Chapter 2
The first callout took us to Fog Belt Ladies Wear.
It was a storefront in a single-story building with a flat roof and shake siding and enormous display windows.
In one of them, a mannequin was giving Cruella de Vil vibes—it was dressed in a shoulder-padded-to-the-max polka-dot suit, and it was holding one of those invisible dog leashes.
Located a couple of blocks off Main Street, in peak tourist season, the store would have been thronged with shoppers looking for either something new and exciting or, just as often, some necessity that they’d forgotten.
Today, though, with tourist season in the rearview mirror, the sidewalks were empty, and the store looked quiet.
“Maybe you should wait here,” Deputy Bobby said as he unbuckled himself.
“It’s not a private residence,” I said.
“I really think you should wait here.”
“I’m supposed to observe, aren’t I? That’s the whole point of doing a ride-along: so I can see how real law enforcement do their jobs, so my writing will be more vivid and powerful and, uh, vivid.”
Deputy Bobby looked at me.
“Normally, I have a thesaurus,” I said.
He got out of the car, and since he hadn’t technically ordered me to stay in the vehicle, I followed.
When we stepped inside, a bell chimed. Racks of clothing stretched the length of the shop, broken up by displays and, yes, more mannequins.
A blast of a floral air freshener hit us, and I fought the urge to gag.
Deputy Bobby was already moving deeper into the store, so I went after him; his boots thumped on the worn floorboards.
Then a voice screamed, “Bobby!” and a man appeared.
I chose that word purposefully, understand. One moment, the store appeared to be empty. And then, in a dramatic—highly dramatic—fluttering of the curtain at the back, the man arrived like a magician’s trick. I almost clapped.
He was probably in his fifties, his thinning hair buzzed, his face carefully toned and moisturized.
He wore a leopard-print shirt, some sort of frilly trousers that made me think of a swashbuckler, and thigh-high boots with what had to be four-inch heels.
When he appeared, he scanned the room, and his eyes locked onto Deputy Bobby.
I’d seen that look before. That was the same look the Terminator used with his auto-targeting system.
“Bobby,” the man purred as he stalked toward us. “Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, where have you been all my life?”
“Hello, Mr. Cheek,” Deputy Bobby said. “You reported a burglary?”
Mr. Cheek made a sound like he’d tasted something delicious.
The boots were definitely slowing him down as he crossed the store, but the plus side was that it gave him plenty of extra time to take Deputy Bobby’s clothes off with his eyes.
He was still a few feet away when he noticed me, but if an audience gave him any pause, he didn’t show it.
When he got closer, he said, “Bobby, thank God. I’ve been so scared.
I’ve been terrified. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep.
I’m all alone in this world, and I need a big, strong man to take care of me. ”
He reached out with a finger like he intended to run it down Bobby’s admittedly, uh, developed biceps, but Deputy Bobby said first, “We talked about touching.”
Mr. Cheek’s eyes cut to me. “He said he’d arrest me! Me! Can you imagine? He’s a savage! He’s a brute!”
“And he’s not very grateful either,” I said. “I bought him a dozen cupcakes from the Cakery, and the first thing he said was ‘Why are there only six cupcakes?’”
For a moment, a different grin flashed out from under Mr. Cheek’s mask—an authentic one. Then, turning back to Bobby, he said, “You beast!”
“The burglary,” Deputy Bobby said.
“You have perfect timing,” Mr. Cheek said, “because I just put some tea on, and I can tell you the whole story.”
Deputy Bobby shook his head.
“It’s always like this,” Mr. Cheek confided to me. “The push and pull. The give and take. He’s the yin to my yang. We can’t be together. We can’t stay away from each other.”
“I’m going to take that,” Deputy Bobby said, “to mean that there wasn’t actually a burglary.”
“Of course there was a burglary! Someone broke into my mailbox and stole my mail.”
Instead of going to check the mailbox, though, Deputy Bobby stood there, giving Mr. Cheek an unwavering look.
Mr. Cheek shrank down a little.
“How do you know they stole your mail?” I asked. “Was the mailbox damaged?”
“Well, no,” Mr. Cheek said. “But it’s my birthday, and the cards from my very best friends aren’t there. It’s obvious that they were stolen.”
Deputy Bobby was silent for another few moments. And then he said, “Happy birthday, Mr. Cheek.”
“Well, thank you, dear.”
“If your cards are missing, we’ll need to refer that to a postal inspector.”
“Oh no, I really don’t think that’s necessary. I’d hate to be a bother.”
“You know what?” Deputy Bobby asked. “I was going to mail mine, but maybe I’ll drop it off this afternoon instead.”
A smile lit up Mr. Cheek’s face. “Well, Bobby, that would be lovely. Just lovely.”
He followed us to the door, and as we made our way to the cruiser, Mr. Cheek called after us, “Oh, Bobby, there’s a strange man who’s been watching my shop from across the street!”
“Keep walking,” Deputy Bobby told me in an undertone.
“He’s really very handsome. Breathtaking, really. And he seems to be quite taken with me. But I thought maybe you could check it out and report back, and then we’d have time for tea—”
By then, we were at the cruiser. Deputy Bobby glanced at the comic book store across the street, looked back at Mr. Cheek, and said, “That’s a cardboard cut-out of The Rock, sir.”
“Is that his name?” There was a little thrill in his voice. “Quite the specimen.”
When we got into the car, Deputy Bobby gave me a look that I realized, after a moment, was unexpectedly defensive.
I managed—barely—to keep my grin under wraps as I said, “He seems nice.”
“He is nice,” Deputy Bobby said, and the same defensiveness was in his voice, too. “He’s lonely. And a little silly. But he doesn’t mean anything by it.”
“You were very sweet to him.”
Deputy Bobby seemed to be picking that apart in his head. Finally, he shifted into drive, and we pulled away from the curb.
“Isn’t that a problem, though?” I asked. “Like, calling in false reports, that kind of thing? Waste of official resources?”
“He sends donuts to the station every morning,” Deputy Bobby said, voice dry. “My first month on the beat, I was out there every day. I finally told him if it was more than once a week, I’d arrest him.”
“You know, I think he might like that.”