The tension broke like it does on a close, humid day when it finally rains. Grant and I breathed easier. He even choked out a laugh, and he fumbled to turn the lantern back on, knocking it over in the process. The flashlight stopped moving.
“It’s Paula Holliday and Grant Sturgis,” I yelled. “We didn’t break in. Grant has the combination.” I blurted it all out in about five seconds, not wanting to get shot accidentally by one of Springfield’s newest cops.
The boy ranger, who’d stumbled upon me and Caroline Sturgis’s distraught husband, managed not to shoot either of us, although we did have a scary moment when one of Guido’s old wicker baskets fell on his head and he swung around, ready to pounce, as if he’d been attacked from behind.
After six months of classes and the same amount of time spent in field training, the rookie had wisely called for backup before entering the building. That was the second car, which had been on a routine patrol not far away. The two cops made another call once the four of us were assembled outside Guido’s nursery. Now that we were outside Guido Chiaramonte’s derelict nursery, I could read the name on the young cop’s badge, Officer J. Berry, the same cop I’d seen at Babe’s.
“My sergeant says there have been a number of break-ins in the area recently, and we should bring you down to the station house just in case.”
“Just in case what, Officer Berry?” I said. “There are some bulbs missing from Guido’s?”
“No need to get belligerent, ma’am.”
Oh, brother. Belligerent? There was that training manual word again. Humor was pointless. Sarcasm was pointless. We were dealing with RoboCop. Was there anything more disgustingly earnest than the newbie-in any field-who had all the rules and regulations freshly imprinted on his brain but none of the logic, experience, or common sense?
Berry and the other officer, a female named Carson, herded us into the backs of the two patrol cars. They had to be kidding. It would have been comical if it hadn’t been so annoying.
Carson drove Grant. I sat in silence, while Officer Berry, who I’d now started to think of as Juniper Berry, drove me through town to the courthouse/police station complex behind the hospital. The cops pulled into two of the reserved parking spots alongside the building and walked us around through the front entrance, swaggering as if they had just apprehended Bonnie and Clyde.
Grant and I were parked on a bench near a very large soda machine that managed to throw off quite a lot of cold air. Berry and Carson checked us in with a few words to the desk sergeant, then they exited through a back door. We sat there, freezing, for over an hour. I paced and read every flyer on the slatted bulletin board. I learned about National Lock Up Your Meds Day and what ingredients might be purchased if the buyer was planning to manufacture meth, which struck me as a mini-tutorial that you might not want to post in a public place that had a steady stream of criminal types-but, hey, what did I know?
A short, unhappy-looking woman came in and quietly asked for her thirteen-year-old daughter’s police report. Good grief, thirteen-year-olds with police reports? Whatever happened to the good old days when they just shoplifted?
Behind the Plexiglas barrier, another woman, who didn’t appear to be a cop but wore an SPD T-shirt, asked what the kid had done.
“She trashed my house.”
Tough love or mom from hell? Who can say? I silently thanked my own mother for never having had me arrested.
Just then a young guy barreled through the heavy front doors. He had dirty blond hair flattened over one eye in a style made popular by lead singers from bands I never listened to and only knew about from meanderings on YouTube. He wore a tan hooded jacket with lots of pockets, and his massive book bag bore the logo from the Springfield Bulletin. Grant instinctively looked down, and I pretended to be mesmerized by the age-progressive images of some kids missing since 1994.
“Hey, Sarge. Got anything for me?” the guy said. He looked at us briefly and must have dismissed us as “marital dispute.” Not interesting unless one spouse was dead or maimed, hopefully in a colorful way. He ignored us.
Behind the civilian employee, a man I took to be the desk sergeant shook his head and the young man spun on his heel and left before the heavy doors had fully closed. That was a break.
In the space of thirty minutes I’d eaten a very stale package of peanut butter and cheese crackers and downed three bottles of water from the station’s soda machine. If they didn’t see us soon I’d be moving on to the corn chips. I’d had enough. I approached the desk sergeant.
“Excuse me, Officer.”
He pretended I wasn’t there for at least two minutes, something I remembered from snooty hostesses in restaurants who sometimes mistook rudeness for exclusivity. But the Springfield police department headquarters was not a velvet-rope joint. There, the tactic might have been used intentionally to make people feel powerless. Which it did.
Not famous for my patience, I tapped my toes, I jiggled the keys in my pocket, I sighed heavily, I turned around to look at Sturgis and made a twisted, eyes-crossed face. Finally the cop acknowledged my presence.
“It’s sergeant,” he said, tapping the nameplate on the counter with his pencil. “Sergeant Frank Stamos.”
“Right. Sergeant Stamos. We’ve been here for a pretty long time. Are we being charged with something? Because, if not, I’d like to go home. And I’m sure my friend here feels the same way.” I waited for Grant to back me up, but he just sat there, forearms on his knees, staring at his shoes.
Stamos looked at me as if everyone he met when he was behind that glass said the same thing: I want to go home. And he answered the same way. “Just be patient, ma’am. Have a seat and the investigating officer should be here any minute.”
“Investigating what? Two people talking? A business deal?” I was getting worked up. Not a good thing under the circumstances. I’d already been borderline belligerent with the first cop.
Grant rescued me. He came to the desk and without saying a word, clamped a hand on my elbow, and led me back to the wooden bench like a child who’d strayed too far in the playground. The only thing missing was one of those kid leashes that have come back into fashion. Stamos left the counter and went back to shuffling the papers on his desk.
“Word to the wise,” Grant said softly. “Don’t protest anything in a police station or in an airport. You should have seen me here last week. I pulled a Howard Dean. Everything I said was true, but I came off looking and sounding like a crazy man.”
“C’mon,” I whispered. “This is Connecticut, not Iraq.” Then I realized that to Grant, it probably did feel like Iraq. Or hell. His wife had been arrested, his children sent away for their own good, and he couldn’t get anyone to help him. Even me, who was supposed to be his wife’s friend.
From the back of the station house, two hospital-style doors swung open and Juniper Berry entered the waiting area with Mike O’Malley.
“I might have known,” I said, jumping up. “What’s going on here? Are you guys having a slow night at the office, or is this the quaint local way of asking for a date?”
O’Malley appeared puzzled and bemused at the same time.
“If I ever do ask you for a date, Ms. Holliday, I don’t think I’ll send a patrol car to pick you up. I have my own wheels.”
Crap, had I really said that out loud? I felt like a prize idiot.
“Mr. Sturgis, you’re free to go with our apologies,” he said. “Officer Berry was acting appropriately and entirely within the law bringing you both in until someone from Rhodes Realty could confirm that you were authorized to be on the Chiaramonte property. Which they just did.”