Chapter Four
Thunderstorms had brewed up every afternoon for the entire week Heath had lived in Whisper Falls. The ground was a mud bog, delaying tornado cleanup. With the chief as his guide, he had spent the days cruising the town in their one and only police vehicle, getting acquainted. The citizens welcomed him with warmth and curiosity, commiserating over his wrecked SUV, his black eye and the ankle that refused to stop swelling like an overheated helium balloon.
Late Thursday morning, he propped said foot on a padded chair next to the scarred desk in what was now his official office—a closet-size cubicle beside the courthouse jail. A window looked out on the courthouse lawn, a pretty space with a Vietnam memorial marker, a statue of the town’s founder and lots of springtime green. On the adjoining streetcars tooled past with slow irregularity. Easy Street was well named. Life was definitely slower here than anywhere else he’d been in a while. Not counting a tiny Mexican village that had once been his base for a very long three months.
He reached down and loosened the boot lace from around the yellow-and-purple ankle. Didn’t hurt as much today, but the tautly stretched tissues were uncomfortable and he couldn’t shake the limp. His head was clearer, though, thank the Father. Damage could have been a lot worse if not for Cassie Blackwell, though he wondered about the inordinate amount of time he’d spent thinking about the woman who’d saved his hide on a rain-slicked mountain road. So far, he’d resisted another trip to her sweet-smelling, female-fixing salon—a male’s purgatory—but he wouldn’t mind seeing Cassie again.
“Already laying down on the job, Monroe?” With her usual rowdy entrance, Chief Farnsworth slammed into this office. No knock. No warning. Just bam! “Wimping out over a measly dab of ankle pain?”
Heath gave her a lazy smile. “That’s me. Any excuse not to work.”
“Figures. You Feds are all the same. All blow and no go.”
“And all you small-town Southern cops are corrupt.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Where’d you hide the body, Chief?”
Farnsworth barked a laugh. She was a straight-up law enforcer and Heath liked her. Didn’t mind working for her, either. He’d never chaffed at having a woman superior officer. Watching his mother raise three boys alone had taught him the value, strength and leadership of the female gender.
She leaned a hand on his desk. “One of us needs to do a safety walk through the school and look for security weaknesses this afternoon. You up to the task?”
Heath pushed back from the desk. He never figured himself as a desk man and didn’t plan to be much longer. Paperwork gave him colic. “Has someone made a threat?”
“No. Don’t plan to have any, either, but if they come, we want our kids protected.”
“You got that right. I don’t mind the trip, a good excuse to get acquainted with school personnel.” And hang with the kids. He missed his rambunctious nephews and that one fluffy-haired niece who could wrangle anything out of him with a dimpled smile.
“Sure you’re up to it? Requires some walking around the campus.”
Heath laced his boot, ignoring the throb and the question. “Want to call the superintendent? Or should I?”
“I’ll call, give him fair warning. His name is Gary Cummings. Reserved, suit-type feller but sharp as bear teeth.”
“Got it.” He dropped his foot to the floor and winced. Annoying. “I need to stop by the garage and check on my truck. That all right with you?”
“Fine. I’m headed up to talk with Judge Watson. The county DA is here today to go over some charges. Why don’t you cruise through town and make sure the citizens are behaving themselves?”
Heath huffed softly. “Is there any doubt? The place is quieter than a tomb.” Quiet seemed too mild a word. He-could-hear-his-hair-grow quiet.
“Just you wait, mister. Storm’s got ’em busy, but summer’s coming. Things heat up.”
He’d believe it when he saw it.
Eager to be doing anything other than sitting behind the desk, Heath was out the door and in the cruiser as fast as his bad ankle would take him. He liked Whisper Falls and had longed for peace and quiet. Be careful what you pray for, he supposed. In his former job, he’d rarely had a quiet day and the lack of action was making him a little crazy.
He cruised the streets first, eyes alert for anything out of the ordinary. So far this week, he and the chief had rousted a truant teenager, ticketed Bert Flaherty for doing forty in a twenty, responded to a possible dog theft and three domestics. Beyond that were the basic patrols, civic responsibilities and a handful of false alarms. He was still trying to figure out why Chief Farnsworth needed an assistant.
At the end of Easy Street, he pulled into Tommy’s Busted Knuckle Garage to check on his ride.
Tommy, a long, skinny man with brassy shoulder-length hair and a wooly reddish beard met him in the bay. “How’s the leg?”
“Good. What’s the verdict on my SUV?”
Tommy scratched his beard. “Insurance adjuster was here this morning. Sorry to tell you, Heath, but she’s a goner.”
Heath grimaced. He’d been afraid of that. “I’m going to have to get a new one?”
“Looks that way.”
He had a sudden vision of limping into the bank to ask Melissa Jessup for a loan, of having her pout over his poor little eye and his poor little ankle and his poor little broken car. Hiding a smile, he thought that might not be a bad thing. A man could use some feminine sympathy now and then.
Tommy clapped him on the shoulder and shook his shaggy head. “A rotten shame, a nice set of wheels like that, but I can’t put her back the way she was.”
He’d been fond of that SUV.
A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. The men turned their heads toward the sound. Were they due for another storm this afternoon?
“Thanks anyway, Tommy. It was good of you to go out in the boonies and haul it up out of that ravine.”
“Ah, no big deal. Just glad it was the truck that bit the dust instead of you.”
“Can’t argue that.”
As he left the garage and started down Easy Street, he spotted a jaywalker. Not that he was going to ticket anyone for the infraction, but this jaywalker caught his attention. Glossy black hair that swung against her shoulders as she bopped along, a hot pink and zebra-printed smock over black pants and a pair of black high-heeled ankle-breakers.
His boredom vanished faster than chips at a dip tasting contest.
He whipped the car into a U-turn and parked at an angle in front of Evie’s Sweets and Eats. He pressed the window button and watched the smoked glass slide away just as Cassie stepped up on the curb.
“’Morning,” he said.
She pivoted toward him with a smile. “Hi. Except
