Chasing a Blond Moon(108)

“What can I do?” he asked.

“Pants would be a move toward civilized,” she said with a smirk and a downward glance. She began to rub each piece of toast with the cut side of a garlic clove, drizzle on some olive oil, and add a small slice of Gruyère cheese.

She pointed the oven mitt at him once again. “Trou.”

The meal was on the table when he came back downstairs. Bloody Marys in tall glasses were in place, with feathers of celery sticking out like flags.

They ate slowly, relishing flavors.

“Politicians eat miserably,” Nantz said. “Always on the run, odd times. I’m surprised they don’t all weigh three hundred pounds.”

“Like Clearcut?” he said. Sam Bozian waddled with splayed feet.

“Sam’s always had a metabolic problem,” she said. She had known the governor since she was a child.

“He could jack up his rate by moving his ass once in a while.”

She rolled her eyes and said, “Meow.”

At the hospital Nantz and Kate Nordquist talked on about Lorelei Timms and her wardrobe and the practical concerns of campaigning day after day. Service went downstairs to have a cigarette.

Gutpile Moody rolled up in his truck, got out and yawned.

“All-nighter?”

“We had a plane over the Garden last night, bagged six shiners.” Officers sometimes employed group patrols and sent a light plane overhead to look for jack-lighting activity at night. When lights were seen, the plane’s pilot directed officers on the ground to the site. The method had become so effective that in some areas poachers had taken to working in broad daylight. But not in the Garden Peninsula, where poaching and violating were taken by many as inalienable rights.

“That time of year,” Service said.

“It’s that time year-round in the Garden,” Moody said. “Rumor is that Lansing’s gonna put you to work on the fish runs with the hired help this spring.”

Service said, “Such decisions are above my pay grade.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Moody said with a sly grin. “You’re Cap’n Grant’s boy. How is he?”

“Bonked his head, slight concussion.”

“If you say so. Way I hear it, Fern LeBlanc is telling everybody he’s had another stroke.”

“Is she now?” Service said. When Moody went inside he dialed Fern’s home number and she answered on the first ring.

“You,” he said. “You have to exercise some judgment in what you tell people.”

“Ah,” she said. “The prodigal detective trying to talk management. You will not tell me what to think or say,” she said.

“Your thoughts are yours, but your words affect others. When you speculate, others take it for gospel.”

“I am not speculating,” she said, “and as you said, you are not management material. I intend to protect the captain.”

“The captain can take care of himself.”

“Like you would know,” she said angrily. “You’re never around! He wants to see you tomorrow night—at his home.” She hung up on him, his point having found a fat vein, as his old man used to say after he had purposely antagonized someone.

Moody had joined Nantz and Nordquist and was regaling them with the tale of a shiner he had grappled with last night. Service and Nantz made their goodbyes and left the hospital.

Nantz called Walter on the cell phone as they drove toward Gladstone.

“Hey, you,” she said.

She listened and said, “Flying is flying.”

Then, “He’s driving.”

More silence. “Really! No, I won’t say a word.”

“What was that about?” he asked as she snapped the cell phone closed.

“He’s just checking up on us.”

For dinner he grilled skirt steaks marinated in lime juice and zest, red wine, soy, ginger, garlic, sugar, and hot sauce. He cooked the meat rare and served it with a small tossed salad of Italian greens and grilled Spanish onion slices.

Nantz had opened a bottle of the new Italian wine, a 1996 Avignonesi Grifi, and poured each of them a glass.

“Mmm,” she said, taking a bite of steak.

“Mmm,” he said, tasting the wine.

After dinner, they loaded the dishwasher and Nantz camped at the dining room table with books from the academy while he put on the Norah Jones CD and poured another glass of wine.

Nantz snapped a book closed at 10 p.m. and said, “Hon, get me a two-gallon jar from the basement, okay?” For reasons he never understood, she collected jars and bottles and vases of all sizes and descriptions. The basement shelves were filled with bags and boxes of glassware.

He brought a jar to the the kitchen counter and watched as she put a strip of masking tape around it and wrote with a large marker, “4F.”