Change of Heart (The True Heart Series Book 3)

by Layce Gardner

  The first phone call of her shift came from Mike. He didn’t waste any time saying, “Backup. I need backup.”

  “Backup? What’s wrong, Mike?” Rosa asked.

  “We’re having a riot downtown,” he said, his voice shaky.

  “Who’s rioting?”

  “Well, you know, people. Lots of people.”

  “Mike, what kind of people, anarchists?” She actually had a pretty good idea who was doing the rioting, but she needed to hear it from him.

  There was no answer.

  “Are the people older women with signs?” Rosa asked.

  “Yes. They’re marching downtown and stopping traffic on Dorset and they do not have a permit.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I asked one of them and she told me to shove my permit up my white, male, cis bunghole.”

  “Sounds like Mabel. Was she short?”

  “Yeah, the short one. She was carrying her protest sign in an aggressive fashion,” Mike said. “She was using it like a giant fly swatter.”

  “She’s a spitfire, all right.”

  “Can you send the paddy wagon?” His voice sounded hopeful.

  “Mike, we don’t have a paddy wagon. And that’s not a very PC word. If I were Irish, I’d be offended.”

  “Oh, well, then what am I supposed to do?”

  “If I were you, I’d get out of the way.”

  “But I’m supposed to uphold peace and order. It’s my job,” Mike said.

  “Okay, let me talk to the Chief. I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, stand aside for the sake of personal safety.”

  Rosa picked up her cane and hobbled toward the Chief’s office. He was on the phone. Rosa could hear the yelling on the other end. He held the phone two feet away from his ear.

  “I know. I know. Yeah, we’ll do something about it. Just calm down. I’ll take care of it.” He hung up and rubbed his face with his hands.

  “You okay?” Rosa asked.

  “Seems that little Fenton has a potential riot on its hands,” Chief Bob Ed said.

  “Yeah, so I heard. Any suggestions?”

  “I was hoping you’d have one. You know most of the protesters.” He shook his head. “It’s not like I can arrest all the senior ladies in town.”

  “Actually, you sort of have to. They don’t have a permit according to Mike,” Rosa said.

  “Mike’s down there?”

  “Yeah, remember you’re letting him cut his teeth doing the easy beat. Downtown is usually mellow,” Rosa said.

  Chief Bob Ed pulled on his mustache. Initially, he’d grown it because he’d been hit in the lip by an errant golf ball. The new mayor, Justin Austin, was a youngish Republican from Kansas City who’d moved to town in an effort to start his political career. Mayor Austin had taken up golf in order to hang out with the influential businessmen. He was a bad golfer.

  The Chief had taken the cut lip with barely concealed disgust. He’d never been hit in the face with a golf ball before. The Chief had held a grudge against Mayor Austin ever since and he didn’t do much to conceal it. He always referred to the mayor as “that pipsqueak.” Mayor Austin was short and looked like an Eagle scout, his blond hair combed to the side with a perfect part and a doughy face with super white teeth. He looked like he should be in a milk commercial.

  “Will you go down and talk to them?” Chief Bob Ed said.

  “Me? And say what?”

  “I don’t know. Talk some sense into them. They can have a parade, but they’ve got to go through the proper channels. Cutting off the downtown businesses and holding up traffic is serious stuff,” Chief Bob Ed said.

  “What about the switchboard?”

  “I’ll take care of that,” he said.

  “Does that mean you’re going to let Clifford answer it?” Clifford was the janitor and not a very good one. He endlessly forgot to stock the restrooms with toilet paper. Rosa made sure the women’s restroom had it, but the men were on their own. Nothing made the Chief madder than doing his constitutional only to find he didn’t have a “lick of paper to wipe his ass.”

  “I don’t really have a choice. It wouldn’t look right if I answered it. The city council might think they could cut the police department funding. We’re operating sparse as it is.”

  “Okay,” Rosa said. Neither of them looked confident with the plan.

  “You think Millie is behind this?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” Rosa said. She knew damn well Millie’s Militia was behind it. Amy had told her about going to Millie’s and finding them making signs.

