Halfway to Half Way

by Suzann Ledbetter

  She was underwhelmed by the packaging and slogan, but the twelve-and-under market wasn't her realm of expertise. Still, the Ayer and Sons logo at the upper-right corner was familiar to anyone who'd ever been a child.

  Delbert said, "As soon as I heard the name, the ol' lightbulb switched on. Along with every other game in creation, there's three more RUDY decks stuck back in a cupboard at the community center.

  "None of the decks I found had the instructions," Delbert continued, "but it appears to be an Uno knockoff." He dumped the RUDY cards on the table and spread them out. "You match letters, instead of numbers, and the object's to get rid of all your cards."

  "That game is another dot I didn't help you connect," Hannah said quietly, so the KP crew wouldn't overhear.

  "Not directly," he hedged. "But the night of our caper at Moody's house, your impressions of Mama didn't jibe with one of Santa's toy-making elves. After Rudy went to jail on illegal weapons charges, I only half listened to the scuttlebutt in town. Nothing allakazammed till my peepers gandered at Chlorine's picture in the newspaper."

  Hannah chuckled. "You're a smart old fart."

  "Humph. You're just now figuring that out?"

  IdaClare returned to the breakfast room, cradling the awake but groggy poodles. "The movie thingamajig's still on, dear, but I turned off the TV."

  "I don't know about the rest of you," Marge said, "but it's getting awfully close to my bedtime."

  Caressing Leo's forearm, Rosemary purred, "It's past ours, isn't it, sweetheart?"

  Delbert made a gagging noise and fished out the roll of Tums from his pocket. "You want it short and sweet? Here 'tis. Rumor has it that Chlorine's made more off that dumb card game than she would've on Royal's life insurance."

  "How much?" Marge asked.

  "A cool million. By now, it's probably closer to two with the royalties." Delbert held up the Masters of Criminal Investigation. "If any of you'd read this, like I told you to, you'd know motive, means and opportunity don't just apply to a murder."

  He exchanged the book for the game's slipcase. "The original idea for RUDY had to be Royal's. Could be, either the toy outfit he worked for turned it down, or he knew they wouldn't pay squat for it and asked Chlorine to put out feelers. Or, she did it on her own, in secret. Whatever the case, she had the means.

  "Opportunity knocked when a whopping offer to buy it came along. Cutting Royal out of that jackpot was a crackin' good motive to kill him."

  "If she did," IdaClare countered.

  "And if she did," Marge said, "after Royal disappeared and Chlorine got rich quick, wouldn't the police have gotten suspicious?"

  "They probably were as soon as he went missing," Delbert agreed. "No body, no life insurance payoff, no arrestee."

  "Okay," Hannah said, "let's assume Chlorine murdered him. According to your premise, you think she poisoned him—"

  "I don't think she did, honeylamb. I know she did." He discarded the slipcase to count off on his fingers. "With a kid in the house, scratch guns, knives and blunt instruments for murder weapons. They're too noisy and she'd have all that blood spatter to deal with."

  "Oh, eww." Marge smacked her lips, grimacing. "Skip the nightmare stuff, okay?"

  "We've gotta have the whys with the wheretofores. Which is, that poison is silent and sneaky. No muss, no fuss. Except once Royal stopped twitching, Chlorine had a corpse to dispose of—also fast and quiet, so's not to wake up their son."

  "Ach, the dead weight, it is heavy," Leo said. "That's why they call it that."

  "Correct-a-mundo. There's no telling if Chlorine dug the grave before or after she offed Royal. From what I heard, he wasn't a big fella, but dragging a body out of a house and across a yard would've been a back-breaker."

  Delbert spread his hands. "How she covered the fresh dirt, lest the cops see it, I don't know. Planting rose bushes on both sides of the fence is better than barbed wire for keeping out kids, cats and dogs."

  "But not bulldozers," Hannah said.

  "Chlorine's filed a lawsuit to stop them, but the city has a legal easement to that alley. It'll be a few days—the middle of next week at the latest—before her cease and desist order comes up on the court docket and a judge throws it out."

  Leo said, "Then the premise of the Code Name: Epsilon, I don't understand. If the bulldozer digs up Royal next week, a cold case to investigate, we don't have."

  "Yeah," Marge agreed. "Let the city do the dirty work."

  "If a body's there and they find it," IdaClare said, "it'll be fascinating to hear how Chlorine explains it."

  "For the love of Mike," Delbert bellowed. "Use your damned heads for something besides a hat rack."

  Clenching the red marker in his fist, he circled Chlorine Moody's picture a half-dozen times. "After all these years, do you think she's gonna sit back and wait for the gas company to prove she's a thief and a murderer?"

  8

  Hannah was in bed, a nest of feather pillows cushioning her back, when a pair of warm, delicious lips kissed her awake.

  Just like the prince who'd rescued Snow White. Except Royal Moody had eaten the witch's poisoned apple and was doomed to an eternal snooze in the rose brambles. And instead of seven dwarves, there'd been only five: Crabby, Pinky, Chubby, Naughty and Marge.

