“Why not today?”
“I couldn’t very well offer Tommy anything without speaking with you first, could I?” he said, turning and walking away.
“Dammit, Stone. Did you just set me up?” Paul called out as Jack reached the door.
He turned to the suspicious store owner. “No, Dempsey, I believe I just shored up your bottom line.” He looked over at the young couple now in a heated discussion over the snowmobile the guy obviously thought he needed. “If I might make a suggestion?” Jack said, drawing their attention. He nodded toward the workhorse Paul had talked him out of three weeks ago. “It might not look as sporty as this one, but it would make a great family sled. Take my word for it, there’s nothing like riding the trails together.”
That said, Jack walked out to his cruiser, whistling a happy tune. He climbed in, then checked his watch. He should leave for Greenville by two-thirty to be at the tech school when it let out at three. His mood heightened even more when he thought of Tom Cleary riding home in the police chief’s beautifully tricked-out cruiser.
Jack had no idea what the Cleary boy looked like, other than Ethel’s description of a gangly teenager with over-long blond hair and likely tattered clothes. Which meant he could be any one of the thirty or so young males pouring out of the tech school, as tattered appeared to be the newest thing. Since he’d arrived too late to go inside and have Tommy paged, Jack stopped his cruiser directly in front of the main entrance, hoping one of the boys would give himself away when he saw his latest prank in broad daylight.
One boy did suddenly stop dead in his tracks and gape, though most everyone—male and female—stopped and stared. But this particular boy seemed more disconcerted than awestruck. He looked around nervously, then suddenly bolted.
Jack muttered a curse. Of course he’d run. Didn’t they always? He climbed out of his cruiser and chased after him. “Tommy, wait!” he called to the kid. “I need your help.”
Apparently Tommy wasn’t the helpful sort, since he continued sprinting around the corner of the building, then zigzagged through a parking lot filled with every imaginable make and year of vehicle. The boy scaled the thirty-foot-high snowbank at the end of the lot in three easy strides, then disappeared down the other side. Jack followed at a flat-out run, acutely aware of the shouts of encouragement cheering Tommy on, as well as the small assembly of students joining the chase.
Jack also scaled the snowbank, crested the top, and saw his quarry disappear into the woods. “Big mistake, Tommy boy. You’re on my turf now.” He turned to look at the parade of students preparing to scramble up the snowbank behind him. “Sorry, people, this is as far as you go,” he told them.
He was answered by a barrage of questions, several muttered curses, and sounds of general disappointment.
“What’d Tommy do?”
“Are you going to arrest him?”
“Leave him alone, he didn’t do anything!”
“He’s getting away, cop. What’s the matter, you out of shape from eating too many doughnuts?”
“Do I look out of shape?” Jack asked with a laugh. “Come on people, go home. Tommy’s not in trouble, I just want to ask a favor of him. So please be upstanding citizens and go home and do your homework.”
He then turned and scrambled down the back side of the snowbank, stepped into the woods where Tommy had, and studied his tracks a few seconds before heading off at a forty-five degree angle to the left.
Within ten minutes Jack was standing behind a tree watching a huffing and puffing Tommy heading straight toward him. The boy kept looking over his shoulder and had started stumbling a bit in his panic, and when he looked forward Jack could see the hunted look in his eyes.
Jack stepped out directly in front of him. “Whoa, there,” he said, steadying the kid when he yelped in surprise and nearly fell. “Easy, Tommy. I just want to talk to you.”
“I didn’t do nothing,” the boy said, panting heavily.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say the improvements to my cruiser are nothing. They turned my poor little wannabe into a real truck.”
Tommy’s eyes widened in surprise, and he suddenly plopped down in the snow to catch his breath. “How come you ain’t winded?” he asked.
“I don’t even work up a sweat running through the woods.” Jack hunched down in front of him. “I have a proposition for you, Tom, and you only have tonight to think about it, because I want your answer tomorrow morning before you head off to school.”
“What sort of proposition?”
“I burned up the engine in my new snowmobile, and I want you to fix it.”
“You do? Me? Why?”
“Because you can. And if you get it purring like a kitten again, I can get you a mechanic’s job at Pine Creek PowerSports.”
Tommy snorted. “Dempsey won’t hire me. I already tried to get a job from him last summer. I offered to sweep floors and wash windows, but he wouldn’t even talk to me. He sure as hell won’t let me near any of his sleds or ATVs.”
“He will now, if you can get my snowmobile running smoothly. And if you do right by him all spring, you’ll have a full-time position once you graduate.”
A spark of interest blossomed in Tommy’s eyes. “Why would he hire me now, when he wouldn’t before?”
“Because I have more pull than you do. Being chief of police has its perks, and I’m not above using my badge to my advantage.”
“Then why are you doing this for me?”
“Because I can.”
He shook his head. “Why should I trust you?”
“Because you have only two choices. One way gets you a weekly paycheck and respectability; the other gets you room and board at the county jail. You’re not a juvenile anymore, Tom. If you get caught for your crimes, not matter how harmless they are, you’ll pay adult consequences. Then who’s going to help your mom deal with your brothers?”
“You’ve talked to my mom?” he squeaked.
“No. And I don’t intend to unless you force my hand.” Jack stood up. “This will stay just between us, providing the pranks stop. Be in my office at seven tomorrow morning with your answer.”
“Wait!” Tommy said, also standing up. “I need to know why you’re doing this!” He ran to catch up with Jack. “You don’t even know me.”
“Yes, I do,” Jack told him. “I was you, except my stunts weren’t nearly as creative.”
“What stunts?” Tommy asked, back to being suspicious.
“The Fart Gallery?” Jack said with a chuckle. “Let me ask you something, Tom,” he said, turning serious. “When you and your brothers were working on my cruiser, did you see anyone nosing around, three camps down from my house? Or did you see or hear anything unusual? A snowmobile on the lake, maybe a car driving away?”
Tommy stepped over a fallen log, then gave Jack a sidelong glance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered.
“This is important,” Jack told him, veering onto a game trail so the walking was easier. “Somebody broke into Megan MacKeage’s house, and there was a lot of damage.”
“It wasn’t us!” Tommy yelped.
“I know it wasn’t. But I sure could use your help finding out who it was.”
Tommy walked beside him in silence for several hundred yards. “We did see a car parked at the end of the camp road. It had New York plates on it, and the windows had iced up, so we knew it had only been sitting there a short while, because they wouldn’t have fogged up if it had been there all day. But we didn’t see anyone around or hear anything.”
“What make and model was it?” Jack asked, heading down the lane toward the school.
“Lincoln Town Car, 2006. White. It had a rental sticker on the bumper,” he told Jack, just as the school bus passed them. “Damn, I missed my bus.”
“Not a problem,” Jack said, giving him a friendly slap on the back. “I’ll give you a ride home in my cruiser.”
Chapter Twenty