by Becki Willis
Rolling down the window, she asked, “Is something wrong, officer?” She wasn’t sure it was the right title, but it never hurt to flatter someone wearing a badge.
It struck her as odd that the man’s hair was as long as it was. Most men on the state payroll wore neatly cropped hair and clean-shaven faces. If they did have a beard, they were always neat and properly groomed. This man’s shaggy beard and long hair were the first things Madison noticed.
The second thing she noticed was that he kept his head bent, so that his ranger-style hat shadowed his face. Which was the third oddity. Where was his customary cowboy hat? And unlike most law enforcement authorities, his clothes were ill fitting and wrinkled.
Madison got an uneasy feeling, even before he spoke.
“I need to search your car,” he said without preamble.
“Excuse me?”
“Said I need to search your car. We had reports of a car matching this description carrying illegal hides across county lines. You’ll have to get out of the car.”
She heard Bethani sputtering in the seat beside her, but Madison motioned for her to be quiet. She offered the man her best smile. “As I think you can see, there’s not an extra bit of space in this car. We don’t have room for any hides in here!” She forced a laugh, but the man didn’t share her humor.
“Could be hidden beneath all the junk.”
“Junk? Those are Christmas gifts for the Angel Tree!”
“Don’t matter. Gotta search your car. Now step out.”
His lack of manners and his grammar were the final clues. Officers of the law, particularly those in the South, were polite and referred to women with the respectful title of ‘ma’am.’ This man was definitely a fraud.
“I don’t believe I will,” Madison said. She heard Bethani gasp in surprise. Very subtly, Maddy raised her hand to her face and pretended to smooth back her hair. She hoped that Bethani saw the position of her thumb and little finger, in the universal sign of ‘call me.’ Or, in this case, ‘call Brash.’ She sent the teen a pointed look, sweeping her gaze down to the phone in her hands. A tiny flick of her head warned her to hide the device.
“I’d like to see your warrant, please,” Madison continued. She leaned forward just enough to shield Bethani from the man’s view. From the corner of her eye, she saw her daughter slip the phone out of sight as she pressed a button.
“Don’t need a warrant,” the man claimed. “Have probable cause. For a game warden, that’s all that’s needed.”
Madison vaguely remembered reading something to that effect while working with a client on a property dispute. They had investigated a variety of options, including calling in the wildlife department for alleged poaching.
She tried stalling. “What kind of hides are you looking for?”
Her resistance surprised the man, but he was quick to answer, “Coon hides.”
Madison used her haughtiest expression, one she hoped mimicked her mother-in-law. “Seriously, do I look like someone who hunts raccoons?”
“You might not hunt ‘em. You might be trying to sell ‘em. Same difference. Now get out while I search your vehicle.”
“I will do no such thing!”
A radio crackled at his waist, and Madison had her first hint of doubt. What if he were a true game warden? A rude one, but legally certified? Was she breaking the law by refusing him?
“Look, lady, don’t make this harder on yourself. I can have the sheriff here in five minutes. He’ll arrest you, of course, but I can call him if you want.”
She briefly considered mentioning Brash’s name, but she discarded the thought immediately. She refused to take advantage of her relationship with him, even if he was a special investigator with the county. Besides, he was probably already on his way.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll allow you to search my car, but only if I can remain inside, and only if you go ahead and make that call.”
“Mom!”
She brushed Bethani’s protest aside. Knowing Brash was on his way gave her a confidence she didn’t feel.
The game warden shrugged his thin shoulders. “Up to you, lady. I’ll make that call and you can unlock the car. Start with the trunk.”
He stepped to the back of her car and she heard him talking, presumably calling for an officer. If nothing else, her license number would go out over the air, dispatch would hear it, and alert Brash. Hoping she had made the right choice, Madison pressed the remote button for the trunk.
“Mom!” Bethani hissed. “Mr. de didn’t pick up!”
Refusing to panic, Madison tried to remain calm. “Send him a text. The game warden is at the back of the car and won’t see you.”
Her blue eyes wide, Bethani said, “Mom, I don’t think he’s a real game warden.”
“Neither do I,” Madison admitted. “Tell Brash where we are and tag it 9-1-1 so he’ll know it’s an emergency. Send it to Cutter, too. I’ll try to reach my phone and call 9-1-1 in earnest.”
The teen looked at her phone. “I don’t have any service!”
They kept trying to get a message out, until the uniformed man came back to the window. Both quickly slid their phones out of sight.
“See, I told you I didn’t have any hides,” Maddy said. “Now may we go?”
“Not until I search the backseat. I’ll make it quick.”
He jerked open the door and removed her purchases. With the lights from his car still blinding her, Madison couldn’t see where he put the presents. “Please don’t damage my purchases. As I said, they are for the Angel Tree in The Sisters.”
“Oh, I aim to take real good care of your purchases, lady.” When he grinned, she saw his decaying teeth, a definite hint that he used meth.
After just a few minutes, he had the backseat empty. He stood back as he slammed the door. “Well, looks like you were right. Don’t see any hides in there, after all. You’re free to go.”
“What? Not without my purchases, I’m not!”
