Halfway to Half Way

by Suzann Ledbetter

  "Take two." She paused for a healthy drink of wine, then another, because it tasted wonderful and she was thirsty. Arms crossed on the table, she began with meeting Luke and Claudina at Nellie Dunn's, the lightning-bolt inspiration at the new house and ended by saying, "I could have reviewed applications and done interviews for years and not found a better person for my job than Willard Johnson."

  She shrugged. "Forest for the trees, I guess. That's my excuse, anyway. Then again, if I hadn't had to dodge IdaClare, the help-wanted ad would have run in the Examiner and Willard might have answered it weeks ago."

  David stared at her, stone silent. His jaw worked, yet seemed welded shut. What he was thinking, feeling, was as impossible to read as a message encased in a block of marble.

  Hannah's eyes locked on his. Emotions tumbled and flooded through her. Bewilderment, fear, anxiety, despair, anger—the complete opposite of what she'd expected.

  "What's wrong with you? I thought you'd be happy!" She raked her fingers through her hair. "I thought you'd jump up and pull me into your arms and dance me around, shouting, 'I love you, I love you.'"

  His tone sliced the air like a chill draught. "Why didn't you tell me any of this before now." It wasn't a question. An accusation, at best.

  "Because—" Disbelief leavened Hannah's chuckle. Was she dreaming this? If she went outside and came in again, would it be David Hendrickson in that chair, or this grim, hostile stranger?

  She ticked the reasons off on her fingers. "This is Saturday night. I haven't seen you since Thursday. You've been busy with a homicide investigation and campaigning. I thought it'd be next week before I could talk to Jack. I didn't know until last night that he'd be here for his birthday. I was too dense and distracted to even think of Willard until this afternoon."

  Resentful at being put on the defensive, she sneered, "Ridiculous as it seems now, I wanted to tell you all this in person, not on the phone."

  "Oh, yeah?" David pressed his tongue against his teeth, his head moving side to side in utter, horrified amazement. "We've got us a bona fide coincidence, sugar. That's why I waited till tonight to tell you I sold out to Luke. The earnest money's in escrow. We close the deal, first thing Monday morning."

  He was joking. Teasing. He had to be. Why, Hannah couldn't fathom, but sell out? Just like that? Impossible.

  "I was gonna surprise you," David said. "Tell you I was moving to the cottage, so you wouldn't have to quit your job."

  "You just up and sold the place. Yeah, right."

  "It'd come between us for too long already. I was sick and tired of showing up at the cottage at midnight and hauling out again at dawn. And of you driving way the hell out here and hauling out at dawn."

  "Everything," she said. "The new house—your dream house, for God's sake. The land you worked so hard to clear. All of it, without saying a single, solitary word to me about it?"

  "Oh, that's rich." David bolted from the chair. He slapped the refrigerator, then gripped the back of his head and spun around. "You're pissed because I sold a house you never liked, out in the middle of nothin' and nowhere, which you hated, but it's fine—it's goddamn fantastic for you to plan a wedding, quit your job, start a business, get Jack on board—shit, you can't sneeze without Clancy around to say 'Bless you'—all behind my back and all without saying a word to me."

  "I didn't do any of it behind your stupid back." Hannah was on her feet, fists balled and primed to punch a hole clear through the damned refrigerator. "Luke talked to you about the wedding first—"

  "Yeah, and I told him, forget it." David glowered at the ceiling, then grimaced. "Then, when he whined at me again, I told him to talk to you." He lowered his evil eye to her. "Because I was absolutely positive you'd tell him to forget it, and maybe beat him up a little, so he'd leave me the hell alone."

  A smile twitched at Hannah's lips at the thought of being a six-foot-four-inch sheriff's one-woman goon squad. It vanished instantly. "Okay. Fine. The wedding's off."

  "What?" David's arms dropped to his sides. "Why? You want to get married in the park, you'll get married in the park."

