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“I know what you mean,” she said. “Civilians have a hard time understanding the demands of the job, much less the stress it puts on us or the sense of family it creates.”
“We share things outsiders can’t understand,” he agreed. He made a face. “I could never talk to Dana about any of it. She said it wasn’t something she wanted to hear about. She thought it was stupid to carry a gun, and she didn’t like having me called out all hours on cases. She said I should hang the badge at the door and forget it until the next morning.”
“That would work well when a man’s beating his wife and child to death and you get called to save them.”
“I know, right?” He sipped coffee. “I guess I knew it wouldn’t work out. But I was crazy about her.”
“You can’t force yourself to love the right people.” She laughed.
“Have you ever been in love?” he asked.
“No,” she lied. “And I hope that I never am. My parents seemed to love each other, but they couldn’t live together. I don’t want to end up like they did.”
“My parents were happily married for fifty years,” he recalled fondly. “They died together in a wreck—went over the guardrail up in the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming during a rain storm. Neither one of them could have lived long without the other,” he added. “They were like two halves of a whole.”
“Do you have siblings?” she wondered.
He shook his head. “I was an only child. I’d just started as a deputy with the sheriff’s department when they died. Hard, losing both of them at once, though.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Your mother died some time back, didn’t she?”
She nodded. “It was just the two of us. We had disagreements, but we loved each other. It was hard. But losing Dad . . .” She stopped and sipped coffee, to keep from crying. “It gets easier, as time passes.”
“It does.”
Mike Markson came in the door a minute later and stopped by their table to say hello.
“How are you coming on the stolen lamp case?” he asked Meadow.
“Slowly,” she said with a smile. “But it’s early days yet.”
“Gil tracked the pipe organ back east,” Jeff told him. “It was sold through an antique dealer in Kansas City.”
“Really?” Mike asked. “Who was it? I know some dealers there . . .”
“You wouldn’t know this one, Mike,” Jeff said as he put down his coffee cup. “He’s buried up in Billings.”
“Excuse me?”
“A dead guy sold the pipe organ to the dealer in Kansas City,” Jeff said with twinkling eyes. “Amazing, how he managed that.”
Mike whistled. “Good heavens!”
“Anyway, the lead went cold after that.”
Mike shook his head. “Old man Halstead was from Billings, you know,” he mentioned. “He had people up there. In fact, his aunt died just recently.”
“Old man Halstead?” Meadow wondered.
“Owned the pipe organ that was stolen,” Mike told her. “In fact, I had Gary drive him up there for the funeral so he could talk to the antique dealer he bought the organ from. He hoped the man might remember someone asking about it, you know, about who bought it. Someone with an unusual interest in it.”
“Was there such a person?” Meadow asked.
“In fact, there was,” Mike told her. “The dealer had to turn down a man who offered him a small fortune, because he’d promised it to Halstead.”
“I’d love to talk to that dealer,” Jeff said. “I’ll send Gil up to see him, if you can provide us with a name and telephone number.”
