Best Served Cold

by Susan Rogers Cooper

  ‘Dammit, Milt!’ Dalton said, his voice kinda scary sounding. ‘She’s pregnant.’

  ‘Dalton, no!’ Holly said between sobs. ‘We said we’d wait—’

  ‘Come on, baby,’ Dalton cooed. ‘Let’s go.’

  I let Holly go for the day and Dalton drove her to his mama’s house. Old Miz Pettigrew had totally gotten over the fact that Holly, with all her tattoos and piercings, wasn’t the girl she’d dreamed of for her son. The pregnancy had totally changed that. Up until the zombie baby hanging, Miz Pettigrew was the only one – other than Holly, Dalton and the doctor – who knew. Now we all did. I couldn’t very well not call my wife and tell her. Mostly – mostly – it was to see if she thought Holly should come in to see her because of the scare and all. My wife, Jean McDonnell, is the one and only – and best – psychiatrist in Prophesy County. OK, part of the reason I called her was just pure gossip. Women don’t hold a monopoly on that. Some of the biggest gossips I’ve ever known have been men.

  ‘She’s with Dalton’s mom?’ Jean asked me on the phone.

  ‘Yeah, that’s where he said he was taking her.’

  ‘I’ll call over there. See if Holly wants me to drop by. Having her come to my office would seem too official. You know she’s my friend, right?’

  ‘Well, yeah, of course,’ I said, back-pedaling. ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘Thanks for calling me, honey,’ she said, and I could hear a smile in her voice.

  ‘You are more than welcome. Wanna do lunch later?’ I asked.

  ‘Let me check my schedule and I’ll call you back.’

  And we left it at that. I have a great wife. She’s smart, gorgeous, sexy and cooks a hell of a lot better than my sister. She walks with a brace on one leg and uses a crutch most of the time due to childhood polio. But that doesn’t mean she can’t move like lightning when she’s in the mind to. I call our son Johnny Mac. His full name is John McDonnell Kovak but calling him Johnny Mac is funny, which makes him Johnny Mac Kovak and which the two of us (me and Johnny Mac) think is hysterical, but Jean calls him John. And gives the two of us dirty looks whenever we do the rhyming thing. Which we do a lot.

  She called me back a half-hour later. ‘I talked to Holly. I’m going by there around eleven. Meet you at the Longbranch at noon?’

  I grinned. ‘Sounds like a date.’

  The Longbranch Inn was in the middle of the downtown square and had been there since just about statehood. It was a hotel with rooms on the second and third floors but mostly it was a restaurant, and one of the best in our part of the state. They make a chicken fried steak with peppered cream gravy that would make you wanna slap your mama. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I had a heart attack a few years back, the kitchen has strict orders not to serve it to me. There’s even a new item on the menu called ‘The Milt,’ which is half a broiled chicken, mixed veggies and boiled new potatoes. No butter. No salt. Or I can have the turkey club, without bacon or mayo. Yeah, I don’t go there as much as I used to. There’s this Mexican place out on Highway Five where nobody knows my wife …

  Me and Jean met up at our usual table a little after noon. I ordered ‘The Milt,’ palmed some salt for later and looked at my wife. ‘So how’s Holly?’

  ‘She’s OK,’ Jean said, buttering a roll – right in front of me. She said I needed to be an adult about my restrictions. My response? Neener neener. ‘It was a shock at first but she’s handling it. With what Holly’s been through most of her life, that wasn’t as bad as it could have been.’ Jean took a bite of the buttery, yeasty roll, chewed, swallowed and said, ‘Mostly we talked about the pregnancy. She’s seriously excited.’

  ‘How far along?’ I asked.

  ‘Twelve weeks. And I understand why they wanted to wait to tell anyone. It’s still early.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s great news.’

  She smiled and the food came. She’d gotten ‘The Milt’ too, in solidarity, I suppose (or she could have actually liked it, who knew), and while she was getting her napkin and utensils in line I shook the salt I’d palmed onto as much of my food as I could.

  ‘She also told me about the note she found yesterday. You didn’t mention it,’ Jean said, finally looking up at me. My face was all innocence.

  ‘Naw, didn’t even think about it. But I guess, maybe the two jokes are related? You think?’

