Halfway to Half Way (9 page)

 

 

Luke Sauers frowned and chuckled simultaneously. "Have I ever lied to you?"

 

 

"Probably." She nibbled a tiny sliver of pie. Free dessert this delicious was worth savoring. "You are an attorney."

 

 

His coconspirator said, "I wasn't there, but if I thought Luke was making it up, I wouldn't be
here.
" Her nose wrinkled at the fresh veggie plate in front of her. "I've got a fridge full of this crap at home."

 

 

Claudina Burkholtz was Hannah's only female friend not receiving a social security pension. The single mother of three was also David's chief dispatcher, his original campaign manager and permanent fan club president.

 

 

After assisting with a murder investigation, Claudina aspired to becoming the county's first woman deputy. How she'd comply with the academy's height requirement hadn't been resolved. To meet the weight standards, she'd shed thirty pounds over the summer but still had fifty-some to go.

 

 

Hannah looked down at her pie and winced. "Fine friend I am."

 

 

Claudina waved a dismissal. "The world doesn't have to go on a diet just because I am. Get fat as a house, then knock off a couple of rooms and you start to get snotty about it." She winked. "That part, I like."

 

 

Luke fidgeted in place—guy code for "Let's can the girl talk, shall we?" He nudged a minuscule cell phone across the tablecloth. "Give David a call, if you don't believe me. He'll confirm the entire discussion."

 

 

"Yeah, right. I'm sure he wouldn't mind taking a break from working a homicide scene to discuss our wedding."

 

 

"Okay, this idea of Luke's is a little crazy," Claudina said.

 

 

"That, Ms. Burkholtz, is a major understatement."

 

 

"Not as crazy as getting married straight outta high school, popping out three rugrats in five years, then divorcing the sorry ass who's never sent them a birthday card, much less a child support check. It's within range, though."

 

 

Claudina folded her hands on the table. In a low honey drawl better suited for late-night radio than the police variety, she said, "But if it was me, and I thought for a second that marrying the man I loved in the park might—
might
—make a difference on election day, I'd do it."

 

 

Hannah's fork clattered on the plate. She sat back, astounded at what her friend was implying. "So you're saying, if I don't turn my wedding into a publicity stunt and David loses, it's my fault."

 

 

"Impossible to quantify," Luke said, "but yes, that's what I'm saying."

 

 

"Well,
I'm
not," Claudina huffed. "God help us if it happens, but David could lose either way. The way I figure it, you two have fiddle-farted around for months, so why not get it over with and maybe swing the election at the same time?"

 

 

Hannah laughed in spite of herself. "Jeez, that's so romantic."

 

 

"It will be. Claudina and I will take care of everything. Music, flowers, candles, cake—the works." Luke grinned. "Except the dress. That, we'll leave to you."

 

 

"You know my kids adore Sheriff David," Claudina added. "Polly and Lana are dying to be flower girls and Jeremy can be the ring bearer."

 

 

Luke chimed in, "David told me he'd take care of the tux, the minister and the limousine. What else do we need?" He hesitated, then answered his own question. "The marriage license." A reminder was duly registered in his BlackBerry. "Ten minutes at the county clerk's office. There's a three-day waiting period, so I'll put you down for no later than the Tuesday before."

 

 

Claudina's mop of curls quivered with excitement. "You can get dressed at my house. The girls will
love
it. We'll have to tie Jeremy to the sofa to keep him clean, but I'll let him pick out the video. Heck-fire, I'll buy him a spankin' new one."

 

 

They chattered about monogrammed napkins and birdseed bags. Hannah gripped the chair's armrests, panting as though a pillow was smashed against her face.

 

 

Luke had definitely discussed this with David. The tux-to-limo remark clinched it. He'd teased Hannah about grooms having it easy—two phone calls and a fitting and they were good to go. Which meant he'd sicced Luke on her for one of two reasons: To let her say no, in a manner even an obsessed campaign manager could perceive as final. Or to see if she might just say yes.