  Hannah's tentative peek through her lashes found Prince Charming looming over her. Hooked on his finger was a hanger with a clean uniform and a plastic shopping bag with other minimum dress-code requirements.

  "Hi," she said, scraping back the hair the fan blew across her face. "Don't take this wrong, but I didn't know I fell asleep, then I had this weird dream, but I'm not sure I'm really awake, so would you mind saying something David-like?"

  "I missed you."

  "Good start."

  "I couldn't stand another night without you."

  She waggled her fingers, keep going.

  He grinned. "Got anything to eat?"

  Ah, yes. Her prince had really come. She stretched, then kicked back the sheet. The file she'd been reading before she nodded off fell to the floor, landing at David's feet.

  "What's this?" he said.

  "Nothing," she said. Oh, hell, she thought, and dove for the file.

  A size fourteen-and-a-half boot attached to a sheriff with lightning reflexes pinned it to the floor.

  David looked down at the label. "Code Name: Epsilon?" His chest expanded with the sigh of the persecuted. "I know I'll hate myself for asking this, but what's with all the asterisks?"

  Whew, boy. Once upon a time, doodling was a harmless habit. Maybe if she whistled a happy tune, Crabby, Pinky, Chubby, Naughty and Marge would skip in for an encore.

  "Hannah?"

  "They're, um, supposed to be snowflakes."

  "Okay "

  "Because—well, you know, it has to be cold to snow and that's a cold case, so "

  The boot lifted off the folder, as though it were soft, fresh and organic in origin. "Bisbee's at it again."

  "Yeah," she allowed, "kind of. But aren't you glad it isn't the Beauford homicide?"

  "Ecstatic." The gray in David's eyes blotted out the blue, like an ocular mood ring. "I thought he learned his lesson the last time he played detective."

  So had she. Until tonight, there hadn't been any gumshoe meetings for more than two months. Seeing them out in force and in action was one of life's little oh shit/thank God moments. The get it part of watch what you wish for.

  "Delbert has pulled some foolish stunts," she said, "but he isn't a fool."

  "I never said he was. None of them are. If they were, they wouldn't be such pains in the butt." Aware that Hannah was a semi-willing conspirator, his informant and thus a present-company pain in the butt, he inquired, "How cold is cold?"

  Finally, a question she could answer that might relax the nerve twitching at his jaw. "Ice cold. More than twenty years cold." She took the hanger he still held and hung it on the closet knob. "And way back then, it was a Sanity Police Department case, not the s
heriff's."

  "If you're expecting a hallelujah, you're in for a huge disappointment." David bent to pick up the folder. Thrusting it at her, he warned, "One complaint call from Chief Rhodes about the Apple Dumpling Gang and I will throw them in county lockup."

  "But you don't even know what—"

  He held up his hands. "Not another word. I don't have time to arrest myself for being an accessory before the fact."

  So much for the Prince Charming-Snow White dream. Then again, David was currently dealing with the death of a friend and an investigation that wasn't going well—a gumshoe revival was the last thing he needed. If only she'd put that damned file in a desk drawer and curled up in bed with a book instead, he wouldn't even have found out about it.

  He caught her arm as she started for the kitchen. "Hey. I'm sorry, sugar."

  "For what?" Hannah smiled up at him. "No, that isn't your cue for a line-item apology, and God help you if you miss one, because that'll be what really pissed me off, which you'd know, if you loved me as much as you say you do, so it'll be obvious you don't, and maybe never did."

  David's head reared back. It angled left, then right, like a satellite dish pivoting for a clear signal. The tic formerly at his jaw migrated upward to his temple. "This is just a guess, but what you're saying is, I don't have anything to apologize for?"

  "Not a thing."

  "Because your feelings aren't hurt, like most women's would be for going off the way I did, because you're not most women and you know me better than I know myself, sometimes."

  "Bingo." She stretched on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "God, we're lucky that communication has never been a problem for us."

  "I reckon." As she left the room, he added, "Scary as it is for me, sometimes the crazy stuff that falls out of your mouth makes sense."

  Malcolm stood in the shadowy breakfast room, body-blocking Hannah's path to the kitchen. On second glimpse, the four-legged barricade was shorter, burlier and wasn't wagging its tail. This was because what remained of it was stumpy and probably not inclined to express joy when it was intact.

  Rambo's presence explained Malcolm's absence in the bedroom when David kissed away Royal Moody and the Five Old Dwarves. By a rhythmic thumping in the great room, her guard-mutt was leveraging the chair from the desk's kneehole, so he could crawl in and hide.

  Hannah couldn't imagine why David had brought Rambo along. The rottweiler's purpose in life was terrorizing defenseless woodland creatures, fertilizing the meadow and patrolling David's land. One might presume a county sheriff needn't worry about trespassers, but smart thieves considered it a challenge and stupid ones were—well, stupid.

  Rambo looked at her as though his own prayers for a midnight snack had been answered. She knew he was all bluff and no confirmed body count. Still, her heart went aflutter and not in a good way.

  "Listen up, bucko," Hannah said. "This is my turf. And Malcolm's. Now cool it with the boogetyboogety rays, find some floor to lie down on and stay there. You got that?"

