The Bones of Old Carlisle (21 page)

“You think that’s bad?” Karl Arrowroot asked his weeping son.
“Well, then, let me tell you about something really terrible.”
Robert Arrowroot, six years old and devastated because of
something having to do with his shoelaces, immediately ratcheted his
wailing down by about half.
“You never met your grandmother, but she was quite a lady,” said
Arrowroot. “A real woman of God, a true saint.”
“You always say that about her,” commented Danielle, who was
watching TV nearby.
“Well, it’s always true,” said Arrowroot.
“It’s boring,” Danielle asserted.
“Your grandmamma was a lot like you,” Arrowroot said.
“It’s still boring,” Danielle said.
“So your grandmother, she could make the best banana bread in
Heligaux,” Arrowroot continued. “We lived in Traxie then, but the
people in High Heligaux would smell it cooking and they’d all say to
each other, ‘You know what, we oughta move to Traxie, with the way
they cook and all.’”
“People wouldn’t move because of smelling some banana bread,”
Danielle observed.
“But one day,” Arrowroot said, and he leaned forward and repeated
himself dramatically. “But one day, Momma made some banana bread, and
that loaf of banana bread, it up and broke in half!”
Robert was still sniffing and looking at his shoes, but he wasn’t
crying anymore.
“Bread can’t break,” said Danielle.
“Oh, but it can,” said Arrowroot. “Thomas, your uncle Thomas, he
was just about 6 or so, just like Robert today. He was so hungry for
that banana bread he reached for it before it had set good, grabbed it
by one end, and it broke right across the middle part.”
“Oh!” said Robert, and he put his hand over his mouth.
“Now, Momma had stepped out for a moment and left us with her own
momma,” Arrowroot said. “We called her Grannykins, or Grannybones, on
account of she was small and bony, and sometimes we called her
Grannyfangs, on account of she was mean. Your great grandma was as
mean as your grandma was good. As mean as a meanbug with a bellyache.”
“There’s no such thing as a meanbug,” Danielle corrected.
“As mean as a snake trying to win first place at a mean contest,”
Arrowroot said.
“There’s no such thing as that kind of contest,” Danielle noted.
“So your Uncle Tommy, he breaks Momma’s banana bread, and I
thought for sure he was gonna get it,” Arrowroot continued. “I thought
for sure Granny was gonna cook his damned goose.”
“Did she?” Robert asked, and he put his other hand over his
mouth.
“Well, that’s just the thing about meanness,” Arrowroot said. “As
soon as you think you know what meanness is gonna do, it does
something different that you never dreamed of.”
“What did she do?” Robert asked timidly.
“I’ll tell you what she did,” replied Arrowroot. “First, she
smiled real big. Of course, that’s when I knew Tommy’s goose was
cooked, and probably mine too, on account of meanness doesn’t care who
it hurts, but it always smiles before it, uh, commences its meanness.
And then she went and just tossed that whole loaf – that whole damned
loaf – right in the trash!”
“You shouldn’t say damn,” said Danielle.
“She threw it out?” Robert asked, incredulous.
“That’s right,” Arrowroot recalled.
“So Thomas started cryin’,” Arrowroot said, “and I probably did
too, so she told us to quit cryin’ and go to our damned room, and
that’s what we did.”
“You shouldn’t say that word,” Danielle repeated.
“It’s what she said,” Arrowroot insisted. “She taught us all the
cuss words, you know. Not on purpose, but you couldn’t help but learn
them with her usin’ ‘em all the time. That’s the way she was. Mean,
and cussed a lot.”
“I’ve heard of meaner things,” Danielle said.
“So, you know what the moral of the story was?” Arrowroot asked.
“Don’t break banana bread!” Robert shouted.
“Well, maybe,” Arrowroot conceded.
“Make Grannykins stop being so mean?” Danielle offered.
“Well, I’m not sure,” Arrowroot replied. “The real moral of the
story, I think— the real moral is: control the food.”
It was, Arrowroot felt, one of the most important lessons he
could teach his children, and he told variations of the story often.
Unfortunately, the lesson never quite took. Danielle had gotten a
degree in economics, but she had no interest in controlling the food.
Instead, she seemed determined to keep others from controlling it.
