by Claire Booth
He certainly didn’t say anything about Tina taking the day off. Fin only found out because she called the office looking for Lew. Hank tried to pin her down on a date, but she couldn’t remember exactly. Maybe three weeks ago? She was positive Marco answered the phone and said Tina had the day off. Fin didn’t think anything of it. And she didn’t think anything of it when Lew came home that night with bloody knuckles and torn pants, because he said he’d helped unload a truck and took a tumble against the concrete loading dock. She only started to think something when Tina’s day off turned into several. And then became an official vacation. Which got extended when her out-of-town mother fell ill.
‘I called up human resources. I wanted to get her mother’s address so I could send flowers. We take care of our own at the Castle. I knew the men wouldn’t think of it, though, so I figured I’d just handle it. But they had no address and no idea when she was coming back. They said Lew was just keeping them updated. Only Lew.’
Hank had been nodding along with Fin’s story, not hearing anything too worrying. Until that last bit. Lew was the only person in contact with this woman? And her reasons for missing work kept shifting? He asked Fin to write down the name of the HR person she had spoken with.
‘Oh, there’s only the one. Doreen. There used to be two, but then all the payroll got automated or some such, and now it’s just Doreen.’ She placed her melted shake in a cupholder and rummaged through her knitting bag for paper. She wrote down Doreen’s information and the number for Marco the finance guy. She added Lew’s typical daily schedule, and slid the paper in the side pocket of Hank’s duffel bag in the backseat.
They spent the rest of the drive talking about the kids, and her knitting, and Duncan’s exploits as a child. She slowly relaxed, until they pulled into the neighborhood a little bit west of the university campus. Then she fell quiet and started to fidget. They pulled up in front of a solid two-story squarish home, all brick with white shutters and a shiny black front door. It swung open and out bounded Lew, arms wide in welcome.
Her spreadsheet was so lovely. Shifts and hourly rates and total hours per pay period. And no overtime at all. Which meant a balanced budget, for the first time since Sheila had been in charge of staffing. When she started with it, Darrell Gibbons had been the sheriff and he never cared. That old snakecharmer could talk the county commission into any extra funds he needed, so they were always able to make ends meet. But Hank … Hank was a different story. The commissioners hated him. He was not the good ol’ boy they’d expected. He didn’t play nice with the local power players. He was incapable of keeping his mouth shut when he thought someone was doing something wrong. And his arrival had coincided with a spike in the county murder rate, which was both expensive for staffing and bad publicity.
She smiled. Hank’s arrival also had meant her promotion to chief deputy and a level of autonomy she never expected to have as one of the only African-American deputies in southwestern Missouri and definitely the only one in Branson County. Sure, she had to bail his tender-hearted, white-boy ass out every once in a while, but that was a small price to pay for a rank she never thought the system would let her achieve.
She hit print and watched her spreadsheet roll out of the machine. Then she started on the white board, changing shifts to correspond with her new system. She was pulling a chair over so she could reach the headings at the very top when Sammy walked in.
‘Geez, Sheila, you could fall. I’ll do it for you.’
She climbed up on it and looked down at him.
‘I’m just fine, thank you. Plus, I don’t like your handwriting. It would ugly up my board.’
He laughed and held the chair steady, despite her trying to swat him away. She finished and hopped down. Sam put the chair back in the corner.
‘Is the Chief in yet?’ he said. ‘I need to talk to him about this burglary case.’
‘Oh, he’s gone. He went on vacation.’ The phrase came out before she thought about it. She paused. ‘That’s not exactly accurate. He … he’s taking a break. He went up to Columbia for a few days, to visit a friend or something. I think Maggie laid down the law. Told him to get a change of scenery and come back in a better frame of mind. I think he was driving her crazy.’
Sam eyed her. ‘I don’t think his wife was the only one.’
Sheila chuckled. Her young Sammy was becoming more astute every day. She gave him a nod and pointed at the white board.
