The Prodigal Son.

The Bellringer.

by Katie Bell.

A weekly column of the Mossy Creek Gazette.

Boys and girls, wait until you hear this one! Rumor has it that Ham Bigelow, otherwise known as Governor Hamilton Bigelow and honorary board member of the Miss Bigelow County Pageant, has single-handedly wrapped up this spring's pageant t.i.tle for his beloved Bigelow township by offering the committee an innocent little suggestion. I'm not sure it's going to be that easy. Our own mayor, Ida Hamilton Walker, has a little surprise that will take the wind out of Ham's political sails . . .again. Stay tuned. This is liable to be a barnburner.

Most of the citizenry consider Katie Bell's weekly gossip column amusing. As the chief of police, I consider The Bellringer more of a scouting report. Every Friday morning, I walk up Main Street, have my coffee at Mama's All You Can Eat Cafe, push something resembling breakfast around a chipped china plate, and read the Mossy Creek Gazette, Katie's column in particular.

Most Fridays, I push my chair back from the table, feeling mildly pleased that Katie's intelligence network hasn't caught my own sources asleep at the wheel. Today, I resisted the urge to swear as I finished the last sentence. Right there in black and white, in front of G.o.d and everybody, Katie congratulated Ida for yet another quiet coup against pork-belly politics. Whatever Ida'd done to Ham this time would probably cause me as much trouble as it would cause her nephew.

Ida didn't seem to care that I was wearing a trail to her door. She had a strong set of small-town values that didn't necessarily reflect the worldview required of a law officer. Policing Mossy Creek was an experience akin to sliding down a rabbit hole and into the Twilight Zone.

After reading Katie's column, I knew it was going to be a rabbit hole day. All morning, I felt the hairs inexplicably rise on the back of my neck way too often; I had to use every ounce of self-control I had to keep from looking behind me-a talent I developed while on the force in Atlanta. I even debated checking the back of my shirt for a target.

By noon, I stood in the town square, honestly considering hauling a few individuals down to the county jail and booking them on suspicion of "something." First in line for jail would've been the always-too-helpful Pearl Quinlan, who owns Mossy Creek Books and What-Nots. I looked at the book she pressed into my hand and tried to give it back, but she was already making her escape.

Pearl might be a very nice woman. And she might run an excellent bookstore. But she'd lost her mind if she thought any self-respecting chief would intentionally be caught dead walking through the town square with a book like this. Much less be caught reading it. The dust jacket was covered with nubile young women wearing tiaras. A splashy, neon-red t.i.tle proclaimed Venus On The Runway.

I already knew everything I wanted to know about beauty pageants in general and the Miss Bigelow County Pageant in particular. I appreciated beautiful women as much as any red-blooded American male, but I wanted no part of the local pageant. I'd sooner wade into a bar brawl between hardened criminals than referee a name-calling match between stage mamas and contestants for Miss Bigelow County. A smart man didn't take sides, place bets on the winner, or lie to mothers about their homely daughters' chances.

I like to think my daddy didn't raise a fool.

There were fools aplenty in Mossy Creek during the month of May. Every armchair judge had an opinion, a favorite and a pageant story to tell about past Mossy Creek beauties. Except me. And I had no intention of acquiring an opinion, a favorite or a story. Most especially, I did not want to endlessly debate whether baking a cake, twirling a baton on your nose, and line dancing to Rocky Top-all at the same time-const.i.tuted a talent.

My position regarding pageants was no secret. So, why had Pearl gone out of her way to hustle into the square and give me the book? What in h.e.l.l was I supposed to do with it?

I got no help or sympathy from Mac Campbell, who was well within conversational range when Pearl foisted the book on me. He'd managed to avoid hooting some pithy comment by staring at the ground until Pearl turned away. Now Big Mac lifted his eyes from the fascinating patch of concrete sidewalk at his feet and began to smirk. Openly. And with great satisfaction. If we'd been thirty years younger and on the playground, the smirk would have been cause for rolling in the dirt-me telling him to take it back and him refusing.

But we weren't younger. We were thirty-five, and I doubted I had a prayer of winning a wrestling contest with the mountain of muscle in front of me. The man had been my friend more years than I could count. My lawyer for the last few. I knew him well enough to know the smirk meant he was about to say something I didn't want to hear. I cut him off at the pa.s.s.

"Don't start with me, Mac. Today is not the day."

"Might as well tell me not to breathe."