She’d go on and on about how too much power, or money, or banana bread
probably too, concentrated in too few hands led to all of society’s
ills. There was an anger to her about it, about a lot of things, he
didn’t understand.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he told her once, soon after she
graduated. “It’s not too much power in too few hands, it’s too much
power in godless hands, that’s where your trouble comes from.”
She replied with something about theocracies and the Catholic
Church, and argued that Nazism and Communism were like religions
(which was utter nonsense), and he shut her up by saying “I thought I
bought you a degree in economics, not history!”
Robert was another story. He had no interest in college, but it
wasn’t for lack of intelligence or ambition. Robert wanted to do
something new, in a world where nothing new could be done. “There are
a million paths up the mountain,” Robert wrote in a discarded poem,
“each worn smooth, each littered with candy wrappers and cigarette
butts. There’s a great gathering on the mountaintop! I hear their
hymns as I turn and head for the salt flats.”
Robert had written the poem sometime before his 21
^st
birthday,
then wadded it up and threw it into the trash, crossing out every line
individually for good measure. But Arrowroot noticed it, smoothed it
out and kept it.
Maybe the Carlisle estate was that salt flat, Arowroot thought as
he pored over the things in Robert’s backpack. Yes, his son had found
something, old and scandalous, and only by the merest of chances had
it seen the light of day.
There were hundreds of sheets of paper in the bookbag, and they
were organized in no discernible order. Arrowroot spread them out in
piles on the floor in Robert’s bedroom and sat back to look over it
all, when Danielle called again.
“Hey, got a question for you,” she said.
“Yup?” Arrowroot replied.
“Do you remember that map I gave you?” she asked.
“What map?” Arrowroot answered.
“The one, uh, Tamani drew,” Danielle said hesitantly. “There was
something on there I think she wanted you to find.”
“Oh, I don’t know anything about that,” Arrowroot admitted. “I’m
going through Robert’s backpack right now. That boy was on to
something. Really on to something out there before he, uh, before he
got called home.”
“Daddy, I gave you a map that Tamani drew, don’t you remember?”
Danielle persisted. “With some kind of like, crystals or something?”
“Oh,” Arrowroot said, and he closed his eyes as one of the least
significant memories of the day at the Carlisle place slowly came back
to his conscious. “Oh, yeah. Damn, forgot all about them. They were
right next to where we found Robert. Damn. Why the hell did she leave
them there?”
“Did you get them or not?” Danielle asked impatiently.
“Well, I guess I got them,” Arrowroot said. “I remember picking
them up, looking at them. Looked like a couple of ice cubes, except
they weren’t cold.”
“Do you know where they are?” Danielle persisted.
“No idea,” Arrowroot said. “Lost in all the chaos of that day, I
guess.”
“You didn’t put them in your pocket or something?” Danielle
asked, and Arrowroot could tell she was trying hard not to let her
exasperation show.
“Well, you’d think I would have,” he said. “What’s this all
about, anyway? Is someone asking for them or something?”
“Yes,” Danielle said simply.
“Who?” Arrowroot asked.
“It has to do with Robert,” Danielle said. “Indirectly, sort of.”
“Okay then, fine,” Arrowroot said. “I’ll keep an eye out for
them. Just a couple of pieces of plastic, you know, but if I see ‘em,
I’ll let you know.”
“What pants were you wearing that day?” Danielle asked.
“Can this wait?” Arrowroot protested. “I’m kinda busy.”
“Can you just go check?” she pleaded. “Maybe you put them in your
pocket and forgot about them.”
“Okay, okay then, damn,” Arrowroot said, and he stood with a
groan and went to his closet. “Okay, I’m looking at my pants, looking
at my pants. No idea what I was wearing that day, probably cargo
pants, since I was going to the fort.”
“Yeah,” said Danielle, “your green cargo pants.”
“How can you possibly remember that?” he inquired.
“Find them yet?” she asked.
“Okay here they are, found ‘em,” Arrowroot said. “Nothing in the
pockets, nothing at all.”
“Check all the pockets, okay?” Danielle said.
“Okay, okay,” Arrowroot said. “Hey, I think I found something.
Pocket by the knee. Damn, what’d I put them down there for? Yup, here
they are, two ice cubes, kinda frosty inside. Well, one totally
frosty, the other halfway.”
“Thank you thank you!” Danielle exclaimed. “Can you to bring them
to me now?”
“Dang it, I told you I’m busy,” Arrowroot said.
“We really need them,” she said. “As soon as possible.”
“Who’s we?” Arrowroot asked.
