Keeping the Peace (4 page)

“Good morning, baby,” said Melanie as the girl plopped down on the couch and pulled a puffy blanket over her legs. “What are you doing up so early?”

Mia yawned audibly. “Emmie texted me. She wants to get together today. She wants to come up here. It would be a perfect day to work on our project. You know, I told you about it. We have to do a comprehensive talk on politics, the media, and the consumer. I said I’d go pick her up.”

Melanie handed her daughter a cup of coffee. “Honestly, Mia! Sometimes your lack of judgment just baffles me! You are absolutely not going anywhere in this weather. Just look at it outside!”

“Mom! Come on! Debbie won’t drive anywhere in weather like this, and she won’t let Emmie take the car. I’m a good driver. The Jeep has four-wheel drive. What am I supposed to do all day?”

“Work on your project over the phone or the computer. I’m telling you once and for all, you are not driving anywhere.”

The girl didn’t reply. Melanie rolled her eyes to the ceiling, glad that the issue had been put to rest so quickly.

Mia seemed to change the subject as she scrolled through the television channels, landing on the local weather report. “Mom, do you think this will mess up Winter Carnival? Emmie and I are still trying to get tickets to the Ragged Rainbow concert Saturday night. I really, really want to go.”

“I should think they would have the roads cleaned up by then,” Melanie said as she put the dirty breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. “These storms only last two days at the most. It’s just not wise to drive during the height of it.”

“I told Emmie I would pick her up at nine thirty.”

“Mia, did you not hear me? Call her back and tell her no, you can’t.”

“Mom! Please! Come on. Why don’t you call Dad and ask him how the roads are?”

“Your father has a whole town to worry about. I’m not going to bother him about two bored teenagers.”

“You don’t have to be nasty about it.”

“I’m not being nasty. I don’t tell you or your brothers no because I want to be nasty. I tell you no for your own safety!” Melanie ran her fingers through her hair in exasperation. She hoped the whole day would not be one of carping back and forth with her daughter.

“Mom. Listen to me. Emmie keeps texting me. What am I going to tell her? How would you like to be locked up in a house all day with Debbie?”

Melanie laughed. “Debbie is an adoring mother. Emmie is spoiled. You’re all spoiled. Tell her you can’t pick her up.”

“Can you drive us? Can you go pick her up? Please? Please, Mom?”

Melanie slammed the dishwasher closed. “Okay. Okay. You broke me. You really did. Tell Emmie I’ll come to pick her up when I can.”

Mia jumped off the couch. “Oh, thank you, Mom! Thank you! I’ll go with you.” She ran out of the room. Melanie heard her running up the stairs to her room to get dressed.

Sighing, she stared out the window, feeling the sting of defeat. She had never been a very good disciplinarian, but maybe this was a good way to compromise. After all, she’d driven in worse.

Twenty minutes later, Melanie was peering through the blowing snow at the base of the dirt road. “Can you see anything your way?” she asked Mia. Mia’s face was pressed to the window.

“I think you’re clear, Mom,” she said.

Melanie pulled out onto the main road into town, hoping that if anybody was coming, they would see the lights of her car. She felt the car’s jolt as the tires first slid and then caught some traction in the sand that had been spread. Warily, she proceeded into the village.

When John finally arrived at the big brick building in the middle of town that housed the police station and the town offices, the weather had not abated in the least. He was grateful to see Becky’s small four-wheel drive vehicle in the parking lot. At least he had a dispatcher. Now he would see how many of his officers showed. His footsteps echoed through the high-ceilinged old building as he opened the main door, stomping the snow off his boots as he went. He headed to the police station, which was actually a block of small rooms cramped together at the back of the building.

Becky sat at her desk in the reception area. She was a large, pleasant-looking woman with wide eyes in a flat face. She wore her shoulder-length light brown hair pulled back from her face with two barrettes. She was dressed in jeans, a turtleneck, and sweatshirt, and in the same way her gruffness belied a soft heart, her slightly sloppy appearance did not translate to her job. She was deadly efficient. John didn’t know what the police department would do without her. He had known her since their teenage years when they had attended the same high school. They had something else in common, too. Becky’s husband was Melanie’s cousin Jim Dearborne, who worked for Melanie’s father, managing the Dearborne dairy. The familial connection had created a bond between them that served as a comfort to whichever of them was in need at the time. It was their own two-person support group.

“What’s happening?” asked John, walking past her. His office was a small room off the reception area.

“It’s snowing,” she answered over her shoulder.

“That’s a lovely shade of sarcasm you’re wearing today. I see you got down off the hill.” John punched a key on the computer on his desk and waited. The tinkle of chimes announced that he had mail, and he brought up the page. Every morning, he checked the log, the roster of incidents that had taken place the night before. The overnight dispatcher at the state police barracks kept it updated and sent it, at six every morning, to all the surrounding local police departments. All the on-duty police officers had to file immediate reports with the state dispatcher. If something had occurred in his town during the night, John would likely always know about it even before his officer could fill him in.

“I like my little car. It goes,” Becky said. “Have you heard from Cully or Jason or Steve?”

“I have not,” answered John.

Steve Bruno had been on duty overnight, but the log reflected no activity in Clark’s Corner. Giamo wondered where Bruno was now. Probably feeding his face at the diner. Steve was the best of his three regulars, but it was still dismal to think that the ages of his three officers only added up to eighty-five years. He and Becky often felt like mother and father to the Clark’s Corner PD.

