Stray Narrow

by Jerusha Jones

  Pete angled me to the side so he could look into my face. “Crime wave?”

  I frowned. We’d both been mingling through the crowd, so clearly our eavesdropping radar were tuned differently—if we’d been hearing, and registering, different topics. “What’s your subject du jour?” I asked, suddenly anxious that maybe some people were spreading the word about the murder.

  “SeedGenix.”

  “Ohhh,” I murmured, and exhaled with relief. The major supplier of crop seed for the farmers in the region. The company specialized in developing strains that flourish on the irrigated plateaus that flank the Columbia River throughout the watershed basin. The name of the company was both a blessing and a curse, depending on who was saying it and at what point we were in the planting/growing/harvesting cycle.

  Of course Pete would pay attention to those conversations because the resulting wheat, corn, and soybeans constituted the majority of his tows for the months of August through November each year. And in the spring when the river’s lock system reopened after winter maintenance, he’d pick up the grain reserves from the various co-op elevators and get those to market as well. That was the way the farmers hedged some of their bets—holding a portion of their harvest back while waiting to see what happened to commodity prices. A tight interplay of percentages and risk, feast and famine.

  When the crops performed well, so did Pete—as measured by bushels, short tons, and cubic feet. I know some of the lingo just from hanging around my hubby, but the sheer volume of the annual grain shipments is still unfathomable to my mind.

  “They’re not getting the rebates they were promised,” Pete said.

  He must have noticed the blank expression on my face, because he pulled me around the cake table and out onto the dance floor. The band had just struck up a lilting melody with a soft beat that it seemed even I might be able to shuffle to.

  “It’s a tactic SeedGenix has been taking the past few years to try to beat out their competitors. They sell their seeds at the same price as the two other big seed companies from the Midwest—it’s not like the farmers have a lot of choices about who to buy their seed from. But SeedGenix has been offering rebates to the farmers based on germination rate.” Pete finagled my hand up onto his shoulder and grasped my other one in his, while his hand on my back told me where to go.

  How he could talk and keep the rhythm with his steps at the same time, I’ll never know. Inside my head, I was counting silently but still lurched about in belated syncopated fashion. “Explain that to me,” I breathed quickly between steps 2 and 3 on the little chart in my head.

  It was a little challenge. I was waiting to see if he could do it—manage a layman’s explanation of the complicated regional economics and foxtrot simultaneously. I needn’t have bothered. Piece of cake, apparently—and figuratively, since the newlyweds had yet to cut the real one.

  “When the winter wheat went in this fall, the SeedGenix salesmen promised rebates to the farmers based on the germination rate. Eighty percent is industry standard. So they set up a directly correlated rebate—for every percentage point over eighty, they also offered a matching percentage off the farmer’s total seed bill. A lot of those guys have to finance their seed buy and then make monthly payments, so to have that total decrease, even by a few percentage points, would be huge for them. Win-win.”

  I tipped my chin against Pete’s shoulder and scowled at nobody in particular. Because that didn’t make sense to me. But maybe there was an error in my math. Could be my fancy footwork was diverting blood flow from my brain. “I don’t understand,” I replied. “Isn’t that win-lose? If SeedGenix produces an amazing wheat seed that germinates more than usual, therefore yielding more per acre, but the farmer has to pay less for that seed because of this very same amazing capability—then the farmer saves money with the rebate while the company loses profit after they spent a lot of time and effort on research and development.” I leaned back to gaze into his crinkle-cornered eyes.

  To find he was grinning down at me. “I was just giving you the sales spiel. Word for word what the SeedGenix salesmen were promising the farmers.”

  I snorted. “Those salesmen need to have their heads examined.” And then another thought hit me. “Did the farmers get the offers in writing?” Because this was sounding hinky. Like ulterior-motive hinky. I’d known some big talkers in my time, some high-pressure sales-types. I’d even been engaged to one once, although he’d been disguised as a lawyer. The personality was identical, though. And if those salesmen were under pressure of their own from upper management, I wouldn’t be surprised if they manufactured off-the-books deals in order to meet their completely arbitrary quotas.