“Several of us,” Danielle replied evasively. “More than just me.
We’ll be at the Caves. See you there in 30 minutes?”
“Oh, damn,” Arrowroot said. “Alright, hell.”
“Have you called anyone at Fort Shergawa yet?” Danielle asked.
Arrowroot sighed, and he thought up several retorts, each in a
complete sentence, about how he had better things to do than run
errands for Danielle or tote ice-cube-looking things about on her
behalf. But in the end, he offered only a meek assent. “I’ll be
there,” he said, “but I might be a little late. I’ve got a phone call
to make, and an email to send.”
Arrowroot sent the email first, copying each one and zero
faithfully from Mr. Smiley’s paper onto his computer. He wouldn’t have
bothered with it if that lawyer hadn’t gotten in his face, or if Chief
Hatfield hadn’t been so dismissive. If something bad happened – if a
bunch of Mr. Smiley’s friends showed up to bust him out of jail – it
wouldn’t be on his hands.
He imagined his moment of triumph when it became clear that Mr.
Smiley was not at all mentally deficient, and the numbers he gave
Arrowroot were indeed intended for some higher purpose.
But what, Arrowroot asked himself, if Mr. Smiley was a terrorist
or a murderer? He quickly dismissed the concern as nonsense and hit
send. No one who blows up buildings or kills people does so by getting
random strangers to send emails to themselves. Moments later, the
email appeared in his inbox. He deleted it, grabbed his phone and
dialed the main number at Fort Shergawa.
This was not an official call. No one with any administrative
authority at Fort Shergawa could help him, and in fact anyone at that
level would be a hindrance. He needed someone who belonged to the fort
but was also relatively independent of it. Someone who could dig up a
file or two and pass it along to a civilian without having to fill out
forms and get permissions. So he’d settled on Dr. Susan Schaumberg.
She told him she was planning to leave the service soon. He’d sensed
sympathy from her as events unwound at the Carlisle place. And, to be
honest, he wanted to talk to her again, if only to apologize for his
behavior that day.
Maybe she’d think he was crazy. Maybe she would just pass his
request up the command chain, and that door would be closed. But he
was doing his best, and he’d at least be able to tell Danielle he’d
tried.
His call was routed from Fort Shergawa’s front desk to the fort’s
infirmary, and from there to a family medical office where he could
hear a baby crying in the background. Schaumberg wasn’t available, so
he left his name and number and headed to his car.
he left his name and number and headed to his car.
minute drive away even in heavy traffic, and Arrowroot made good time.
It was a little after 5 when he parked his truck in front of the
establishment. The early dinner crowd hadn’t begun arriving quite yet,
so things were still quiet.
Located in the first floor of an old, three-story factory
building made of dark red brick, it was a mostly windowless place,
with cave-like, recessed booths ideal for discreet – and sometimes
illicit – meetings. It had been called the Schooner years ago, but it
had taken the name of its most distinctive feature, colloquially,
years ago, and the owners eventually gave in and changed it
officially.
It was popular with families and with the better off of Traxie’s
citizenry, but plenty of deals, of both the commercial and carnal
variety, had been negotiated upon its aging leather seats.
Arrowroot entered, nodded to the hostess and kept walking. He
found Danielle in a booth toward the back, talking quietly to a woman
he didn’t recognize in the darkness.
“Sit down,” Danielle hissed. “Did anyone see you come in?”
“No one I know,” Arrowroot replied, studying Danielle’s companion
in the gloom. She had dark eyes, short dark hair and looked to be
about Danielle’s age.
“Hello, Karl,” she said.
“Huh? Oh, god, no,” Arrowroot stammered. “Tamani?”

“Okay, what the hell?” Karl Arrowroot demanded, because that’s
the only question he could think up that summed up all the questions
he had. Why was Tamani still in town? How had she eluded the
authorities? What did she know about all the killing at Fort Shergawa?
Had she killed any of them herself? And what, for God’s said, was she
doing hanging around with his daughter?

“Please don’t freak out,” Danielle said. “Please?”
“Freak out’s not what I’m going to do,” Arrowroot said, and he
slid out of the booth and stood. “Tamani, I want you to come with me.
Danielle, you’re welcome to join me, or you can follow in your own
car. We’re all going to the police station, and we’re going to turn
Tamani over to Floyd. Tamani, you couldn’t be in better hands.”
