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“Do you always rush toward trouble?” she called after him as he charged out the door.
“Part of the job,” he called back. “Put it in the ground rules, cause that ain’t changing.”
Downstairs, he found a crew of volunteer firemen clustered around the hearth while guests crowded nearby, craning their necks to see what was going on.
Since he was a full head taller than most of them, he could see clearly that the firefighters were trying to corner some kind of creature that had gotten into the lobby. The furry thing zipped through the legs of one of the firefighters and scurried behind a display of pine boughs arranged in an urn.
One of the guests shrieked. “What is it?”
“No need for alarm,” said the firefighter. “It’s just a raccoon.”
“Do they bite?”
“Only if threatened. Everyone stay back. We got this.”
Granger scanned the terrain of the foyer, analyzing it in terms of getaway routes and sight lines, pinch points and threat assessments. Quietly, he sidestepped his way around the edge of the crowd and plastered himself against the far wall. There was a bathroom back there, which he thought was likely how the animal had gotten in. He slid off the coat he’d grabbed on his way down to the lobby and waited.
Sure enough, after more darts and feints and shrieks and dodges, the raccoon sped toward Granger like a fur ball on acid. As soon as it reached him, he dropped his coat on top of it and pounced. He wrapped the wool around the squirming creature tightly enough so there was no way it could use its teeth on him. Wrestling the armful of angry raccoon, he strode through the crowd and pushed open the door with his foot.
He released the squirming animal into the snow. Within seconds, it was gone.
A firefighter ran up behind him. “Nicely done. You’re lucky you didn’t get bitten.”
“No chance of that.” Granger shook out his coat and brushed off a few bristly raccoon hairs.
“I’m Jason Mosedale, one of the volunteer firefighters here in town.” He offered his hand, clearly waiting for a return introduction.
Reluctantly, Granger obliged. “Granger. I’m a guest here.”
When he didn’t add anything further, Jason said, “Well, thanks again. Even though you showed up our entire department, at least the problem got solved.” He grinned to show he wasn’t seriously annoyed. He had a light-hearted, friendly manner about him that made him impossible to dislike.
Granger wondered what that would be like. Most people’s first reaction to him was wariness. “Right place, right time, what can I say?”
“No one’s in the right place at the right time unless they’re prepared.”
Solid point.
Granger shrugged and glanced back inside the inn. So many people were still milling around in the lobby that he decided he should wait until later to return. He sent Bliss a text telling her that everything was fine, and he was going for a walk.
Then he headed down the street toward the Blue Drake Club, where Alvin Carter served up his burgers to a soundtrack of blues.
But a meeting with Alvin still wasn’t in the cards. When he was a block away from the club, he happened to witness a federal crime.
Granted, most people probably didn’t know it was a federal crime, but that kind of thing was his job. So when he spotted the kid using a spray can to write an “N” on the wall of the Blue Drake, he wasted no time in clapping a hand on the boy’s back.
“If you were about to write what I think you were about to write, that’s a federal hate crime punishable by fines and prison time.”
The kid tossed aside the spray can as if it had nothing to do with him. “I…I wasn’t…how do you know…I was going to write Nerf ball.”
“Nerf ball?” Granger glared down at him. “Tell it to the cops, maybe they’ll believe you.”
“It’s true! My friend dared me. That’s all I was going to write, I swear. I’d never write the N word. My mom would ground me forever if I did. She’s on the board of aldermen. Please don’t tell her.”
Granger heard the ring of sincerity in the kid’s voice, but that kind of thing could be deceiving. “Like I said, I’ll let you sort it out with the cops. Where’s the police station?”
“We don’t have a police station.” For the first time, the boy perked up. “Just the fire department and the sheriff’s office two towns away.”
What kind of town didn’t even have a police station?
