Stone Cold Crazy (Lil & Boris #4) (Lil and Boris Mysteries) (3 page)

Until now, Steve had been remarkably quiet, making notes on some kind of handheld electronic gadget, barely replying to a question. At Jack’s enthusiastic comment, his head came up and the gadget went into the leather bag slung over one shoulder. “No,” he said, hands moving animatedly. “What you want to do is
this
.”

He’d always done that. Said that. The exact way he did then. Eyes sparkling and smiling. Hands dancing all over the place, pointing and shaping. He’d done it the night of the rehearsal dinner when we’d broken up. It’s peculiar, but I’d somehow thought that wouldn’t be the same. It creeped me out a little.

What
he said creeped me out a lot.

Calmly he described the benefits of shaping the stream
thus
and carving out the mountain
so
, of bringing in backhoes, bulldozers, explosives if necessary. The lodge would go
there
, the pool
here
, the bicycle and footpath
that
way, the playground
this
way, new plantings
everywhere
.

When he said there’d be profit in cutting out a certain percentage of trees, say, forty percent, any spell he’d woven on Cousin Jack broke. “No,” said my cousin sharply, interrupting. “No. There’s plenty of room for the trees.”

“Look, you have 500 acres, maybe half of it usable for the campground, you can maximize the number of tent sites if you thin out the trees and grade the land.”

“No,” said Jack, the Littlepage Glare focusing on Steve. I should have warned Jack that Steve has never been bothered by it. “The point is that every tent site will enjoy shade.”

“You’ll lose fifty-sixty tent sites, maybe more.”

I decided to finally enter the conversation. “How many tent sites were you planning?” I was thinking of how many calls we’d get for noise, drunkenness, trespassing.

Jack said, “A hundred.”

Steve said, “Two hundred.”

I said, “Are you
nuts
?”

Steve grinned the same old cheeky grin. “Which one?”

“Both,” I snarled, and stomped up to my cousin. I am, in fact, closer to six feet tall than he is, but it’s not something I typically take advantage of. “Assuming an average of even two people per tent, you’re damn near doubling the size of the town! Do you plan to have private security? Because damn if I’ve got the personnel, and you know Fat-Ass Rucker won’t send his boys to help.”

Steve’s head tipped to one side, his grin broadening. “
Your
personnel?”

I’ve frequently claimed my pride got hurt more than my heart by our canceled nuptials, and I’d been lying. To save that pride. Which flared up hot enough to please any of my haughty blood relatives on either side. “
My
personnel!” I bit out, turning my version of the Littlepage Ice Glare on him. “I’m the sheriff, this is my jurisdiction, and if you’re going to double the number of jackasses I have to deal with, then by God someone had better double the number of my deputies in tourist season. And pay for them!”

Steve tut-tutted me. Jackass. “The town will be able to give you more deputies from the extra revenue. Taxes, retail sales…”

I took a deep breath to let loose on Cousin Jack, since I knew better than to talk sense to Steve, and suddenly stopped. I couldn’t believe it. Yet it was true. Staring me in the face. Cousin Jack couldn’t care less about owning a campground, though it did foil Eller hopes quite nicely. He was doing this for Crazy. He wanted to save the town.

It might work.

The Food Mart would get tons of extra business, all those toiletries and groceries people forget. Same with Green’s Pharmacy. Bob Shifflett’s fuel and service station would be the nearest source of gasoline. Joe Brady’s Hunt & Fish would see an uptick in business for camping gear. Somebody would think to rent bicycles. Blue Quartz Pottery might actually make money off their little shop instead of relying solely on their internet sales for profits. Dr. Hartley’s Emergicare would make money off sunburns and bee stings and stitches. Maury and his butter-for-brains brother would get the sanitation contract. Even Junior’s Lawn & Garden would probably make money. To say nothing of the teenagers who’d have summer jobs they could walk to. I thought of Veronica Turner, Lynn’s mom, never married, who in her retirement dreamed of opening a little store that sold only health food and organics and such. She could make that work, if she had tourists to help boost sales. Then there were the Simms, Marsha and Chet, of Spottswood Lane. They’d retired here from Northern Virginia, which I ought to mention most of us see as its own state. They’d said more than once they’d like to open some little store or other selling local crafts, but who’d buy them? Answer: Tourists.

Then there was the liquor store. It’d make money, too.

I forgot my rage. I looked at my cousin in some awe. “My God,” I said, “it might work.”