Arrowroot took his glasses off, wiped them and felt his throat
tightening up. Why was this so hard for him to say? he wondered. He
paused and collected himself.
“Floyd’ll most likely call the fort,” Arrowroot continued, “and
they’ll come get you, and Danielle, they’re gonna want to talk to you
too.”
“Sit down,” Danielle whispered urgently, leaning out of the booth
and peering around to make sure they weren’t drawing attention. “Sit
down and listen.”
Arrowroot leaned over and barked out an urgent whisper of his
own. “Tamani is a fugitive,” he said. “She’s wanted by the damned
federal government. And now you’re harboring her, unless you’re here
to help me turn her in. Which I doubt.”
“Daddy,” Danielle pleaded. “Daddy, please, just sit down, just
listen.”
“Tamani,” Arrowroot said, and he looked directly at the darkhaired woman, sitting impassively in the darkness. “Will you come with
me?”
“Nope,” she said simply.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” Arrowroot said, straightening up. “I’m
going out to my truck, and I’m going to give you two minutes, then I’m
calling 911. I’m going to tell them I saw Tamani. And Danielle, I’m
going to give them your name too, and your address. I’ve got no
choice.”
“Sit down,” Danielle said again.
“And in the meantime, you two skedaddle,” Arrowroot continued.
“Go pack your things and hit the road. Go on and be Thelma and Louise
for all I care.”
The implications of what he was saying and thinking began to dawn
on Arrowroot, and he sat back down, buried his face in his hands and
felt the tears on his fingers. One way or another, he was about to
lose his second child, to federal prison or to a life on the run. This
would be his last meeting with her, in a dark booth in the empty back
end of a Traxie restaurant.
“Just listen,” Danielle begged. “Just listen, Okay? First of all,
and most importantly, this isn’t Tamani.”
Arrowroot looked up, feeling at once hopeful and hideously
stupid. The girl beside Danielle met his gaze, blinked and smiled
brightly. If it wasn’t Tamani, he’d just put on one of the more
ridiculous performances of his life. But it was her. It was definitely
her. Same eyes, same mouth, same broad, muscular shoulders, even if
they were hidden under a white Oxford shirt. Even if her eyes were
made up now, lined heavy and black like Danielle’s always were.
“No, it’s her,” he said. “I’d recognize her anywhere.”
“Prove it,” Danielle said.
“It looks like her, it sounds like her,” Arrowroot said. “Case
closed.”
“That’s your word against hers,” Danielle said, and she turned to
Tamani. “Who are you?”
Tamani rattled off two or three sentences in what sounded to
Arrowroot like fluent French.
“In English now,” Danielle said.
“I am Adele Johnson,” Tamani said in a barely discernible accent.
“I was left on the steps of a convent near Paris soon after I was
born, and the sisters arranged a private adoption by an American
couple who were living near the city. It is speculated my biological
mother was French and my father was African. Then my adoptive parents
had a child of their own, and I grew apart from them and ran away when
I was 12. I lived on the streets of Paris for eight years, trying to
find my biological mother, and now I have come to America in hopes of
finding the people who raised me, to reconcile.”
“Do you have an ID?” Danielle asked.
Tamani pulled a North Carolina driver’s license from her back
pocket and showed it to Arrowroot. He inspected it briefly and handed
it back without commenting.
“What are your parents’ names?” Danielle asked.
“Tom and Beth Johnson,” Tamani replied, “although he might also
be Thomas, Tommy, Tomas or Jacob, and she might go by Elizabeth or
Becky, and they might have divorced and remarried others. Their child
was a boy everyone called Kip, but I’m not sure what was on his birth
certificate.”
Arrowroot laughed tensely. “Okay, you’ve done a passable job of
creating a new identity,” he said. “Might fool the Army for about half
a day. But you’re going to have to give me a better reason than that
not to call the police.”
“Let me see the crystals,” Danielle said, holding out her hand.
Arrowroot pulled them out of his pocket and handed them over to
Danielle. Danielle gave one to Tamani and for a long moment, both
women stared at the little blocks of plastic.
“Okay, I give up,” Arrowroot said, and he laughed again, this
time sincerely. “What the hell are those things?”
“Tamani,” Danielle began, then corrected herself. “Adele thinks
they might have writing in them.”
“I didn’t notice any writing,” Arrowroot said.
“It’s very small,” Tamani replied.
