by Helen Conrad
“Cue sheep down Main Street, led by the village idiot,” Kate said, and then she gasped, because it happened.
Old Joe Bob Mortimer (who was maybe forty-five, but was also the type who had looked like he was pushing fifty since high school) came strolling onto the main drag, fifteen California Red Sheep behind him, walking with martial discipline.
Joe Bob. Good grief. Kate turned away and pushed open the door to the Sheriff’s office. Inside, the air was cool, a different world from the heavy heat outside. The station was very small – really nothing more than a pair of offices and a small holding cell. Kate walked on into the back-office without so much as a knock.
“Excuse me, this is a private office and I don’t… well, say,” the sheriff stopped blustering and stared at Kate.
Her smile for him was warm with memory, but at first he didn’t smile back. There was something in his look that spoke of anxiety. Maybe even fear. But then he closed his eyes, opened them again and was a whole other person – the smiling, gregarious sheriff that she’d loved when she was a kid, even when he was hauling her in.
“Hello, Sheriff Duffy,” Kate said.
“Say. Kate Becker, what in the world are you doing here? Last I heard you were a big city lawyer making life hard for prosecutors and… Lord, here you are now, prettier than I’ve ever seen you.”
“I’m going to step right over there and give you a great big hug, Sheriff,” Kate said, and she was as good as her word. After the hug, the Sheriff sat back down and looked at her, and then looked away like he was embarrassed.
Maybe I do look good, Kate thought wryly.
“I’m sure sorry about your aunt, Kate. Gladys was a hard woman to like, but… well, you and your sister Susan were sure missed at the funeral.”
“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about. Not the funeral.” She shivered involuntarily. “Susan. You know that Gladys left everything to us,” Kate said. She sat down on one of the ugly metal chairs that the Sheriff had in front of his desk.
“Is that right? Makes it a bigger shame you couldn’t have come to the funeral,” the Sheriff said, a bit of irony in his tone.
She blinked, wondering if he’d said that on purpose to wound her. But why would he do a thing like that? No reason she could think of. Funny how paranoid she was getting.
“Well, anyway, Susan decided this was her chance to…”
Kate stopped. She really didn’t want to go over all this miserable background. Her sister had gone further south long ago-- to Los Angeles. The stories she’d told Kate from there, of sham auditions and rehab centers really weren’t the Sheriff’s business.
“Chance to what?” the Sheriff asked.
To come back to life.
“To get a house of her own,” she said instead. “She was coming here to fix up the old place.”
The Sheriff blinked and looked away. “That house and Gladys, they started to go with each other. If it weren’t for Joe Bob taking care of her—and of it, I don’t know whether she would have lived as long as she did.”
Kate cringed hearing that. Sure, they should have come back long ago. Aunt Gladys was the only relative they had in the world and maybe they should have taken better care of her in her old age. She had a small pang of guilt for a second.
But it didn’t last any longer than that. Gladys never liked either one of them. She took them in because she thought she had to and as Kate remembered it, there was some amount of money from their parents’ estate available for their care. Gladys took it all. And she was perfectly happy to see them leave right out of high school. No, there was no love lost between them.
“I wish I could have been here, Sheriff, I really do,” Kate said wistfully. “But the problem now has to do with Susan. Has she been by to see you all?”
He shook his head, moving some papers on his desktop.
This was what she’d expected. Susan had sent her the letter three weeks ago. Kate almost threw it out until she noticed the return address: Whispering Pines, CA. The last three letters before that had been requests for cash, all of them demanding that Kate not ask what it was to be used for. Her mouth tightened, thinking of it. But this was different. Susan wasn’t trying to use her now – for the first time since they were kids together, there was something more than bitterness and desperation in her letter. There was hope, and a promise to write soon from the house.
But three weeks brought no new letters. Kate had hoped that Susan wasn’t going to screw up again – she’d gladly give over her part of the house if it gave Susan her chance.
