Between Lost and Found

by Shelly Stratton

  “So what’s the . . . you know . . . procedure for something like this, if you don’t mind me asking, Sheriff?”

  “Chief,” he said, making her pause.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I’m police chief. Not a sheriff,” he corrected. “The sheriff’s star is just part of the costume,” he said, tapping his breast through his coat. “The real sheriff is over in Deadwood. It’s just lowly police chief down here in Mammoth.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t—”

  She was stopped midsentence by her own clumsiness. She stumbled on an ice patch the size of a large snow boot that was in the middle of the sidewalk. Her arms windmilled wildly, and the chief grabbed one of them to keep her from falling to the ground and face-planting in a patch of snow that was gray from exhaust and yellow with another substance she suspected might be urine. As a reflex she grabbed onto him, too, to steady herself. With a strong tug, he lifted her upright, and she stared up at him, feeling the warmth of his hand even through the thick lining of her coat. Her stomach did a little flip-flop, catching her by surprise.

  “Thanks,” she said, meeting his eyes as he released her. She realized she was still holding onto him, so she let go. “I told my grandfather Mammoth Falls was too dangerous for a girl like me. I can barely walk around without falling down.”

  She gave a self-deprecating laugh. The chief didn’t join her in her laughter or even crack a smile. Instead, he turned and started walking again, bunching his shoulders against the chill. Her cheeks warmed as she rushed to catch up with him.

  “Were you actually flirting with him?” a bemused voice in her head chided.

  No, I wasn’t flirting, she thought defensively as she and the police chief walked in silence. That’s just . . . just insane!

  Flirting was the furthest thing from her mind. She loved Mark. She was just admiring the South Dakota scenery, so to speak. She wasn’t blind, and her androgen levels were in good working order; of course, she was attracted to the chief. Just like she knew Mark was attracted to other women: the buxom jogger on the bike trail in their neighborhood whom he tried to slyly watch as she passed, or the pretty waitress at the Italian bistro they liked with whom he always joked and flirted. Mark was a red-blooded man, and she wouldn’t resent him admiring the opposite sex occasionally.

  No harm, no foul. We’re all human.

  “What do you mean by procedures?” the chief asked.

  “What?” She stared dazedly into his to-die-for blue eyes.

  “You asked about procedures,” the chief reminded her, speaking slowly.

  “Oh, yes! Yes! Right. Procedures,” Janelle said, forcing herself to focus again on the topic at hand. “What’s the procedure for searching for a missing person? Do I need to file paperwork? Do you guys go to his cabin first? How does this work?”

  They crossed the street and passed a clapboard storefront with a wagon wheel and chalkboard in front advertising biscotti and “The Finest Cup of Joe in the Black Hills.” Two women in reenactment costumes walked by them holding paper cups. One had on a blue bonnet and a long, drab gray dress under her shearling-trimmed wool jacket. Janelle could spot the lace hem of a saloon girl costume under the other woman’s parka.

  “Well, we would probably check his cabin and then try to locate his truck,” the chief said, glancing at her. When their eyes met, he looked away again. “We’d also want to talk to anyone who was last in contact with him—probably his buddies and his girlfriend.”

  Janelle’s brows raised a few inches. Pops has a girlfriend?

  “We’d also do a search of the surrounding forest and the lake. We partner with the state police, the Lawrence County deputies, and the police departments in neighboring towns. They would bring in the search dogs. Then, if the weather cooperates, the county would even break out the helicopters for the search. That’s what we had to do for that one hiker who got stranded in the woods a couple years back after a bad hailstorm.”

  “Oh, you did? Did you find the hiker?”

  “Yeah, we found him.”

  “And he was okay?” Janelle asked, feeling her first glimmer of hope since she arrived in Mammoth. They crossed another street.

  “Hey, Chief!” someone called out, and Janelle turned toward the roadway.

  She spotted a young woman who looked to be in her mid-twenties with almost iridescent lime green hair in two pigtails, waving at them. At the sight of her hair, Janelle did a double take. The woman paused midway in climbing on the back of a Harley that was splattered with mud and drying snow slush. A guy whose face was obscured by a helmet and aviator sunglasses sat waiting on the motorcycle for the woman to board. He waved absently at the police chief.