  He hesitated long enough for her life from first memory through eighth grade to flash behind her eyes. Moving to the rug under the table, he hunkered down, then rolled over on his side.

  "Good boy," she said, recanting all those snide remarks she'd made about assertiveness-training seminars.

  Malcolm hoved into view. He looked at the recumbent rottweiler, then at Hannah, then strutted into the bedroom and returned, dragging his Scooby-Doo beach towel. Dropping it in the great room doorway, he circled twice, hunkered down and rolled over on his side.

  Alas, a miracle in the breakfast room didn't beget another in the kitchen. After Hannah stashed the Code Name: Epsilon file in a drawer, she perused the cupboards, the refrigerator and its freezer compartment. All held pretty much what she expected—food, but nothing much to eat.

  In fairness, that was less a result of crummy shopping skills, than the good stuff always ending up at one end of the county, while they foraged for crumbs at the other.

  Living together separately. Living separately together. Either way, it sucked. And would, even if she didn't know there were marshmallow-fudge cookies, English muffins, hot dogs, a bag of salad greens, eggs, frozen waffles, lunch meat and bread to slap it between at David's house.

  "Hannah," David called from the bedroom, "have you seen my cargo shorts?"

  "You wore them home when you forgot your gray slacks. Remember?"

  No audible response. Telepathy wasn't required to channel, Sure, I remember now. Which doesn't help a helluva lot, when I'm standing in the bathroom in my underpants with nothing to wear, except the uniform trousers I just took off.

  While clothing outages were as common as grocery outages, Hannah knew the true test of a commuter relationship was personal-product outages.

  Loaned razors that barely grazed a beard, or performed unscheduled kneecap surgery. David's discovery that mousse only foamed like shaving cream. Gender-bending deodorants that left her smelling like a jock and him like a botanical garden. Constantly regarding a large bottle of mouthwash with suspicion, and maintaining a running tally of the paper cups beside it.

  Hannah listened to the water heater clack on and roar to life in the utility room. Outside the kitchen window, the moon cast more shadow than light and katydids skritched their eponymous song. Malcolm yipped like a puppy in the doorway, his hind legs jerking in his sleep. A few feet away, Rambo snored and slobbered on the area rug.

  Across the county, the moon shone just as bright at the corner of East Jesus and plowed ground. Bugs serenaded there, too, the new house had a bigger water heater, two full baths and there'd be a king-size bed with a hot, handsome sheriff in it every night.

  Okay, most nights. Duty would still call, but the A-frame's pantry was large enough for a case of marshmallow-fudge cookies. And for a price, every pizza joint in town delivered.

  David had her heart. He deserved the home to go with it, and another four years as sheriff to keep it. Even if she had to hire Delbert, whose résumé was in the mailer she'd picked up at the post office. Or Marge, who'd snuck hers in Hannah's Code Name: Epsilon file when IdaClare wasn't looking. Or the Schnurs, who were piling into IdaClare's Lincoln when Rosemary said she'd lost an earring and scurried back inside to give Hannah the résumé tucked in her bra.

  Or, about three minutes before "Here Comes the Bride" played in the park, Hannah could scratch out the felony clause in Valhalla Springs' employment contract, rehire Jack's mother, then make David promise to love, honor, cherish and buy her a Howitzer for a wedding present.

  She shuddered and stared at the floor, telling herself to keep her options open and her mouth shut for the time being. Advertising was her game, not politics, but even Luke Sauers would agree: unless whoever killed the former sheriff's widow was apprehended and soon, the current sheriff taking a bride in a public ceremony would be like dancing on Bev Beauford's grave.

  * * *

  David spun the lid off the mouthwash bottle. As he raised it for a swig, the mirror reflected a column of paper bathroom cups on the counter. On the top one, an upside-down Quick Draw McGraw blustered, "Now hoooold on thar "

  "Hannah will never know the difference, podnah." David tipped the bottle, then lowered it. "But I will."

  There've been strides, he thought, pouring mouthwash into a cup. He'd almost broken himself of drinking from milk jugs and orange juice cartons. Dirty clothes mostly went straight to the hamper, instead of piling up behind the door. And he seldom left toilet seats up, even in the courthouse washroom, despite Jimmy Wayne McBride saying he was whipped.

  David watched the man in the mirror swish peppermint mouthwash around in his mouth. The same damn fool who'd needed to see Bev Beauford lying dead on the floor to remind him that life's too short, shit happens, and if you aren't part of the solution, then could be, you're the problem.

  A partial truth. Doubts had always murmured in the background. Louder, at times, but never mute. They'd goose-stepped in hobnail boots through David's bra
in at Ruby's, before he ever got the call about Bev.

  He spat and raked a towel across his mouth. "I'm not the impulsive type." He cupped his hand under the faucet to scoop water to rinse the basin. "Never was. Never will be." He wiped splatters from the counter, then rehung the towel. "Slow and steady's just looking an awful lot more like stubborn and stupid."

  Home was where Hannah was. The address didn't matter. What did was hearing, but failing to listen, whenever she teased him about not knowing how to be a wife.