The front door of the station opened, and there was a quick buzzing noise.
A couple of fans on the desk in the front room were turned on, and the gentle humming sound they generated spilled into the Sheriff’s office, like a pair of giant mosquitoes. The man who’d turned them on was bending over the desk, looking at a series of papers that were there. The window blind cut off the top part of his body, so Kate couldn’t see his face, but the way he looked in those tailored slacks she was sure she was seeing his better half.
Not bad. In fact, it had been some time since she’d noticed a man fill out a pair of pants in that hard, muscular way that tended to make a girl do a double take. Not bad at all.
“Kate, I’m not sure what you’re here for.”
“To file a missing persons report. Something official, so that if she did just…” The term “flake out” flashed in her mind but she managed to avoid using it “…change her schedule, then I don’t have to stay worried. And if, God forbid, something did happen…” Kate didn’t finish.
Sheriff Duffy shook his head. “I’m not going to do that, Kate. No, hold on, don’t get upset. I’m not going to do that because I can’t. Without something more to go on, some concrete evidence that something’s happened to your sister, well, I…” The sheriff stammered for a moment, as if he’d lost his train of thought.
Dereliction of duty. Refusal to file a report. Maybe even neglect. Kate’s lawyer-brain was ringing up the charges, the reasons for civil litigation and the arguments she would use even if she didn’t have justification.
But he was right – she was just acting scared. Maybe the whole reason for her coming to the Sheriff was because she was afraid to admit to herself that her sister just wasn’t up to being an adult. Well, and then there was that other thing. Could be that she was scared to go back to that old house with all its ghostly memories alone.
All in all, she needed some help here. Didn’t he see that?
“I really wish there was something you could do, Sheriff Duffy. For her to not even leave a forwarding address…”
“You can’t call her on the cell phone?”
“The cell phone.” Cute.
“No sir, you see, her phone doesn’t answer. She might have just forgotten that last bill or whatever. But I can’t get a call through lately.”
“I see. No phone service, is that it? Hmm. That does seem serious.”
“Yes sir, it does.”
“I don’t think… “ He frowned. “Well, look here, I could get my deputy to do a drive round town, to ask any folks if they’d seen her or her car, if you knew what she was driving.”
Kate shook her head.
“Well, if they’d seen her, anyway. In fact, you can go along with him, if you’d like. No reason not to get the ball rolling, hey?” The Sheriff smiled, and before Kate could respond he was on his feet and sticking his head out the door. “I got something for you,” he called to the deputy.
Without answering, the deputy started towards the door. His head was still cut off by the blinds and Kate felt free to objectify him. Not only did he fit into those slacks like he’d got them direct from Calvin Klein himself, the shirt framed him in a state of barely suppressed sexuality – the brown deputy’s uniform was tight in the shoulders and across the chest. He was obviously in good shape, and…
“Blake, you know Katie Becker, don’t you?”
“Blake?” she said in disbeli
ef, and then when the face came into view she recalled everything. The features were grown up, but it was the same old Blake Spanner.
“Well, hell…” Kate said, standing up in astonishment.
***
Well, hell! Blake thought, seeing Kate Becker for the first time in almost a decade. She’d extended her hand and he took it and shook, but he didn’t say a word. Of all the people from his past he could have run into, Kate was about the furthest from his mind and the one with whom he had the least pleasant memories.
But she was smiling at him now, looking so sharp and pretty he could almost forget how much he really, really didn’t like her back when they were young. He forced a smile back at her, which made her scrunch up her face, reminding him even more of what she’d looked like as a kid. Those darn freckles still stuck stubbornly to that cute little nose, but the dark eyes looked larger, brighter and those thick dark lashes really added something he didn’t remember.
What did they call that? Sex appeal? Her body seemed to have filled out a lot as well. In a good way. In a way that made certain elements of his psyche take notice, even though he didn’t want them to.
“What are you doing here?” Blake asked, sounding more perturbed than he’d intended.