A waitress approached the table and Arrowroot ordered a lemonade.
Danielle got a refill on Diet Coke. Tamani was drinking a beer,
although it might have been more accurate to say she was experiencing
a beer. She was smelling it, leaning over and looking down into it,
dipping a finger into it and tasting it cautiously.
“Adele thinks this has got everything on it,” said Danielle. “Her
story, what happened at the fort, who Mr. Smiley is.”
“You still can’t remember anything?” Arrowroot asked.
Tamani looked at Danielle, and Danielle grabbed her father’s arm.
“If she answers your questions, um, the way Tamani would, you’re not
going to freak out again, are you?” she asked.
Arrowroot leaned back and scowled. “I reserve the right to pass
on anything I learn here to the authorities,” he said. “But I’ll hear
you out. And for the record, there’s a big difference between freaking
out and being a responsible citizen.”
“I don’t blame you, I don’t blame you,” Danielle said, and
Arrowroot could hear the relief in her voice. “Just listen. I think
you’ll realize we all want the same thing.”
“Okay, then, what do you want?” Arrowroot inquired.
“I want to help Tamani recover her memories,” Danielle said.
“She’s got terrible memories. She wakes up screaming, she keeps having
dreams. I want to know what happened to her. I want to know what they
did to her.”
“Have you read the newspapers?” Arrowroot asked. “Their account
of what happened out at Fort Shergawa is halfway accurate.”
“I have,” Tamani said. “Every word of every story in the
newspaper and the Internet. It just confuses me more.”
“Wait a minute, hold on a second,” Arrowroot said, and he looked
at Danielle. “She wakes up screaming?”
“Yes, a couple of times a week,” Danielle said.
“And how did you come by this information?” Arrowroot asked.
“She’s living with me,” Danielle blurted.
“Oh my God,” Arrowroot said, and he folded his arms on the table
and dropped his head onto them, sighed deeply, then raised his face.
“You got any other fugitives from the federal government living with
you?”
“To be completely accurate,” Danielle said, “Tamani is only a
person of interest, not a suspect. She hasn’t been charged with
anything.”
“Mmmphm,” Arrowroot said unintelligibly, dropping his head back.
“And she didn’t do anything,” Danielle continued. “She’s
innocent. If anything, she’s a victim. A victim, Daddy!”
Arrowroot’s lemonade arrived and he raised his head and took a
long look at Tamani. “So there’s words in these crystals?” he asked
her.
“Yes,” she said, and she raised her beer to her lips, smelled it
and set it down without drinking. “I remember that part. And I want to
read them.”
“Okay,” said Arrowroot. “Now, please don’t take offense, but what
happens if you read these crystals, and— and it turns out you killed
someone?”
“She didn’t,” said Danielle. “I just know it.”
“I’m not sure what I did,” corrected Tamani. “But I want to know
it, whatever it says.”
“If she’s arrested now, she has no hope of figuring out what
happened,” asserted Danielle. “None of us do. The Army’s not going to
care about any crystals, they just want to silence her, so she can
never talk about what they did to her.”
Arrowroot took a long, slow sip of his lemonade and leaned back.
“So you’ve got the crystals and you’re going to figure out how to read
them,” he noted. “Good luck, and I’ll leave it at that. Tamani or
Adele or whatever, it’s been good to meet you. Or see you again or
whatever.”
Arrowroot took another sip of lemonade and began sliding out of
the booth.
“Don’t go, please,” Danielle said.
“Oh, no, I’m done here,” Arrowroot said. “And if you’re
committing any other federal crimes, please don’t tell me.”
“Don’t go,” Danielle repeated. “We still need you.”
“Need me for what?” Arrowroot demanded, and then a dreadful
thought crossed his mind. “Oh no, not that. I am not taking in any
fugitives.”
The idea seemed to be a surprise to both women. Danielle laughed
and Tamani smiled.
“That’s not what we need you for,” Danielle said, and she handed
the crystals back to Arrowroot. “We need you to get these read.”
Arrowroot looked down at the crystals in silence. And then he set
them down, picked up his lemonade, drew an ice cube into his mouth and
slowly crunched it.
“And how do you propose I do that?” he said at last.
Danielle pulled a slip of paper out of her pocket. “National
Microscopy,” she said. “They’re like, five blocks from here. I’m
pretty sure they can read it.”