“Oh, we gotta keep those as evidence,” he grinned. “Book ’em into… into evidence.” He grappled for a more official-sounding term and came up short.
“I don’t think so!” Maddy stormed. “I demand you give me my gifts back!”
“I don’t think you’re in a position to demand a thing, missy, but I’ll see what the sheriff has to say.” He turned on his heel and she saw his silhouette retreating against the bright lights as he walked back to his car. She thought she saw a door open.
Before she knew what was happening, the car spun out and made a U-turn in the middle of the highway, racing off in the other direction.
“Mom, he left!” Bethani screeched. “Where are all our things?”
With a sinking feeling, Madison opened her door to peer into the night. Using the light of her cell phone, she got out and circled around the car. She returned with her lower lip trembling.
“Beth,” she whispered, breathlessly. She soon found her voice and blurted out, “We’ve been robbed!”
***
With no cell service, Madison knew she had to drive into town to report the robbery. She marked the spot by tying the bag from Tasty’s on a nearby bush, then drove as fast as she could to the police station. Brash wasn’t on duty, but she gave her statement to Officer Schimanski.
By the time she was finished with her initial report, Brash arrived.
“Oh, Brash, I feel so foolish!” was the first thing she said.
“Foolish? You are a victim, Maddy! That man falsely impersonated an officer of the law.”
“But I knew he wasn’t legit. We both did!” She made frantic hand motions as she described the discrepancies. “His speech was wrong, he didn’t call me ma’am, his hair was long and needed a cut. He—He had a long, shaggy beard, but the more I think about it, I think it was fake. It looked just like those on that show you like to watch.”
“Duck Dynasty?”
“Yes, yes. Just like that. But it was the wrong color for his complexion, and—and
the whole thing was just a set-up, and I fell for it!” she wailed.
Brash gathered her into his arms. He reached out and included Bethani in the embrace. “It doesn’t sound like you did, sweetheart. It sounds like you knew he was a fraud and that you did just the right thing. Bethani was smart to hide her phone and try to make the call. I got the message about two minutes ago,” he smiled ruefully. “But she put all the right things in it, so good girl, Beth.” He gave her a warm wink and a quick squeeze. “And you did the right thing by refusing to get out of the car and demanding that he call the sheriff. If he had been legit, the sheriff would have understood a woman’s reluctance to leave her car in a situation such as that.”
“When—When he didn’t call me ‘ma’am,’ I knew he was a fraud.”
Brash smiled. “That speaks well for the state of Texas and law officers everywhere.”
“I can give you a description, Brash. He was about five feet ten, and very thin. He had dirty blond hair and—”
“I have a picture of him,” Bethani announced. She wiggled out of Brash’s arms and pulled her phone from her back pocket. “Mom’s hair is in the way on this one.” She swiped the screen for the next image. “And there’s her nose. But there! There’s the guy!”
“Good work, honey! And smart thinking!” Brash hugged the teen, who couldn’t help but glow from his praise.
Bethani broke out in unexpected laughter. “You should have heard Mom! She looked down her nose at the man and spoke to him like she was some sort of diva or something. ‘Seriously, do I look like someone who hunts raccoons?’ It was hilarious!” She doubled over in mirth as she impersonated her mother.
Nerves made the situation seem funnier than it actually was. It took both women several minutes to quieten down and sober. Once they did, reality came crashing back in.
“We lost all the gifts, Brash!” Madison wailed in misery. “The presents for the Angel Tree. He must have had someone with him, loading the packages as he took them out. The lights were too bright for me to see a thing. We spent the entire afternoon shopping, and now they’re gone. Just gone! Just like Vanessa Hutchins and those Carr people.” A new thought occurred to her, and a look of horror crossed her face. She slapped her hands to her mouth. “Granny Bert,” she moaned. “How will I ever explain this to Granny Bert?”
***
After taking Madison and Bethani home and staying with them until they were settled and calm, Brash returned to the office. He studied the photo Bethani had taken with her cell phone. It wasn’t the best of pictures, but it showed enough for him to make a tentative identification. Unless he was badly mistaken, that was Dickey Fowler in that wrinkled game warden suit.
Pulling out his trusty lists of names, he scanned over them for the name. There it was, Dickey Fowler, underlined three times. Once for petty theft, once for assault and battery, once for drug possession. Only two of the charges had stuck, landing him in the River County Jail for dual visits.
He searched his memory banks for what he knew about the man. He lived just out of town in a rundown shack a few years past inhabitable for decent folk, yet suitable for riffraff like Fowler. Brash doubted the shack even had indoor plumbing. If he was right, the twenty-something-year-old was kin to Bernie Havlicek in a roundabout way. He would make a call to his mother for the specifics. She didn’t know the town’s history as well as Granny Bert, but she was a close second.
In the meantime, Vina could pull up the official records. Between the two, he would have a better idea of how Dickey Fowler fit into all this.
One thing was for certain. Tonight had been no coincidence.
At best, it was the latest Christmas crime, an alarming situation that was quickly escalating.
At worst, it was a warning. He had been sniffing around, asking questions, letting folks know he was watching. Targeting Madison may have been their response: he was getting too close.
