Chapter 30
Come-to-Jesus Meeting
I crouched along the riverbank trying my best to peek through the shrubbery as a tall intruder lurked inside Sherrif Chad’s brightly lit mobile home.
Mabs shivered to my right with her head between her hands. “Dang it. This mud is ruining my new dress.” she said.
“You could have stayed in the car.”
“Don’t remind me. Is he still there?”
“Yes.” The man wore a cowboy hat and stalked through the rooms, turning as if he were searching for something in every corner of every room. And then the lights went out plunging the interior into darkness. The man’s form turned to shadow. The faint outline of his cowboy hat plunged up and down hurriedly.
Mab’s looked up. straining to see through the shrubbery. “What’s he doing?”
“I don’t know.” Moments passed. The cicadas fell silent, as if they had played the last notes of that night’s symphony. The only sound I heard was the wind in the cottonwoods and the slow, easy drift of the river a few feet behind us. And then the soft click of Chad’s back door closing. The truck engine fired up, breaking the night’s silence. The truck backed out of the driveway and sped away just as Chad’s home burst into flames.
“Oh my god!” Mabs said.
‘Yeah, that’s a Ranger Rover.”
“No, I mean the fire!”
I dug out my phone to report the growing blaze. The fire’s heat reached us, hot against our skin. “C’mon, Mabs. We have to leave. We can’t be seen here.”
“I hear ya,” she said.
Unfortunately, there was only one road in and one road out of the River Run mobile home park. I gunned the Buick with my lights off and raced toward the exit. Luckily, we were out on the county road when the oncoming fire truck passed us heading toward the blaze.
# # #
I dropped Mabs off at her home and warned her not to speak about this to anyone until we could figure out what we had witnessed.
“Yes, missy. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Thanks. Get some rest…and say, thanks for the backup.”
She grinned. “Hey, we’re a team.”
I was pleasantly surprised to see Tom still at my house. He’d been napping on the couch. I quickly filled him in including details of the Range Rover. He yawned. “If you think you’re in danger, I’m happy to spend the night…On the couch, of course.”
“Of course.”
# # #
Early the next morning, I decided to call Deputy Dawg Martin, at his home, before the sun had a chance to rise and shine a light on the darkness that had hung over Standard since my return. I stared through the kitchen window at the gray blue of dawn. As the phone rang, I considered how much I wanted to be back in New York, wrapped up in the crises of the world that unfolded across the huge monitors above my desk. On mornings like these, I could handle crises at a distance. It was far easier to stay detached and unemotional even though innocent men, women, and children were dying in war, floods, terrorist attacks, and other man-made and unplanned disasters. But this. This was personal. Doug picked up on the fourth ring.
“Chad’s home was set on fire last night.”
Doug coughed into the speaker of his phone. “Hold on.” I heard the strike of a matchstick, the whoosh of a flame, his long inhale, and the heavy sigh of exhale. “Chad who?”
“Sheriff Chad Fuller. Your AWOL boss. Who else do you know named Chad?”
He stammered. “I dunno. Maybe, maybe Chad Everett. The actor, you know. Except, I remember reading he died awhile back.” He coughed harder this time. “Lung cancer, I think.”
I paused. Incredulous. “We need a Come-to-Jesus meeting?”
“’Bout what?”
“You got a pen?”
“Yeah. Hold on. Go.”
“What bugs me the most, Doug, is you seem unconcerned about Chad and all the crime happening under your nose. So, unless you’re willing to face up to a few facts, I’m prepared to call the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. This has to stop, or we’ll all be dead before sundown.”
He coughed heavily again. “Funny you say. Why don’t you meet me at the office at nine. The KBI already asked for a meeting.”
I really liked the sentence about the cicadas ending their Symphony. Very melodic.