11
A s Dillon approached the station, Maud shoved through the main doors and stomped her way across the parking lot. Dillon thought she looked like a drill sergeant on a tear. “Where on earth have you been?”
“Walking.”
“How dare you slink off when there’s work to do!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“That’s no excuse!” She waved one hand back at the station. “Disappearing today of all days! When the pile of official documents on your desk is a foot high!”
“ My desk?”
She ignored his question. “Half my exhausted force has been out searching for your sorry hide!” She took hold of his sleeve and stomped back toward the entrance, dragging him along. “Can you or can you not understand a set of books?”
“Can.” On definite ground. At least on that point.
“And you understand bureaucratic red tape?”
“Different question, same answer.”
“So maybe Christmas won’t miss us after all.” A stray shaft of weak sunlight illuminated the glass portals as Maud pushed them open and declared, “The wayward lad has returned.”
Ryan grinned at his confused state. “Guess we can call off the dogs.”
Maud led him to the desk directly in front of hers. “Dillon, sit.”
The desk was now piled with documents, folders, a tray of receipts, scrawled notes, and a desktop computer. “What is all this?”
“What does it look like?”
He opened the top folder, studied the spreadsheets, said, “A half-finished mess.”
“Sounds like we’ve found our man,” Ryan said. “Maybe you should deputize him.”
“Can’t hurt,” Maud agreed. “Raise your right hand. Do you swear to uphold the law, behave yourself, get this work done on time, and not break Olivia’s heart again?”
“What kind of oath is that?”
“Say yes,” Maud declared. “That’s an order.”
“Okay, yes. But I didn’t—”
“You just hush with that.” For once, Maud’s ire became very real indeed. “Olivia’s mother was one of my dearest lifelong friends. I helped her pack for the move to Phoenix. Your running away broke two beautiful hearts that day.”
Dillon had no idea what to say.
Ryan offered a remarkably soft, “That was then and this is now.”
Maud stood, hands on hips, glaring.
Ryan said, “Tell our new deputy what we’re facing here.” When Maud remained silent, she went on. “The state is offering us disaster-relief funding. Us, as in, the town and police and fire and emergency services. The problem is, nobody knows how to handle these forms.”
Maud said, “Everybody is stretched impossibly thin. Even if we weren’t, I doubt we could complete these on time.”
“Maud is the best we have at red tape,” Ryan said. “And she’s overwhelmed. Just like the rest of us.”
Dillon asked, “What’s the due date?”
“Tomorrow,” Maud replied. “Now get to work.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Dillon was as content as he’d been in what felt like forever.
The work was deeply complex and absorbing. Just the same, a portion of his mind was safe to drift back over the hard weeks and months he’d left behind. Through the sleepless period of defeat and shame and futile struggle, he had lost touch with this. The joy he had always known while working.
Numbers like these formed a delicious puzzle. He could dive in, lose himself in piecing together the mystery that very few even realized was there. His ability had taken him so very far. And now brought him back to where he had started.
He broke the work into five segments. The state’s jumble of paperwork and red tape came first, since that formed the necessary framework for everything else. Once he had a handle on the requirements, he launched into the four sets of books—police, fire, EMT, and all the equipment the town had leased from local contractors.
Hours passed.
Dillon was content. A kitten working its way through a saucer of double cream, with a silk cushion waiting by a roaring fire, had nothing on this guy.
A while later, he looked up to find a sandwich and steaming cup planted on the desk’s corner. Only then did he realize how hungry he’d become. Dillon ate while doing a preliminary run-through of the fire station’s books. Which were, in a word, a mess.
He fanned out reams of hand-scribbled notes, receipts that had been dashed off and smudged to oblivion, then dripped grainy mustard all over an email from the state confirming the highway department would reimburse them for clearing roads and using equipment normally reserved . . .
Dillon stopped when a shadow fell on the desk. He looked up to find Maud standing by his chair. Ryan was two steps back, observing. Dillon thought the detective had a lovely smile. “Yes?”
“The fire chief called. Do you want him to stop by?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.” His gaze was caught by a flicker of lightning. “It’s raining.”
Ryan chuckled, shook her head, turned away.
“Well, duh,” Maud said.
Dillon thought the woman’s glare had lost a touch of its former spice. “Thanks for the sandwich.”
Ryan called from her desk, “You’re welcome.”
Maud asked, “You need anything?”
Lightning flashed, closer this time. “A laptop would help. You know, just in case we lose power. I can make sure nothing’s lost . . .” He stopped talking when Maud turned and walked away. He caught sight of Ryan seated across the aisle, still grinning. “What?”
“Just wondering what that song was you kept humming.”
This was news. “I don’t hum.”
Ryan laughed out loud.
“I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”
She bent back over an open file. “You got that right.”
Maud returned and set down a laptop and cables beside his keyboard. “This is the chief’s personal computer. You break it, you’ll be back in the rear cell without a key.”
The fire chief arrived soon after. Dillon wasn’t exactly clear on timing. Which he took as a very good sign. The fire chief was a lean, rawboned man with craven features. He stripped off his yellow hazard gear, dragged over a chair, asked, “You mind?”