  “But the opposite is true as well. If the seed underperformed, the farmers wouldn’t have gotten any discount, and the company would’ve kept the full purchase price, thereby profiting more. So that would be a reverse incentive for the company—lose-win.” I shook my head with the confusion of the concept.

  “Hence the grumbling,” Pete said. “The farmers are in a tight spot regardless because SeedGenix has what amounts to a stranglehold on the supply. And they’re the ones who verify the germination rates.”

  My blood was rising, too, just thinking about it. “That stinks. There should be third-party verification.”

  “Indeed.”

  I began to wonder if all the murmurings Pete and I had been hearing were, in fact, related. Because problems at the top of the socio-economic ladder filter down very quickly in a place like Sockeye County. There just aren’t that many rungs.

  CHAPTER 16

  Hot damn he thought again—for about the millionth time—his vocabulary having shrunk noticeably. Whatever words had been in his brain half a second ago had vaporized. Also, his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth. If he did manage to actually open his trap, something that sounded suspiciously like aargh aargh grunt aargh would probably come out. Nothing suave, that was for sure.

  So he studied the remains of the prime rib dinner on his plate. He hadn’t devoured the meal with remarkable efficiency, the way he normally ate, because he didn’t want to gross out the girl sitting next to him. The girl all the silent hot damns were for. Darcy—Darcy O’Hare she’d said her name was.

  And then she hadn’t spoken to him again, either. Probably wishing she’d been assigned to any other table but this one—with a bunch of geriatrics and a stone-cold silent, boring galoot of a deputy sheriff who probably hadn’t used his knife properly while cutting the meat. Not such a fun night for a single girl.

  Hot damn, but she was all dimples and curves in that clingy, silky bridesmaid dress. And huge blue eyes with flawless, creamy skin—he could see quite a lot of her skin, actually, because of the dress. But it was her deep, coppery red hair with golden sparkles in it that was really doing him in. He was staring—he knew he was staring, so once more, he quickly averted his gaze to the congealed gravy smears on his plate.

  Maybe he could’ve talked, if he’d had a subject that wasn’t off-limits. But all he did was work, and telling a pretty girl about finding the murdered body of a different pretty girl wasn’t a good idea. He supposed he could brag about how fast his patrol car could go or that one time he cold-cocked a scrawny teenage robber who was running out of a 7-Eleven. But that was just a case of being in the right place at the right time, since he’d been going inside to get himself a Slurpee, so he could hardly take credit for it.

  Hot damn, but she had amazing eyelashes too. Even they were curvy, and long. He was staring again, enough to make her blush. He cleared his throat, opened his mouth, closed it.

  Why wasn’t she a chatterbox? Most girls were. He’d been in several situations with girls where they seemed to happily fill in all the blanks in the conversation, so he’d had to say very little at all. Easy. They’d made it easy.

  Darcy wasn’t making it easy. He sort of liked her better for it, though—if that was possible. But it’d be up to him…

  He cleared his throa
t again, shuffled his big feet under the table. Finally the band launched into a song that seemed the right tempo. Not crazy fast, but not so slow that the only option was super-close dancing. Just right. Maybe.

  He coiled up every ounce of nerve he had and briefly—just for a fleeting nanosecond—skimmed a fingertip on her gorgeous bare arm. “Would you like to dance?” It came out like a croak. Like a frog with laryngitis.

  She beamed at him, and he just about fell off his chair.

  And then she gave him her whole hand, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Except, well, hold it, and stand up—and she rose with him, every curvy inch of her, and she dropped her napkin on the table next to her plate. HOT DAMN.

  His legs were wobbly, but he made it to the dance floor, and then she was in his arms and she smelled heavenly, and he wasn’t sure if his feet were moving or not, but he wasn’t sure if it mattered either.

  oOo

  “Will you look at that.” Frankie’s tone was ripe with satisfaction, her hands clasped tightly together at her waist, almost as though she was restraining a victory jig.

