He pulled into the parking lot of the sheriff’s department, so relieved to be back that the long, narrow building actually looked good to him, faded red bricks, straggling shrubbery, dirty windows, and all. The summer heat radiated up off the concrete sidewalk, and the few weeds that were attempting to work their way through the cracks looked depressed and wilted.
Kind of like he felt after spending over an hour standing in a field of reeking cow patties, trying to convince Stu Philips that his neighbor Henry hadn’t deliberately pulled down the fence between their farms so his heifers could eat the crops on the other side. The two men had finally stopped yelling long enough for him to point out that said cows were now halfway down the hill, leaving trampled rows of young corn as evidence of their passage. When he left, both the cows and farmers had been headed for home, none the worse for their adventures. He wished he could say the same for his boots.
The cooler air inside the station was like a melody written in the key of relief. He nodded at a couple of deputies sitting at their desks in the outer room, ignoring the wrinkled noses and grimaces that followed in his wake. He’d come in smelling like worse things than manure; they’d live. The ancient AC units wheezing within the frames of windows with peeling white paint would eventually clear the air.
His secretary, Molly, trailed him into his office, her low heels tapping on the beige linoleum floor. “Nice aftershave, boss,” she said, waving a sheaf of colored papers in front of her nose. “Something new you’re trying out?” The message memos were color coded in various shades to indicate urgency, and Liam noted an unusual number of oranges and reds in the midst of the usual yellows. It was a hell of a stack too.
“I’ve only been gone for two hours,” he complained. “How many problems could possibly come up during that time that somebody else couldn’t handle?”
Molly’s normally placid face pinched with worry. “Almost everyone else is already out dealing with other things. Sorry, Sheriff. It’s been like a zoo. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since I got here.”
Liam gave her an apologetic smile. It wasn’t her fault the sudden summer heat wave was making everyone cranky. “Hey, at least this zoo doesn’t come with livestock.” He pointed at his boots, which still had manure embedded in every nook and cranny, despite his efforts to wipe them off. “Go ahead, hit me.”
Molly looked over the top of her glasses at the first note, held at slightly less than arm’s length. She’d turned forty the year before, but was still resisting the bifocals she clearly needed. One strand of brown hair had slipped out of her usually tidy bun, and while she was as calm and pleasant as always, something about the set of her shoulders told Liam she hadn’t had an easy morning either.
“Roy Smith called,” she said, reading the yellow note written in her precise cursive hand. “He says that something savaged three of his lambs—either a wolf, or some kind of wolf-dog hybrid. He wants you to look into it.”
Liam rolled his eyes. “Call him back and tell him I am neither the game warden nor the animal control officer. Next?”
This note was on orange paper. “Clementine Foster called because someone poisoned her well. She helpfully provided a list of suspects, most of them kids she had in last year’s math class.” Molly tucked that one behind the rest of the batch, and read off the one after it. “Lester Haney wants you to investigate the vandalism on his farm. Says someone is sneaking around at night letting all the air out of the tractor tires, stealing plastic parts off the equipment, and hiding half the tools.”
“Just the plastic parts?” Liam thought that sounded odd. “Maybe it’s teenagers, doing it on some kind of a dare?” Molly gave that theory a dubious look, which he tended to agree with. “Well, tell him I’ll get out there when I can, but in the meanwhile, maybe he should tie his dogs outside at night for a bit.” He took a deep breath, bracing himself as he looked at the size of the stack still remaining. “What else ya got?”
She flipped through them rapidly, finishing up with, “Sherwood Latham wants you to find out who is threatening his migrant workers; suddenly they’re packing up their families and leaving town in droves. He says if you don’t get to the bottom of it, the crops are going to rot in the fields.”
Oh, for the love of Pete. “How am I supposed to know why the migrant workers are leaving? Maybe they got a better offer from someplace else. What the heck is going on around here, anyway? Has everyone lost their minds?”