Jack smiled. It was soft, and shy, and pleased. “I told you,” he said, “I want this to be where I live. Where my kids’ll grow up someday. It won’t last if we don’t do something.”

Generally, tourism is a lousy way to boost an economy. The money doesn’t go far, and the jobs are usually minimum wage. Yet in such a small town, how far would the money have to go? Figure eighty campsites booked at least three months of tourist season, maybe half that the rest of the time what with hikers and fishermen and hunters. Average that out to, say, sixty percent capacity full. That’s sixty tents of people who’d need paper towels, sunscreen, bait, umbrellas, towels, snacks. A hundred people coming and going and buying and shopping and recreating, eating at Old Mill and the Country Rose, or running out to the Reynolds farm on Turner Gap Road to buy organic produce and tour the place to see how you could raise food without steroids and hormones. They might make donations at the Littlepage Eller Animal Sanctuary built by Aunt Marge using that Eller money I’d inherited and given her.

Jack must have followed my thoughts. “Even if it’s just seasonal, Lil, think what it could mean.”

I did think. It blew my mind.

We’d both forgotten Steve. “I thought our goal here was a profitable venture.”

“Profitable town,” said Jack Littlepage. “I owe this town. I want it to survive. No more than a hundred tent sites, plenty of space between them, and minimal changes to the landscape.” Though Steve is taller, Jack loomed over him, the Voice of What Will Be. “
This
is why they’ll come, and come back, and tell others to come.” He spread his arms slowly, grandly, to encompass five hundred acres of trees so big around it’d take two of us to hug one. Of rocks and stream and bushes and delicate little wildflowers that only grew in the sheltered places of the forest. “
This
is the hook, Mr. Kipling. We’ll have a lodge full of fun, but
this
stays as close to as-is as possible. Or I find someone else to oversee the project.” His gaze looked warm, his smile chilly. “You’re very good at business. So am I. This isn’t about that.” My cousin put out an arm and encircled my shoulders, a shocking show of emotion for a Littlepage. “This is about…‌what is owed this community.”

I almost ruined the nobility of the moment by pointing out he’d paid for my fancy new cruiser the previous year, but for once I knew when to keep my mouth shut. Had an Eller talked about owing the community, I’d be pretty sure back taxes had to be involved. But I’d come to know my Littlepage cousin a bit since his sister’s murder. Whoever he’d been before that day, I knew who he was after. He meant what he said. This wasn’t about one-upping the Ellers, or trying to finally win the feud with another public works project. He’d been bit by the Crazy bug. He wanted to bring money into the town because that’s the way he expressed love.

3.

N
ews of the Grenville Campground did what all news does in a town of 300 people. It spontaneously combusted.

So did Punk.

Like I said, we weren’t officially dating. We couldn’t. I’m his boss. By keeping it low-profile, and by low-profile I mean subterranean, we could keep up the polite fiction of a purely platonic relationship.

Nevertheless, Punk is a man. This means he is territorial. The fact Steven Kipling was such old news he was just plain olds did not matter. He was news to Punk, and Punk started our conversation Tuesday evening with, “Since when do you have a fiancée?”

Lord save me from testosterone.

“Ex-fiancée,” I sighed, and got very tempted to slam the front door on the man. If I hadn’t spent two hours on a very healthy homemade pizza, where the only thing I didn’t make from scratch was the friggin’ cheese, he’d have gotten a face full of good-bye. Instead, I let him in with a terse, “I didn’t bring it up because he doesn’t matter. You can tell it doesn’t matter because,” I continued with heavy sarcasm, “I didn’t bring it up.”

He plunked down a can of fancy tuna for Boris, who said hello by washing his butt in Punk’s direction. “So who dumped who?”

I pulled an Aunt Marge. Reassuring to think nurture has some sway over nature. “Whom,” I corrected. “He dumped me the night before the wedding. Best favor he ever did me.” I pulled the pizza out of the oven. I’d set the table nicely, gotten a bottle of fancy organic bubbly juice, lit a few candles, and for all Punk noticed, I could’ve served him cat food on a paper plate. “I gave back the ring, we parted ways, I never heard from him again till yesterday.” I glanced at Punk’s face as I started on my first slice. I was getting nowhere fast. I risked a bit of truth and trivia. “I didn’t even know he’d left the Bureau.”

“Didn’t know he’d been in it.”

My appetite fled for parts unknown. I sank my head into my hands. “Punk, swear to God, it’s no big deal.”

Punk snorted. “Yeah, and when people tell me Leelee says hello, it doesn’t bring up anything.”