"Don't breathe."

Call me an optimist; I thought it might work. It didn't.

"Amos . . . Amos . . . Amos. Something's going on here. Inquiring minds want to know: What's up?" He plastered a look of disbelief on his face. "You're beloved all of a sudden. After months of people complaining about you enforcin' the rule of law around here. Why the change? You been lettin' the speeders off with a warning? You walkin' all the old ladies home from bingo the way your daddy did? What?"

I didn't answer. He didn't expect an answer. Hank was on a roll.

"That's the fifth person who's stopped you to chat, invited you to O'Day's for a beer, or told you to drop by for a little homecooking. And now they're givin' you things!"

"You done? Pearl gave me a lousy book. Let's not make a production out of this. Ida's probably preparing a beauty queen defense for her next crime spree and wants to be sure I understand the psychology involved." I scanned the familiar square as the last of Pearl's pink tennis shoe disappeared into her bookstore across the way. "Doesn't mean anything. I talk to people in the square every day. Just like now. When I do my job and make the circuit."

I walked off. He followed, fell in beside me and made noises I can only describe as chortling. I tried to ignore him and concentrate on exactly what had changed in Mossy Creek.

There were always plenty of people in the square. Zeke and Eleanor Abercrombie perennially planting petunias. Moms moseying along with baby strollers. A couple of the twenty-something workers grabbing rays during lunch. I knew the square regulars. They knew me. During the lunch hour, I made a habit of walking the circuit. Partly from my need to get out of the office-away from Sandy so I could run my own life for thirty minutes- and partly from the conviction that a town that "saw the law, kept the law."

Unfortunately, the people who stopped me today weren't square regulars. Nor were they tourists. .h.i.tting the trails to enjoy the wildflowers. The odd collection of folks toadying up to me were business owners, the kind who probably hadn't left their shops unattended during lunch in years. Pearl was the fifth shopkeeper who'd broken longstanding habits to put herself in my path.

Not that I was about to enlighten Mac on that score.

This information was on a need-to-know basis, and Mac didn't need to know. He and his wife were already far too interested in my re-adjustment to life in Mossy Creek. Living my life under a small-town microscope again was uncomfortable as h.e.l.l for me. It wasn't a feeling I thought I'd ever really get used to.

I couldn't tell Mac that either since it begged the question of why I'd moved back to Mossy Creek if living here felt uncomfortably like living in a goldfish bowl.

A breeze pushed a few stray gra.s.s clippings up against one of the vacant park benches as I turned back. "I'm their cop, Mac. Their cop. People are supposed to want to talk to me."

He snorted. "Since when? Your daddy was their cop. Same way my daddy was their lawyer before he was their judge. That doesn't make us anything but the unproven prodigal sons of legends. We're both on borrowed grace."

"Thank you for pointing that out. That changes everything. G.o.d only knows how I survived all that time on the streets of Atlanta without you. Now, why don't you go deliver subpoenas or something before I'm forced to arrest you for loitering?"

"Subpoenas?" He shook his head sadly. "That's the best a big city cop can do for tough talk? Subpoenas? And loitering? I'm disappointed. Plain d.a.m.n shattered, in fact. You have changed, Amos, my man. You've caved in to the subliminal need to be liked."

I narrowed my eyes and gave him my best Clint Eastwood look. "Make my day. Go back to your office, where tearful soon-to-be-ex-wives are no doubt waiting in some vain hope you might actually know what you're talking about."

"Clients are waiting for me morning, noon and night whether I'm ready for them or not. You'd be surprised at the business a lawyer can do in little ol' Mossy Creek. Especially when their only other choice is to make the trip to Bigelow."

I glanced down Main Street to the usually filled parking s.p.a.ces in front of his office. Not only were the parking s.p.a.ces empty of client vehicles, I didn't see the heap of rusted 4x4 that Mac called a pickup truck. "Where the h.e.l.l are you parked, anyway?"

He hesitated.

Watching Mac Campbell try to lie is a lot like watching the progress of a tall truck that hadn't quite cleared a bridge. There's a brief moment of panic in the driver's eyes and then the horrible squeal of metal sc.r.a.ping against concrete. "What, Mac? Don't remember? You double-parked and don't want a ticket?"

He mumbled something I couldn't quite catch. I thought he said Pine Street. Not that that made much sense.

"Pine! Why would you park over on Pine? Nothing over there to interest a lawyer except maybe the funeral home. . .ah. The light dawns."