 

 

Given that David hadn't mentioned it at all, even as a joke, could be construed as a double-dog dare. And who, other than David, would assume the crass, arguably sacrilegious, politically motivated, hootenanny aspect of it might have a certain appeal. The buy-a-dress-and-show-up thing, for instance.

 

 

Particularly since the gumshoes knew David had proposed, but not that Hannah had officially accepted. The instant they did, IdaClare, Rosemary Schnur and Marge Rosenbaum would launch into manic, fairy-tale wedding mode, the likes of which had not been seen since Prince Charles took his first bride.

 

 

Risking the lake of fire for living in sin was preferable to listening to the three godmothers debate virginal white versus never-married-but-only-sporadically-chaste shades of beige.

 

 

They'd be crushed if Luke and Claudina took charge; David might be crushed if Hannah told her two tablemates to go ruin somebody else's wedding.

 

 

Then again, she hadn't left the starting block when it came to planning the happiest day of her life. Whenever she browsed through the bridal magazine hidden in a desk drawer, she had to grab a paper sack and breathe into it until the dizziness subsided.

 

 

Twenty-five years of seat-of-the-pants, multimillion-dollar corporate decisions were a breeze compared to selecting the one, the only, the
perfect
freakin' wedding invitations. Starting with ink color. If, of course, you cheaped out and didn't go for complementary pastel duotones. Or metallic. Or antique, airbrushed metallic.

 

 

How could she possibly slough off that—along with the ceremony's other eighty-four-thousand details—on anybody? No, the hell with how and who. Was
she
ready to take David Hendrickson for her lawfully wedded husband in three weeks?

 

 

Great-uncle Mort was fond of saying sometimes you've gotta take off the bridle, throw your hat in the air and let the panther scream. Mort Garvey wasn't a cowboy and wouldn't have known a panther from a saber-toothed tiger. But just because the old boy's wheel was short a few lug nuts didn't mean he was always wrong.

 

 

Hannah's brain spun inside her skull. If a paper sack had magically appeared, she wouldn't have known whether to breathe into it or throw up in it.

 

 

Luke murmured behind his hand, "She hasn't said no. Thinking about it's as good as a yes."

 

 

Claudina whispered back, "You don't date much, do you?"

 

 

Hannah picked up her fork. The cold stainless steel felt wonderfully solid. The pie, she polished off in one unladylike bite. She dabbed her lips with the napkin, then laid it on the table. "It was great seeing you both. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work."

 

 

Startled, Luke shouted, "But what—" He gulped and lowered his voice. "But what about the
wedding?
"

 

 

Claudina stuffed a cauliflower floret in his mouth. "Don't call you," she said to Hannah. "You'll call me."

 

 

Hannah grinned. "Bingo."

 

 

Outside, the afternoon heat and mugginess had thinned pedestrian traffic. Awnings cast shady rectangles on the boardwalk, but seemed to trap the air, like striped canvas lids. Flowers in window boxes and stone tubs along the cobbled street looked as wilted as Hannah felt when she entered Valhalla Springs' postal substation.

 

 

The alcove housing the post office boxes resembled a bank's safety deposit vault with an arched oak trellis and a gate, instead of a door. Hannah keyed box number two; box one belonged to IdaClare Clancy.

 

 

Banded inside a large clasp envelope was the typical assortment of bills, handbills, winning sweepstakes notifications addressed to occupant and information requests from retirees seeking an alternative to Florida, the southwest and the Gulf coast.

 

 

Valhalla Springs couldn't compete with an endless summer. Hannah batted the hair off her neck, wondering why anyone would want a permanent July. Here, you had four seasons—sometimes a touch of two in as many days—plus a Victorian village atmosphere, peace, quiet and a genuine sense of community.

 

 

She dropped the mail packet into her shoulder bag to sort through later. On average, one in ten inquiries netted a personal tour. One percent of those added new tenants to the population.

 

 

"To see Valhalla Springs," she said wistfully, "is to never want to leave."

 

 

Thankfully, Luke and Claudina had. A scooter and a Miata were parked where his Beemer had straddled two spaces. Fearing that Luke might attempt a second offensive at the cottage, Hannah thought she'd do some casual window-shopping at Carla Forsythe's boutique.

