AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And?”
“There are loose ends.”
Once more he went quiet. I realized he was trying to interrogate me, using the silences to entice me to say something. I wondered if he’d picked that up off some TV show or a “How To Be Police” YouTube video.
“Yeah,” I agreed, “there are. We need to talk to Mickey Pitts about it.”
Bartlett shook his head. “He had surgery yesterday. He’s back under to recuperate. He’ll be out of it for a little while.”
I was way behind on Mickey Pitts, and I saw the long hand of Senator Wilcox in that since she had the pull with the prison to keep me out of the loop.
Bartlett reached toward the dash. “Can I try the lights?”
I closed my eyes briefly. “Sure.”
He flipped them on, the red and blue on top of the dash flickering their lights on the hood along with those on the front bumper next to my winch. A motorist coming the other way pulled off the road. Bartlett reached for the siren switch.
“No.”
Bartlett reluctantly pulled his hand back. “Do you think I can get my car rigged like this?”
I shrugged. “You’re the chief.” I tried to imagine Bartlett in his PT Cruiser trying to chase down a bad guy, lights ablaze. A possibility if the crook was in a wheelchair.
“How do I go about it?” he asked.
“Will Porter does all the work on our vehicles,” I said, referring to Cash’s younger brother and the owner, along with his sister Patsy, of Porter’s Garage and Restoration.
It seemed Bartlett’s mind was all over the place. “Did Mayor O’Toole really tell George not to bring in the county for Lavender Porter?”
It always sounded strange when he called her that. I would always think of her as Lavender Blue. Of course, I’d always visualize her lying in a pool of blood, rather than as the beautiful woman she’d been. I turned off the lights. “Yes. But that came from the senator. What did she want this morning? It’s pretty early to come down from Cincinnati.”
“Oh, she spent the night in town,” Bartlett said.
That was new. “Where?”
“One of those old Victorians on the levee overlooking the river,” Bartlett said. “It’s an Airbnb. Pretty nice from the photos online.”
That explained why she’d had a crack-of-dawn meeting with O’Toole, Bartlett, and Cash to pass on the news about Pitts. Senator Wilcox was much too interested in Burney. Of course, it was an open secret that she was one of the backers of Vermillion Inc. She’d been the one who’d pushed through the permits for the dock and the ferry. I also wondered if Cash had spent the night with her. From where I’d pulled them over, they’d hit the mayor first, then gone to the development and had been on their way out of town.
Traffic heading south was heavier than usual. The workers from Cincinnati who went home on the weekends were returning to their job sites. I followed them into the new three-hundred-and-sixty-acre development that spread out on both sides of Route 52. After two years of starts and stops, it was finally proceeding at full speed. Several houses had been finished in the past month and dozens more were in various stages. The core, where the stores and, it seemed, the new municipal building were going to be, was a blank spot for now.
Some of the workers from Cincinnati used the few finished houses during the week to bunk in, saving the commute, and that had been causing some problems with the locals. It was getting to the point that I was closing out JB’s, the town’s favorite bar, almost every night because somebody got drunk and picked an argument with somebody else and I had to talk them down.
A large sign proclaimed “River Vista” because “River View” was too common. The houses were built to code, which meant they were elevated to allow a five-hundred-year flood to wash through without hitting the living space. Two large barges with cranes were anchored next to the pilings, putting in the dock that would allow a direct commute via ferry to downtown Cincinnati, the key selling point of the venture.
Cash’s car wasn’t there, but there were two vehicles that caught my interest: a brand new Harley with a helmet on the seat that had an Indian chief’s headdress painted on both sides, and a powerful dirt bike I recognized: it had belonged to Mickey Pitts.
“Cash isn’t here,” I said.
“How do you know?” Bartlett asked.
“Intuition,” I said. “You’ll gain it with more experience.”
Bartlett gave me a doubting look. Whether about my having intuition or whether he’d get it was a toss-up.
The door to one of the trailers opened and Pete OneTree came out. He was older than me, sporting a thick beard with as much grey as dark in it. He wore jeans, a dark t-shirt, and a denim vest with the Iron Wolves’ colors on the back. A Marine Raiders patch was on the left chest along with a nametag that simply said PETE.
“Let’s say hello,” I said to Bartlett.
