What Janie Saw(90)
Speaking of teachers...
He picked up the phone to dial Janie’s hospital room, thought better of it and dialed her sister, Katie, instead. “Call her yourself, Rafe,” Katie ordered before he could even get the words out.
If Janie were in the Scorpion Ridge Hospital, he’d call either her doctor or one of the nurses. The hospital was small and he knew most of them. But Adobe Hills was bigger, and there’d be more red tape.
He glanced at the phone and then at his desk. Truth was, he didn’t need to talk to Janie; he simply wanted to. Bigger truth was, he had to get some work done, and today was booked solid with responsibilities.
Janie should be just another item on his to-do list.
An hour later, he’d dealt with a dispute between a member of his custodial staff and one of his volunteers. Apparently, only he had the authority to appease both parties. Next, he approved the date for the next Bike Safety Day. Candy Riorden wanted a bike rodeo, but so far, Rafe had managed to rein in her exuberance. Though according to one of the memos on his desk, she’d already made the Bike Rodeo signs, so it seemed his hold on the reins was at best tentative.
Settling back, he perused a court case two of his officers served on. It had returned a guilty verdict. Good. A repeat offender had not only been caught in the act, but had resisted arrest and had actually bitten one of the arresting officers. Same thing had happened a year earlier, but thanks to a technicality the kid had been put back on the streets.
This time, the jury had found the guy guilty and Rafe sighed in relief, in triplicate. In police work, everything was in triplicate.
After sending an email to the lieutenant on a job well done, Rafe caught up on statistics—so far this week there’d been twenty-five incidents, nine arrests, twenty traffic tickets, twelve jail bookings and nineteen civil papers served.
Other than the Travis case, he’d call this a slow month.
At noon, after returning a dozen phone calls and what felt like a hundred emails about tomorrow night’s awards banquet, he headed out the door for lunch.
Lunch was uneventful. Instead of the Corner Diner where the locals, especially his mother, would be hovering for information about the Travis case, he headed for home, a little two-bedroom that he’d bought from his uncle Leo.
It hadn’t changed much from Leo’s day. Leo, a bachelor, had been a long-distance truck driver, and hadn’t needed much when it came to “home.” It made for an empty look. The brightest spot in the room right now was the painting over the couch.
Crisco in all his glory.
His mother had already noticed it and remarked that he could use Janie’s touch in all the rooms. Rafe was well aware she wasn’t talking exclusively about paintings.
Rafe grinned as he cleaned up his sandwich and left his empty house.
His next responsibility was giving a speech at the high school. Scorpion Ridge High had just over six hundred students. He would be speaking to the graduating class, about one hundred and fifty-two students. Rafe knew about half of them.
When Rafe had sat in the audience of the high school as a graduating senior, his dad had been the speaker.
At the door, Rafe was met not by Sam Winslow, the principal, but by Sam’s father, Sam Senior. He’d been Scorpion Ridge’s high school principal for fifty years before retiring.
“Good to see you again,” he boomed.