The Prodigal's Return. Lynn Bulock

muffled beeping coming from some pile of dirty laundry in Jeremy’s room? It was hard to tell.

      Before she could activate the pager again, the phone rang. “Rats.” Nothing aggravated her more than a ringing phone that she couldn’t answer. “Jeremy, you have my phone,” she called. It was still ringing.

      She went to Jeremy’s room, looking around for the telephone handset as she went. “Jeremy Samuel, answer that phone. It might be one of your aunts again.”

      By the time she got into his room, Jeremy had rescued the telephone from whatever corner it had landed in, and was talking to someone. “Yeah, hold on. Wait a minute, my mom wants to talk to me.”

      He looked up at her. “It’s for me. Todd.”

      He went back to his conversation and what she heard next pushed Laurel over the fence she’d been sitting on.

      “Yeah. I’m back. I know, but we’re in the Dark Ages here. No caller ID, no extension in my room. No chance of my own phone line in this lifetime.”

      He sounded so aggravated. Laurel looked down at Jeremy’s rangy form splayed across the floor, and saw a child who was being raised in an environment that was so foreign to her own memories of growing up that it felt like another planet.

      If she had ever dared speak that way to her father, or even in her father’s presence, she couldn’t imagine the consequences. Jeremy knew there were no consequences, but Laurel wasn’t so sure that was a wonderful thing. Was this really the life she wanted for her son, while they faced his teen years? Was it the life she wanted for herself? The answer to the question was easy, and made her turn on her heels and leave the room to do some serious thinking.

      “Poor Jeremy,” she murmured in the hallway. “You’ll never know how this one day changed your whole life.”

      California was not the place for her to raise this young man. And today was the day to take steps to ensure she didn’t have to raise him here any longer.

      It was hot in his office. Tripp Jordan wasn’t used to experiencing summers like this yet. Back in the detective room of the station house in St. Louis, the windows were always closed. There was temperature-controlled air all the time, summer or winter. Of course, it was often too hot in the winter and too cool in the summer, but it didn’t bring you into contact with nature, for sure.

      Here there were all kinds of distractions. Not the least of which was the knowledge that he was now officially in charge here and wasn’t ready for it. He’d been in charge all week, but it hadn’t sunk in until this morning, when he’d faced the fact that Hank was in surgery and wouldn’t be back for weeks.

      He still felt out of place in Hank’s office. His chair didn’t sit right and the desk was too low at one corner. Plus there was the temperature problem in here—it was hot. And the coffee wasn’t strong enough. Or maybe it was just that Verna made good coffee. He was still used to the sludge at St. Louis police stations. Real coffee, made lovingly by hand by his fifty-something secretary with her tight perm and plastic-rimmed glasses, was a new experience. The woman reminded him of his aunts, who looked sweet and old-fashioned but had every situation well in hand. And he’d always felt uncomfortable around them, too.

      No matter how many faults he found with Friedens or his office in the tiny police station, he still wasn’t sorry he’d taken the job. So maybe he hadn’t been prepared for the changes of the past week, but being Hank’s deputy had been great so far.

      When the town had been looking for a deputy, Tripp had jumped at Hank’s offer to take the job. The city council had liked him, the interviews had gone smoothly—and Tripp had gotten out of St. Louis, where it had felt as if the walls were closing in on him.

      Once he had been hired on in Friedens, he rented a great apartment over a vacant downtown store, where the odds and ends of furniture he’d collected over the years looked dwarfed. He’d gotten settled in, and had even gotten used to seeing himself back in uniform after eight years in suits and ties.

      He didn’t miss the tie, but he still missed the hat: the sharp fedora that was the trademark of the “hat squad” of St. Louis homicide. Deputies around here didn’t wear any kind of hat. Even the sheriff’s hat that he’d been issued when he took over for Hank was a poor substitute for that fedora.

      He was running his hand around the brim, trying to break it in some, when Verna ushered in his first visitor of the day. His initial guess when he saw the woman was that she was the town’s version of the welcoming committee, bringing him brownies.

      Although she looked old and delicate enough to be Verna’s mother, she dispelled his notion that she was a grandmotherly type in a hurry. The sweet-looking older lady in front of him proceeded to scald his ears with a scathing diatribe on the unsafe driving habits of some of her fellow senior citizens. She claimed to be a representative of the Women’s Club—and the PTO, although Tripp thought that she could have given birth to the school board members he’d seen. This lady hadn’t had anybody in the school system in decades.

      Still, she was persistent. Tripp felt himself breaking out in a sweat just listening to her. Trying to get a word in edgewise was almost impossible. Might as well wait until Mrs. Whoever-she-was wound down on her own.

      He nodded and made appropriate sympathetic noises for about ten minutes. Then he’d had enough and tried to break in. After three attempts he was successful. “So let me summarize this. You believe that I ought to be writing some tickets downtown?”

      The old harridan’s nostrils flared. “Not just tickets. Citations. That Sam Harrison ought to go to jail. He’s parked in my flower bed twice this month. That old heap of his is a menace, even standing still.”

      “Well, Mrs….” Tripp looked down at the desk, hoping he’d jotted down something when Verna ushered the lady into his office. “Mrs. Becker—”

      “That’s Baker,” she corrected in a frosty tone.

      “Mrs. Baker.” He had to learn to decipher his own handwriting better. “Sorry about that. I’ll go track down Sam Harrison and have a talk with him. If he’s as dangerous as you say, I’ll take appropriate action.”

      Mrs. Baker sniffed. “You won’t have to go far. That awful car is parked two doors down from here right now. In front of a fire hydrant.”

      Tripp stood up and put on his hat. “Then I’ll get right on it. Can I escort you out, ma’am?”

      “I’m not that feeble, and you’re not a Boy Scout. Although you look like one in that hat.”

      Tripp didn’t say anything else. He couldn’t, for fear of further offending an old lady on his first official day as sheriff.

      It was going to be a long couple of weeks before Hank got back. How long did uncomplicated bypass surgery take to heal? He hoped it was uncomplicated. He didn’t know how many days of this he could take.

      Chapter Two

      “You’re kidding, right? Jeremy, tell me she’s kidding.” Gina Evans was in danger of spilling her café au lait all over Laurel’s kitchen table.

      “Hey, Gina, you tell me she’s kidding. Then we’ll both think so.” Jeremy’s voice was hopeful.

      His expression told Laurel that her son was sure she’d gone around the bend, to even suggest something as strange as moving back to Missouri. And her best friend agreed with him.

      Laurel leaned against the door frame of the kitchen. That way she could stand in the family room, not invading Jeremy’s personal space, but still be in command of the situation. With a teenager, that was important. Especially when the teenager reached the point that Jeremy already had, at fourteen, of being taller than she was.

      “Afraid not. Why would I kid about something this major?” She reached out to ruffle his hair, and Jeremy pulled away.

      That part hurt, but Laurel had to remind herself that it was only natural.