Chuck Logan - Homefront

“Mrs. Klumpe, I’m Kit’s mother-”

The woman drew herself up, wary. “It’s not Klumpe, it’s Bodine, Cassie Bodine.”

“Well, I’m Nina Pryce. I didn’t take my husband’s name either. Although I did give him the option of taking mine.” Her hand was still outstretched.

Nina’s casual remark was just enough to skew the building tension.

Cassie’s face was pinched gorgeous, with nervous blue eyes. She transferred the blouse to her left hand and cautiously shook Nina’s hand.

“My husband tells me we owe you something,” Nina said, searching her memory for just what it was that Broker had said they owed by way of a peace offering.

Cassie swept her arm behind her and hauled Teddy out in plain view. Kit and Teddy looked up at their mothers for clues, then both stared at the floor.

“Actually,” Cassie said, her hand touching her throat and then her hair in a jumpy reflex. “Actually, Teddy…this is Teddy,” she said, dropping her hand, patting the boy briefly on the head.

“Hello, Teddy,” Nina said easily. “You got some shoulders on you, boy. I’ll bet you play-”

“Hockey,” Teddy said, his eyes shifting sideways.

“Hockey,” Nina repeated. Then she patiently looked back at Cassie.

Cassie said, “Well, it was his shirt, it got-”

“Blood on it,” Nina said, nodding, extemporizing. “Probably ruined it.”

“Well, yes, it did.”

“Ms. Bodine,” Nina said carefully, “we’ve had quite a talk with Kit about playing too rough, and we’d appreciate it if you let us replace Teddy’s shirt.” She glanced down the store. “I don’t suppose they have anything suitable here?”

Suddenly animated, Teddy tugged at Cassie’s sleeve. “Mom, they got those X-Men in the back.”

“There is a small kid’s section, but it’s on the pricey side,” Cassie said. Grinding her teeth, that jerky eye movement again.

“X-Men’s cool; right, Kit?” Nina flashed a warning to Kit, who was struggling to contain the mortification creeping up her neck and reddening her cheeks. “Let’s take a look.”

They followed Cassie and Teddy to the rack of specialty T-shirts. He selected a black one, boys’ extra-large.

Nina said, offhand, “Maybe you should get the red one-if you get skinned up playing hockey, won’t show as much.”

Cassie blinked, not sure if there was a discreet stinger in the remark. Teddy stuck with the black. They walked back up to the sales counter, and Nina explained to the clerk that she was starting a tab. The clerk removed the price tag, set it aside, then folded the shirt and put it in a bag.

Nina shook hands with Cassie a second time, saying earnestly, “We’re real sorry about what happened. Let’s hope things work out for the best.”

Cassie shrugged, eyes and facial muscles flitting. Not entirely certain what had happened here. “We’ll see…how it goes,” she said. And they left it at that.

As Cassie and her son walked from the store, Kit elbowed her mother, “Mom, I am so embarrassed . He’s a bully, and his mom is mean. She was yelling for his dad to hurt my dad in front of the school…”

“Calm down. You’ll learn that sometimes you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Kit said.

“It’s a cliche. Sometimes when you deal with dumb people, it helps to say dumb things. That’s a cliche.” Nina brightened, turned Kit by the shoulders, and pointed her into the store. “Now, let’s buy some frivolous stuff.”

“I don’t know what that means either.”

“Fun. It means fun,” Nina said.

Nina and Kit returned to Griffin’s house with their new hairdos and the backseat of the Tundra stuffed with shopping bags. They collected Broker and bumped away down the rutted driveway.

Griffin showered, shaved, then started pacing his house, smoked one cigarette, then another; made another pot of coffee. Antsy. The thing was building up momentum. He reined himself in. Wait on J. T.’s call. If the check comes up empty, forget it. But just in case, he laid out his pack, unfolded a county map, and studied the solid green bulge where the Washichu State Forest dipped into Glacier County. Traced County 12 where it entered the green and petered out into a secondary gravel road…

Where Gator lived.

He threw on his jacket and went back out on the deck with the cordless phone, to enjoy the soft afternoon. As he drank his fresh coffee, he smoked and watched the clouds slowly drift together over the northwest horizon. Like the gathering clouds, pieces of a plan scudded in his mind. Simple, organic: a variation on a poetic justice theme that Gator Bodine himself had scripted.

Okay. Don’t go jumping to conclusions…

Finally, the phone rang.

Griffin picked it up, thumbed the power button. “Hello.”

“Harry, it’s J. T.; I got a read on the license plate and talked to some people. You, ah, gonna tell me what this is about? Like, does it involve our friend?”

“Not directly. Fact is, they were all three just here, looking like Ozzie and Harriet; you ask me, they’re getting close to packing up and coming home.”

“Yeah?” J. T. said, waiting.

Griffin opted to be straight with J. T., up to a point. “Look, you been up here, the sheriff is spread kind of thin.”

“Uh-huh. And you help out, is that it. The Community Watch.” More waiting.

“Okay. I think we got a guy way back in the woods cooking meth. I come up with a license on a silver-gray Pontiac. This mystery lady visits him-”

“Bingo,” J. T. said, his voice on surer ground. “Sheryl Marie Mott. Caucasian female, thirty-six, goes five feet eight, one-thirty pounds, dark hair, blue eyes. Drives a 2001 Pontiac Grand Am GT. And Harry-watch the cowboy shit. She’s associated with the OMG motorcycle gang, some real bad-news bikers.”

“She got a record?”

“Nothing that resulted in convictions. She was looked at a few years back on suspicion of smuggling dope into the prison. Nothing that would stick. And dig this. Under identifying marks on her sheet, it says ‘red Harley wings tattooed under her belly button hip to hip.’”

Griffin chuckled, “Talk about getting your red wings, huh?”

“There it is. And to answer your question, to quote my unimpeachable source; she’s the perfect chick, strictly likes to fuck and cook. Cook meth, that is.”

“Thanks, J. T. Now when I talk to Sheriff Nygard I got a little more to go on than just my overactive imagination.”

“I can make some more calls-BCA’s got a flying meth squad could help out the sheriff-”

“I’ll let him know.”

After a pause, J. T. asked, “So they’re all right, huh?”

“Hey, when I saw her an hour ago she just came from getting her hair done.”

“I guess. Question is, what’s she gonna do next? She goes back in the Army…,” J. T. said.

“It’ll kill Broker, she does that,” Griffin said.

“He won’t admit it, though; dumb fuck. Maybe nothing changes. Okay, look, Harry; you watch your ass, hear?”

“Lima Charley. Thanks again.”

Griffin switched off the phone, stood up, and stretched. Looking around, he thought, Not a bad day for a walk in the woods. But first he went in the house and sat at his desk computer, connected to the Net, and Googled “meth labs.” Got some book titles, clicked to Amazon.

Christ, lookit all this shit: Advanced Techniques of Clandestine Psychedelic amp; Amphetamine Manufacture, by Uncle Fester. The Construction and Operation of Clandestine Drug Laboratories; Second Edition, Revised amp; Expanded, by Jack B. Nimble.

After almost two hours clicking his way through the sites, he thought he had a basic fix on the kind of equipment to look for. Okay. Let’s do it.