“Well”—and this time, Becky sounded exasperated—“I just got here. I know I’m early, but you’d think they’d get their asses in gear and get here on time, especially on a day like today.”

As if in answer to her crabbing, the door swung open and a young man in uniform stamped into the room, all the while whacking at himself with his hat and sending snow flying in all directions.

Becky set up a howl. “Cully! Stop that! You’re making a mess! It’s all over my desk!”

The young man stopped shedding snow. John came back through his office door carrying two cups of coffee. The coffee machine was in his office because it housed the only free outlet in the suite of old rooms. The younger man reached out his hand, but John scowled and set the cup down in front of Becky. Nonplussed, the chastised officer took off his jacket and hat and hung them on the pegs behind the door.

“They say we’re going to get twenty-four inches,” he exclaimed. Tim Cully was twenty-one years old, with curly dark hair and equally dark brows over snapping eyes. He was of average height, but powerfully built and particularly handsome. What he lacked in experience, he made up for in enthusiasm, honesty, and energy, although this was sometimes to his own detriment.

“What’s that to you?” huffed Becky. “You’re on duty, snow or no snow.”

John interrupted her grousing. “Are the plows out anywhere?”

Cully nodded vigorously. “Yeah. The main road through town is plowed, and they’re getting to the side streets. Patterson called my brother out at four this morning. He’s plowing up your way.”

“I didn’t see him,” Giamo said into his coffee cup. He could picture Woody Patterson, head of Town Maintenance, running around, self-important. Woody went crazy in weather like this, calling in independent plow trucks, zipping around in his town pickup with the yellow flashers piercing the snowfall, “checking on” his drivers, measuring the salt and sand piles. In the end, he mostly succeeded in irritating everyone, with the police department absorbing the majority of the complaint calls.

Steve’s voice crackled over the dispatch mike.

John leaned over Becky’s shoulder and pushed the button. “Yeah, Steve, what’s up?”

“Hey, I’m on the south side of River Street Bridge. There’s a rig jackknifed across the whole bridge. The tractor’s hanging over the side.”

“Son of a bitch. Driver?”

“He’s okay. Crawled out the window. We gotta move this thing. The side of the bridge is punched out. What’re we going to do about that?”

“Reroute the traffic around River Street.”

“I’m trying to do that now.”

John could hear an angry voice in the background and said, “I’ll get Woody down there with some flashers. We’ll call Larry and get the wrecker down there. I’m on my way.”

He stabbed at the button again and turned to Becky, but she was already on the phone to Larry Sample. It was so early, John reflected, and she would know that the garage wouldn’t be open. But only she would actually track him down at the diner and order him and his wrecker to the accident on the bridge.

John opened his mouth to say something, but Becky waved him impatiently toward the door. “Go, go,” she urged, covering the phone with her hand. “I’ve got things here. I’ll call Woody as soon as I’m sure Larry’s on his way.”

He thanked her silently with a smile, shut the door behind him, and hurried down the hall. John was a little surprised when he pulled out of his parking place at the town hall and fishtailed into the road. What traffic there was had turned the slush made by passing plows into a shining coat of slick icing, like the glaze on a doughnut. The SUV responded sluggishly to his skillful twist of the steering wheel, and he proceeded up and over the hill.

The scene of the accident was chaotic. John parked in the driveway of one of the River Street homes and left his lights flashing. He could see Steve Bruno in the midst of it as he approached. Thank the Lord it was Steve, thought John. If it had been Cully at the scene, fistfights would have broken out. Steve was trying to talk to Larry, who, contrary to usual behavior, had already arrived. He was shouting over the dieseling of the wrecker engine and waving his arms towards the bridge. A small man with a cigarette hanging from his lips, obviously the irritated driver of the rig, hopped up and down at Steve’s elbow, also shouting. John could hear broken English mixed with angry French. At the same time, Steve was frantically motioning the creeping line of morning traffic to detour through River Street, trying to keep it moving.

“Got your hands full, Steve?” asked John.

“I’m glad to see you,” his young officer responded candidly. He gestured toward the skinny little man who stood at his side. “This is Joe Boulanger, the driver.”

John reached out to shake the man’s hand. The exasperated driver politely took the cigarette out of his mouth and dashed it to the ground before he shook the chief’s hand. “You sure you’re all right, sir?”

“Fine, fine.” The driver nodded vigorously. “Not my rig, though. Damn bridge! Damn bridge. I been coming this way for years. Every time, I say, one day somebody’s gonna fall off this bridge. Then, it gotta be me. When somebody gonna do something about that bridge?”

“We’ll get your truck out, sir. Just be patient,” said John, but he had to agree that the man had a point.

The bridge had been built in 1941. It was narrow, made of reinforced concrete. It wasn’t high above the water, just fifteen feet, but the road curved coming off it at each end, and the bridge itself was improperly banked. Apparently, the driver had skidded just as he came onto the bridge. He’d fought to regain his control as, in maddeningly slow motion, the rig continued to slide forward, twisting until the rear wheels of the tractor smashed into the far abutment. The ancient, cracked cement, already swollen with ice, crumbled under the blow. The driver found himself at a standstill, jackknifed on the narrow bridge, with the rear wheels of the tractor and the front wheels of the box perched precariously over the river. Now, as John could see, the little man was literally hopping mad.

“John,” called Larry from the wrecker.

John raised his head in acknowledgment.