CHAPTER 39
Grimshaw
Watersday, Novembros 3
Chief?” Osgood pushed the Hold button on the phone. “It’s Mr. Sanguinati for you.”
Ignoring Viktor’s wary look—the expression of a teenager wondering if he’d done something wrong and this was about him—Grimshaw took the call.
“I need to see you in my office,” Ilya said. “Now.”
Hearing controlled anger in the Sanguinati’s voice, Grimshaw figured the meeting with the mayor had not gone well. And he wondered if he should call the EMTs to see if Roundtree was suddenly suffering from acute anemia—or something worse.
“Mr. Farrow will be joining us,” Ilya added.
“I’ll be up in a minute.” He hung up, then looked at Osgood. “Anything I need to know about?”
“A complaint from Ellen C. Wilson about Pops Davies not serving customers whose account is overdue and whose last check bounced. He’s now requiring cash, which, apparently, is insulting to someone of her status.”
“She doesn’t have any status outside of being the village pest.” The woman seemed to have enough money when it suited her, but he didn’t think she did any work—unless her job was to harangue shop owners to see how long it would take them to ban a customer.
“Pops has made a countercomplaint about Mrs. Wilson’s son, Theodore, stuffing a few things in his pockets and bolting out the door while Mrs. Wilson badgered Pops,” Osgood continued. “And a couple of other people complained about Pops limiting some items and keeping some things behind the counter.”
“Did you get the names and addresses of the people who made those complaints?” Grimshaw asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Anyone we know besides Mrs. Wilson?”
Osgood shook his head. “Newcomers.”
The rookie made it sound like he’d lived in Sproing all his life when, in truth, he’d been transferred here during the troubles that past summer and was still living at the boardinghouse—and didn’t seem to be in any hurry to find his own place.
“Go over to the general store. If Pops wants to make a formal complaint about the shoplifting, you take his statement, and we’ll deal with it.” Grimshaw paused. “And see what he has to say about any other newcomers.” He remembered something else. “Did you ask Pops about selling bleach to Adam Fewks?”
Osgood nodded. “The name didn’t mean anything, but he recognized the picture from the student ID and confirmed that was the boy who purchased a bottle of bleach on Trickster afternoon. He thought it was an odd purchase for a boy that age, but he saw no reason to question it.”
That crossed another item off the list. They didn’t know what Fewks had thought he could do with the bleach in the moments before the terra indigene came hunting for him, but at least they had confirmed where he’d bought it in the village.
Grimshaw walked over to the desk with the computer.
“Am I in trouble?” Viktor asked.
“Can’t see how,” he replied. “Have you sent those e-mails out?”
“I sent the message to the ITF agents.”
“Hold off on the messages to the police until I find out what’s scratching at Ilya.”
Grimshaw stepped out of the station and almost collided with Mayor Roundtree.
“You have got to do something about . . . them,” Roundtree said, poking a finger at Grimshaw.
“No, I don’t,” Grimshaw replied. “My job is to handle human-against-human crimes and to stop any fools from antagonizing the Others to the point of starting another purge.”
Roundtree’s face turned an alarming shade of red. “You think you’ll get reelected with that attitude?”
“I wasn’t elected; I was hired. If Ilya Sanguinati decides I’m not doing my job, he’ll fire me. He’s the only one who can. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mayor, I’m going upstairs to find out what you said that pissed him off. And then, if you want, I’ll come to your office to hear your version of that meeting.”
“My version? My version? Who do you think you are?”
“I’m the chief of police, and you are one word away from being arrested for causing a public disturbance.”
Grimshaw waited while Roundtree did a passable imitation of a landed fish. Then he walked around the other man and went upstairs.
Well and truly pissed off, Grimshaw thought when he entered Ilya’s part of the office.
Ilya handed him a sheet of paper with “From the Mayor’s Office” as the heading. Must be the letter Roundtree’s office submitted for the next issue of the Sproing Weekly.
After reading Roundtree’s latest thoughts, Grimshaw understood why Ilya was angry. The letter was one long whining complaint about roads being closed and the terra indigene’s high-handed control of the village, which made law-abiding citizens too fearful to live and work in Sproing. Grimshaw figured Ilya would have filed that away for future reference when dealing with Roundtree and remain unruffled. But the Sanguinati’s leader wouldn’t shrug off the paragraph strongly hinting that Sproing’s troubles were mostly due to the current ownership of The Jumble.
“If Roundtree makes a move against Victoria, we will kill him,” Ilya said.
If that was Ilya’s conversation opener, every human in and around Sproing was in trouble.
Julian appeared in the doorway of Ilya’s office. “The village is starting to feel unhealthy. Cracked. And something is seeping in through those cracks.”
Crap. “Why here?” Grimshaw laid the letter facedown on Ilya’s desk. Then he looked at the other two men. “Why now?”
“Why is Roundtree trying to get people stirred up when last winter he was all about cooperating and everyone working together to get through the hard times?” Julian countered.
“Last winter he wasn’t dealing with us,” Ilya said. “Last winter he could pretend, or even believe, that everything that wasn’t human was Out There, not sitting in an office in the building next to the village government.”
And last winter, something the Others called a contamination hadn’t appeared in Sproing. Grimshaw took a seat, stretched his legs, and crossed them at the ankles—a deliberately relaxed position, even if he didn’t feel the least bit relaxed. “So, what did you and the mayor wrangle about?” he asked Ilya.
“Reopening the roads, among other things,” Ilya replied.
“Well, everyone wants the roads open, so that’s not a surprise,” Grimshaw said. “And I imagine Roundtree would like to pin the blame for this current trouble on someone who lives outside the village limits.”
Ilya gave him a sharp look. That letter had made it clear enough where Roundtree wanted to place the blame. Then the vampire flicked a look at Julian, confirming Grimshaw’s suspicion that the Sanguinati knew more about Julian Farrow’s past than he did—and didn’t want to aim Farrow toward Roundtree.
“It may have been a mistake to rent some of the cabins to colleges in the Finger Lakes without stipulating approval of the individuals who want to make use of that arrangement,” Ilya said. “Especially since we reduced the time on the leases to four months to accommodate the number of professionals who wanted a chance to have contact with the terra indigene.”
“You can’t preapprove Vicki’s guests or Ineke’s, and they’re more transient than professors coming to observe the terra indigene in order to write papers for academic journals,” Julian pointed out.
“The influx of new residents is now a concern,” Ilya said. “It didn’t seem within Silence Lodge’s duties to preapprove them either. Now it seems that knowing where those humans came from is vital to the village’s survival. Do you agree, Chief Grimshaw? Is the difference between new and settled residents the crack Mr. Farrow is sensing?”