 

 

Most of the shops, stores and eateries along Main Street had larger counterparts in Sanity. Carla's clothing store in town had a selection of wedding gowns, but aside from special requests and holiday wear, her annex catered to less formal ladies' attire.

 

 

Not that Hannah was in the market for anything long, lacy and
white,
by God. At least not in the next three weeks, as opposed to someday in the foreseeable future. After David was reelected. After a new operations manager was hired. After David's house was move-in ready. After his rottweiler, Rambo, bonded with Malcolm, instead of picturing him fried, fricasseed, roasted, stewed and barbecued.

 

 

After all those afters,
then
they'd get married and live happily ever…after.

 

 

Hannah groaned and started down the boardwalk to where her Blazer was parked, yielding to the deliveryman pushing a loaded handcart into the mercantile. Momentary inertia let thoughts she'd tried to outwalk catch up with her. She glanced over her shoulder at the boutique, then at her truck.

 

 

Eeny, meeny, miny…
On
mo,
she shrugged, smiled and headed back the way she came. "Just browsing," she'd say. And if Carla brought out the photo catalog with both stores' full inventory? Well, what was the harm in looking? A little virtual retail therapy, as it were.

 

 

* * *

When yet another bond issue to build a new sheriff's department met with defeat, the county commissioners leased a narrow storefront on the west side of the square for the detective division's headquarters.

 

 

The commission's generosity didn't include replacing the long-vacant storefront's fake walnut paneling, matted shag carpeting, water-stained suspended ceiling tiles and ancient fluorescent lighting. On the day of the detective unit's official ribbon-cutting, Marlin Andrik took one look at—and sniff of—his new domain and dubbed it the Outhouse.

 

 

A kindness, David thought, squirming in the molded plastic lawn chair on the visitor's side of Marlin's desk. It would be a small miracle if the seat defied physics and gravity long enough for Marlin to finish his progress report on the Beauford homicide.

 

 

David had left the scene around noon and gone home. Six hours later, he'd wakened with no memory of the drive, shucking down to his underwear and falling into bed. Blackouts were known to scare drunks into sobriety. All David could do was hope his luck held, thank God he hadn't had to drive clear to Valhalla Springs for some shut-eye, and vow for the umpteenth time to cut back on voluntary double shifts.

 

 

A long, hot shower and a home-grilled cheeseburger had him feeling almost human again—eager for anything besides half-listening to radio chatter on the scanner behind him and staring at the nascent bald spot on the top of Marlin's head.

 

 

"The fingerprints lifted from Bev's vehicle," David said, as though the conversational thread hadn't dangled for upward of five boring minutes. "You don't expect them to amount to much?"

 

 

Marlin looked from the photos on his desk to their corresponding documentation. "They're few, which helps. If Bev hadn't taken it through the car wash, we'd have eight thousand latents to run."

 

 

He tapped several close-up shots of Bev's sedan. "It's the far-between that doesn't have me juiced. The rear passenger door, trunk lid, back of the interior mirror…" Pulling off his reading glasses, he chewed on a mangled earpiece. "All different fingerprints. All in places that don't correspond to a perp along for the ride home."

 

 

Drivers adjusted rearview mirrors, not passengers. There were no other indications that anyone aside from Bev had driven her car, since it was cleaned.

 

 

At the desk behind David, Josh Phelps was transmitting the latents to the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. AFIS's computerized database didn't read fingerprints, but numerically identified similarities. The more the markers, the higher the probability of a match. Phelps would then compare each of the system's mechanically selected candidates to the unknown one.

 

 

From Marlin's remarks, if AFIS did provide a hit, the follow-up was more likely to waste time than identify a suspect.

 

 

The phone rang, and Marlin snapped up the receiver. "Yo. Andrik." His eyes flicked to David. "Yes, Ms. Beauford. No, please don't apologize. I realize what a shock it was and appreciate you calling me back."

 

 

He listened a moment. Grimaced. "I know what I'm asking, but it really can't wait until morning." A pause, then, "Uh-huh. Yeah, we sure can. Thank you, Ms. Beauford. See you in a few."