  "We're getting married. Not just me. If you hate the idea—"

  "It's cheesy, it's a lousy publicity stunt, it's got disaster written all over it." He gestured conciliation. "I should've known you'd go for it."

  "Yes, you should have." She pointed in the A-frame's general direction. "And I didn't hate that house. I love the house and I love the land, and for the record, I'm pretty fond of this place, too."

  "Love? C'mon, darlin'. Be honest."

  She was being honest. "Okay," she said, "that's a fairly recent leap, but I do love it, and I never hated any of it. I just kept wishing it was closer to Valhalla Springs."

  Hannah looked away, more sad than angry. "When I was on the deck the other day, I pretended it was winter and imagined how incredibly beautiful it would be to watch the snow falling down into the meadow."

  "It is. I could hardly wait for us to see it together."

  "But you didn't wait. Worse than that, you didn't trust me."

  "Where the hell does trust come into this? I—"

  "Months ago, you listed it with a real estate agent, because you thought you'd need the equity to pay a defense attorney. I knew then, this place was more than an address to you. I told you that. I showed you, the day I yanked up that For Sale sign and threw it in the back of your pickup."

  "I remember. And it meant the world to me when you did." He grasped her upper arms. "What it took me way too long to realize is that Valhalla Springs isn't just an address to you, either."

  "No, but it's not the permanent kind, either. The cottage isn't mine, David. I don't own it and never will. I've never owned a home in my life."

  She wrenched away. "All right, I should have told you about the wedding. About finally seeing myself living in the new house—our house—and about the agency idea, but none of that's anywhere near as drastic as selling out."

  Moving to the table, she drank down her now lukewarm coffee. It didn't soothe the sickening, empty feeling in her stomach, the pounding at her temples. Carrying the empty mug to the coffeemaker, she said, "Celebrating. That's what I thought we'd be doing tonight. I wanted to take candles and sleeping bags and the wine up to the house and make love there for the first time."

  She turned from the counter. "Instead, I'm unemployed, homeless, wedding-less, and I love you more than anything in the world, but I don't like you a damned bit."

  "I should have told you."

  "Too little, too late."

  "I'm homeless and wedding-less, too, you know." He chuffed. "Gimme a coupla weeks. I may be jobless, right along with you."

  "Ah, there's something to look forward to." She hoisted her coffee mug. "Skoal, Sheriff. Between the two of us, we've hit the trifuckingfecta."

  * * *

  Delbert had no idea how long he'd been on Chlorine Moody's roof. Felt like a week, at least. An hour, for sure. Probably.

  The shockproof, waterproof, fire-resistant watch he'd ordered from Private Spy Supply was on his dresser at home. It had gizmos galore and set him back a cool $29.99, plus shipping and handling, but its face glowed like a one-eyed alien in a bad sci-fi movie.

  He supposed he could buzz IdaClare on the walkie-talkie and ask her the time. Chances were, the old bat would say the big hand's on this and the little hand's on that, knowing he couldn't yell at her.

  However long he'd been at his post, the tar-and-bird stink had evaporated, or he'd ceased to smell them. Mosquitoes heckled his ears and the back of his neck, but the shoe-polish face paint repelled them. Delbert reckoned the basic ingredients minus the black dye ought to be worth millions.

  The night air and fickle breeze had also cooled the roof considerably. Now it felt like he was stretched belly-down on a hard, slantwise water bed. Downright comfy, if he didn't need to keep his golf spikes pinioned in the shingles.

  A sudden jaw-cracker of a yawn popped his eardrums. Eyes watering, he obeyed the reflex
ive urge to stretch. It felt so good, he couldn't stanch the groan barreling up his throat. Smacking his lips, he blinked and googled his eyes several times to clear his vision.

  Wonderfully refreshed and sleepy as hell at the same time, Delbert rose up on his forearms and peered through the binoculars. What the—

  Holy camoglies. A lens adjustment blurred what he was seeing, rather than clarifying it. Changing the binoculars back to the previous setting, he commenced a corner-to-corner visual sweep of the perimeter.