“Not at all.”
He eased down like every joint hurt, then offered a meaty paw. “Charlie Hurst. Sorry about the mess we’ve dumped in your lap.”
“It’s okay, Chief. I figure you’ve done your best, given everything else you’ve had to handle.”
The man’s eyebrows were a pair of unkempt meadows. The eyes below were one shade darker than his skin. “That’s not what I was expecting to hear from the man wading through my bad handwriting.”
Dillon indicated the piles of receipts and scrawled notes. “Everything related to your fire stations is pretty clear. You’ve kept a running tally of all your daily operating expenses. What I haven’t seen are summaries of your larger costs. I found a note saying you leased equipment from other sources, but I can’t locate the charge sheets.” Dillon picked up the yellow slips with nothing save a series of handwritten numbers. “You’ll have to help me with these.”
The chief took his time responding. “Maud told me you’re the miracle worker we’ve been hoping for.”
“I said no such thing.” Maud rose from her desk. “Coffee?”
“Can’t hurt.” He told Dillon, “To answer your question, I’ve got an office full of charge sheets and receipts, and my copies of those things you write when you hope to pay off the kindness of strangers one day.”
“Promissory notes?”
“Sounds right. My crews got saddled with a lot of the road work, basically because they volunteered and there wasn’t anybody else. I keep trying to tell them you don’t volunteer for nothing. But they’ve spent years learning to ignore me.”
Dillon indicated the mostly handwritten pile. “So what I don’t have here are things like . . .”
“Plows and dozers we rented from as far away as San Luis Obispo before the southern route got washed away.” He squinted at the side wall, thinking. “Land we leased so we had somewhere to dump the rubble. Extra hands we hired. ’Bout a dozen other things I can’t be bothered to recollect.”
“What about hard-use amortization, damage to your own equipment, items that need replacing?”
“Yeah, I’ve done my best to keep up with that too. The main crews working the power lines are out of Santa Cruz. But we had some fellows down from Frisco, and two of their trucks broke down. They’ve been using my ladder trucks. They aren’t gentle.”
“Okay, so there’s no time to input all that,” Dillon decided. “We’ll make the split right here. What you’ve already supplied, we request payback from the state. Everything else we bundle into the FEMA application. That sound okay to you?”
Charlie Hurst accepted the mug from Maud without taking his eyes off Dillon. “You sure you understand what’s required here?”
“Yes.”
Maud took up station beside the fire chief. “He’s been like that all day.”
Charlie asked Dillon, “You really think the state auditors are going to accept a mess of notes in my bad writing, and pay us what we need?”
“They won’t see any of this.” Dillon swung his laptop around. “I’m inputting the figures into their form. Breaking down the costs by week.”
“I didn’t date the things. Didn’t know I needed to.”
“It doesn’t matter. We have a series of bona fide expenses tied to an emergency situation. One so severe both the state and federal government have declared this a disaster area. The state auditor should take my forms and be grateful.”
“You’re certain of that, are you?”
“Absolutely.”
Charlie took a noisy slurp. “What about this nonsense about submitting in the run-up to Christmas?”
“Makes perfect sense.”
“Does it.”
“Sure. Having the central coast declared a state and federal disaster area means two sets of financial floodgates are officially being opened. The state’s set this supertight timeline so there’s no overlap with the feds.” Dillon fiddled with his trackpoint, brought up the second set of documents. “See here, the feds start their own giveaway program that very same day.”
“Is that so.”
“Right. FEMA will insist on inspecting the state request forms along with whatever we want to get from the feds, so they can make sure there’s no double-billing. Which is where I’ll need access to the receipts in your office.”
Charlie glanced at Maud, took in her crossed arms and her frown, but all he said was, “What else can we ask the feds to pay for?”
“The coastal walk. That’s top of my list.” As Dillon drew up the relevant clause, Maud closed in tight beside the chief. “The walk, the road, the parking lot, the retainer wall, all this is covered by what they say here. If we can get some decent estimates in time, I want to include the motel entryways.” Dillon hesitated, then added, “Maybe, if we do this right, we can get some money for the motels as well. Their gardens, the damage from hillside runoffs, treat it as infrastructure that plays a role in the town’s enjoyment of the beachfront.”
“You don’t say.”
“I can’t promise that last bit. But yeah, that’s what I’m hoping. And it’s going to be submitted on time. Thanks to the great job Maud’s done getting me started.”
Charlie looked up at the station manager. “How can you stay mad at this guy?”
Maud snorted. “Don’t get me started.”
But Charlie wasn’t having it. “Maud, apologize to the gentleman.”
“No.”
“Maud, I’m not asking you a second time.”
“Since when did the likes of you . . .” But when Ryan walked over to stand on Charlie’s other side, the station manager lost a good deal of her starch. She grumbled, then, “Oh, all right. I suppose you’ve earned a pass. But only if you get those documents off on time.”
Charlie did his best to hide his smile. “I guess that will have to do.”