CHAPTER SIX
“It could happen to anyone, child,” her grandmother said over the telephone. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“But I promised you, Granny Bert! I said, ‘I got this,’ and I thought I did. I really did. I thought you were being overly pessimistic, thinking I couldn’t handle it. But it turned out you were right,” Madison moaned miserably.
“I knew you could handle it, girl, or I would never have left it in your capable hands.”
“Capable? I let someone steal the presents from me, right out from under my nose!”
“What choice did you have? You were right to do what you did. Gifts can be replaced, you and Bethani can’t.”
“I know, but the whole thing was a set-up. It just irks me, knowing I was a part of a scam.” She seethed for a moment, before adding, “Oh, and did I tell you? This has actually happened before. The call went to the county sheriff, so Brash didn’t hear about it at first. But when he started asking around, he found out that a couple of days ago, someone stopped to help a stranded motorist, and while they were fixing a flat tire, someone stole all their packages. Right here, on this very road!”
“Shall I point out that if all of you had shopped local, this sort of thing wouldn’t have happened?” Granny Bert harrumphed.
Madison groaned aloud. She knew she was getting off too easy. Now she would have to hear a lecture about supporting the local economy.
“How can you expect our small-town stores to stay in business if you run off to Bryan or Waco or Houston shopping all the time? You spend your money in the big city, you support the big city. You spend your money local, you support your friends and neighbors. You could have bought most every single gift right there in Juliet and Naomi, instead of traveling an hour away to throw your money at some big corporation that knows diddly-squat when it comes to customer service!”
“I know, but—”
“But nothing! When my washing machine went out last week, who came to my rescue? Evans Hardware, that’s who. If I had bought it from one of those big box stores, they would have dug around in their computers, decided my warranty was up unless I wanted to pay a small fortune to upgrade it for two years, then they would have either sent a repairman one day next week—sometime between the hours of noon and five, like I didn’t have a life and had nothing better to do than sit around waiting all day—or else they would have sold me a new one, gone back into their computers to locate the nearest one, tried to sell me another extended warranty, and promise delivery by a week from Lord knows when! Again, between the hours of noon till five!” She paused only long enough to draw in a breath. “But no. I was smart and bought my machine locally, so when I called them up, they had someone out that very afternoon to look at it. And in the meantime, while my clothes were soaking in all that bleach because Blake spilled grape juice all over my tablecloth, Betty Sue Evans came over, helped me wring the clothes dry, and took them to her house to finish washing. Now that, my girl, is customer service!”
Madison hung her head and listened to her grandmother rant. At the first opportunity, she broke in, “Yes, I understand, and you do have a point. But I was spending donated money, Granny, and I felt it was my responsibility to get the most bang for the buck. The fact is, I can find better buys in the bigger towns.”
“Bang for the buck? That money was donated by local folks, to benefit local kids! The least you could have done was spend it local! Did it ever occur to you that most of those kids’ parents work at our local stores? They can’t afford to travel back and forth to work in Bryan every day, so they work right there in town, where their jobs depend on their friends and neighbors to support them. Keeping the local stores in business means keeping local jobs. Talk about bang for your buck!”
Duly chastised, Madison could do nothing but agree. “You’re right. You are absolutely right. And when I re-buy the presents, I promise I will buy them right here in The Sisters.” I’ll pay twice as much, but I will buy them here.
“Darn tootin’ you will, because Sticker and I are footing the bill to do just that!”<
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Madison bit back a smile, hearing their names linked together so casually. “So how are things going there, Granny? Are you having fun?”
“A bit noisy for my tastes, but the food’s good. So is the gambling. I raked in five hundred dollars on a penny machine yesterday. I’m setting that aside for the Angel Tree.”
“And Sticker? How was the ceremony?”
“I told you, child, I’m not marrying that old coot!” her grandmother snapped.
“I meant the opening ceremony, Granny. Wasn’t that why you went out there in the first place? For him to be honored at the National Finals Rodeo?”
“Oh, that. It was fine, fine. Lots of pomp and circumstance, bright lights, and flashy women. Right up the old fool’s alley. Cutter and Genny were here, you know. Didn’t they tell you about it?”
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet. Say. You don’t think they’ll have one of those quickie Las Vegas weddings, do you?” she cried in dismay.
“You sound upset. If you ask me, that’s the best way to go. No muss, no fuss. People spend a fortune on weddings these days.”
Before her grandmother could go off on another tangent, Madison explained, “I know, but Genny deserves something special. I’m looking forward to helping her plan the wedding of her dreams, just like she did for me when I got married. She’s waited a long time for this, you know.”
“She was waiting for the right man, not the flashy wedding. Judging by the stars in both their eyes, they couldn’t care less about the ceremony itself. It’s the wedding night they’re after.”
Not wanting to get into that conversation again, Madison said, “Look, Granny, I have to go. You be safe and have a good time. Don’t worry about things here. I promise, I won’t let you down again.”
“You didn’t let me down the first time,” her grandmother said. “I’ll be home day after tomorrow. Have my baking pans ready.”