher said. I don’t recall the case.”
“Agent Forester. The Secret Service agent who killed himself in Danbury?”
“Oh, OK. Sure.”
“Did he speak to you the day he died?”
“No. He was supposed to show up the next day. We had an appointment. I stayed in the office waiting. Had to have a part-timer come in to do my road patrol because of it.”
“Did he tell you what he was looking into?”
“Not at all.” Ball pushed his chair back and got up. “Service agents out of Danbury told me about it the day after. Or maybe it was Poughkeepsie.”
Ball stared at her. His rising was evidently intended to signal that they were done talking, though Lia didn’t budge.
“So you knew nothing about the threat against Senator McSweeney?”
“I have no idea why your man thought that someone from Pine Plains was involved. I’d’ve been happy to investigate anyone — happy to do it still.”
“When Agent Forester came to talk to you, did he have a notebook with him?”
Something flicked in Ball’s eyes. “He never came to talk to me.” Ball took another step, reaching the edge of the desk.
“Something wrong, Chief?” Lia asked.
Ball frowned. “It’s getting toward dinner.”
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”
His frown turned into a full-blown scowl.
“Senator McSweeney has a house near here, doesn’t he?” asked Lia.
“That’s up in Columbia County. Forty-five minutes — an hour, if you drive the speed limit. Most don’t.”
“You deal with him a lot?”
“Are you trying to investigate me, miss?”
“Do you need to be investigated?”
“Get the hell out of my office.”
“Gladly,” said Lia.
“Why’d you antagonize him?” Telach demanded when Lia reached the car.
“Something about him doesn’t jibe,” said Lia.
She pulled out the booster unit for the audio fly she had left in the office and activated it. Lia looked around, trying to decide where to leave the unit. The fly couldn’t transmit very far on its own.
“He’s just a macho ass,” said Telach. “Unfortunately, that’s not against the law.”
“I planted a bug. Are you picking it up?”
“A bug? I didn’t authorize you to plant a listening device, Lia.”
“Since when do I have to ask?”
“Stand by,” said Telach abruptly.
45
Chief Ball kept his wrath and tongue in check as he contemplated the arrogant federal agent whom he’d just dismissed.
Teeth clenched, he stomped out of the village hall, down the white wooden steps, and around the back to the path that led to Maple Avenue, where he lived with his wife.
The federal people had egos the size of the Lincoln Memorial. The younger they were, the more full of themselves they were. And the women were the worst.
Ball waved at his neighbor, who was ushering his two sons to Little League practice. Ball had to be nice to Marco, because the shortcut was on Marco’s property.
Actually, Ball decided, he didn’t have to be nice to anyone. He made up for it by scowling at Scott Salotti, who was mowing his lawn next door.
So they were still interested in Forester, were they? They couldn’t just take “no” for an answer and move on?
“Hi, honey,” said his wife from the kitchen when he came in the front door. “Dinner’s ready.” Ball didn’t bother answering. He went up to the bedroom and changed out of his uniform.
“Your beer’s on the table,” his wife said when he came into the kitchen. She rose on her tiptoes and kissed him on his cheek. “Something wrong?”
“Just the usual.”
“Village board talking about cutting back the part-timers’ hours again?”
“Nothing specific.” Ball took a swig of the beer, Miller Lite. “I’m going out after dinner.”
“But we were going to watch
“Another time.”
A pout appeared on his wife’s face. But it dissipated quickly, as they always did.
46
Rubens was so angry he pounded his desk. He barely kept himself from shouting. “Lia left a bug in the police chief’s office because he was rude to her?”
“You know Lia,” said Telach, frowning uncomfortably.
“It’s one thing for her to trash-talk someone and quite another to leave a bug in his office.”
“Well, she did both.”
“We’re not overseas, Marie. We can’t be leaving audio devices in people’s offices—
“I didn’t tell her to. But—”
“There’s a but?”
“The operatives are trained to work a certain way. That’s what she’s doing. If she were in Vietnam—”
“She’s not in Vietnam. Why did she even bother?”
“It’s just standard procedure. She’s not used to working in the U.S.”
As angry as he was, Rubens realized that Telach was right. The Deep Black operatives had been trained to
