Cherry Two

Part 36

Chapter 34

"LA doesn't just pollute the air, it pollutes your mind," Alain said to Robert after ending the call to his mother. "Those two should get away more."

Robert didn't comment as he looked at the digital clock. It made him sad that his own grandson would be compelled to defend him to Sonia in such a pathetic way. "Well there's nothing much we can do now," he said with impatience bottled in his voice. "Everything's closed down in this backwater. I'll try calling Wolanchuk once more, but come first thing in the morning I intend finding that farm. We're running out of time. Calley needs to talk with Joby Benson and we only have part of tomorrow left. I won't wait for this Donna Sanford to surface with an agreement any longer."

Alain seemed to concur despite many other things pressing on his mind. "Isn't there supposed to be some sort of party for Benson's mother in town? If we find the party location we find them. Maybe we don't have to go looking for this farm."

"That's a very good point. I'm glad someone is still thinking." Robert reached out his arm. "Hand me that directory. There can't be too many party places for hire in Port Angeles."

While Robert flipped pages, Alain took an anxious glance through the bedroom doors. Calley hadn't moved and seemed to be curled up on the bed as if asleep, which he knew damn well she wasn't. He'd reached a solid resolve. Brother and sister would jointly break the news to James and leave Sonia and Keenan to provide confirmation and details, as there were bound to be questions he could never answer from the English father he'd never met. True, the prospect unnerved him, but he'd decided this was the way it had to be done—face-to-face. Sonia and Keenan could protest all they liked.

Tonight he would hold his sister close for a final time in an intimate yet platonic embrace. Since her arrival it felt as if his life had taken a huge upheaval and an abrupt left turn. With confused, battered emotions, it was time to face square into a new future.

***

Around eleven o'clock the watch officer took a call from Bernice Growe. She'd been wondering where the heck her husband had strayed to this time. All the cops on the Port Angeles force stuck together and covered for each other, especially the triad of detective class officers who considered themselves a breed apart. Of course she'd tried phoning the bars first, the ones Marty was known to frequent when off duty, but came up dry. He'd be in some cop's basement swilling down boilermakers in a stupor and high-fiving the Mariner's upset victory over LA.

"Come on, Chuck. How many more times? It's not the wasted food; although God knows it's expensive enough. All he had to do was make a call. And don't give me that cop's wife crap. I resigned myself to this stuff years ago."

"Honest, Bernice, he said he was going home to watch the rest of the game. Signed off around seven." The sergeant could hear grinding teeth. Nothing new, Marty had gone AWOL before. Bernice was a big woman—a farmer's daughter that generally took shit from no one. "Let me check with dispatch. Hold on."

Chuck's answer came back within seconds. The plain-wrapper cruiser had not been returned to the garage and Marty's Toyota still sat where he'd parked it. Off duty use of Port Angeles department vehicles had always been a no-no without exceptions. Marty's portable radio wasn't responding, likewise his cell phone. A GPS ping of the car's locator produced nothing. Chuck pinched the bridge of his nose. The stupid bastard had gone on another pussy prowl and it took an officer's wife and a spoiled meal to issue the wake-up call.

Embarrassing or what?

"Hello, Bernice, I'll get back to you. He's probably stuck somewhere." The phone call terminated fast and Chuck returned into the night-shift dispatcher: a new girl just out of training. "Yeah, it's Sergeant Bearden again. Do you have a last location for Detective Growe? We seem to have lost him."