Arrowroot took the slip of paper, set it on the table and stared
at it as he made fists and the blood drained from his fingers. Once he
noticed that his hands were aching, he shoved the paper into his shirt
pocket and massaged them slowly.
Tamani took a tiny sip of beer, swished it around her mouth as
she stared at the ceiling, set the bottle down. “Karl,” she said, and
she reached across the table and took Arrowroot’s hands in both of
hers. Her grip was remarkably firm, and Arrowroot thought she might
make a very good masseuse, if she could stay out of prison. But her
face didn’t match the gesture. She looked at him tentatively, as if
expecting him to pull away, or to yell in fright. Danielle, without
moving her head, moved her eyes down briefly toward the four joined
hands, then returned her gaze to Arrowroot’s face, and he concluded
somewhere in the back of his mind that there was a lot going on here,
with these two women, most of which he wasn’t privy to, and might
never be. That’s how it was most of the time with women.
“Karl,” Tamani repeated. “Do you want to know what happened at
the fort?”
“Yes,” he said. “There are a lot of things I want to know.”
“I’m so sorry about this. About Robert. About everything,” she
said. “But we need you. You are the only one who knows about the
crystals, and the only one who can know about them right now. You are
the only one we can trust.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll see what I can do,” Arrowroot said. “And I
won’t tell anyone anything now. But if the police ask me something,
I’m going to answer honestly.”
“That’s okay,” Danielle said. “Thank you!”
Tamani withdrew her hands, Arrowroot put a $20 bill on the table
and stood, and Danielle slid out of the booth too and hugged him, then
Tamani did the same, and he could feel the muscles through her shirt
and knew she could probably break his back if she wanted to. Despite
himself, he saw the annoyed face of the man he thought of as Mr.
Smiley’s brother, lying in the Carlisle kitchen with his neck snapped
and his head turned around. Had she done it? Was she the murderer? Did
he really want to know?
“Hey, tell Guillaume I said hello, will you?” Arrowroot said.
“That boy wasn’t half bad, you know.”
Danielle looked down and Tamani gazed away, her eyes settling on
her beer. She picked it up impulsively, swallowed half of it, squinted
and bit her lip.
“Oh, broke up?” Arrowroot asked.
“Not exactly,” Danielle said. “He’s seeing Tamani now.”
“Oh, alright, alright,” Arrowroot said, wishing desperately he
could take back the question, so his next question was intended to be
completely innocuous: “Parked out front?”
“No, we’re in back,” Danielle said, and they turned and headed
toward the restaurant’s rear entrance.
Arrowroot left the restaurant, sat down in his truck, pulled the
paper in his pocket out to look at it, and slumped until his head was
touching the steering wheel.
His daughter, his own flesh and blood, was committing a federal
crime, living with a dangerous woman who was a fugitive and who, as if
that weren’t enough, had taken her man.
And now he was running bizarre errands all over town for said
daughter, trying to get someone to wrest words about murder and mayhem
from two frosty crystals.
He was about to start his truck when his phone rang.
He didn’t recognize the number but knew it was local. Because he
couldn’t talk to the press, about Robert or the fort or anything else
right now, he’d gotten in the habit in the last few weeks of not
answering his phone at all unless he knew the caller. But this looked
like a Fort Shergawa number, so he answered it with a guarded “hello?”
“Hi, Karl,” a vaguely familiar female voice said. “It’s Susan.
Susan Schaumberg. You left a message for me?”
“Oh, Dr. Schaumberg!” Arrowroot replied. “Thanks for calling me
back.”
“Of course, and please call me Susan,” she said, and there was a
warmth to her voice that surprised him, that he didn’t remember from
the day at the Carlisle place. “I want you to know that I’m so, so
sorry about your loss. I hope you’re doing okay.”
“Thank you,” Arrowroot replied, and he fell silent.
“So, you called me,” Schaumberg said gently. “What can I do for
you?”
“Well,” Arrowroot said, and he paused. “Are you in a place where
you can talk discreetly?”
Schaumberg laughed. “I guess so. But I can meet you in person if
you prefer. I live in town, you know.”
“How you like your water bills?” Arrowroot asked. “Upgraded
everything in February. Mayor Journeyman put the original system in
years ago, of course.”
“I think I’ve noticed that,” Schaumberg replied, and Arrowroot
couldn’t tell if she was being honest. “The water keeps flowing, of
course, which I always appreciate.”