Carolina Moon by Roberts Nora

Author:Roberts, Nora [Roberts, Nora]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2000-06-21T04:00:00+00:00

17

Police chief Carl D. Russ wasn't a big man. He'd reached the height of five-feet-six-and-a-quarter when he was sixteen and had stayed plugged there.

He wasn't a handsome man. His face was wide and pitted with his ears stuck on either side like oversized cup handles. His hair was as grizzled as a used-up scouring pad.

He had a scrawny build and topped the scale at one thirty. Fully dressed and soaking wet.

His ancestors had been slaves., fieldworkers. Later they'd been sharecroppers eking out stingy livings on another man's land.

His mother had wanted more for him, and had pushed, prodded, harangued, and browbeat until, mostly out of self-defense, he aimed for more.

Carl D.'s mother enjoyed the fact that her boy was police chief nearly as much as he did.

He wasn't a brilliant man. Information cruised into his brain, meandering about, taking winding paths and detours until it settled down into complete thoughts. He tended to be plodding.

He also tended to be thorough.

But above all, Carl D. was affable.

He didn't bitch and moan about being awakened at four in the morning. He'd simply gotten up and dressed in the dark so as not to disturb his wife. He'd left her a note on the kitchen board, and had tucked her latest honey-do list in his pocket on the way out.

What he thought about Kincade Lavelle being at Victoria Bodeen's house at four in the morning, he kept to himself.

Cade met him at the door. "Thanks for coming, Chief."

"Oh well, that's all right." Carl D. chewed contentedly on the stick of Big Red gum he was never without since his wife had nagged him into quitting smoking. "Had yourself a prowler, did you?"

"We had something. Let's take a look around the side, see what you think."

"How's your family doing?"

"They're fine, thanks."

"Heard your aunt Rosie was down for a visit. You be sure to give her my best, now."

"I'll do that." Cade shone his flashlight on the grass under the bedroom window, waited while Carl D. did the same, and pondered.

"Well, could be y’all had somebody standing there playing Peeping Tom. Might've been an animal." He scanned with his light, chewed contemplatively.

"It's a quiet spot, off the road a ways. Don't see that anybody'd have good cause to be wandering 'round out here. Guess they could come across from the road, or out through the swamp. You get any kind of a look?"

"No, I didn't see anything. Tory did."

"Guess I'll talk to her first, then do some poking around. Anybody was out here's hightailed it by now."

He got creakily to his feet and swept his light over the darker shadows where the live oaks and tupelos closed in the swamp. "Yeah, this here's a quiet spot, all right. Couldn't pay me to live out this-a-way. Bet you hear frogs and owls and such all blessed night long."

"You get used to them," Cade said, as they walked around to the back door. "You don't really hear them."

"I guess that's the way. You get so's you don't hear the usual sounds anymore.

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