“I’ll do my best. You know we don’t have the manpower or budget to run patrols at night. An officer on call is the best I can do.”
“I know.” Sandy lowered her gaze. “It’s tight everywhere. That’s why I need this damage stopped. I haven’t had a profit since Christmas, and I can’t afford to lose a single customer. Any more of this and I’ll be frying eggs and hash browns at the restaurant down the street.”
“You’re too important to this town for that . . . although you’d improve the diner’s breakfast tenfold.” Truman felt bad for the hardworking woman. “Your B&B brings in customers for other local businesses. We’re all dependent on each other. I’ll ask around and see if someone has some cameras they’d loan for a while,” he lied. “I’ll help set them up.”
After I order them from Amazon.
“I hope they don’t move the vandalism to the house,” Sandy said, looking up at the stately Queen Anne home. “I put a lot of work into restoring it, and my insurance deductible is huge.”
“You said no one has heard the glass breaking or seen people near the cars?”
“I asked all the guests. I can’t even tell you when this one happened. The owner didn’t come out to his car until lunchtime. It could have happened anytime in the last twenty-four hours.”
“I suspect nighttime.”
“I agree.” Her dark brows came together, and she frowned at the broken window of the Honda sedan.
“What is it?” Truman asked. The look on her face was thoughtful.
She shook her head and smiled at him. “It’s nothing. I’m trying to imagine what kind of person from around here does this. Teenagers, I expect?”
“That’s a solid guess. I’ll file a report—another report—and find some cameras for you. Until then, warn your guests not to leave things in their car.” He paused. “Nothing was stolen this time either, right?”
“Right. Someone simply enjoys causing damage.”
Truman slipped his notebook in his pocket. “Be careful, Sandy.”
“Don’t worry. I’m always on my toes,” she said grimly. “Later, Chief.”
THREE
Truman inhaled deeply as he stepped inside the Eagle’s Nest station.
Lucas’s mom has been here.
The smell of her pulled pork nearly made him weep with hunger. He hung up his cowboy hat and turned to see his office manager, Lucas, and his mom walking out of the small room used for meetings. She had a grocery bag in one hand, but Truman could tell it was empty. She must have just dropped off dinner.
And for once I’m here before the other guys.
Too many times he’d been out on a call when Bree Ingram dropped off food, and he’d come back to find a tiny plate of cold leftovers that survived only because Lucas had saved it for him. Bree’s pulled pork was Truman’s favorite, but he also liked her pasta salad, fried chicken, and berry pie.
“Evening, Chief,” Bree said with a smile. “I made a little extra pork, so I brought it by. Goes to waste in my house.” Bree Ingram had Lucas’s big smile, but that was the only physical attribute the widow shared with her son. She was tiny, especially when she stood next to linebacker-size Lucas. With her dark coloring and peppy attitude, she reminded him of a happy lab puppy.
Lucas was a Saint Bernard, a gentle giant.
“Thanks, Bree. We always appreciate your extra food.” Truman swallowed back a curse as all three of his officers emerged from the small room with paper plates loaded with pulled pork and fresh rolls. So much for being first. He glared at Samuel. The officer wasn’t even working today. No doubt one of the other officers had given him a heads-up. Samuel was a bachelor, unlike his other two officers, and was always happy to eat food someone else had made.
The three officers greeted Truman with their mouths full.
“You outdid yourself this time, Bree,” Royce Gibson told her. “You ever going to share the recipe with my wife?”
Bree laughed. “I did months ago.”
Royce took another bite, chewing thoughtfully. “It doesn’t taste like this at all.”
“Hmmm. Maybe I left something out of the recipe I gave her. I’ll get in touch.”
Lucas squeezed his mother’s shoulders, and she gently slapped at his hand as she smiled up at him.
Looks like Lucas knows Bree doesn’t share her exact recipes.
“You working with Ollie tonight?” Truman asked. Bree tutored the teenager a few times a week as he worked toward his GED. Bree was an English teacher at the high school but spent her little spare time tutoring.
“Not tonight,” she answered. “He’s coming along really well. It’s like his brain is a sponge. I don’t think I’ve ever had a student who wants to learn with such enthusiasm.”
Truman agreed. Ollie was thirsty for knowledge.
Lucas walked his mother to the door as she said goodbye to the men. Once she was gone he turned to Truman with suppressed excitement. “You gonna tell us about the remains Ollie found?”
Truman hadn’t told anyone what had happened that morning. “How’d you hear about that?”
“Ben told me.”
“I heard about it at the feed store at lunch,” Ben said with a full mouth. “Not sure how it got started there.”
Truman scanned his four men—his work family. Ben was the oldest, with decades of police work under his belt. Samuel was a solid ex-military man who now lived and breathed law enforcement. Royce was young and rather naive, and barely kept up. And Lucas was Lucas. One of a kind.
All trustworthy, good men.
But damned gossips, each one of them.
“I think we all know the feed store is a front where the men in this town go to gossip,” said Truman.
“It’s a news source,” Ben corrected him. “Our own little local newsroom.”
“It’s gossip. And it’s often wrong.”
“Ollie didn’t find a body this morning?” Samuel asked with a confident look in his eye.
Clearly they knew the story was true and were deliberately ignoring the point of his lecture.
He gave in.
“Ollie found remains in the northern section of Christian Lake’s property. Looks like they’ve been there for years. Maybe decades,” admitted Truman, keeping silent about the bullet hole and the money bags.
The men immediately turned to Ben, Truman forgotten. “Remember anyone who went missing over the years?” Royce eagerly asked the older officer, who stored most of Eagle’s Nest’s history in his brain.
Ben swallowed before answering. The seventysomething-year-old looked pleased to be recognized for his longtime-resident expertise. “Well now . . . old Don Ward vanished one day in the 1980s. Don’t know what happened. He lived alone, and one day his mailman went up to the house because his mailbox was overflowing. Never heard a word about what happened to him. Simply gone.” Ben looked at Truman. “Were the remains male?”
“Don’t know for sure. Odds look good.” How much of this will be repeated at the feed store tomorrow?
“If it’s female, it could be Harriet Zimmerman. College girl that disappeared while hiking on her summer break . . . I think that was somewhere in the nineties.” Ben rubbed his chin. “Those are the unsolved disappearances I can remember off the top of my head. There’re more. I’ll look into it.”