  The green-haired woman was wearing an orange wool jacket and a short denim skirt, revealing black-and-white-striped wool tights that made her look like a witch or a marauding pirate. She finished the ensemble with yellow combat boots. When she saw Janelle, her brown eyes widened with interest.

  “Hey, Yvette!” the chief shouted back. “You staying out of trouble?”

  The woman laughed. “Don’t I always?” she asked, giving full indication that she was a woman who most certainly found her way into trouble.

  “Don’t worry, Chief!” the driver assured. “I’ll watch out for her.”

  “You two watch out for each other!” the chief called back.

  Janelle and the woman held gazes a bit longer before the woman slapped on a plum-colored helmet the driver held out to her. As soon as she finished securing the helmet strap, the motorcycle pulled off with a thunderous roar. Janelle turned back to the chief.

  “So the hiker was okay?” Janelle repeated.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, well, he was . . . alive.”

  “Alive?” She squinted. “Alive? What does that mean?”

  The chief cleared his throat. “The hiker’s left arm had to be amputated because of injuries from his fall and being stuck in the elements for a few days, but he was just happy that we found him before . . .” His words drifted off. His chapped lips formed a grim line.

  “Before what?”

  “Before the animals got to him.”

  Janelle gulped audibly. For all she knew, Pops was lying on the side of the mountain being eaten by a vulture or his body was being dragged into the burrow of some she-wolf that would use his decaying flesh to feed her young.

  “Chief, we have to start looking for my grandfather now—right now! We’ve wasted enough time already!”

  He nodded in agreement. “We are looking for him.”

  “No, we’re not! We’re taking a stroll along Main Street where people are setting up tents and walking around in costumes,” she exclaimed, pointing up at the three- and two-story buildings around them and the passersby. “I’m expecting someone to walk up and show me where Wild Bill Hickok was shot!”

  At that, the chief chuckled and continued his long strides beside her. “That would be the Saloon No. 10 back in Deadwood.”

  “Chief,” she said firmly, not finding the humor in any of this, “I’m being serious.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself as a gust of wind sent her hood flying back and off her head. She looked around Mammoth Falls. It appeared just as you would expect a quaint, sleepy mountain town to be, but she couldn’t ignore the overwhelming presence of the Black Hills—those dark granite slopes that looked like they could spring to life at any moment and shake off the town and all its residents like an annoying fruit fly. And her grandfather was somewhere lost out there.

  She watched helplessly as the chief paused in front of a door with the sign “Toby’s Bar & Grill” hanging over the entrance.

  “I don’t care what you have to do, who you have to talk to, or where you have to look. Just . . . just . . .”

  He shoved the bar door open and stepped inside. The bar was mostly empty, save for one person sitting at the counter and a few of the tables where one or two diners loitered over half-eaten plates. A haze of smoke lingered in the air,
catching Janelle by surprise. She hadn’t smelled smoke in a bar in almost a decade. It was definitely verboten back east.

  Despite her watery eyes and instant hacking, she angrily marched in after the police chief.

  “Just find my grandfather, please!”

  “Will do,” the chief said as he strode across the smoky bar room toward a dark-haired woman who was hunched over a beer and biting into a sandwich. The woman gazed up at the TV hanging over the bar where a baseball game played.

  “Hey, Connie. I hate to interrupt your meal here, but uh . . . have you seen Little Bill anywhere?”

  The woman slowly turned to them and lowered the Rueben sandwich from her mouth to her plate. Her eyes zeroed in on Janelle. She smiled timidly. “You must be Bill’s granddaughter.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Janelle stared down at the woman in confusion. How did she know who she was?

  “I’m the one that called you yesterday,” Connie said, answering the question Janelle hadn’t voiced aloud. Connie’s cheeks flushed crimson. Her neck erupted in streaks of red. She lowered her gaze to the scuffed wooden table. “I’m the one who told you Bill was missing.”

