Authors: Linda Cunningham
Keeping the Peace
Cover
Title Page
Keeping the Peace
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Linda Cunningham
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Omnific Publishing
Los Angeles
Copyright Information
Keeping the Peace, Copyright © 2014 by Linda Cunningham
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.
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Omnific Publishing
1901 Avenue of the Stars, 2nd Floor
Los Angeles, California 90067
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First Omnific eBook edition, May 2014
First Omnific trade paperback edition, May 2014
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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Cunningham, Linda.
Keeping the Peace / Linda Cunningham – 1st ed
ISBN: 978-1-623421-50-2
1. Romance—Fiction. 2. Vermont—Fiction. 3. Murder—Fiction. 4. Marriage—Fiction. I. Title
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Cover Design by Micha Stone and Amy Brokaw
Interior Book Design by Coreen Montagna
Dedication
Since their personalities figure so prominently in this story,
I dedicate this book with my whole heart to my three children,
Ian, Megan, and Colin.
Many thanks to Makayla Smith,
whose creative judgment and talent with a computer
has helped me so much.
Chapter One
I
T
W
AS
F
EBRUARY
and the dead of winter in Clark’s Corner, Vermont. John Giamo stood naked, towel in hand, watching the blizzard from his bedroom window. Somehow, he felt older than forty-six this morning. Maybe it was just the weather. Another Vermont winter. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror on the wall. He still weighed the same as he had for years, his stomach muscles still tight. Peering closer, he could see that his light brown hair was just beginning to show a little gray around the edges of his high forehead, highlighting his slightly swarthy complexion. Was it making him look older, or more distinguished, he wondered. He knew that upon first impression, he gave the appearance of being the same khaki color all over, but Melanie always said it was his eyes that changed the whole equation. No matter how ordinary John Giamo appeared at first glance, his wife insisted, those eyes betrayed a unique and intense intelligence. They were light brown, too, but flecks of green danced in the irises. People who might judge him as phlegmatic, unassuming, or even depressed, she told him, were forced to reevaluate their opinions when they looked into those eyes. It was this trait, she said, that made him particularly effective as police chief of this small Vermont town where he had grown up.
He turned away from the mirror with a sigh and stood in front of the window awhile longer, enjoying the slight chill on his skin as the moisture from his recent shower evaporated into the dry air of the room. It was quarter past six. The morning light was struggling to penetrate the thick, blowing snow. John watched as the wind gusted and little swirls of white blew against the window like tiny ghosts trying to get in. He heard the familiar clunking sounds in the kitchen and knew that Melanie was stirring up the wood stove as she did every winter morning, building the wall of warmth between her family and the elements outside.
John began to dress. As the chief of police in such a small town, he spent very little time in one place. Sometimes he was traversing the streets downtown; sometimes he was cruising the back roads to make a general check on things. He knew he should spend more time at his desk, but he was pulled in so many directions that he relied heavily on his dispatcher/secretary, Becky, to keep most of the paperwork in order. Thank heavens for Becky. Today, the weather was so extreme that he was careful to dress accordingly. More than likely, before the day was out, he thought ruefully, he would find himself at the scene of some traffic accident, if not multiple ones. He pulled on his long underwear, his uniform blues, and the standard-issue wool sweater, then opened the bedroom door. The smell of coffee wafted up the stairwell. Happily, he meandered down into the kitchen, anticipating the first swallow of the hot liquid.