  Rosa was a good police officer, but being tied to a desk had given her ego a slap. Her whole identity was tied to being a cop. It was only two years until she could take early retirement. And then what? Rosa knew it wouldn’t be a shiny future for her.

  What would she do, become a watercolorist? Set her easel up in front of the courthouse and try to sell her art? She was horrible at painting. She chuckled to herself as she walked to her car. During her convalescence, she’d taken a watercolor class just to get Steph off her back. She remembered Parker studying one of her finished works.

  “You know that’s bad, right?” Parker had said as they both stared at a forest scene that looked more like a nuclear bomb has scorched the landscape. There were stunted and misshapen trees under a gray sky that was ominous and threatening to swallow everything.

  Steph had tried to boost her up with the “you’ll get better” talk. Rosa had thrown the tubes of paint at her. Steph picked them up and gifted them to Ruth’s eight-year-old daughter, Cece, who’d been delighted. According to Ruth, Cece had worked her way through the entire beginning watercolor book and they’d had to go the library to get more. At least something good had come of her short painting career.

  Rosa unlocked her new car. Her old Sentra had finally died and she’d been forced to get a new car. She pined for her old car. Her new Sentra had all these additional features that Rosa didn’t understand. She just wanted simple controls, not a car that was smarter than she was. She hadn’t been able to turn off the back windshield-wiper for days until Parker had shown her how. Now she didn’t remember how to turn it back on.

  Normally, she would’ve walked, but she wasn’t comfortable testing her physical limits. She drove downtown and just as she was about to turn onto Dorset, she saw a throng of women march by. There were a lot more people than she’d thought. She’d figured on about twenty senior citizens making their dissatisfaction known. This was more like a hundred people.

  Rosa parked and got out of her car. She saw Mike’s cruiser sitting in the middle of Dorset with its lights flashing. He stood in front of the car, waving his skinny arms. He looked like a younger version of Barney Fife. The protesters were ignoring him. They just walked around him. Then she saw Clementine, Jeb’s wife, climb up on the squad car with a bullhorn. Rosa grabbed her cane and made her way toward Mike and his cruiser.

  Mike’s eyes were wide. “Thank god, you’re here. They won’t listen to reason.” He looked up at Clementine. “Mrs. Marshall, you have to get off the car or I’ll be forced to arrest you.”

  “Then do it,” Clementine snapped back. She held up her bullhorn and shouted to the protesters, “We, the feminist people of America, are doing it for ourselves!”

  There was a roar of assent from the crowd.

  Rosa cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted up to Clementine, “What’s this all about?”

  “We’re reclaiming the word “feminist” and we want a constitutional amendment for equal rights. We’re sick of the bossy, old, white guys telling us what to do with our bodies and our brains,” Clementine said.

  “I am one hundred percent behind you, but will you please get off the cruiser?” Rosa asked.

  “Is this a police state now?” Clementine growled.

  “No, but the cruiser is police property and you’re putting a dent in the roof,” Rosa said.

  “Then arrest me,” Clementine sa
id, holding her hands out in front of her.

  At that moment, Millie and Bernie came up behind Rosa. Millie admonished her. “Rosa, you’re a woman. You can’t defect by adhering to the rules of the patriarchy.”

  Rosa was a police officer, true, but she was also a woman. She had to think fast. It wouldn’t do to get the mayor and city council members coming out here and confronting the women. It could get out and go further than the local news, especially if Mabel got a chance to bring her protest sign on one of the “old white guys.”

  “What am I supposed to do here?” Rosa asked.

  Bernie crossed her arms over her chest and said, “You should just arrest us all. That’ll save your job and it’ll give us the publicity we need.”

  Rosa chewed this over.

  “Besides… we’ve run out of street to march on,” Bernie concluded.

  “I can’t arrest all these women,” Mike said. “I don’t have enough handcuffs. And how would I get them all to the station?”

  “They could march there,” Rosa said.

  “What about your being on our side as a woman?” Mabel said. She’d elbowed her way through the crowd. She brandished her sign at Mike who had the good sense to step behind Rosa.

