Behind her, a balding man in a Yankees tee shirt turned bright red, grabbed his female companion’s hand, and left his table without a tip. Liam sighed.
Desperate to change the subject, he said, “Hey, you’ll never guess what I found down at Miller’s Meadow. One of those fancy silver Airstream trailers. Belongs to a woman from California, some herbalist professor type name Barbara Yager.” He added cheerfully, “She even has a bit of a Russian accent. Maybe she’s a long-lost relative. She says people call her Baba.”
Belinda’s mother dropped her coffee cup, spilling milky brown liquid everywhere. Her face turned two shades paler than it had been, and Lucy clucked at her as she mopped at the table with an already sticky cloth.
Mariska insisted she was fine, but Liam could see her hands shake as she asked him, “This herbalist, was she an old woman? Ugly, with a long nose and bad teeth?”
He blinked. “No. Not at all. Her license said she was thirty-two, although she didn’t look nearly that old to me. Her nose might have been a little long, but her teeth were fine.”
Belinda laughed, a rusty sound. “You’re hardly an expert on women. I’m surprised you even noticed she had teeth.”
“Hey,” he said, pretending to be wounded. “I’m a professional lawman. I notice everything. And I know plenty about women.”
Belinda’s father came to Liam’s defense in his usual well-meaning but clumsy fashion. “Sure he does, honey. He was married, you know.”
An uncomfortable silence flattened the air around the table. Lucy cleared her throat and said, “I’ll go get that chicken for you, Sheriff,” and scuttled for the kitchen. Nobody mentioned Liam’s wife. Ex-wife. Whatever she was.
Melissa had left town two years ago, after spending the year before that trashing what was left of their marriage and her reputation. Shared tragedy should have brought them closer together. Instead, it had torn them to shreds and left nothing behind but dust and tears and a few pieces of stale popcorn from the circus she’d run away with.
Into the echoing chasm of their conversation, Mariska said hesitantly, “Are you sure the woman said her name was Baba?”
“Yes, pretty sure,” Liam answered, grateful. “It’s an odd nickname, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes it is.” Mariska stood up, tugging on her husband’s arm. “We should get going, Ivan. Those cows aren’t going to milk themselves, and we should let Belinda get back to work.” Her face had gone from pale to flushed, and she had a strange look about her; Liam hoped that the stress of the situation wasn’t making her ill. He stood up as the women rose from the table.
“Belinda, why don’t you walk us out to our car, dear?” Mariska said, still pulling at her baffled husband. “Sheriff, it was nice to see you.”
Ivan pushed away his hardly touched plate of meatloaf and stood up. “Are you going to be at the anti-fracking meeting later?” he asked Liam. “I know I should stay home, under the circumstances, but the issue is so important, I hate to miss it. If the land goes, what do we have left?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Ivanov,” Liam said. Hydrofracking was a hot-button issue in Clearwater County, with about half the folks believing the drilling process would destroy the environment and contaminate the water table, and the other half insisting that leasing land to the natural gas companies was the only thing that would bring in much-needed money during the recession.
Liam tried to stay out of anything even vaguely political, although he sure as hell wouldn’t want them drilling on his land. “I’ll make it if I can. I’m supposed to be off duty, but the last few meetings have been a little . . . unsettled . . . so I might come just to keep an eye on the hotheads and make sure no one gets too worked up.” At least this might be one instance where he could actually do the job he got paid for.
The old man held out one gnarled, arthritic hand for Liam to shake, making I’m coming, I’m coming noises at his wife. “Well, we really appreciate everything you are doing to try to find our malenkaya devotshka. You’re a good man.”
The three of them left, and Liam sat back down with a thud. Lucy put his lunch in front of him and he took a bite, but it tasted like sawdust mixed with bitter desperation.
How could Ivan thank him? He wasn’t doing anything. Nothing at all, except spinning his wheels and wasting the taxpayers’ money. What was worse, he knew in his gut that if he didn’t find any answers soon, another child would go missing. And there didn’t seem to be a damned thing he could do to stop it.
FOUR