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Authors: Melanie Jackson
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something they would understand. “The sheriff…was closest.” This wasn’t as lame an excuse as it might appear. Molly and Dell lived deep in a ravine on the other side of town, at the end of an unpaved, unlighted road. Given the weather last night, only a madman would have been up for a slog through the dark and mud.
At last I got a nod of understanding, but no comment. This annoyed me. I was looking for answers and getting silence instead. Why couldn’t they cooperate and just let the clues come tumbling out of their mouths so I could solve this case and go home where the air was clean?
“Did Irv have any family?” I asked. It seemed a natural question. When someone died you were supposed to contact their kin. “Is there someone we should call?”
“There’s a nephew, I think,” Molly said at last, after she and Dell had exchanged a look. “Gordon or Jordon. But I’m not sure where he is. Last I heard he was living in Lodi…or maybe it was Fresno.”
Great. I finally had a lead: Gordon or Jordon, who might still be living in Lodi. Or Fresno. There would only be…what, hundreds—thousands—of names to sort through?
Or maybe I would kindly tell the sheriff about this and make him look into it. After all, he’d asked me about it the night before. And this would give me an excuse to talk to him and find out why he was keeping Irv’s death so quiet.
I found that I was looking forward to seeing the sheriff again.
C HAPTER F IVE
A cat is a lion in a jungle of small bushes .
— Indian saying
Special elections were coming in June and our local political scene is surprisingly byzantine, so, bad weather or not, Mayor Nolan Vickers was out pressing flesh and kissing bundled-up babies. Our mayor is impressive in his own way. He has a weight lifter’s body, a too-pink shiny face and a lot of teeth he purchased after he sold off the family demolition, truck rental, and self-defense businesses. He always makes me think of that line from Shakespeare about how a man can smile and smile but still be a villain. Not that Nolan was a villain exactly, but he had a black belt in local politics, flexible morals, only a moderate IQ and a long memory for slights, so it didn’t do to cross him unless the cause was important. Some people liked this—many of them women who found him attractive and strong, a happenstance I have always construed as proof that God has a bent sense of humor. I think there is also probably a master plan for Nolan that holds a third divorce, hypertension and at least one heart attack.
He had supposedly been a friend of Cal’s when theywere on the city council. Then Cal hadn’t agreed with him about blocking construction of a skate park for kids, then about closing the county hospital, and things changed after that. Cal was suddenly labeled as a knee-jerk liberal and Nolan worked hard to get rid of him.
Nolan failed the first time. Cal had good friends who forgave him his political leanings since it was for the children.
Our town used to be staunchly Republican, but the war in Iraq poured some political Visine over the county and a few Democrats managed to get into office, where they worked uneasily. Not everyone went true blue, though. In fact, few did. At heart this town still belongs to the Grand Old Party. The county is an odd mix, though, and that’s where things get tricky. Many of the smog-eating refugees from Silicon Valley were already Green, and others outside the mainstream joined them as the evidence proving global warming mounted. Which meant we had lovely organic produce at our farmers’ markets, a growing Green Party that actually hung up posters at election time (printed on recycled biodegradable paper), and fewer liberal votes to back our few brave Democratic candidates. This meant that those who were blue and wanted to stay in office had to be fiscally responsible in our conservative town. The skate park matter was finessed by getting everything donated by local
At last I got a nod of understanding, but no comment. This annoyed me. I was looking for answers and getting silence instead. Why couldn’t they cooperate and just let the clues come tumbling out of their mouths so I could solve this case and go home where the air was clean?
“Did Irv have any family?” I asked. It seemed a natural question. When someone died you were supposed to contact their kin. “Is there someone we should call?”
“There’s a nephew, I think,” Molly said at last, after she and Dell had exchanged a look. “Gordon or Jordon. But I’m not sure where he is. Last I heard he was living in Lodi…or maybe it was Fresno.”
Great. I finally had a lead: Gordon or Jordon, who might still be living in Lodi. Or Fresno. There would only be…what, hundreds—thousands—of names to sort through?
Or maybe I would kindly tell the sheriff about this and make him look into it. After all, he’d asked me about it the night before. And this would give me an excuse to talk to him and find out why he was keeping Irv’s death so quiet.
I found that I was looking forward to seeing the sheriff again.
C HAPTER F IVE
A cat is a lion in a jungle of small bushes .
— Indian saying
Special elections were coming in June and our local political scene is surprisingly byzantine, so, bad weather or not, Mayor Nolan Vickers was out pressing flesh and kissing bundled-up babies. Our mayor is impressive in his own way. He has a weight lifter’s body, a too-pink shiny face and a lot of teeth he purchased after he sold off the family demolition, truck rental, and self-defense businesses. He always makes me think of that line from Shakespeare about how a man can smile and smile but still be a villain. Not that Nolan was a villain exactly, but he had a black belt in local politics, flexible morals, only a moderate IQ and a long memory for slights, so it didn’t do to cross him unless the cause was important. Some people liked this—many of them women who found him attractive and strong, a happenstance I have always construed as proof that God has a bent sense of humor. I think there is also probably a master plan for Nolan that holds a third divorce, hypertension and at least one heart attack.
He had supposedly been a friend of Cal’s when theywere on the city council. Then Cal hadn’t agreed with him about blocking construction of a skate park for kids, then about closing the county hospital, and things changed after that. Cal was suddenly labeled as a knee-jerk liberal and Nolan worked hard to get rid of him.
Nolan failed the first time. Cal had good friends who forgave him his political leanings since it was for the children.
Our town used to be staunchly Republican, but the war in Iraq poured some political Visine over the county and a few Democrats managed to get into office, where they worked uneasily. Not everyone went true blue, though. In fact, few did. At heart this town still belongs to the Grand Old Party. The county is an odd mix, though, and that’s where things get tricky. Many of the smog-eating refugees from Silicon Valley were already Green, and others outside the mainstream joined them as the evidence proving global warming mounted. Which meant we had lovely organic produce at our farmers’ markets, a growing Green Party that actually hung up posters at election time (printed on recycled biodegradable paper), and fewer liberal votes to back our few brave Democratic candidates. This meant that those who were blue and wanted to stay in office had to be fiscally responsible in our conservative town. The skate park matter was finessed by getting everything donated by local
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