Grimshaw hesitated. “I don’t know. If nothing else, he can answer phones and type up reports. Walk down Main Street in uniform and look official. Keep his eyes and ears open.”

“There is no safety in the dark, not even on the main street of a village,” Hargreaves said quietly. “Humans screwed up last summer, and we’re all paying for it. What happened to Chesnik and Baker . . .” He sighed. “I have an old friend, a patrol captain in Lakeside, who has a line to the governor. I’ll wangle it so that Osgood ends up working under your temporary command.”

“I’ll have to find him a place to stay.” Grimshaw smiled. “The CIU team was staying at the boardinghouse. So am I. I can handle being in the same building as Swinn. I’m not sure it would be healthy for Osgood, especially once he’s reassigned.”

“Your call.”

That was it? No, it wasn’t. Hargreaves had something on his mind.

“Swinn is a good investigator. He finds the evidence, and prosecutors are glad to see his name on the reports. Nineteen cases out of twenty he is good.”

“Then a few mistakes get made on number twenty?” Grimshaw guessed.

Hargreaves shook his head. “On number twenty, he’s even better. All the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed. And somebody goes to jail, maybe even prison. But it never feels quite right. Swinn jumping on this case? It doesn’t feel right, so you watch your back, you hear?”

“And Julian?”

The waitress brought over the bill. Hargreaves put enough money on the table to cover both meals and the tip. He slid out of the booth and gave Grimshaw a long look. “The less said about Julian Farrow the better. But I won’t comment about him giving you a hand as long as evidence isn’t compromised.”

“Not my job to look for evidence. That’s what CIU is for.”

“Maybe.”

The word was said so quietly, Grimshaw wasn’t sure he heard it. He looked at his watch and swore. He had to get moving if he was going to get back to Sproing in time to accompany Vicki DeVine and her attorney when they reopened her safe-deposit box.

CHAPTER 17

Vicki

Windsday, Juin 14

Opening the safe-deposit box the next morning was better than watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat. You got the happy surprise of something empty being filled without the brown presents at the bottom of the hat.

Everything had been returned—all the paperwork, which Ilya Sanguinati checked off the list he’d made from my record of the documents I’d put into the box. And there was even seven thousand dollars, nicely bundled.

Besides me and my attorney, there were three other people crowded into the privacy room to witness the Return of the Paperwork: Officer Grimshaw, Detective Swinn, and Valerie, who had been the head teller and was now the reluctant, and temporary, bank manager. When Ineke called me at the crack of dawn, telling me she’d pulled out all of her money as soon as she’d heard about yesterday’s naughtiness with the safe-deposit box, I didn’t ask how she’d found out—and I didn’t need to talk to anyone else to know the bank was going to crash. The whole village was holding its breath, especially the folks who hadn’t gotten to the bank yesterday and were now hoping that something would save them.

Frankly, I think everyone was hoping that the bloodsuckers who sucked blood would take over the bank. The penalties for a late payment might be steep, but at least there would be a brutal kind of honesty when they sucked you dry.

I placed each piece of paper in an old leather tote bag as Ilya Sanguinati checked it off. But when it came to the money, I hesitated. I had tucked six thousand into the box. Who had made up the other thousand? Had the bank manager taken it from his personal savings or had he used the bank’s money, which would be another bit of naughtiness?

I hesitated. Then I looked at Valerie, said, “Sorry,” and stuffed all the money in the tote bag.

“Don’t be,” Valerie replied. “I opened my box yesterday and removed the antique jewelry that belonged to my grandmother. It has more sentimental than monetary value, but I didn’t want to discover it missing one day.”

I hesitated a moment longer, wondering if I should put back the thousand dollars that didn’t actually belong to me. Then I glanced at Detective Swinn and swiftly closed the box, which was empty once again.

Swinn wasn’t old, but he looked a bit freeze-dried and his ash brown hair was cut short and stuck up across the top of his head, like it was iron filings being pulled by a magnet. He wore glasses with heavy black frames that dominated his face and didn’t suit him at all. But the glasses didn’t disguise the undiluted venom in the way he looked at me, and there was nothing I wanted more than to get away from him. Unfortunately, he was the person in the doorway and was, therefore, the person I had to squeeze past.

Valerie smiled at Swinn and moved her arm in an unspoken request for him to step aside so that we could all leave the privacy room and she and I could follow procedure and return the safe-deposit box to the vault.

As I eased past Swinn, he spoke one sentence so quietly no one else would have heard it. It was cutting and cruel and painfully familiar.

Valerie and I returned the box to the vault. Maybe, if it had just been Officer Grimshaw and Ilya Sanguinati waiting for me, I could have remained polite, could have clamped down on the hurt and anger churning inside me until I got home and could break down in private. But Swinn was still there, and he looked at me as if he knew what would hurt me most—and I couldn’t breathe. Just couldn’t draw in enough air for my heart to beat and my brain to work.

I bolted out of the bank, ignoring the “Ms. DeVine? Ms. DeVine!” behind me. A few Sproingers were out on the sidewalk. They were sitting up the way they do when they’re given chunks of carrots for treats, but they weren’t wearing their happy faces. Neither was I. I still wanted to talk to Julian Farrow about books, but I couldn’t do that until I could breathe.

I marched next door and stomped into the police station. Officer Osgood, looking even younger in his official uniform, jumped to his feet. I might have jumped down his throat because he looked like a relatively safe target for the feelings building in my chest, but Officer Grimshaw and Ilya Sanguinati burst into the station, Grimshaw slamming the door in Swinn’s face and pausing to turn the simple lock.

And Mount Victoria erupted.

“I know I’m not pretty, and I know I’m not smart, but I don’t deserve to be treated like trash, to be pushed and pushed until I’m too tired and worn down and I agree to something that I don’t believe.” I pointed at the door, aiming my finger between Grimshaw’s and Ilya’s shoulders. “Why is Detective Swinn here? I didn’t know the man who died. I didn’t have an appointment to see him or talk to him. And I didn’t kill him. So why is Swinn pushing and pushing, saying it’s my fault and I’d better come clean about what I did, and how selling The Jumble will be the only way to pay for any kind of attorney who might be able to get me a reduced sentence? Why is he saying that?”

That’s the trouble with hiding in your safe place and hearing but not hearing a verbal hammering. You do hear the words, and with the right trigger, all your feelings come out as word vomit or lava—a hot projectile that can’t be controlled at all.

“And why would that bank manager help someone take the things out of my safe-deposit box? I’ll tell you why! Because no one thought I would make a fuss, and even if I did who would listen to me, and I was just expected to swallow it. Well, I’m not going to swallow it. I was given The Jumble as the main part of the divorce settlement because everyone thought it wasn’t worth much of anything but the assessed value looked good on paper. See how generous he was to give her some of the land that had been in his family for generations. But now someone thinks it is worth something and wants to take it away after I worked so hard to build a new home, a-and . . . a-and . . .”

I was done, drained, didn’t even have a piddle of lava left to finish the sentence.

Three men stared at me. Osgood looked ready to crash through the window and run. Grimshaw looked grim. And my vampire attorney? I couldn’t begin to figure out what he was thinking about my hysterics.