“No. One thousand. Take it… or leave it.”
Well,I thought,at least she won’t take taxes out.
The next night,the Tony Awards began at eight after a repeat of60 Minutes. I was entranced. Nana Cole was less than pleased. They kept mentioningHairspray, which she couldn’t believe didn’t take place in a beauty parlor—not that she thought a beauty parlor was a good location for a musical. About a half-an-hour in they did a number from the show. When Harvey Fierstein joined in my Nana Cole frowned at me and said, “That’s a man in a dress. Singing.”
“Oh. Is it?”
“I’m done. Help me to bed.”
Which meant I missed the end of the number and the next twenty minutes of the awards. After I helped her get ready for bed—by pulling a nightgown over her head and then accepting her clothing as she stripped each piece off underneath, thus preserving her modesty—she said, “So… you haven’t… seen the sheriff yet.”
“It’s Sunday.”
“It’s the sheriff, he works every day.”
“I’ll go tomorrow,” I promised. “I’m going to take Reilly out and then I’ll lock up.”
“Lock up? Why would you—”
“Someone murdered your minister. I’m going to lock the doors.”
“I don’t know what this world is coming to,” she muttered.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I forgot, ‘And then everyone locked their doors’ is the first line of Revelations.”
“Oh, it is not. Don’t talk… foolish…ness.”
I managed to avoid seeing the sheriff for three more days. Getting involved seemed like a bad idea. Seriously, Ididnearly get killed. But then, a trip to the sheriff’s office in itself wasn’t dangerous. To my ego, maybe, but other than that it was basically safe. Finally, I decided to go—mainly so my grandmother would stop harassing me.
The sheriff’s office was located in the Wyandot County Municipal Center on the first floor. Along with the sheriff, the recently constructed building—yellow brick with squinty little windows—housed the county clerk, a court, senior services, county treasurer, the board of commissioners, and a raft of otherdepartments. I knew all that because I read the board on the way in.
I decided not to bother Sheriff Crocker at all. Instead, I went directly to Detective Rudy Lehmann, who’d once been a detective in Grand Rapids. For some reason that impressed people.
The Wyandot Sheriff’s Department featured one whole detective to investigate everything from vandalism to murder. Since that still didn’t amount to a lot of crime, I was able to find Detective Lehmann sitting in his cramped, messy office.
In his early forties, the detective had brown eyes that were sad rather than kind, and a receding hairline. He wore a wrinkled gray suit that was probably out of style before it was made.
While I had no reason to think that he liked me any better than Sheriff Crocker, he hadn’t suggested I leave town, so it seemed logical I might get more information out of him.
“Hello. My grandmother wanted me to come by and ask a few questions about Reverend Hessel’s death.”
The sheriff would have said something about my grandmother being good people, and then given me a look that suggested I wasn’t. But as I said, Lehmann was from Grand Rapids, so there were a lot of social niceties he didn’t bother with.
“Oh, well, if your grandmother sent you I guess I’ll have to tell you everything.”
I ignored his comment and launched right in, “It doesn’t make sense to me why the Reverend was killed during a robbery on a Thursday. There wouldn’t have been any money in the church.”
Lehmann raised an eyebrow at me. “And a meth head would have thought that through?”
“Meth head? You think it was an addict trying to get money for drugs?”
I could tell he was uncomfortable having given me that much information. I stood there in the doorway to his office attempting to square what I knew with what he’d just said.
Of course, I was familiar with meth or crystal or Tina as the boys called it. Personally, I didn’t much like it no matter what it was called. In L.A. tweakers were everywhere. As far as I could see, Tina was a disaster. She gave you acne, rotting teeth, a nasty chemical smell, and to top it all off made you super horny.
Can you imagine? You had to go out and try to get laid with bad teeth, bad skin and a bad smell. Definitely not for me. Yes, I like the occasional sedative. But my skin is flawless.
“Is there a big meth problem around here?”