He looked at me sourly, checked his watch and waited for the inevitable.

I'm proud to say I resisted the urge to needle Mac-well, for about five seconds. "So. I guess you'll be playing the dirge for another Piping-Our-Pets-To-Heaven service? Got your instrument all tuned up?"

No answer. He was clearly considering a roll in the dirt and telling me to take it back.

I smiled. "How are those bagpipes, Mac?"

Finally he spit out the explanation he'd given at least fifty times since the first critter's funeral. "The bagpipes . . . were. . .Casey's idea."

Casey was the wife of Hank Blackshear, our local veterinarian. The critter funeral itself had been Hank's idea, but Casey embellished. Oh, how she had embellished.

I didn't bother to hide my amus.e.m.e.nt at his very careful distinction. "But you're the one playing the bagpipes. Folks are in awe. The kilt is a nice touch. Takes guts. Honoring your Scottish heritage like that. Means a lot to folks around here."

"Don't start with me."

"Might as well tell me not to breathe. They're still talking about your knees down at the Goldilocks." I nodded toward Rainey's hair salon. "I understand she offered you a free leg wax." I shook my head in wonder. "Heck, over at Mama's Cafe, they've got a new fried bologna sandwich called Under-the-Kilt."

Mac stoically waited for the rest. I obliged. "They wrap the bologna around a little weenie."

He opened and shut his mouth twice, then gritted his teeth as he moved silently off toward Pine. Just when I thought I'd finally gotten the last word for the first time in our history, Mac stopped. By the time he turned back, he was sporting that irritating, patient smile we had traded over the years. He had a few thoughts to back it up.

"I'm goin' to tell you this one more time, Amos, and then I may have to begin pummelin' you. That whole thing-the whole critter funeral-was Hank's deal. The man's a vet. The rabbit was the library pet. The reading group kids needed closure. I'm not really happy about the fact Hank started a fad for pet funerals. But he was right about those kids needing closure. And I'm beginning to believe the same thing about you."

"Excuse me?"

He stopped smiling. "Closure. You're in Mossy Creek because you're looking to prove something to your old man."

He didn't wait for a reaction or look back as he walked away. He'd scored a direct hit and knew it. He hadn't given voice to the familiar Southern truism, but it rang in the air nonetheless. In the South, you're not a man until your daddy says you're a man.

Or maybe until your daddy's town says you're a man.

Mossy Creek had been Battle Royden's town. He'd owned it-every man, woman and child. Body and soul. He'd been their cop for more than thirty years. Had been their chief for most of them. Revered for all of them.

They trusted him. They knew him. And us. They realized the old man and I had had our differences. They remembered that Battle hadn't ever quite gotten around to p.r.o.nouncing me a man in the true Southern tradition. He had never introduced me as his "son." It was always, "Come over here and let me introduce you to my boy."

My boy. Didn't matter how proud his voice had been or how hearty the slap on the back. The actual words were what mattered. I was Battle Royden's boy.

Folks around here didn't care that I came to the job of chief as a fifteen-year veteran of the Atlanta Police-a detective by the time I left. Didn't matter that I was a good two inches taller than Battle in his prime. Didn't matter that I had managed to finish my degree in criminology or that I was thirty-five years old. They gave me the job, and the benefit of the doubt, as a posthumous favor to Battle.

One thing I learned at the old man's knee was to live with reality. You can hate a Southern truism. You can scoff at it. But you can't escape it any more than you can escape death and taxes. I had known full well what I was getting into when I pinned Battle's badge on my shirt. But d.a.m.ned if I could resist the job when Ida offered it to me.

Mac had the right of it.

Cussedness or stubborn determination had made me Mossy Creek's new chief of police.

"Whatcha readin', Chief?"

Zeke and Eleanor Abercrombie, each carrying a flat of petunias, had crept up on me while I was lost in thought. I blinked at the two grinning old gardeners and then scowled down at the silly book in my hand.

A painfully underdeveloped part of my intellect wanted my old man's town to admit that I'm more than a chip off the old block. That I'm a man in my own right.

Carrying Venus On The Runway through town was probably not a good way to accomplish that goal.

Hiring Sandy Crane had been an easy decision. The job was more clerk than true dispatcher. Lack of experience hadn't been a problem. Of course, her application failed to mention one tiny problem. No one really managed Sandy. You just grabbed hold of a handful of the back of her shirt and did your best to slow her down. She had been as good as her word about making sure the place was clean. It had taken a few weeks before she was satisfied with the results.