“Why, Mr. Spanner, that’s the nicest greeting I’ve ever received,” she said, her voice dripping with irony.
She hadn’t changed a bit. He dropped her hand and grunted out a, “Sorry,” that sounded just as sincere as her statement had.
“So what are you doing here? Slumming? Or did San Francisco get a little dull?”
“Kate was worried about her sister Susan. You remember Susan, don’t you?”
“Yeah, she was quite a little…” Blake stopped, faked a cough, and then glanced at Kate. She was giving him a wise look. Probably knew exactly what he’d been going to say.
The Sheriff continued. “She’s gone missing. Or, I mean, Kate here doesn’t know where she is and she expects that she came round here some time recent. So she wants us to do a little canvassing, to figure if anyone saw her. I volunteered you for the duty.”
Blake’s bad day was getting worse. He turned to Kate.
“Would you excuse us for a moment?” he asked, his voice sounding just a little higher than normal.
She nodded and stepped outside the office, shutting the door behind her. She looked on the verge of laughing.
“Sheriff, what are you…?”
The man held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it, Blake. I know it’s busy work, I know it’s getting in the way, and you know what else? I don’t care. Kate Becker’s a sweet girl, and God knows we don’t have any mass-murderers running about. Worst thing I’m pulling you away from is patrolling Shoutin’ Pete.”
Shoutin’ Pete was what the locals called the single traffic light that stood sentinel over the cross street of Main and Bodega. It had a companion just two blocks away at Main and Crescent, but the city council had paid only enough money to get that one installed, not to operate it. It was called Snorin’ Pete.
Suppressed anger roiled in Blake’s gut. Being assigned to baby-sit Kate Becker was guaranteed to keep it roiling. The sheriff thought she was a “sweet girl”. That showed how much he knew.
“I’m warning you right now, I can’t be held responsible for what I might do left alone with that woman.”
The Sheriff’s shoulders sagged with exasperation. “I need you to do this. Consider it a favor.”
Blake swore softly. He knew when he was beat. “What the hell is she doing here, anyway?”
The Sheriff told him about the inheritance and he swore again.
“It would be just our luck to get stuck with both those women again,” he said, shoving his thumbs under his wide leather belt. “And here we were goin’ good.”
“Were we?”
“Well…”
Blake didn’t have anything but work to keep his mind busy, and he threw himself into that with abandon. It was the regularity he craved – and being a small town cop afforded him few challenges, and that meant few chances to screw up. When a cop screwed up, people got hurt. That was something he knew from experience.
Kate was an X-factor. He remembered her as impetuous and bratty. He could see it in her face just a moment ago, laughing because she thought he didn’t want to spend time with her. As he remembered, she liked it better when she was disliked – it gave her an excuse for bad behavior. And her sister Susan was almost the opposite. So crazy to be accepted that she’d give away pieces of herself, day in and day out.
“I was going to ask what’s bothering you, Blake. But I did a little soul searching, right here and now, and I realized I could not care less. Why don’t you go out there and do your job, okay, son?”
Whenever Sheriff Duffy called Blake “son”, he knew what it meant. He wasn’t just playing rank and seniority, he was trying to impress Blake on a personal level. It never worked, but Blake wasn’t going to go and hurt the Sheriff’s feelings by rebuking him now. He just nodded and left the office without saying another word.
Kate was sitting at his desk, having turned off the two fans that he’d turned on not five minutes ago.
“Why’d you bother with the fans? It’s so cool in here anyway,” she said.
“Because I like to have them on,” Blake said sharply.
Yup. She hadn’t changed a bit. The strawberry blonde hair was the same, only now she let it grow long enough so that she actually looked like a girl. The tomboy still lurked in the shadows of her eyes, but there was very little about her that did not shout out “girl”. Or, more accurately, woman.