  I followed her gaze and emitted a surprised little gasp of my own. Yes, it was—it most certainly was the illustrious pair. I had to squint through the golden glow surrounding the dancing couples. Over the course of the evening, someone had surreptitiously been dimming the ballroom’s overhead lights until they’d been reduced to a flicker, and the tea lights from the tables as well as the after-hours lighting that shone from the base of the exhibits had taken over the majority of the task of illumination. The big room had shrunk into a very intimate dance party—and romance was in the air.

  That particular khaki uniform belonged to Owen Hobart, and he had the gorgeous redhead bridesmaid engulfed in his arms. Finally. They’d been sitting at their table like a couple of starstruck mummies for hours. Now he had his head dipped down, his nose near the crown of her head as though he was…sniffing her? Inhaling her delicious perfume, of course.

  I stuck out my hand, down by my thigh, and Frankie gave it a surreptitious, but celebratory, low-five pat.

  “Hallelujah,” she muttered. “Otherwise the evening would’ve been a total bust in the matchmaking department. Speaking of which”—her voice ticked up a notch—“you’d better come up with a good excuse for the absence of our boss in about ten seconds.”

  Barbara Segreti was winding her way toward us through the half-empty tables. Her hair was piled on top of her head and wound with pink ribbons, adding a good ten inches to her short, round form which was swathed in a swishy silk maxi-dress sporting a delicate cherry-blossom print. The fabric looked hand-painted and very expensive. Barbara had gone to a lot of trouble.

  No, trouble wasn’t the right word, since she owned the only beauty salon in town. Effort, perhaps, was more accurate.

  She was panting by the time she reached us. “Is Rupert still sick?” she asked, worry creasing her forehead.

  Well, there it was, handed to me on a silver platter. “Still not one-hundred percent,” I agreed quickly, not bothering to add that, no matter the state of his health, he’d rather embark on a treasure hunt than sit about, roped into exchanging banal pleasantries. Or that he was still blissfully unaware that the woman in front of us had had a crush on him since they were children when they’d played hide-and-seek in his family’s lonely old mansion.

  Frankie and I were certainly working on Barbara’s case—without her explicit consent, I might add—but these things do take time. A long time. Barbara had been waiting nearly fifty years.

  “Ah, well,” she sighed, and shuffled around beside me so she could also watch the dancing couples. “It’s been a fine party. No hitches?” She quirked a painted-on brow and a sidelong glance at me.

  I shook my head silently. None that I could admit to.

  Except what was that sudden cluster over by the hallway to the kitchen? I spotted my husband, standing tall next to a bent-over person, also in a khaki uniform. He waved to me urgently.

  Frankie and I scrabbled across the room, shoving chairs out of the way and squeaking between tables. Barbara chose to sail around the perimeter of the room—her small feet must’ve been churning madly under that tent of a dress—and almost beat us there.

  “What’s wrong?” I wheezed, already kneeling down beside Sheriff Marge. Pete had managed to prop her into a chair, but she was still bent at the waist and gripping her knees, panting, her face a sickly white.

  “Pain,” she gasped.

  “Where?”

  “Right side.” Pete set her hat on the table and squatted down beside me. “Came on really fast.” The muscles along his jaw were bunched tightly.

  “Appendix?”

  But Sheriff Marge shook her head. “Had that…taken out…thirty years ago.” She was clammy with the strain of breathing, and even her lips were colorless.

  “Kidney stone,” Barbara announced over our shoulders, with an air of authority.

  We were huddled like a football offense, with our disabled quarterback in the center. I tipped my head back to peer at Barbara. “Are you sure?” She was a hairstylist, not a doctor. “Maybe it’s indigestion, heartburn, acid reflux.”

  “I’m right here,” Sheriff Marge growled, although her voice was muffled because she was still doubled over and speaking into her knees. “I didn’t eat too much. Didn’t feel like eating.”