Somewhere during the cleaning process, she'd adopted me as a project. I got "the eyebrow" if I had nothing more than chips and canned chili from the Piggly Wiggly for lunch. Sandy had no problems with my patronizing the local businesses, but she had particular ideas about what her chief should eat. I was personal property in much the same way the department offices were now her personal property.

G.o.d love her, she thought the mirrored sungla.s.ses our two patrolmen had taken to wearing were a new addition to the uniform. Truth was that after enduring a particularly bad patch of sunny days, the boys had gotten sungla.s.ses to cut the glare from the office's newly scrubbed, blindingly white counters and walls. No one had the heart to ask her to stop cleaning, especially since she did it all while digging her teeth into the clerical job like a territorial junkyard dog dispatching trespa.s.sers.

Word got around. It always does.

The county sheriff down in Bigelow hinted about taking her off my hands every time I ferried a prisoner to the county jail for lock-up. I always smiled, thanked him politely and declined. Two weeks into her tenure, I had decided to take my chances with Sandy and wasn't likely to change my mind. Battle always said, "Better the devil you know than the one you don't."

My devil scrubbed ink marks off the wallboards with a cotton hair scrunch soaked in motor oil.

All the same, the sheriff still checked to be sure I was happy. Just in case I decided we really did need to start grooming a bonafide dispatcher after all. We didn't, and besides, Sandy was an a.s.set to the department in other ways. The woman always seemed to be plugged in to the nuances of life in Mossy Creek. I was hoping that particular talent would pay off in regard to Pearl's strange behavior.

The moment my foot crossed the threshold of the office, Sandy put down the phone and bounced up from her desk. We reached the counter at the same time. I slid the book across to her. "A gift from Pearl."

She glanced at the t.i.tle and made a "huh" sound that was part delighted surprise and part satisfaction. A half-beat later, she shuffled the four pink slips of paper in her hand. Not a good sign.

"Those are my messages, I a.s.sume?"

"How do you want them?"

The first time she'd asked me that it had thrown me. By now I was used to her system. I could have them sorted by time, caller urgency or Sandy's Picks-which meant she'd prioritized them. Of course the offer of choice was merely an illusion. I'd learned early on to trust Sandy's judgment. "Fire away."

"You need to hot-foot it out to Hamilton Farm. Miss Ida wants to discuss something with you. Stop by Disney Halbeck's on your way back into town. He wants you to talk some sense into his boy, Mickey."

"You've got to be kidding."

Sandy looked up. Her hair had grown a bit since the disaster at Rainey's hair salon, but it still fought for its independence, making her look like one of the plucky dandelions along Mossy Creek's roadsides. "Why would I be kidding? Mickey's sixteen and thinks he's immortal. Somebody's got to knock some sense into the kid before he kills himself skateboardin' on these roads."

"Point taken. Next?"

"Hannah says someone's moving books in the library again."

"And the last one?"

"Bud Esterhaus thinks someone's trying to kill him. Says someone shot at him. Twice. He wants you to find out who it is."

The day just kept getting better. "Someone's reporting a murder plot, and yet it's number three on your list of calls I should make." I rubbed my temple, carefully keeping both the amus.e.m.e.nt and the irritation out of my voice. "You didn't radio me, so I'm guessing Bud is still in one piece. The person missed, and you've solved the crime."

"Well, not missed. Not exactly."

"Of course not. Continue."

"The black satin sheets on his clothesline took a couple of rounds." She formed a gun with her hand and aimed. "Kapow. Flat and fitted sheets-matching holes in the lower right corners. Bud's about as mad as I've ever seen him. Those sheets cost him sixty dollars." She sighed. "It's a real shame. Apparently he has fond memories of those sheets."

I reached for the messages. "I'm a little more worried about Bud than the sheets."

"Why? He's safe as a baby's b.u.t.t in Pampers."

"Okay. I'll play. You know this. . .how?"

"I sent Mutt over to take Violet Martin's gun away. He radioed back and confirmed she'd done some shooting today."

Forget any personal quest in being the chief of Mossy Creek. I'd have taken the job for sheer entertainment value alone. "How do you know who's shooting at Bud if Bud doesn't even know?"

"I doubt she was shooting at Bud per se. His backyard meets her backyard. There's about a six-foot privacy fence separating them."