He considered. The idea of anyone being able to walk in while he slept and was vulnerable chilled him. But was that any different than letting himself go to sleep with her still there? “Keep it.”
Only when she sighed did he realize she had been holding her breath waiting for his answer. “Helen also asked if you will please drive your car to work tomorrow, even if it isn’t raining, and park on her side of the drive when you come home. Why?”
“So a friend can use the garage.”
Her eyes widened. “A — Helen is — ”
“As entitled to her privacy as I’m sure she feels we are. So you can be reassured no one will hear about us from her just as I never look to see if I know her friends’ cars. Now, how do you rate the rest of the butts in the BPD?”
15
It rained again for his Monday shift. Maggie did not come over and the bed already felt empty without her.
Tuesday dawned with a clear blue sky, crisp autumn air, and leaves glowing incandescent yellow and red. Tuesday Baumen buried Diane and Jonah.
Garreth made himself wake up and attend the funerals. Not exactly ordered to, but the memo Danzig posted on Monday made his feelings clear.
I think it would be a mark of respect, and demonstration that this department’s regard for accident victims and their families goes beyond working those accidents, if as many officers as possible attend the Barnes and Wiltz services, in uniform. My family and I will be there.
So Garreth made sure he was, too…uniform crisp, gear belt polished. And went well fed to curb hunger amid all that blood scent. They held Jonah’s service in the morning. PD officers and their families sat in a block. Counting noses — Danzig, Lieutenant Kaufman, Nat, Maggie, Duncan — Garreth wondered who was minding the store besides Bill Pfannenstiel.
Reserve Officer Chuck George it appeared, who drove the patrol car leading the procession from the packed First Christian Church to Mount of Olives cemetery.
Diane’s service came in the afternoon, at the equally crowded St. Thomas More Catholic church…where a horse blanket covered with show ribbons, mostly blue or purple, draped the casket. Pfannenstiel replaced Duncan in the PD contingent, though Garreth spotted the woman and teenage girl who had attended Jonah’s funeral with Duncan — his sister and the niece who wanted to barrel race like Diane — elsewhere in the congregation. He sat next to Maggie. During the service, her hands and jaw clenched with the effort of keeping her composure. He put a hand over the near fist, and her hand turned to interlace fingers tightly with his. Beyond her, Garreth saw Martin Lebekov notice and smile.
Since the cemetery lay just across from the church, they had no vehicle procession. Everyone walked. Sterling-Weiss had a vintage buckboard waiting in front of the church, draped in black. It carried the casket, still covered by the horse blanket, across to the cemetery. Followed by a bay horse tacked in western saddle and bridle with cowboy boots turned backward in the stirrups like a military funeral, then the rest of the mourners. At the grave site, John and Anita Sterling folded the horse blanket and presented it to Diane’s parents like a flag.
Garreth did not see a dry eye in the house, including his.
Maggie had the bed unfolded when he reached home after his shift. Not for sex this time, but to cuddle against him and talk about the pain of losing her mother to breast cancer when Maggie was fifteen. Holding her, he thought of his father accusing him of burying himself here. There were, he reflected, far worse places to be buried.
16
Wednesday, their dead buried, the majority of Baumen began moving on. Halloween decorations disappeared from yards. Scott Dreiling resumed driving just short of violations and pushing his home curfew. The real flowers in the memorials on 282 wilted. Nat handed Garreth a memo from Danzig. The department was beginning to receive requests for the home security checks Garreth had volunteered to perform, so he needed to make appointments with the citizens whose names and addresses appeared on the bottom of the memo.
He groaned. Gaining access to Baumen homes seemed hardly worth the effort now, no longer than he was likely to be here, but…he better play his role to the end. With the sun setting about six-thirty now, late afternoon and early evening inspections should not be too uncomfortable.
Before going out on patrol, he called the citizens and made appointments for the next three days, then spent the rest of the week being invited into dwellings before going on duty, working his shift, riding herd on the now-normal Friday/Saturday cruises…and except for Saturday night, coming home to find Maggie waiting for him.
A Maggie who wanted to talk as much as have sex. Fine by him. Marti, too, had liked to talk. As then, he was content to listen, since it came without Judith’s implied You will be tested later. With Maggie he definitely preferred listening over, say, answering questions about Grandma Mikaelian. The trouble with lies was remembering what he said about her bogus death and Depression era boarding house.
While the apartment and bed felt lacking without Maggie, solitude did let him force himself to sleep so he could drag out for Maggie and Martin’s waffle and sausage feed in the morning. Arriving in dark glasses and his cowboy hat to fend off the bright autumn day, he found a crowd in their back yard similar to get-togethers at his parents’, except with fewer cops…just Nat and his family, Bill Pfannenstiel, and Sue Ann. Once Maggie handed him a plate of waffles and sausage and introduced him to everyone — Martin’s VFW buddies, fellow members of St. Thomas More, a gaggle of aunts and uncles, plus Pfannenstiel’s wife and a soft-spoken hulk and a female toddler who turned out to be Sue Ann’s husband and daughter — he further resisted daylight by sitting on the ground under a big cottonwood tree. There he cut the waffle and sausage into small bites and pretended to eat, while surreptitiously sneaking the pieces to four dogs who came with other guests but gravitated to him.
Looking around, it did not surprise him how many of the faces looked familiar from seeing them around town, nor that he had met two of the aunts without knowing their relationship to Maggie. He ran security checks at their houses on Friday. It would not have surprised him, given the town’s interlinking kinships, to find Anna here, too. He sat feeding the dogs and brooding about her. If only she were here, since he had been unable to arrange an encounter this week…not seen her in her yard nor out shopping on Thursday. With the weather appearing to bear out her prediction of an early, cold winter — temperatures crisp by day, dipping near freezing at night — he needed to know how that was affecting her thoughts about Acapulco.
Familiar blood and skin scents announced Maggie’s approach. She grinned. “Are all of us so overwhelming that you’re driven to a retreat with dogs?”
“No, I’m fine, just savoring the sausage. My compliments to your Uncle Leo.” He held up his fork with one of the last bites on it.
“Since that’s the case…” She brought more sausage.
To the dogs’ delight.
Settled against the tree and earth, he started to doze, when a boy’s voice roused him. “Blue doesn’t usually take to strangers.” One of Nat’s sons, staring at the Blue Heeler with its head on Garreth’s knee and along with the other dogs, mournfully eyeing the empty plate.
Yes, what was it with dogs and him. The thought prompted a joke reply. “It’s a kinship thing. He senses my secret identity as a werewolf.”
“Is that how you’re going to the wedding? I always thought weddings were boring but Dad says this one will be cool. Mark and I get to go trick and treating first and then wear our costumes to the wedding. I’m a Jedi.”
“I can’t go; I’m on duty.”