  ‘Seems possible,’ Jean said. ‘Not very funny jokes.’

  ‘No, not very.’

  ‘How did they get in?’ she asked me.

  Well, she had me there. With all the Holly upset, I hadn’t even thought about that. How had they gotten in? We don’t have a night deputy anymore (county cutbacks several years ago saw to that), but we do have locks and an alarm system. The alarm system didn’t go off. But then again, a lot of people in town had the code – me and all my deputies, Holly, and the once-a-month cleaning crew. Which meant a lot more people had access to that code just by knowing any of those people who might have written it down to remember it. I’ll admit I’ve got the code written on a scrap of paper in my wallet. Maybe it was time to call the alarm company and change the damn thing. Hadn’t been done since it got put in, over eight years ago. I had a feeling I was just about ready to embarrass myself – at least with my wife.

  I sighed. ‘Haven’t changed the code in a while. Lots of people could have it.’

  ‘About time to change it, I guess,’ she said, keeping her eyes on her food.

  ‘Yeah, probably.’

  ‘Have you any idea who’s doing this?’

  I shook my head. ‘Nary a one.’ I shrugged. ‘Maybe that’s it. Whoever did it got a kick out of hearing Holly scream, you know, skulking outside the building, and that’ll be the end of it.’

  Jean looked at me and raised one eyebrow. I had to agree with her. What I’d just said was a crock.

  ‘So who do you think would wanna kill one of our people’s families?’ I asked Emmett.

  He shrugged. ‘Can’t think of anyone. I mean, we’ve put away a few scumbags over the years but offhand nobody comes to mind.’

  ‘Maybe we should check the files to see who’d be pissed enough to do this. Seems like revenge, you think?’ And then I had to broach the subject of the alarm code. ‘And maybe we should check those files against anybody who might have access to the alarm code. I mean, it didn’t go off, did it?’

  ‘Hell, no, it didn’t!’ Emmett said. ‘I never even thought of that.’

  We’d been sitting in my office, me behind my desk, him in one of my two visitor chairs. He got up. ‘Maybe we should go look at the system.’

  ‘It’s just sitting there on the wall, looking fine and dandy,’ I said.

  ‘I mean the outside one,’ he said.

  ‘What outside one?’

  ‘Where the circuits are,’ he said.

  I followed as he walked out the door of my office, out the side door to the employee parking lot and around the back where the a/c unit, electrical meters and other maintenance crap was kept. On the back wall, behind the a/c unit, was an outdoor meter box. Emmett opened it up. There were loose wires hanging, their ends obviously cut.

  ‘Well, that solves one mystery,’ Emmett said.

  ‘Maybe we should have Holly look into a whole new alarm system. You know, one that can’t be hacked from the outside, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Works for me,’ he said as we headed back to my office.

  ‘OK,’ Emmett said, ‘so we got somebody who knows enough about antiquated alarm systems to hack ours, but why? What would be the gain? Revenge?’

  ‘Blackmail? Extortion of some kind? “Pay me X amount of dollars and I won’t kill your family”? That sort of thing?’

  ‘Don’t make sense.’

  I had to agree. ‘Then revenge. But for what?’

  ‘For putting ’em away, probably. We put a lot of assholes away.’

  ‘And we’ve killed a few, too,’ I said, thinking about it. ‘It may not be someone we put away but kinfolk of somebody k
illed in the line?’

  ‘We need to look at the records,’ Emmett said.

  ‘They’re on the computer,’ I said.

  We both stared at each other. ‘When’s Holly coming back?’ Emmett asked.

  ‘Sooner rather than later,’ I said, picking up my phone to dial Dalton’s mama’s house. Holly was our computer person. As in practically the only one in the office who knew how to turn it on, much less find something on it. And while she was here, she could call a few alarm companies.

  Turned out a new, updated alarm system was going to cost an arm and a leg, and I knew without asking that the county commissioners were going to say nada, nein, no way. Repairs to the existing one were steep enough but the alarm guy said our insurance should cover it. I asked if we could get the meter box moved inside the building rather than outside, but the guy said he doubted it. Then he suggested we get a state-of-the-art lock on the meter box, which he’d be happy to add to the final bill. I thought I’d have Holly look into the insurance aspect and see if we could add that state-of-the-art lock.