  When had Moody switched off the lights at the back of the house? The kitchen window still cast its pale patch on the grass along the driveway. Another larger area of the front yard gleamed yellowish from the porch light. With it on, Delbert couldn't tell whether the living room was as dark as the back of the house, or not.

  Had she gone to bed? Delbert swore under his breath. Damned old fool. Yawning and stretching and derelicting in general's the same as abandoning your post. If you were Leo, there'd be hell and a piper to pay, yes-siree, Bob.

  Binoculars leveled at the back door, Delbert pulled the red walkie-talkie from his right hip pocket. "Team one, this is command central. Gimme a status report, ASAP."

  Silence. Garbled voices, then Leo said, "Now it is the team one, we are?"

  Delbert held the walkie-talkie in front of the binoculars. Red as a dingdanged stop sign. "Goddamn it, Schnur. How'd you get IdaClare's walkie?"

  "Huh? The one I got is the one you gave to me."

  Again, Delbert checked the instrument in his gloved hand. Red. "Oh, yeah? What color is it?"

  "The blue."

  Trying to keep one eye on Moody's back door, Delbert tilted the binoculars and looked down at his transceiver. Blue. Blue? Thoroughly confused, he held it in front of the binoculars again. Red.

  Because they're night-vision binoculars, you idiot. He thumbed the button. "Blue is correct, team two. Clear."

  Temporarily holstering the blue walkie-talkie in his turtleneck collar, Delbert took the other one—the red one—from his left hip pocket. "Team one. Command central. Status report on the front of the house, ASAP."

  "Delbert, is that you?" IdaClare drawled.

  "Who the hell else—" He growled low in his throat. "Affirmative."

  "Well, the status is the same."

  "Lights still on the living room?"

  "If they weren't, we'd have something different to look at," she snapped. "Do we have to stay here much longer? We're both bored to tears, and Marge needs to go to the bathroom."

  "In a min—" A soft whump seemed to have come from every direction, save up. Delbert ducked behind the roofline. He flinched as his shoulder scraped against the shingles.

  Moody's back door was still shut. He'd swear to it. So were all the rear windows. Was it the echo of a car door from down the street, he'd heard? Couldn't be. It was a wooden whump, not a metallic one.

  Craning his neck, Delbert eased the binoculars above the ridge. A coppery pink halo wreathed the corner streetlight. He chastised himself for not ascertaining whether light at certain angles would glint off the glass lenses.

  By God, the back door was definitely shut. Slowly sweeping right, he almost swallowed his upper plate when the other half of the cellar door whumped open. Pulse galloping faster than a man his age's should, he watched Chlorine Moody creep up the concrete steps and into the backyard.

  With a dark scarf knotted under her chin, dressed in a black blouse and slacks, she was almost as invisible as Delbert hoped he was. In one hand, she carried a shovel; in the other was a trowel and a halogen penlight. Its slender, bluish beam didn't diffuse like a typical flashlight's. A silvery circle on the ground no larger than a quarter marked her progress across the yard.

  Eureka, Delbert yelped to himself. He could scarcely breathe, and the roof felt fifty degrees hotter. For the love of Mike, he thought, let the Schnurs stay as still and quiet as Royal Moody.

  The penlight beam jagged sharply to the left, away from what Delbert had pegged as the grave site. The shiny circle played over an upturned billed cap a few feet from the tunnel in the hedge—precisely where it had fallen when he'd pushed Leo's big fat butt through the gate. Delbert watched in horror as Chlorine bent to pick it up.

  Yesterday, he'd tried talking Leo into distracting her at the front door while he slipped back into the yard for his cap. Leo's reply was in German. Delbert sprechened enough Deutsch to translate an obscene and physically impossible suggestion.