  The chief took a step back, tipped back the brim of his Stetson, and stared at her. “What are you talking about? So Little Bill really did disappear somewhere? Well, why the heck didn’t you report it?”

  “I didn’t because there was nothing to report, Sam. Bill is fine.”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t disappear.”

  “Wait, so he’s not missing then?” the police chief asked.

  Connie shook her head, making her long, dark hair sway like a lush velvet curtain behind her. “No, he’s not missing. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”

  The police chief and the woman continued to go back and forth. Now Janelle was even more confused. She was trying her best to orient herself to the bar with its smoke haze and baseball game playing loudly on the television. The announcer shouted that one of the Dodgers had just hit a home run and the crowd on TV erupted into a roar. One of the diners started to clap.

  “All right! Don’t make a liar out of me, fellas!” he shouted before shoving a forkful of coleslaw into his mouth.

  She tried to orient herself to the paradoxical conversation between the police chief and this woman whom Janelle had never met or heard of before—but she couldn’t.

  She felt dizzy, like someone was swinging her around and around in a maniacal game of ring o’ ring of roses. “And we all fall down!” they would shout, and she would fall to the floor in a heap.

  “So then why’d you tell his granddaughter that he disappeared?” the chief persisted. “Are you saying you lied to her?”

  Connie looked shamefaced, and it was all the answer they needed. “It’s . . . it’s complicated, Sam.”

  “It’s not complicated; it’s crazy! What were you thinking?” he asked, his voice rising almost to a shout. Several diners’ eyes swiveled in their direction. “What got in your head to—”

  “I know it was wrong, Sam! I don’t need you lecturing me like I’m some high schooler who decided to whip-cream someone’s car.”

  He sighed gruffly. “I’m not lecturing you, Connie. I’m just saying that you can’t—”

  “Look, I’ll explain everything to you. I promise. I know it wasn’t the right thing to do. I know that now. But like I said, it’s complicated.” Her eyes locked with Janelle’s again. “Just let me talk to her first. Okay?”

  Sam looked between both women, as if contemplating whether he should stay or go. Finally, he took a step away from the table and held up his hands in surrender.

  “All right. Fine. I’ve got work to do anyway. I’m interested in hearing the backstory on this one, but I’ll wait—for now. You know where to find me.”

  He then turned and walked back across the bar. A few people shouted their hellos to him, and he waved and greeted them back. Janelle watched as he pushed open the door and stepped into the cold.

  “He’s a good man,” Connie volunteered, making Janelle turn back around to face her. “His father was police chief too, before he died last year. Sam comes from good people, though his father rode him a bit too hard when he was alive.”

  Janelle nodded absently. Frankly, she didn’t give a damn about the Mammoth Falls police chief’s lineage or the relationship he had with his father. She was more concerned with why this woman had lied to her.

  Connie pulled out an empty chair beside her, dragging it over the bar’s hardwood floor. She patted the seat. “Go on and have a seat.”

  Janelle stared down at the seat. She didn’t move.

  “Go on! I won’t bite,” Connie said, her smile widening.

  Janelle finally lowered herself into the chair Connie offered her. She took off her coat after yanking down the zipper with enough ferocity she almost ripped it off its track. She balled her coat in her lap, holding its unwieldy bulkiness in her arms.

  “Hiya! What canna get ya?” a waitress asked in a “Gosh darn don’tcha know” accent that made Janelle look up. The young woman held a notepad in her hand and chewed gum with loud pops as she looked at Janelle expectantly. “If ya’d like to know today’s specials, it’s the—”

  “No. No, thank you,” Janelle said. “I don’t want anything.”

  I just want to find Pops and go the hell home, she thought, furious that she had turned her life upside down for a lie—a stupid lie. Mark had warned her, but she hadn’t listened.

  The young waitress shrugged, stuffed her notepad into her jeans back pocket, and walked away.

  “Where’s my grandfather?” Janelle couldn’t keep the accusation out of her voice. She was too angry to mask it. It sounded like she was accusing Connie of hiding him, and deep down, she probably was. “Is he here?” she asked as she looked around the bar room.

