“Maybe it’s a good thing,” I said, trying to put the best spin on what was ahead. “We need more manpower. We need technology. This is bigger than us, Dad. It’s all about Jeremiah.”
“Of course it is.”
“Plus, it’s not like they don’t need us. We know the area. We know the people. They don’t.”
“You’re right.”
But being right didn’t change the fact that this was our town, our people, our boy, and our mystery, and the whole investigation was about to be taken out of our hands. We didn’t have to like it.
I heard the jingle of the diner’s front door. Breezy flew in, ninety minutes late, looking stressed and breathless. In unison, everyone in the booths silently pointed their fingers at the empty coffee pot behind the counter. She stopped at the door long enough to hang up her windbreaker and tie up her ponytail, triggering disgruntled rumbling from those of us who needed more caffeine.
“Yeah, yeah, keep your pants on,” she announced loudly. “Dudley wouldn’t start again.”
Dudley was her 1998 Ford Escort, which she’d nursed through twenty years of Mittel County winters. The patient had been on life support for a while. When it ran, its engine sounded like a bicycle with a baseball card taped in the spokes. Breezy had been working extra shifts morning and night to save money, but as fast as she earned it, she spent it on other things.
She went behind the counter, and the aroma of the brewer soon took the edge off everyone’s nerves. While we waited, Breezy leaned her elbows on the counter in front of me and Dad.
“Any news?”
I shook my head.
“Hell’s bells,” Breezy said. “I hear the FBI’s coming. Is that right?”
“They are,” my father replied.
“Soon?”
“Any minute.”
Breezy looked around the café with a hungry expression that was different from what the rest of us felt. I could read her mind. For her, the arrival of strangers meant tables crowded with out-of-towners who left large tips. That may sound heartless, but I couldn’t really blame her. Newcomers meant money in the cash registers of the local economy. It didn’t matter why they were here.
“How’s Dudley?” I asked.
Breezy swore. “The starter just grinds. We may be near the end of the road.”
“How’d you get here?”
“I called Monica, and she gave me a lift on her way in. Hell if I know how I’m getting home tonight.”
I knew Breezy, and I wasn’t worried. With men pouring into town, she’d have plenty of offers for a ride.
“Hey, you’re right, by the way,” she told me.
“About what?”
“The Gruders are back. I couldn’t sleep. They were playing their radio in the woods half the night. You know what that means.”
Yes, I knew what that meant. More meth around the county. More emergency calls to the hospital in Stanton. More lives ruined. On any other morning, that would have been our first priority.
Breezy went off to pour coffee for the rest of the diner. Dad studied the clues of the crossword, but I noticed that he hadn’t filled in a single word. His pencil sat unused on the counter, and the point of the pencil was perfectly sharp. Dad liked to say that chaos began with the littlest of things, like a dull pencil. He picked up the paper and squinted at the puzzle.
This wasn’t just entertainment for him. He did crossword puzzles because he’d read that doing them was like calisthenics for the brain. He knew he was struggling. I knew it, too. Apparently, everyone in town knew.
“Sixteen across,” I said, peering at the paper. “That’s an easy one. Ten letters. ‘The beacon in the storm.’”
Dad blinked as he reflected on the clue, but the answer didn’t come. He stroked his snow-white mustache and grimaced. I think that moment was the first time I ever saw him as old.
“I guess I’m more tired than I thought, Shelby.”
“Lighthouse,” I prompted him.
He stared at the empty little squares on the page. “Yes, of course. What was I thinking?”
He picked up the pencil, wrote “L” in the first box, and then put it down again without finishing. He turned over the newspaper and instead focused on the mug of coffee that Breezy had placed in front of him.
“I really didn’t think it was possible,” he said to me in a quiet voice. “I didn’t want to believe it. A child abduction. Here.”
“We’re not cut off from the world, Dad.”
“No, I suppose not.” My father took a sip of coffee and glanced over his shoulder at the others in the diner. “Everyone’s saying it must have been a stranger who took him. They don’t want to consider the other possibility.”
“What do you mean?”
“It might not be a stranger at all. It might be one of us.”
I didn’t say anything, but I realized that Keith Whalen had been right. Soon we would all be turning on each other. We’d be looking for someone to blame. We’d be hunting for an Ursulina hiding among us.
The bell on the diner front door jingled again.
Monica Constant pushed into the café like a little tornado. She had an enormous satchel purse draped over one shoulder that looked as if it weighed as much as she did. Her brown eyes were huge behind round glasses. She wore a flouncy pink dress that was decades out of style. She patted her kinky strawberry hair to make sure it was just so, and then she took a seat on the counter chair next to me, where her feet dangled well above the floor. The first thing she did was remove a velvet case from inside the purse and put the urn for Moody, her dead dog, on the paper place mat. The urn was six inches high, made of turquoise ceramic, and hand painted with lilies of the valley.
“Hello, you two,” Monica squeaked.
Dad turned his head and gave her his usual charming smile and then picked up his newspaper again.
I said, “Good morning, Monica.”
She tapped a fingernail on the place mat and gave me a pointed look.
“And good morning to you, too, Moody,” I added.
“Thank you, dear,” she said with a playful dance of her eyebrows. Then she dug a sheaf of papers out of the deep bowels of her purse. “I checked at the office before coming over here. I have the summary of overnight calls.”
“Did the Stanton police track down old Mr. Nadler?” I asked, hoping for a little good news.
“Well, if they did, they didn’t send out a follow-up report. Not that this would be the first time things fell through the cracks over there. I’ll call later and find out.”
“Thanks.”
Breezy showed up in front of us again with a cup of hot Twinings tea and a blackberry scone. “Here you go, Monica, my treat. Thanks for the lift this morning. You saved me.”
“Oh, please, Witch Tree is right on my way, dear. I was happy to do it.”
Monica lived an hour’s drive from Everywhere in a small town called Sugarfall on the western edge of the county. On some winter mornings, her commute took two hours or more. Even so, she was typically at the office ahead of all of us, and I couldn’t remember a day she’d missed for weather or sickness. She was a rock.
I watched her dip the tea bag in her cup and nibble at the scone by picking off pieces with her red-nailed fingers. To me, she’d always been ageless, the kind of woman who looked the same year after year. She was precise and organized, with a great memory for details, which made her a perfect partner for Dad at work. I was pretty sure she’d thought about being a partner for Dad in other ways, too, but he’d always been too busy as a sheriff and father to think about getting married.