  “Mabel, this way makes sense. You’ll get to march more. I get to save my job. And, as a bonus, you get a lot of publicity,” Rosa said.

  Mike leaned forward and whispered to Rosa, “We don’t have the facility to house this many people.”

  “Ssshhh,” Rosa admonished him.

  “What do you think, Clementine?” Mabel asked, looking up at her.

  Clementine put her cell phone away. “I just called the paper. Amy is coming down to interview us. She’ll meet us at the police station.” She climbed down from the car. Mike snapped handcuffs on her wrists.

  “Awesome sauce!” Millie called out. She was always picking up teenaged lingo and adding it to her vocabulary.

  Mike took a deep breath and said, “Clementine Marshall, I’m charging you with disturbing the peace and damaging a police vehicle.”

  “Damage? What damage?” Mabel asked.

  “She dented the roof of my cruiser,” Mike groused.

  “Phish, you baby. I’ll show you a real dent,” Mabel said, raising her sign above her head.

  Clara grabbed Mabel’s arm, stopping her in the nick of time. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Why not? We’re already getting arrested.”

  “Because you already have a record,” Clara said.

  “What record?” Mabel asked.

  “When you got into that scuffle with Edna at Bingo. And smeared doggie poo on her car,” Clara said.

  “Hmmph. Slipped my mind,” Mabel said. She handed Clara her sign and stepped toward Mike with her hands held out. “I’d like to be handcuffed, please. Just like Clementine.”

  “Why?” Rosa asked.

  “I want an authentic experience.”

  “Oh, Mabel, that’s sweet,” Clementine said, as Mike put the cuffs on her, leaving them loose. She could’ve gotten out of the cuffs with a minor Houdini move. “But you don’t have to do that.”

  “We should be handcuffed, too,” Millie said to Bernie. “It wouldn’t look good if we weren’t.”

  “Do you have enough cuffs?” Bernie asked Mike.

  “I’ve got an extra pair,” Rosa said, looking over at Mike. He pulled out another pair from his belt. “That gives us just enough. But I can’t handcuff any more of you.”

  “What about Clara?” Mabel asked.

  “Mabel, I’d rather not,” Clara said.

  “Well, we do need someone to carry the signs,” Mabel said. They all handed their signs over to Clara.

  Mike put the cuffs on Millie and Bernie. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Hey, we’re supposed to have our hands behind our backs,” Mabel said. “I do not want preferential treatment.”

  Rosa said, “Mabel, he’s putting them on the front because it’s hard on the shoulders.”

  “You’re saying that because we’re old,” Mabel said. “That’s ageism.”

  “Mabel, you have bursitis, do you want to aggravate it?” Clara said as she held the signs like they were an unruly bouquet of wildflowers.

  “Oh, okay,” Mabel said, giving in. “I guess this will have to do.”

  “May I use your bullhorn?” Mike asked Clementine. She was still holding it between her cuffed hands.

  “As long as you promise to return it,” Clementine said.

  “I promise,” Mike said solemnly.

  “What are you going to do?” Rosa asked.

  “Inform the protesters that they’re being arrested and they need to go to the police station,” Mike said. He tried to sound authoritative.

  “Maybe I should do it,” Rosa said.

  “I can handle it. I’ve been trained for stuff like this,” Mike said.

  “Okay,” Rosa said. She tried to suppress a smile by clamping her lips together.

  Mike held up the bullhorn, saying, “Hear ye, hear ye! All protesters! You are hereby under arrest! You need to march to the police station to be charged.”

  The crowd began to chant, “Hell no, we won’t go!”

  Mike tried again, but the crowd outshouted his bullhorn.

  “Oh, for Chrissakes, give it to me,” Mabel said, snatching the bullhorn from his hand. “No one is going to listen to a pansy like you.”

  “Mabel, please don’t cause an uprising,” Clara said.

  “I won’t,” Mabel said. “I’m as civic-minded as the next person. Right, Clementine?”

  Clementine wisely refrained from comment.

  Mabel looked the bullhorn over. “How in hell does this work? Is there an on switch?”