If anyone is going to get insecure, it should be me when I think of Leelee Shiflet. Lisa Lee Shiflet Chalmers, that is. She is petite, naturally strawberry blonde, cuddly-curvy, and adorable. I’m a few hairs shy of six feet, my hair is a sort of generic dark color unless I get it highlighted, I am not terribly curvy, and as you know by now, I’m not terribly adorable, either. I’d lain awake a few nights already wondering if I was just the Rebound Girl. You know. The one the guy dates to prove he’s over the first one.

I did not reply to Punk’s remark. I couldn’t. Seeing Steve did bring up memories I’d as soon forget. If I’d been smart, I’d have spilled the whole story to Punk then and there, but old habits die hard.

Steve had taught me some of them.

I did try. “Doesn’t mean you still want to be with her.”

I’d caught him off-guard. “Well, no, I guess it don’t. But…‌Look, I don’t have to like that he’s here.”

You’d think an adulthood spent in a male-dominated profession would’ve taught me more about the male brain. Hell, living with Boris should’ve been an education in itself on territorial tendencies. Yet I sat there too confused to come up with a better answer than, “I’m not asking you to like it. I don’t even like it. Just ignore him. That’s my plan.”

Punk grumbled wordlessly. He sounded like Boris. Great. Like I needed two of
that
.

***^***

What I needed was a crime. Something to take my mind off my troubles. I figured I could count on Eddie Brady. He’s been the town’s official nuisance for just about as long as he’s been out of diapers, and if our county judiciary had a decent budget, he’d be doing felony time. As it is, he averages one night a week in one of our two cells. After that not-date with Punk, I actually
looked
for Eddie.

If that’s not desperation, I don’t know what is.

If this was one of those complicated mystery novels, my ex-fiancée would turn up dead right around now. In fact, nobody turned up dead. Given the last couple years, that came as a relief. I’ve had a bellyful of corpses, if you’ll pardon the expression.

What did happen was…

Well, I’ll just tell you.

***^***

It’s a rule of police work, or at least my police work, that whatever you’re prepared for is never what happens. I was braced for some sort of macho confrontation, popular protests, teenage hijinks to celebrate the coming end of the school year. I was ready for graffiti, feces in paper bags, some drunken stupidity, the usual start-of-summer routine. What I was
not
ready for was an explosion that shook the car six inches sideways.

Okay, maybe one inch, but it
felt
like six.

Boris’s fur stood on end. He clung to his car seat with all eighteen claws. His ribcage rose and fell with quick staccato breaths. His eyes rounded.

I said, “What the hell?” and grabbed the radio. “Punk! What is it?”

The radio squealed. I heard a squelching noise, then Punk’s irritated, “Son of a bitch! I got smoke and what-all on Spottswood.”

“En route,” I snapped, and peeled out of my speed trap with all lights and sirens going. The siren at the VFD was already screaming. Our volunteer chief Hugh Rush was shouting, a garden hose forgotten around his ankles amidst the pansies. Being a volunteer fireman was considered a pretty safe civic duty around here. The VFD rarely got any call more thrilling than an occasional kitchen fire and car accident. Oh, they did the training, and they did take it seriously, all six-seven of them, but the county always lent a hand if it got more complicated than rescuing a kid from a tree. I hit the radio and Punk replied instantly, “I’ve got county fire on the line, a’right, Lil? I do know my job, dammit.”

I covered pretty well, I think. “
Which
house on Spottswood?”

“It’s the Weed house.”

Number 23.

“The Vogts called it in, they got some broken windows. I’m heading over.”

“See you there.”

My tires squealed as I turned onto Spottswood, just ahead of Punk as he jumped into our spare cruiser. I wriggled my cell off my belt and hit speed-dial for Tom Hutchins. Splinters of wood and siding and glass lay everywhere. A hunk of two-by-four had been driven clean through the windshield of Adam Weed’s sedan. I rolled to a halt on the shoulder just shy of the burning remains of the house. Punk pulled in across the road. He legged it to the Vogt house to make sure they were okay. They had two kids, both of whom would’ve been going to school that morning. I had a sudden, gut-twisting vision of what would’ve happened if the kids had been outside waiting for the school bus. Renee and Ryder would’ve caught shrapnel. Same with Shannon Hart’s boy, Eric. I waved at Punk as he came out of the Vogt house. He threw me an okay sign, and I pointed to Shannon Hart’s place. He nodded, understanding.