‘I’m going to send out an email – because I do know that nobody ever looks at my board – and let everyone know there’s a new schedule. We’re going to try to be … more efficient.’ That was a good word. She’d use that in her memo to the department. ‘Efficient staffing’ was a much better spin than ‘axing your overtime’.
The only change to his week, she told Sam, was a change on Wednesday from investigation follow-up to patrol duty. He said that was no big deal and stepped over to peruse the actual board, much to her delight.
‘Oh, I see. My switch is because otherwise Bill Ramsdell would be the patrol shift as overtime. Just like here, and over here,’ he said, immediately spotting the different squares on the board where she’d taken extra shifts away from people. He let out a low whistle as he realized the extent of what she’d done. ‘People are going to be ticked off. Super ticked off. Are you sure about this?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah. We’ve got no choice. We are so far over budget, the next option is going to be laying people off. I’m hoping this will save us enough money that we won’t have to do that. It’s not even like we’re cutting anybody’s salary. We’re just not doing overtime anymore.’
Sam scratched behind his ear, which she knew meant he was having a serious think on things. She waited.
‘You need to say that – in your email. That you’re trying to avoid layoffs. Don’t say “saving money”. People hate that.’
See? Astute.
Sam examined the board again. His eyes widened.
‘What’d you do with the jail schedule? It’s not on here.’
Too astute.
‘That … um … that’s going to be its own thing from now on. Partly because a lot of the patrol guys were using it to rack up overtime,’ she said. ‘So I’m just going to separate it out.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Partly?’
Good heavens. He was picking up on everything. Before long, he’d be ferreting out all of her plans. Time to change the subject.
‘You mentioned that home burglary?’
He lit up and whipped out his notebook. He took her through the investigation so far, including his suspicions about the Balefskis’ honesty.
‘You think they staged it?’ Sheila asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I think there really was a burglary, especially with the car missing. I think they’re just stretching the list of what actually got taken – trying to get more cash out of the insurance company.’
‘Well, luckily, that’s the insurance investigator’s problem, not ours. Finish up the report, and those two can start dealing with that company instead of us.’
‘Could I look into the missing car, though? Try to run it down? I’ve got the rest of today before I have to report for patrol tomorrow.’ He gestured at the board and grinned at her.
With that smile, how could she say no? She agreed and told him to get himself gone before she found a clerical job for him to do. He loped out of the office on those huge feet and she turned back to her computer. She pulled up her second spreadsheet and got to work.
FOUR
Lew Lancaster, his thinning silver hair immaculately styled with some kind of miracle pomade and his navy blazer perfectly pressed, showed Hank into the front room. A man in his late fifties rose from the couch to greet them. He introduced himself as Marco Cortello. The financial officer Fin mentioned, Hank thought, stealing a glance at his aunt-in-law. He shook the man’s hand while having an internal laugh at Duncan’s expense. This six-footer with the lean physique of a tennis player, the
smile of George Clooney, and the baritone of Johnny Cash was much more likely to be having an affair with Tina Hardy than the octogenarian Mark-down Lew was. Which was a thought worth pondering some.
‘How long you been working with Lew here?’ Hank asked.
‘Almost twenty years,’ he said, his glamour-shot smile wavering a little. ‘It’s getting hard to believe.’
‘Wasn’t that just when you were starting to expand, Lew? How many employees did you even have back then?’
‘Oh, a few. Maybe five or six.’
‘And now,’ Hank said, ‘just look. All the stores, and then your main office. How many folks you got there now?’
‘Four,’ Marco said. ‘And then the warehouse guys. And us two, of course.’
‘How’d the two of you find each other in the first place?’
‘Oh, he’s better at numbers than I am,’ Lew said. ‘Can’t sell anything worth a damn, but he’s great with the financials.’
The two men looked as if each was daring the other to contradict that statement. Interesting.
‘Well, we were just finishing up,’ Lew said, holding the front door open.