But still, she was the same – she had that challenging smirk on her face, like she not only thought she was smarter, stronger, and better than you, but was dying for an opportunity to prove it, again and again. It was that attitude she had in school that kept getting her into trouble, and that mouth that talked her out of it. But that was a long time ago. It was surely time to get over it. That didn’t mean he relished an afternoon of reminders from the past, however.
“So, Blake, it has been a real long time.”
“Yep.”
“Still as wordy as ever I see.”
“Shall we get going?”
“Do we have a plan, Mr. Blake?”
“Officer Spanner, please.” He threw her a hard look. “Go around the houses near your place, talk to folks ‘round there, see if anyone has anything to say. Got a better idea?”
She smiled, and it gave him a little twinge – not the good kind. Blake could see the wheels turning, the witty retorts being filed for later use. But she apparently was trying to stay on good behavior, because she just shook her head and stood up.
“You’ll be taking the squad car, I presume?”
“Only black and white in ten miles, not counting CHP,” Blake said with a nod. He walked past her to the door leading from the station, and opened it up. The heat from the outside hit right away, clinging to Blake like a mist. The outside smelled musty, and the subtle sound of rainfall competed with the hum of the air conditioning, making a din of low, barely perceptible sounds. Kate stepped past Blake.
“Why thank you sir. I’d never have managed the door without you,” she said, smiling.
Blake had a deep desire to get into his squad car right then and run her over three… maybe four times. Never in his life had he met somebody who it was harder to do something nice for. His jaw locked into granite mode and he followed her to the outside, putting his hat on as he did. He thought of grabbing an umbrella, but decided not to. Let her brave the rain on her own – his hat would keep him dry.
“Blake, look who’s admiring your car!” she called, laughing.
He looked at the squad car, and almost laughed himself had he not remembered that he had to be serious – any evidence that he had a good time would be used against him by Kate as an opportunity to compel misery. It was her way. But having a trio of sheep standing on top of the hood of his car peering in looked funny. He co
uldn’t deny that.
“Joe Bob,” he yelled.
“Yessir?” But the vacant-looking man had spotted Kate. “Well, I’ll be. Miss Becker. I’ll be.”
“Joe Bob, how many times do I have to ask you to keep your sheep away from the station?” Blake called at him, though he wasn’t really angry. He wasn’t allowed to be angry at Joe Bob, who was now looking at Blake, and then at the ground, kicking at the damp dirt.
“Aw, Mr. Blake, sir, I didn’t mean to go breaking rules. But the sheep, they goes where they likes a lot of the times. Y’know? I keep telling them and telling them, but they don’t listen. Sometimes I think they’re dumber than me.” He gave a little smile, and then looked back down at his feet.
Blake heard Kate give out a little, “Awww,” and watched as she walked over to Joe Bob and gave him a hug. She talked to him in babying tones, reassuring him about himself and patting him on the head, and Joe Bob ate it up.
Just like he was a baby. But he wasn’t a baby. He was a man closing in on his fifties. And something about it disturbed Blake. Maybe it was the blithe cheerfulness that he didn’t like.
Or maybe he was just jealous of attention. Either way, he wasn’t going to do anything about Joe Bob. No need to upset anyone in town just because of Blake’s suspicious impulses. But he also did not want these damned sheep around the station anymore, so Blake had to play bully.
“Look, Joe Bob, I’m not saying I’m going to give you a ticket or run you in or anything, but as a personal favor to me, do you think you can try and keep a tighter rein on your sheep?”
“Well, I sure am going to try and do as you ask, Mr. Blake, ‘cause I wanna be a good citi… cit…”
“Citizen,” Kate said for him.
He smiled like she’d just given him a thousand bucks.
“That’s right. And can you do a favor for me, Mr. Blake, sir?”
“What’s that, Joe Bob?”
“Start calling me Mr. Mortimer? I got my own place now, nobody calls me Joe Bob no more,” he said.
Kate nodded along with him, and looked Blake dead on in the eyes.