The large room where John’s wife and coffee awaited him was bright and warm. She was always up an hour before him. Although they’d moved to Maine when their children were small, allowing John to start his career in law enforcement, they’d come back to Clark’s Corner ten years ago to a home that had been in the Giamo family for generations. John and Melanie had done some renovations, opening the old kitchen ell into the woodshed to expand the space to fit their family of five. It was now a combination kitchen and family room, where the fireplace crackled most evenings of the year. There was also a wood-burning stove that they, like most local families, kept blazing all winter long. It cut their fuel oil bills considerably, and the wood heat made the house extra warm and cozy. The walls were lined with bookshelves, and there were comfortable couches where the kids curled up to watch TV or do their homework on winter evenings. Two dogs, a German shepherd and a brown-and-white Jack Russell terrier, occupied the couches now. The German shepherd flopped his tail when John came into the room, but didn’t raise his head. Melanie Giamo set a big white mug of coffee on the table as John crossed the room and sat down. Then she poured herself the same and pulled up a chair to sit next to him. They looked out the window together. The winter sun had succeeded in penetrating the blowing snow, dragging the day into action. The chickadees were swarming the bird feeders in the garden, hanging on with their tiny claws, gobbling up the sunflower seeds.
“Look at them go,” said John between sips of coffee. “That’s a sign of heavy snow.”
“They look like ornaments on a Christmas tree, don’t they? I never get tired of watching them. I filled the feeders first thing this morning,” Melanie said. “There was almost six inches out there then. I bet there’s eight, now. They’re predicting eighteen inches to two feet.”
“At least they’ll have snow for the Winter Carnival this year. It rained last year. I take it there’s a snow day?”
“Yes. I delivered the news upstairs just before you came down. Everybody rolled over and went back to sleep.”
“Everybody” was their seventeen-year-old daughter, Mia, and their fifteen-year-old son, Peter.
“How about Michael?” asked John, just as her cell phone rang.
“I bet that’s him.” Melanie dug the device out of her pocket. “They said on the radio that Dartmouth was closing for the day.” John listened to the one-sided conversation. “No,” his wife said. “No, Michael. Just stay where you are. You’ve got plenty of clothes. You don’t need to bring your laundry home on a day like today. I don’t want you driving. Okay, well, that’s better. I’ll call you later. Bye-bye.” Melanie stuffed the phone back into her pocket and turned to her husband. “Can you believe that? Michael wanted to come home today to do his laundry.”
“Hmph,” grunted John. “I think he wanted to come home to eat. If he’d gone to school in California, it wouldn’t be an option, would it? What would he do with his laundry then? Mail it home?”
Melanie laughed. “You know he always wanted to go to Dartmouth. And he
is
a homebody, John. He takes after you.”
“I went away to school, not down the road.”
“You went to Boston. You could almost walk there from here. Your mother said you came home every weekend.”
“That’s because you were here.”
“You still know what to say to a girl.” She flashed him a smile as she rose and took his mug to refill it.
He watched her as she turned away from him. It seemed to him that she had not changed since he first saw her, when she was fifteen, except she wore her blond hair shorter now. It curled around her face in thick, feathery, sexy disarray. He watched her small trim figure in jeans and turtleneck sweater, pouring them each a second cup of coffee. The same familiar desire he had felt for her all these years rose up in him again. She was irresistible. He never could fully understand what she saw in him, why she’d married him. He stood and walked up behind her, encircling her waist with his big hands.
Bending his head, he nuzzled her hair. “Do we have time to go back to bed? It’s a snow day.”
“What’s gotten into you?” she said. “You haven’t touched me in two weeks!”
“You look pretty sexy in that sweater. I guess it
has
been a while.”
“Well, we’re going to have to wait a little longer. You’re too late. You should have gotten up half an hour sooner.” She feigned impatience, but she pressed back against him as she said it. He kissed her neck and sat down again, sipping his coffee silently and watching the birds at the feeder. Melanie set a bowl of steaming cereal before him, along with two small pitchers, one with milk and the other with maple syrup. He stared down into the bowl.
“What’s this?” He snorted. He knew very well what it was, but he didn’t like oatmeal. He liked pancakes and sausage drowned in maple syrup.
“It’s oatmeal,” answered his wife from over his shoulder. “It’ll keep you going. You don’t know what you’re going to face today, John. Besides, it lowers cholesterol, and we’ve got to start watching things like that now. We’re not getting any younger.”
It was not something he wanted to be reminded of. “You don’t look any different to me than the day we got married.”
This made her smile. “Very sweet, but eat your oatmeal anyway.”