Occam's Razor (Joe Gunther mystery series) by Mayor Archer

Author:Mayor, Archer [Mayor, Archer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Brattleboro (Vt.) --Fiction., Police --Vermont --Brattleboro --Fiction., Gunther, Joe (Fictitious character) --Fiction.
ISBN: 9781939767097
Publisher: MarchMedia
Published: 2013-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

18

TO A NATIVE-BORN VERMONTER, driving across New Hampshire is a little like walking on a rival team’s playing field. It’s not an infraction of the rules, or even in bad taste, but it does feel kind of funny.

On the map, they look like mirror images of the same real estate—two similarly sized wedges fitting together to form a rough rectangle. New Hampshire has the sea, Vermont, Lake Champlain; New Hampshire’s largest towns are near Boston to the south, Vermont’s are to the north, not far from Montreal. Both pride themselves on their mountains, their maple sugar, their cows, and their sense of independence.

And both couldn’t be further apart.

The rivalry between them predates the Revolutionary War, when New Hampshire claimed sovereignty right up to the New York border, declaring present-day Vermont to be the “New Hampshire Grants.” That was actually fine with the few settlers living there, except that in 1764, King George III stuck his foot in it again by giving Vermont to New York, whose governor had taken exception to New Hampshire’s high-handedness. This allowed a very belligerent Ethan Allen—with his Green Mountain Boys and the fortunate timing of the American Revolution—to create in 1777 not just a new state but a wholly independent republic, which didn’t join the Union for another fourteen years.

Referred to colloquially as Vermont from its birth, the new republic was officially named New Connecticut, revealing how ambiguous its residents had become.

Maybe as a result of this contentious start, both New Hampshire and Vermont have forever after eyed one another like suspicious twins and made great hay about their differences.

It was hard to admit, therefore, that the actual drive across New Hampshire to Portland, Maine—where Ron had set up a meeting with the prosecutor in Reynolds’s old case—was more pleasant at this time of year than a similar trip would have been across southern Vermont. At home, the Green and Berkshire mountains link up between Brattleboro and Bennington, making passage across their backs scenic but perilous in all but good weather. New Hampshire is only gently hilly and benign at the same latitude, influenced by the seashore to the east and the Massachusetts plains to the south.

Not that we had bad weather to contend with. The whole region had settled into a routine after that one major storm, with perfectly bearable alternating periods of grayness and sparkling sun. The day Ron and I had chosen for our drive was of the blue-skied, ice-cold variety so favored by skiers and longed for by those going bonkers with cabin fever.

We didn’t discuss work at first, taking advantage of the outing to simply enjoy the scenery. Traffic was light and the roads were in good shape, so the feeling encouraged more talk of home and family than of major crimes and office squabbles. Ron had a wife and a small child, of whom he was inordinately proud. Where many male cops referred to their mates as “the wife” on a good day, Ron carried pictures in his wallet,

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