"And how very much it's revered?"
"He might have some trouble getting his head around that. Back then, he most likely ordered it from the local general store, paid a dollar or two a week on it. Instruments were tools, like spades or frying pans. Something to help people get by."
We were out on the porch, me leaning against the wall, Val with feet hanging off the side. Bright white moon above. Insects beating away at screens and exposed skin.
Val said, "I'd never have come to this place in my life without you, you know."
"Right."
"I mean it."
I sat beside her. She took my hand.
"You have no idea how well you fit in here, do you? Or how many people love you?"
I knew she did, and the thought of losing her drove pitons through my heart. Climbers scrambled for purchase.
"This is not just something you're thinking about, then."
She shook her head.
"I'll miss you."
Leaning against me there in the moonlight, she asked, "Do I really need to say anything about that?"
No.
She stood. "I'm going to spend the last few days at the house shutting it down. Who knows, maybe someday I'll actually complete the restoration."
I saw her to the Volvo and returned to my vigil on the porch, soon became aware of a presence close by. The screen door banged gently shut behind her as J. T. stepped out.
"She told you, huh?"
"A heads-up would have been good."
"Val asked me not to say anything. I don't think she was sure, herself, right up till now. Amazing moon." She had a bottle of Corona and passed it to me. I took a swig. "Talked to my lieutenant today."
Hardly a surprise. The department was calling daily in its effort to lure her back. Demands had given way to entreaty, appeals to her loyalty, barely disguised bribes, promises of promotion.
"Be leaving soon, then?"
"Not exactly." She finished the beer and set the bottle on the floorboards. "You didn't want the sheriff's position, right?"
"Lonnie's job? No way."
"Good. Because I met with Mayor Sims today, and I took it."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Obviously it was my time for surprises. And for mixed feelings. Wounded at the thought of Val's departure, nonetheless I was pleased that she'd be doing what she most loved. The two emotions rode a teeter-totter, one rising, the other touching feet to earth-before they reversed.
And J. T.? As my boss? Well…
I gave some thought to how she, city-bred and a city-trained officer, would fit in here. But then I remembered the way she and Moira had sat together up in the hills and decided she'd do okay. It goes without saying how pleased I was that she'd be around.
I was considerably less pleased when Miss Emily chewed a hole in the screen above the sink and took her brood out through it.
Because I considered it a betrayal? Because it was yet another loss? Or simply because I would miss them?
I was standing in the kitchen, staring at the hole in the screen, when J. T. swung by to see if I wanted to grab some dinner. She had moved into a house on Mulberry, or, more precisely, into one room. The house had been empty a long time, and the rest would take a while. But the price was right. Her monthly rent was about what a couple in the city might spend on a good dinner out.
"They're wild animals, Dad, not pets. What, you expected her to leave a note?"
"You think she moved in just to be sure her offspring would be safe? Knowing all along she'd leave afterwards?"
"Somehow I doubt possums very often overplan things."
"I thought…" Shaking myself out of it: "I don't know what I thought."
"So. Dinner?"
"Not tonight. You mind?"
"Of course not."
Some time after she left, second bourbon slammed down and coffee brewing, the perfect response came to me: But we slept together, you know, Miss Emily and I.
Rooting through stacks of CDs and tapes on shelves in the front room, I found what I was looking for.
It had been one of those drawling, seemingly endless Sunday afternoons in May. We'd grilled chicken and burgers earlier and were dipping liberally, ad lib as Val kept insisting, into the cooler for beers, bolstering such excursions with chips, dip, carrot sticks, and potato salad scooped finger-style from the bowl. Eldon sprang open the case on his Gibson, Val went inside to get the Whyte Laydie, and they started playing. I'd recently had the cassette recorder out for something or another and set it up on the windowsill in the kitchen. Just about where Miss Emily and crew went through.
"Keep on the Sunny Side," "White House Blues," "Frankie and Albert." No matter that lyrics got scrambled, faked, or lost completely, the music kept its power.
"We should do this more often," Val said as they took a break. I'd left the recorder running.
"We should do this all the time." Eldon held up his jelly glass, half cranberry juice, half club soda, in salute. Only Val and I were dipping into the cooler.
Soon enough they were back at it.
"Banks of the Ohio," "Soldier's Joy," "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels."
I left the tape going and went back out onto the porch. Just days ago I'd been thinking how full the house was. Now suddenly everyone was gone. Even Miss Emily. Val and Eldon shifted into "Home on the Range," Eldon, playing slide on standard guitar, doing the best he could to approximate Bob Kaai's Hawaiian steel.
"What the hell is that you're listening to?" a voice said. "No wonder someone wants you dead, you pitiful fuck."
Diving forward, I kicked the legs out from under the chair and he, positioned behind with the steel-wire garrote not quite in place yet, went along, splayed across the chair's back. An awkward position. Before he had the chance to correct it, I pivoted over and had an arm locked around his neck, alert to any further sound or signs of intrusion. The garrote, piano wire with tape-wound wood handles, sat at porch's edge looking like a garden implement.
"Simple asphyxiation," Doc Oldham said an hour later.
I do remember pulling the arm in hard, asking if he was alone, getting no answer and asking again. Was he contract? Who sent him? No response to those questions either. Then the awareness of his body limp beneath me.
"Man obviously didn't care to carry on a conversation with you," Doc Oldham said, grabbing hold of the windowsill to pull himself erect with difficulty, tottering all the way up and tottering still once there. '"S that coffee I smell?"
"Used to be, anyway. Near dead as this guy by now's my guess."
"Hey, it's late at night and I'm a doctor. You think I'm so old I forgot my intern days? Bad burned coffee's diesel fuel for us- what I love most. Next to a healthy slug of bourbon."
Meanwhile J. T. waited, coming to the realization that further black-and-whites would not be barreling up, that there were no fingerprint people or crime lab investigators to call in, no watch commander to pass things off to. It was all on her.
She sat at the kitchen table. Doc nodded to her and said "Asphyxiation," poured his coffee and took the glass of bourbon I handed him.
"Tough first day," I said.
"Technically I haven't even started."
"Hope you had a good dinner at least."
"Smothered chicken special."
"Guess homemaking only goes so far."
"Give me a break, I'm still trying to find the kitchen. Speaking of which, this coffee really sucks."
"Don't pay her any mind, Turner," Doc Oldham said, helping himself to a second cup. "It's delicious."
"I'm assuming there's no identification," J. T. said.
"These guys don't exactly carry passports. There's better than a thousand dollars in a money clip in his left pants pocket, another thousand under a false insole in his shoe. A driver's license that looks like it was made yesterday."