A frown flashed across Marco’s face before he suppressed it. He gave Fin a kiss on the cheek and took his leave. Lew turned to Hank and offered up orange juice, coffee, and pastries. Hank took the last two and said sure, he’d love a tour. Because this wasn’t an obligatory visit with a random in-law – this was reconnaissance.
They started outside, with Lew showing off work they’d had done around the place, including the backyard gazebo and then around front to see the enlarged picture window.
‘It was nice to meet Marco,’ Hank said as they strolled across the lawn. ‘Do he and his family live here in Columbia?’
‘Oh, he doesn’t have kids. His wife is a professor at the University of Missouri in St Louis, so they have a place here and a place there and go back and forth.’
Marco was getting more interesting by the minute, but he couldn’t think of any more questions that wouldn’t start to arouse Lew’s suspicions. As they walked back inside, Hank decided that to effectively search the inside, he would become very interested in closets. What with the growing kids and all, they were always trying to maximize storage space, he explained as he poked through the coat closet in the foyer. Did Lew happen to have any ideas? Of course Lew did.
The next ten minutes were spent on the science of organization, with Lew talking and Hank rummaging around. He had to admit the closet under the stairs was a dazzle of shelving and neatness. The pantry was next. Then the study, which was the only messy room Hank had seen. He tried to take in as much as possible before Lew shooed him out.
‘This is only for work. No space or organization issues here.’ He closed the door firmly and practically pushed Hank back toward the living room. He went willingly, because ol’ Lew had provided the perfect segue.
‘So business is good?’
He thought he felt Lew tense, but by the time he turned to look, the older man had an easy grin on his face.
‘You bet. Expanding, even. We’re in the planning stages for store number five. Got to make sure all the numbers pencil out, though, before we pull the trigger.’
Hank started a follow-up question, but Lew had already turned toward the kitchen. Hank could see the muscles in his stooped shoulders tighten and his hands ball into fists. Stress, or just old age? He followed, and they found Fin attaching artwork to the front of the fridge. Hank recognized the bold stylings of a certain three-year-old and the slightly more refined brush strokes of a kindergartener.
‘Benny and Maribel let me take some,’ Fin said, with the first true smile he’d seen from her all day. She pointed at several in particular. ‘We made these paintings together.’
He hadn’t realized Fin spent so much time with the kids during her visit. He reached out and gave her hand a grateful squeeze. Lew, on the other hand, looked at the fridge like she’d just covered it with rock concert handbills from the local Blue Note nightclub. Hank was just about to defend his kids’ talent when the doorbell rang.
‘That,’ he said, ‘should be my friend Jerry.’
Doubt was not something Sheila bothered with. She didn’t have time for it, and it usually wasn’t necessary. She was generally right about things, and in the rare instance that she wasn’t, she fixed it and that was that. So this was a new feeling. She knew she was taking the correct course of action, but had she timed it wrong?
The jail staff had always been allowed to trade shifts and reschedule themselves any way they wanted. It was one of the only perks of a shit job. But it had to stop. Letting patrol officers sub in to cover jail slots meant they had to be paid overtime, as did jail officers trading amongst themselves if the work crossed over into a different pay period.
So now there was a set-in-stone schedule, and any changes would have to be approved by her or Hank. It was exceedingly sensible and fiscally necessary. She had explained this in her memo and was in the middle of explaining it in person to the jail staff – all ten of whom were giving her stone-cold death stares – when the doubt started to creep in. Should she have waited until Hank got back? She hadn’t thought she needed cover, but looking at the more than just hostile expressions on these men’s faces, maybe she did. And it pissed her off. She was the one who made this department work. She should be able to command the kind of authority necessary to do this. But she wasn’t a man and she wasn’t white. And Hank was.
‘I don’t see why you got to change things. They’re fine the way they are. You don’t even know what you’re doing.’ That was Berkins. Three hundred pounds of fat and attitude. He’d been jail forever and thought he was God’s gift to both correctional facilities and humanity in general. The other officers called him Bubba. The frequent flyer inmates called him Fat Bastard. Sheila just wanted him to retire.