  “Here let me show you,” Clara said, taking the horn from Mabel. But instead of turning it on, she quickly stuck the bullhorn behind her back.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Mabel said indignantly.

  “Preventing civil unrest,” Clara said, handing the bullhorn over to Millie.

  Millie said into the bullhorn, “Ladies, listen up! Let’s do what they say. March to the station and be put under arrest! The newspaper is there and this will be great publicity for our cause!”

  There was a collective shout of joy from the crowd.

  Millie added, “To the jail! Civil disobedience requires a night in the pokey. March on!” she called out.

  The crowd roared its approval and began to move in the opposite direction.

  Bernie swept Millie into her arms and kissed her. “Our first arrest together,” Bernie said.

  “How sweet is that,” Rosa muttered.

  ***

  The jail was in complete pandemonium. Rosa and Mike escorted a handcuffed Millie, Bernie, Mabel, and Clementine into the police station. Clara followed them in. The rest of the protesters tried to crowd inside, but the booking area filled up quickly. The rest sat on the steps and benches outside. Once there were no more benches, women sat on the grass.

  The day was sunny and warm. It was a pleasant day to get arrested. Rosa surveyed the crowd from the window.

  Chief Bob Ed came out of his office with Mayor Austin trailing behind him. The mayor looked small compared to the chief. His usually neatly-combed hair was mussed as if he’d been running his hands through it in frustration, and his Eagle Scout veneer was gone, replaced by an angry scowl.

  “What is going on here?” Chief Bob Ed said, surveying the room.

  Mike puffed out his chest proudly and stood on his tiptoes so he could be seen above the heads of the crowd. “All the protesters are arrested for public disturbance and protesting without a permit. And Clementine Marshall is also being charged for damaging a police cruiser,” Mike said.

  “Damaged? How’d she do that?” the chief asked.

  “She climbed on top of it and dented the roof,” Mike said.

  The mayor interjected, “I told you they were violent.” All vestiges of the well-mannered public servant had evaporated
in a cloud of angry steam.

  Chief Bob Ed looked down at him. “These are women. Women of this town that we’ve known all our lives, Mayor. They wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “We’re not weak!” Mabel yelled from her folding chair. “And these hard metal chairs are bad for my hemorrhoids. I demand to see my lawyer so I can sue the pants off this town!”

  “Mabel, hush,” Clara scolded.

  “I swear to tell the truth and the whole truth,” Mabel said. She tried to hold up her right hand only to remember she was handcuffed.

  “We’re not there yet, Mabel,” the chief said.

  “I want my day in court,” Mabel said, pointing a knobby finger at him.

  At that moment, the door opened and Amy managed to shoulder her way inside. “Millie? Clementine?” she asked, searching the sea of faces.

  Clementine waved one ink-stained hand at her. “Amy! Over here!”

  Amy waved back and made her way through the throng to stand next to Clementine. “A group of college students are outside. They’ve volunteered to get arrested, too,” Amy said. She pulled her yellow legal pad from her messenger bag so she could take notes. She looked at Rosa who was waiting to fingerprint Millie and Bernie. She had removed their handcuffs.

  “Can they do that?” the mayor said. “You can’t be arrested just because you want to be, can you?”

  Chief Bob Ed chuckled. “Beats me. I’ve never had anybody ask to be arrested before.”

  “You’re looking like a big weenie, right now, and I’m not talking Ball Park Franks,” Millie said, jabbing her ink-stained finger at him. She looked at her fingers. “Does this stuff come off?”

  Exasperated, the mayor said, “Answer my question!” He stamped his little foot. “Can they volunteer to be arrested or not?”

  “Not unless they do something wrong,” Chief Bob Ed answered. He looked out the window. “They’re just standing outside, handing out pamphlets and talking to the…” he stopped for a moment, apparently considering his word choice, “our esteemed, seasoned members of the community.”

  “He means us old people,” Clara said. “Need I remind you, Bob Ed, that you’re getting up there yourself.”

  Amy knelt next to Bernie who sat in a chair next to Millie. “What is this all about?” Amy asked. “What’s your take on it?”