Alicia Scott - Partners In Crime

“Mayor? Call on line one,” the receptionist interrupted.

Hal grunted and took the call. He shook his head, said he’d get to it in a minute, sighed and hung up. “Incompetence,” he muttered. “Sheer incompetence.”

Jack studied Hal for a long time. Stone had gone still beside him. “Your meeting with Jo?” he asked quietly. Was the man so dense he could not see the significance of his own words?

“Jo? Oh, Josie Reynolds. You know Josie.” Hal headed toward the door. Jack and Stone didn’t stop him.

Stone waited until the acting mayor was completely out of sight before speaking. “Josie Reynolds. Do you think…?”

“We interviewed her, right?” Jack was pawing through the notes. “She discovered the body. She called 911. The EMTs said she’d started CPR before they arrived.”

“I was the one who talked to her, I remember now. Ah, hell, I don’t know, Stryker. She was pretty broken up, you could tell she and Olivia had been close. I heard Olivia had been the one to give Josie the job as treasurer. She took Josie under her wing, made her feel at home.” Stone contemplated his thoughts. “You’ve met her, right? I’ve seen her around, at the usual places, but I’d never really spoken to her before Olivia’s death.” He grinned abruptly. “Odd, you know, for a man like me not to approach a beautiful lady. But…well, she seems to keep to herself. As much as it wounds me to admit it, I’m not sure she would have considered me her type.”

Jack nodded. He had been introduced to Josie Reynolds two years ago when she’d taken the job as town treasurer, and she wasn’t the kind of woman a man forgot. Five foot six with a cloud of blond hair and frank blue eyes, she looked more like a beauty queen than a CPA. By all accounts, however, she was good. Olivia had described her as spirited, passionate, and committed. She got her job done. That was about all Stryker knew. He had always made it a point to stay clear of Josie Reynolds, though he could never say why. And not once in the past two years, in all the times their paths had crossed, had she ever approached him. Without saying a word, they seemed to have settled upon a policy of mutually-agreed avoidances. He kept to his side of the room. She kept to hers.

Stone rose to his feet. “Hungry? I think they can hear my stomach in Wichita by now.”

Jack automatically shook his head.

Stone knew better. “Hey, Straight Arrow, when was the last time you ate?”

“I’m fine.”

“If you’re fine then I’m ugly—and we both know I’m not ugly. I’ve seen that look in your eye, Jack. You’re in bulldog mode and have been for weeks. How many of those files are you bringin’ home at night? How many times are you gonna pore over them with your face scrunched up? You get any more lines in your forehead and people will mistake you for a road map.”

“You’re not exactly lolling around popping bonbons.”

“Nope. But I got smart. I married Jessie.” Stone beamed, Jack rolled his eyes. Stone was so gaga over his new wife, it made a man ill. Jack honestly wished Stone the best and he liked Jessie, but having been married once before himself, he never intended on having Sucker stamped on his forehead again.

“Go meet Jessica for lunch,” Jack said sagely.

“Is that an order, boss man? You know I’d do anything for my partner.”

Jack just grunted.

“I’m telling you, Jack, you’re too intense.” Stone gathered up his sport coat. “Unwind a little, smell the roses. Take a beautiful woman out to dinner. It’ll put a skip in your step.”

“That’s what Grand Springs needs right now—skipping detectives.”

“Absolutely. I’ll be back in an hour. Feel free to solve the case while I’m gone.”

“I’ll do that.”

Stone waved, but Jack didn’t wave back. He had his nose buried in the files, looking for Josie Reynolds’s interview notes. Josie Reynolds. Jo. Josie.

Josie Reynolds whom he had always avoided. And yet he always knew exactly where she was in a crowded room. Stryker set down his pencil. No more reading. He would talk to her in person. And he would closely watch her eyes.

* * *

Josie Reynolds had never met Gabe Chouder, but she knew him. In the last three months it seemed she had met all the Gabe Chouders of the world, and now as he stood before her desk, she wondered if she would be able to help him any more than she’d helped the others.

Gabe owned a small dairy farm outside of Grand Springs. Two hundred and fifty-four dairy cows on a spread that had belonged to his family for three generations. Now most of those fields were under three feet of mud and silt. His grain silo was destroyed. The water-soaked straw and alfalfa bales had been hauled away before they spontaneously combusted and burned down the little Gabe had left.

When the flood warnings had been issued, Gabe and his son had rounded up the cows, while his two daughters had tended the calves. The cows had been lined up in the milking parlor, which was set on higher ground. He’d done this before, he told Josie, and it had always worked. Grand Springs’s valley didn’t flood much or deeply. The rivers in his low-lying land overran some springs when the snow thawed too fast. Maybe he’d get a foot or two of water.

But the storm had hit; the skies opened up and poured into swollen rivers. Banks had given way. Mountainsides already at saturation point hadn’t been able to take any more. In a span of thirty-six hours, Mother Nature had burst and Gabe Chouder’s life would never be the same.

The water had risen three feet in a matter of hours. He and his son had raised the calves into the hayloft, but below, their cows had bawled in terror as lightning filled the sky and the wind rattled the roof.

Gabe’s wife and daughters were evacuated before the next heavy water hit, but Gabe and his son stayed in the milking parlor. They watched the water rise—the cold, black water which began to freeze their cows’ lungs. Exposure set in. Then shock. The fat, complacent, gentle dairy cows that had never been bred to withstand harsh conditions, began to succumb one by one—the barn filled with their last scared moans.

Gabe wasn’t an emotional man. He’d lived on farms all his life, he understood nature was cruel. He’d accepted it all. Now, however, he contemplated taking a shotgun and shooting every one of his cows so they wouldn’t have to suffer the rising water. So the bawling would go away.

But Gabe didn’t. Because some cows remained standing. Even as the water grew colder, the night darker, they stood. Their companions sunk around them, but some survival instinct, some need deeper than definition, kept them on their feet. If they could try, he had to let them.

He lost one hundred and twenty-six cows that night.

The rest endured. When the water finally receded, they sank into the mud, their legs shaking too hard to support them. And he and his son rubbed them down as if they were champion athletes who’d just brought home the gold.

He had one hundred cows left and twenty-eight calves. His house was ruined, his fields wouldn’t be fit for at least a year. His tractor worked, but the pumps in his milking parlor had to be replaced.

“I got straw,” he told Josie now, “from the last batch donated from Oregon. But there wasn’t much alfalfa given out. Sly’s letting me use one of his fields, but grass ain’t enough for dairy. I’m gonna need forty…fifty thousand in feed to get through the winter.”

“Did you go to the fairgrounds and talk to FEMA?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He twisted his baseball cap nervously. “There’s all these agent people sitting around the Exhibition Hall. You gotta find the one right agency for your needs, they told me. I filled out the paperwork, but no one knew what to do with me. They asked me what I made gross—”