  “Is it more painful than being in labor?” Barbara insisted.

  Sheriff Marge grunted. “Yeah. Been a while since I did that too, but yeah.” She was certainly panting with carefully controlled breaths that mimicked the Lamaze technique.

  Pete shifted, probably embarrassed at the highly personal direction the conversation was taking. He was the lone male in our huddle, and the urgent topic had just taken on a decidedly intimate flavor.

  “Kidney stone,” Barbara said with a finality that indicated vast experience. “You need to go to urgent care. You’ll need an IV, pain killers, probably a smooth-muscle relaxant.”

  “Okay.”

  Sheriff Marge’s voice came out like a whisper, but I was so shocked I almost fell over. She was agreeing to go to the hospital? This was serious indeed.

  Pete jumped up. “I’ll get you a driver.”

  No one was thinking of calling an ambulance. There were three deputies on scene, all of whom were qualified to drive very fast and had sirens and flashing lightbars on the tops of their cars. The closest one happened to be Owen Hobart.

  Owen had a blissful sort of dreamy expression on his face, and his eyelids where half closed. But he snapped to reality in an instant when Pete laid a hand on his shoulder for a hasty whispered consultation. And left poor Darcy bewildered and alone in the middle of the dance floor in his urgency to see to his chief.

  “Oh dear,” Frankie murmured. “Oh dear.” But she rushed to clear a path and open the glass double doors.

  We tried to keep the mass exodus quiet, tried not to interrupt the festivities, but when there’s a galvanized blitz of khaki, everyone tends to notice.

  Sheriff Marge was grumbling the whole way, and waddled forward surrounded by her deputies while still bent in half. “It’ll pass,” she wheezed, her arms clenched over her abdomen. “Whatever it is, it’ll pass.”

  “Darn tootin’,” Barbara affirmed. “It’ll pass all right. But you won’t like it much.” She’d stationed herself at Sheriff Marge’s side and was leading her like a small child toward the exit.

  This was a side of Barbara I hadn’t seen before, but I was grateful for her take-charge attitude, especially when she was going up against the greatest take-charger of them all in Sheriff Marge. And because Sheriff Marge just might need another woman for company in this particular situation when all of her deputies were men. And because I remembered with a startled gasp out in the parking lot that I couldn’t be that woman—no matter how much I wanted to be—or be part of the entourage to the hospital.

  “I have a kid,” I said dazedly to no one in particular, bli
nking in the frigid air. I felt as though I’d just been splashed in the face with ice water. “I have a kid,” I repeated and glanced back at the museum where a few lights burned brightly from an office on the third floor.

  “Yeah, babe, we have a kid,” Pete said grimly, coming up to wrap an arm around my shoulders.

  It was only then that I realized I was shivering uncontrollably, as we watched all the law enforcement personnel rapidly depart—no sirens, but lights swooping across the frozen landscape in a bizarre sort of red and blue ballet, speeding one of their own into Lupine for medical treatment.

  oOo

  The party had come to a screeching halt. That much was clear from the sea of worried and inquisitive faces that were aimed in our direction when we reentered the museum.

  Frankie immediately went over to reassure the bereft Darcy. To tell her this sort of thing wasn’t normal. Although if she was going to date (as we all hoped—it was a long shot, but hope burns eternal) a deputy, she might as well get used to it.

  There was one deputy spouse in attendance—Dale Larson’s. He was the only deputy who’d managed to marry and have a mostly normal family life, complete with two kids who were already more than a handful at eight and ten years old. Sandy Larson was a calm and sensible woman, and I liked her immensely.

  She had also stationed herself just inside the double doors and caught my elbow. “You’ll need to make an announcement,” she whispered. “Poor Sheriff Marge, but the rumors…” She shook her head. “There’s no confidentiality in Sockeye County.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. If we didn’t tell everyone what was going on, they’d manufacture worse scenarios—like terminal cancer, or leprosy, or brain disease, or something. Sheriff Marge would be dead by morning if left up to the imaginations of the populace.