  As far as the revenge scenario went, there were seventeen cases in the last five years where somebody could be pissed off enough. You know, sometimes it doesn’t take much: ‘You looked at my girlfriend crooked, prepare to die.’ That kind of thing. Of those seventeen cases, two of the ones we’d sent up were dead of natural causes with no kin who’d care, one moved out of state, and four were still in prison. Which left ten. Who doesn’t like a nice round number?

  Of that ten, seven were dead either by the hand of law enforcement or due to circumstances surrounding the arrest. Of those seven, two were vagrants without known family, one was an idiot who’d blown up his own meth lab when we arrived to arrest him (there’d been a girlfriend there, but other than that, no family), and two were brothers who’d drowned when they jumped off the top of Mountain Falls in an attempt to evade capture. Which was a shame, since their crime had been more like a misdemeanor than anything serious. When I informed their father of their deaths he’d just shrugged and said, ‘They both took after their mother. Stupid as a bag of rocks,’ and closed the door in my face. The county had ended up footing the bill for their burial.

  The last two were a little more serious – although I’m not saying the other deaths weren’t serious; there’s not much more serious than death. The first one was a guy beating his wife. Dalton handled that one. Domestics are always a bitch but this one was even more so. The girl’d been beaten pretty bad, lying in a pool of blood on the floor of their double-wide, and the husband was standing over her with a gun pointed at her head when Dalton walked up. Dalton drew his weapon, announced himself and the husband swung the gun up and out at Dalton. Dalton fired. End of story. Except his two brothers – even meaner than the husband – took umbrage and tried to come after Dalton. They ended up hospitalized and soon after became guests of the penal system. Those two went on my list. They’d been out for a while now.

  Then there was Maudeen Sanders. Nice woman – Sunday-school teacher at the Methodist church. Husband was a long-haul trucker, died in a wreck up north some place, leaving her with a six-year-old child. Maudeen remarried when the girl was twelve to a guy named Wharton Jacobs, who was a pretty-boy who didn’t do much of anything except live off his various and sundry wives. He’d had four by the time he married Maudeen, who, let’s face it, should have known better, but, like they say, the heart wants what the heart wants.

  Problem was Maudeen came home early from her shift at the Piggly Wiggly to find Wharton messing with her twelve-year-old daughter. So, being a reasonable woman, she shot him. Judge Norman, seeing that she’d spent the night in lock-up, gave her time served and sent her home. Unfortunately, old Wharton got out of the hospital and attempted to go back to the same house. Maudeen shot him in the head when he walked in the door. This time Judge Norman had to get serious and gave her ten years. Her daughter, Lynette, fought tooth and nail for her mom, with the help of her mom’s brother and his wife. Could they all still be pissed at the sheriff’s department? And, I had to wonder, did old Wharton have anybody left who cared that he’d got shot? But why would they come after us? We didn’t shoot him.

  That left three. There were those two rednecks who held up Smithy’s gas station and pistol-whipped the attendant because he didn’t have the key to the safe. One rolled on the other and got two years while his partner got fifteen for assault, battery and armed robbery. The one who got two years got out six months ago. I had to wonder what he’d been up to. Was he still in the county? But why would he be pissed enough to want revenge on the sheriff’s office? I’d have to look into that.

  Then we had two families, one with reason enough to seek revenge if they’d a mind to. There was this wreck on the highway that caused some serious road rage. One guy in an F150 pick-up and another in a Ford minivan. The guy in the F150 had his wife and two sons in the truck with him. The guy in the Ford minivan had his wife, two daughters, a son and a golden retriever in his. Both guys jumped out of their vehicles but the F150 guy had a revolver and shot the minivan guy before he could say boo. Minivan guy was dead at the scene and we had screaming wives and children on both sides, a dog barking its fool head off and the F150 guy being handcuffed by Anthony Dobbins. While Anthony was busy with the F150 guy, the two wives started in on each other, screaming, hair-pulling, eye-gouging, what have you. Anthony called for back-up. By the time Jasmine Hopkins and Dalton Pettigrew got there the F150 guy’s two sons were beating up on the dead minivan guy’s one son, while the dead minivan guy’s two daughters were jumping on the backs of the F150 guy’s sons. Everybody was screaming at everybody and the dog, for some reason, was trying to tear a hole in Anthony Dobbins’ uniform. Eventually the F150 guy got fifteen years but unfortunately was killed in prison two years in. The wife of the F150 fella tried to sue the sheriff’s department and the county but it didn’t work. But both families still live in the county and I understand there’s still bad feelings there – at each other and probably at us too, at least by the family of the F150 guy.