  By penlight, Chlorine examined the sweat stains and the brand stamped on the cap's inner band. She peered at the hedge. The beam flicked across severed branches, their leaves wilting and brown at the edges.

  Her head swiveled toward the garage. She looked up, straight at him.

  His heart quivered behind his ribs. But Chlorine glanced back at the house, then tossed his cap aside.

  She placed the penlight in the grass so that the beam pointed toward the alley and began to dig. Three shovelfuls of dirt had formed a small pyramid before Delbert could relax in the knowledge that she hadn't seen him. Slowly bending his knees, he inch-mealed downward below the peak of the roof. Nausea walloped him smack in the breadbasket. Elation lightened his head and set it spinning.

  Chur-rekk pause chur-rekk pause. Counting each shallow bite the shovel took had a strangely soothing effect. Delbert interpreted the sounds as a rescue of sorts. Twenty-three years late in some respects, but not all, by any means.

  His ears pricked at the mewl of a worn-out fan belt and brakes squeaking to a halt. Judging by the sound, the car could have parked on either side of the street and up a house or two, or down.

  A hand braced for leverage, Delbert leaned from the waist. He stretched just enough to see a taillight flash off.

  The shoveling stopped. Chlorine heard the car pull up, too. And she damn well wasn't expecting company. Delbert huddled against the roof again. He couldn't see her, didn't hear footsteps—wasn't certain he would, if she'd returned to the house.

  Then, came an ever-so-faint lilting refrain, like the lid of a music box being opened. Instead of a regular doorbell, Chlorine had one of those twist-key jobs that played "Edelweiss," or some such. Much closer, though muffled, a female voice whispered, "Delbert? Delbert. Oh, dear, how do you work this thing, Marge?"

  Yanking the walkie-talkie out of his collar, he clapped it to his chest. Carefully, feeling the spikes on his right shoe losing their grip, he wriggled up the roof again.

  The cellar doors were still open, but light shone through the curtains at the rear of the house. Chlorine must have gone inside. Whoever was at the door wouldn't have rung that rinky-dink chime if he'd had a key.

  Into the red transceiver, he whispered, "Team one, come in."

  "Delbert! Oh, Lord almighty, we thought you were a goner."

  So had he, but that was beside the point. "Status report. Quick."

  "Well, you'll never believe who just went into Chlorine's house. Marge and I thought Chlorine had caught you for sure."

  "Will you shut up and tell me who's here?"

  "Detective Andrik, that's who. And that sweet young man that follows him around all the time. Phillips? Phipps? No, it's Phelps. Josh Phelps."

  Delbert scowled. Hannah went to Marlin about that file on Royal. Hendrickson knew about it, too. But even if they suspected Chlorine of murder, they'd throw the investigation back to the Sanity PD. Most likely to Lieutenant Williams, that cold-case dick Hannah got a copy of the report from.

  Whatever the county boys were here for, it had naught to do with Royal Moody. Except for putting the kibosh on Chlorine digging him up. The trench she'd started hadn't exposed anything, aside from a couple of gallons of dirt.

  Be damned if the cops were never around when you needed 'em, but sure as God made green apples, they show up whenever you didn't.

  Andrik was good for something, though. While he kept Chlorine occupied, Delbert would do the gentlemanly thing and give her a hand with the spadework.

  "Team one, you still the
re?"

  "Yes, but we're leaving and don't even try to talk us out of it. We're both fit to bust and poor Itsy and Bitsy are, too."

  "This is a code-red emergency. I repeat, code red. Find a pay phone and call 911. Report a prowler at this address. Use Chlorine's name. Got that?"

  "A prowler?"

  "Yes, a prowler. Then call Hannah. Hendrickson's likely at the cottage with her. Tell 'em to come on the double and hang up. Come back fast as you can, park around the corner and stay put. Do you read me?"

  "Yes. 911, a prowler, Hannah, come back and wait. Oh, my stars and garters, this is so exciting, I'm about to—Never mind."