  “No, he’s not here. We usually meet for an early supper after I close down the shop for the day, but we . . . well, we had a fight last night when he asked me to call you, and I guess he thinks I’m not speaking to him.”

  “He asked you to call me?”

  “Uh-huh. He told me what to say to you.”

  “So he told you to make up that . . . that . . .”

  Janelle struggled to find the right word. Her anger made her thoughts flit around in her head like frenzied bumblebees. The thoughts landed long enough for her to grapple with what she was trying to say but flew off again before she got the chance to articulate them.

  “He told you to make up th-that ridiculous story about him disappearing?” she finally sputtered.

  Connie nodded.

  “And why the hell would he do that?”

  “He didn’t want you to get engaged to that man of yours,” Connie answered plainly before taking a sip of her beer. “That Mark guy. Mark called and asked him for your hand in marriage that morning—the day of your party. Bill doesn’t like him and said he had to stop it, so he roped me into it.” Connie then spread her hands in a helpless “What can you do?” gesture.

  Janelle stared at Connie in astonishment. How did this woman know more about what was going on in her life than she did? What other details about her life had Pops discussed with Connie, a woman whom he had never mentioned once to his own granddaughter? Janelle doubted even her mom knew about Connie.

  “So I guess you’re his . . .” Janelle grimaced. She struggled again with the right word, not because she didn’t know what to say, but because she was reluctant to say it. “You’re his girlfriend?”

  Connie’s face reddened again. She lowered her beer back to the table. “Yes, we’ve been friendly for quite a while. About five years now.”

  Friendly? For five years?

  Longer than some marriages, Janelle thought with disbelief. But again, Pops had never mentioned Connie or their relationship.

  But why?

  She let her eyes scan over the woman sitting across from her. Maybe Connie’s appearance was the explanation for this quandary
. Though Pops was in his late seventies, Connie looked a lot younger. Janelle surmised that maybe Connie was in her fifties, judging from the vague etching of wrinkles Janelle saw on her olive-toned skin and Connie’s glossy black hair that had only a few patches of gray. That would make her . . . what? . . . only a few years younger than Janelle’s mother.

  Embarrassed about robbing the cradle, Pops?

  Connie also didn’t look like someone you would expect to find on an elderly man’s arm—that is, unless said elderly man drove a gleaming sports car, belonged to Hair Club for Men, and popped Viagra like the pills were Tic-Tacs.

  Because it was freezing outside, Janelle had donned a thick cable-knit sweater that had a collar so high it was almost a turtleneck. In contrast, Connie had on a plaid flannel shirt that was rolled up at the sleeves and unbuttoned to the navel. She wore a blue tank top underneath that showed a great deal of cleavage, and on her left breast was a heart with the name “Buddy” written in the insipid curly script that only seemed to be used by women who get those types of tattoos. Silver-and-turquoise chandelier earrings dangled from Connie’s earlobes. Two silver bracelets were on her wrists. She wore black eyeliner and ruby red lipstick. Janelle looked down at the woman’s feet, bemused to find her wearing suede Uggs—something that the teenage girls would prance around in at the suburban malls back home.

  Mom would not approve of this . . . of any of this, Janelle thought. And frankly, she wasn’t sure if she approved of it, either.

  Why couldn’t Pops have chosen a woman more like her Nana?

  Involuntarily, she fingered the gold-and-diamond pendant necklace at her throat—the necklace she always wore, whether it complemented her outfit or not. It had once belonged to her grandmother.

  Janelle still remembered Nana even though she had been dead for almost twenty years. She remembered her smell—a mix of talcum powder, cocoa butter, and a Fendi perfume that had long since been discontinued. She remembered her voice: a real North Carolina drawl unlike the manufactured one Brenda used all the time. The retired schoolteacher had always worn silk blouses and matching scarves with gold pins in the shape of butterflies, parakeets, or turtles. On Sundays, she wore wide-brimmed, elaborate hats to church, and she donned dainty garden gloves with bows on the wrists whenever she fiddled around in the garden that Pops had set up for her in their backyard.