  The other serious consideration was a home invasion robbery. John and Reba Connors – he was a bailiff for the county court and she was the county clerk. Reba was in the bedroom of their home when she heard a commotion in the living room. She peeked in and saw two guys holding a gun on John. She snuck back into the bedroom and called the sheriff’s department. The invaders must’ve heard her on the phone because they found her and dragged her back into the living room, where they raped her in front of her husband. Anthony Dobbins, who was newly back to Prophesy County at that time, got lost and took too long to get to the Connors’ home. The bad guys were gone before he got there. John had been pistol-whipped, mostly about the head, and Reba was in a pretty bad shape. They both quit their jobs and have been trying to sue the county and us ever since. It’s not going well for them and I’ve had a few drunken late-night calls from John Connors. And we never found the bad guys. John Connors was definitely a possibility.

  I set Holly up to dig deeper into those at the top of my list – the brothers of the dead wife-beater, Maudeen Sanders’ relatives, the redneck who only got two years when he rolled on his partner, the families of the road-rage victims and John and Reba Connors. Holly was real good on computers and I knew if there was anything to find, she’d find it. Meanwhile, I had other things to consider: like filling out a hundred and eleven forms for the county, state and feds, getting the paperwork ready for Anthony Dobbins’ review due the end of the month and finding a nice place to take my wife for our anniversary, which was coming up sooner than Anthony’s review. I had my eye on this necklace with three little diamonds I’d found at Murray’s Jewelry & More, which I thought nicely represented our little family of three. Now I had to come up with a good place to take her to dinner, and I’d be damned if it was gonna be the Longbranch Inn.

  Later that evening, my sister, Jewel Anne, believe it or not, came to my rescue as far as a place to take my wife for our anniversary.r />
  ‘I have an idea,’ she said, sneaking into my little office off the kitchen.

  ‘I’m not interested in dessert,’ I said, a little terrified of what might be coming.

  ‘No, not that, silly. Besides, there’s homemade rhubarb ice cream in the freezer if you need something sweet. No, I’m talking about where to take Jean for y’alls anniversary.’

  If I could, I would have raised an eyebrow. Instead, I just said, ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. Your anniversary’s on Saturday, so why don’t you take Jean to Oklahoma City for the weekend? Harmon and I will keep an eye on John and the house. And,’ she said, grinning wide, ‘I have a fifty-percent-off coupon for that steakhouse downtown.’

  ‘No shit?’ I said, staring at her. ‘You’d do that?’

  She kissed me on the cheek. ‘It’s the least I can do for all y’all have done for us, big brother.’ She whipped the fifty percent steakhouse coupon out of her pocket and handed it to me. ‘I would suggest the Regents Hotel. It’s very nice. And I hear they give an AARP discount, you old coot.’ And with that last parting shot, she left. Being an old coot did have its advantages.

  So it was all set. We would leave Friday after work for Oklahoma City. We had a suite at the Regents Hotel, with a nice AARP discount. We’d have room service for dinner, then spend Saturday shopping the antiques stores, with reservations for dinner at the Sooner Steakhouse that evening, which was within walking distance of the hotel.

  For early March, the weather had been pretty good, and everything went according to plan. Our suite was a nice enough place, with a small living room leading into a small bedroom, and a small bathroom attached. The operative word here being small. But it was big enough for me and Jean. It had a large-screen TV and a small balcony that looked out over downtown Oklahoma City, which looks real good at night. We checked out the room-service menu and ordered a meal we agreed to share, a chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream (which my wife insisted we’d only get if we shared it too – sometimes this diet thing sucks), and a couple of alcoholic drinks. Me and Jean weren’t big drinkers but it was our anniversary and we both figured a little booze was in order.