‘Nobody’s taking a pay cut,’ she said again.
‘Hell, yes we are,’ said Stevenson, who Sheila was pretty sure had paid for his shiny new pickup with just his massive overtime earnings. ‘We got the way we do things. We switch when we want to. That’s the deal.’
‘And how we gonna cover when somebody’s sick? Huh?’ said Bubba, who called in sick all the time.
‘That’ll be figured out by me or Sheriff Worth. You guys won’t have to worry about it anymore.’
That prompted a barrage of invective from most of them that came damn close to insubordination. She let them go on for a moment and then closed her file folder with a snap. They shut up. Thank God. She surveyed the room and decided to dismiss the ones who were currently on shift. That would split up the group, make it harder for them to feed on one another’s anger – or even worse, to start plotting something.
Those men filed out of the room. She thanked the rest of them for coming in and made sure to state clearly that they’d get paid for their time. She watched them go out the other door to the parking lot and then walked back to the administration building.
Only two people said nothing during the meeting, which caught Sheila’s attention for two very different reasons. Sheila wasn’t surprised Molly March hadn’t spoken up at all. She was brand new, young, and seemed to alternate between shy and terrified. She was also the only woman on the jail staff. Like about half of them, she hoped to work her way up to patrol. She was currently on the swing shift, so Sheila rarely saw her. She needed to change that. Check in with the kid more often. Make sure she was doing OK. She made herself a note to look up her contact information.
The other person she wasn’t going to contact at all. Gerald Tucker had just sat there and stared at her through the entire meeting, arms crossed and eyes unblinking. On a personal level, she wasn’t concerned about him. She knew he didn’t give two shits about her, except that she was a proxy for the sheriff. Because he had it out for Hank, like no one she’d ever seen.
Tucker had been a long-time patrol deputy until Hank demoted him to the jail. The asshole had left his guard duty
post at the wrecked Branson Beauty showboat and the thing blew up. Hank was positive Tucker deliberately caused the explosion, and Tucker knew it. He’d run against Hank in the last election and almost won. If he had, the good ol’ boys’ network would have come roaring back, and it’d be Sheila working in the jail right now.
So a quiet Tucker was a thoughtful Tucker – and that was a dangerous Tucker. He had powerful allies. He could hatch a revolt quietly. She’d thought it would be easier to quell one without Hank around but now she wasn’t so sure. She’d need to keep a close eye on him. She pushed open the door to her office and sat down to think.
FIVE
Hank introduced Fin and Lew to his college roommate.
‘This is Jerry Heinrich. We met in the dorms and then got our own apartment off Nifong Boulevard.’
Jerry was still as lean and lively as he’d been when they graduated. He crackled with energy as he stepped into the house and shook hands all around.
‘And you’re the lovely Maggie’s aunt?’ he asked Fin. ‘How wonderful to finally meet you. Any McCleary family member is an honor to know. This guy’ – he gave Hank a light punch in the arm – ‘is lucky to have nabbed himself one.’
Hank winked at Fin. ‘Even if I did get Dunc as part of the deal,’ he said. Fin cackled with delight and gave Hank a big hug.
He whispered quickly in her ear and then grabbed his duffel bag off the front step. He turned toward the driveway and stopped. ‘Really, Jer? Are you kidding me?’
‘Had it six months. Traded in the Corvette.’ He spread out his arms with a flourish. ‘You like it?’
That was an enormously stupid question. ‘It’ was an Acura NSX sports car. And it was beautiful. A low-slung, turbocharged, God-knew-how-many-horsepower, six-figure-price-tag masterpiece. It was to his minivan as a cheetah was to a hippopotamus. Hank folded himself down into the supercar’s passenger seat as Jerry loped around the front and swung behind the wheel with a practiced fluidity. ‘Buckle up, man. We’re taking the long way home.’