“I’m keeping my fingers crossed we dodge this one.”
Spring wasn’t in a hurry, that was for certain. Starting in February they’d had the occasional bright, warm(ish) day like today, giving everyone hope that they’d seen the end of snow for this year, but despite the calendar saying it was spring, they hadn’t turned that corner yet. Snow wasn’t unheard of in April, and her day would be the same regardless of what the weather did; that didn’t stop her from feeling disgruntled.
“I’ll check in before I head home,” he said, which he always did anyway. He pulled the squad car into a parking slot, and Bo pulled out onto Hamrickville’s main street, which was named Broad instead of Main. Several people waved at her as she passed: Harold Patterson in the Broad Street Barbershop, Doris Brown as she entered the bakery she owned and operated, as well as Mayor Buddy Owenby, who was walking well now after having broken his ankle this past December while deer hunting. The mayor kept curtailed hours, too; his was a part-time job like hers, and he owned the small grocery store that served the town. Bo was fond of Mayor Buddy; he’d served four terms and was in large part responsible for keeping the little town as viable as it was. It had been his idea to turn over running the town as much as possible to the younger generation, thereby keeping them involved and, most of all, there. Hamrickville hadn’t seen a large drain of its younger citizens toward greener pastures.
As many people as waved to her, twice that many waved to Tricks. She knew who they were waving to because they yelled, “Tricks!” as the Jeep rolled by. It seemed as if everyone in town knew her pet. For her part, Tricks sat in the passenger seat with her tongue lolling out and a big, happy golden-retriever smile on her face. For all her diva ways, Tricks had the typical retriever nature, sunny, without a lick of dignity, and always ready to play.
Several miles out of town, Bo took a secondary road and drove a couple more miles before she reached her driveway. Her mailbox was on the opposite side of the road so she drove past the driveway, checked for any traffic either behind her or in front of her before swerving onto the right shoulder to give herself a wider turning axis, then left across both lanes of the road to pull onto the opposite shoulder just short of the mailbox. She’d performed that maneuver so often there was a crescent-shaped track worn out in the shoulder on both sides of the road.
The mailbox was set far enough off the pavement and the shoulder was wide enough that other vehicles had plenty of room to get past. And if anyone didn’t like it-well, tough shit; she was the chief of police, and even though she lived in the county instead of inside town limits, no one in the sheriff’s department was going to hassle her over something as mundane as how she collected her mail. She didn’t get a whole lot of perks with the job, but she’d gladly use the ones she did.
She put the transmission in park and got out, tugging hard on the door of the battered mailbox because it was slightly warped from being attacked by a couple of teenagers with a baseball bat. She pulled out the usual assortment of sales papers, flyers, a bill or two, and one thick oversized envelope that didn’t have a return address. Huh. Bo eyed the envelope, examining the postage-just the right amount, a post-office sticker rather than extra stamps-and the location and date. It had been mailed three days before from New York City.
Double huh. She didn’t know anyone in New York City-or state, for that matter.
Common sense told her a mail bomb would come in a box, not an envelope, even if she had any reason to be wary of a mail bomb, which she didn’t. Hamrickville wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime, or of anything else.
She flipped the envelope over and looked at the back. Blank. The envelope was a heavy cream-colored paper, about the size for a largish birthday card. And it was definitely addressed to her, using her formal name of Isabeau instead of just Bo.
It wasn’t her birthday. Nowhere close.
A pickup truck blew past with a toot-toot of the horn and a wave: Sam Higgins, school bus driver. She returned the wave, then curiosity got the better of her and she put the rest of the mail on the Jeep’s hood so she could open the envelope.
The card she extracted did indeed say Happy Birthday. In full, it said Happy Birthday to a Wonderful Sister. What the hell? She had a couple of half-brothers and/or -sisters whom she’d never met; she considered herself an only and liked it that way. It had to be a case of mistaken identity, but how many Isabeau Marans could there be? There was only one in Hamrickville, West Virginia, that was for certain.
She opened the card. Glued to the interior was a small photograph of someone she definitely recognized, because a shit turd was always recognizable as what he was even though it had been years since she’d seen him and with luck it would be many more, as in the-rest-of-her-life more.
Underneath the photo was written, “Hope you enjoy the present I sent. Take good care of it.” There was no signature, but she didn’t need one.
“You didn’t send me a present, you asshole!” she snarled at the photo. Even if he had, she’d have burned it.
As soon as she had that thought, a small yellowish flame flashed across the card. She yelped and dropped it; the whole thing turned black and dissipated into thin ash before she could even stomp on it. She stomped anyway, just for good measure. Just thinking about her asshole former stepbrother could make her temper flash almost like whatever chemical he’d used to treat the card. If that thing had dropped into her lap she could have been incinerated too-not that he’d have cared. He’d always thought crap like this was funny.
She didn’t know why she’d been so abandoned by good fortune that he’d get in contact with her now, after all these years-if a flash-burning card could be called “contact”-but he’d succeeded in putting her in a foul mood. She was so angry she stomped the ashes another couple of times.
Breathing hard, she looked down at the ashes. If she could have gotten her hands on him, she’d have tried to strangle him. He’d always had that effect on her. She’d had the same effect on him. It had been mutual hate at first sight when her mother had married his father, but thank God the union hadn’t lasted very long. If it had, she had no doubt that either she or Axel would now be in prison for murder. Well, that was the past, even if the jerk had for some ungodly reason thought sending her a booby-trapped birthday card was funny. How in hell had he known where she was, anyway? It wasn’t as if they’d kept in touch.
She grabbed the remainder of the mail and slammed into the Jeep. Tricks immediately sensed the change in her and gave her a quick, sympathetic lick on the hand as Bo refastened her seat belt. “Everything’s fine,” she said, rubbing behind Tricks’s left ear. And it was. The jerk’s lunatic card had made her mad, but it was just a card and she’d already indulged in a mini-temper tantrum. That was enough; he didn’t deserve the effort of more.
After checking for traffic-none-she pulled across the road to her driveway, which cut through a stretch of woods, curving up and away from the road; the house was a half mile away, perched on the flat top of a small rise and hidden from view from the road. She had no close neighbors; the nearest house was a mile back down the road toward town. The isolation of her home wasn’t ideal, but she hadn’t had any other option so she dealt with it. At least she had plenty of room for Tricks to romp and play, and that wasn’t a small thing.
It was a pleasant drive; she’d become accustomed to it and even enjoyed a sense of homecoming now. For a few years she’d resented having to live here, resented the havoc the housing crash had caused in her life and her plans, but after a while she’d become more philosophical about it. She had her own share of blame in the state of affairs, after all. If she’d taken others’ advice, she wouldn’t have been landed in the predicament of sinking all her funds in a house and then having the buyer walk away, leaving her broke with a house she didn’t want and couldn’t sell.