Chapter 4
Warren Caldwell
The trick to running a small town for as long as Warren Caldwell had run Whistlerun was understanding that the people in it did not, strictly speaking, need to be run. They needed to be tended to and acknowledged. They needed to be told, once a week and sometimes twice, that they mattered.
The community garage sale was one way to do so.
So, Warren had moved it the year he’d won his first election.
The complaints had stopped, attendance had doubled, and the church had quietly thanked him with a free pew at the front for the rest of his natural life. A man who could solve a problem like that was a man who could solve other problems, too.
Warren stood near the church’s side door with his hands in the pockets of his Saturday-morning slacks and his mayoral pin transferred to the lapel of a lighter jacket than he wore on weekdays.
Janet Shepley was complaining that the folding tables at the far end of the lot were the wrong height for what she had brought.
“They are not the wrong height, Janet,” Warren said with forced pleasantness, rocking once on his heels. “A table is a table.”
“They are too tall, Warren.”
“They are the standard height,” Warren insisted as he resisted the urge to glance at his watch. He was a busy man. “They have been the standard height since I was a boy.”
“I am not getting any taller, Warren.”
There was no arguing with Janet Shepley, and Warren had stopped trying years ago. He didn’t know why he’d tried this morning, but he forced himself to slowly breathe in and remind himself that her continued support was vital to his position.
After all, Janet was the unspoken leader of the older women in this town.
She had hemmed dresses for most of the daughters in Cane County. She’d come through for him more than once when the council had voted on something the residents cared about, and he would undoubtedly need it again.
“I will see what I can do about a shorter one,” Warren promised, making a small mental note to actually get her one before the morning was out.
A simple phone call should suffice, considering several other residents owed him favors.
Janet’s problem would be someone else’s problem before lunchtime.
“A new table will be here before the end of the day.”
Warren was about to redirect their conversation when movement on Main Street shifted his attention.
Hadley’s Chevy Equinox slid to a halt against the curb in front of the church.
He could not imagine what business would bring their chief of police to the preparation of a garage sale that was not set to open until Thursday morning. He monitored her arrival with interest.
Hadley had been a slip of a girl when she’d left Whistlerun at eighteen, and Warren recalled her then with an indistinct fondness.
The young woman who stepped down from the Equinox was no longer a slip of anything.
She was five feet seven or eight by his estimation, and her wavy brown hair with hints of copper had been pulled away from her face.
Her striking features were the kind that an older man learned not to dwell on too long when she happened to be the chief of his police department.
Since she was wearing one of her blazers that she only ever seemed to wear when on duty, he assumed she’d stopped by on business.
A few of the older residents who were setting up tables called out to her.
Mrs. Latham from the post office gave her a wave. Rosie Trindle, who was eighty-four and walked everywhere with a cane, shouted out a “Mornin’, Chief Dawkins” across the gravel lot. Hadley raised her hand in return, though she kept her gaze, which seemed awfully determined at the moment, on him.
The residents her age didn’t ignore her, but he’d noticed they didn’t give her the respect she deserved.
He supposed they weren’t entirely sure she’d earned it.
They had spent twenty years believing her brother had killed Emily Esten, and the news that Emanuel Telfort had been responsible for the girl’s death hadn’t been an easy thing for them to swallow.
Now, Mason was walking free, and most of the townsfolk did not yet know what to do about that.
They didn’t even know how to greet him on the street, not that Warren had seen him around lately.
And because they had not all yet decided how to react to Mason, they had not yet decided how to react to Hadley.
Warren didn’t mind the current status quo, though. When political issues became murky just beneath the surface, he tended to use the unrest to his advantage. The town would decide which direction it wanted to lean in its own leisurely time.
The arrangement he’d brokered with Hadley, the more he thought about it, had turned out well for him.
His original plan, the one he had been quietly working toward for the better part of three years, was to eliminate the chief of police position entirely and allow the county to take over.
The line item alone would have saved the town twelve percent of its operating budget and given Warren a campaign talking point for life.
Hadley had been the one to change his mind, though he doubted she had realized it at the time. They had been standing in the dining room at Reed Langley’s wake when she had laid out why a town like Whistlerun needed its own chief.
She hadn’t been wrong…yet.
“Would you give me a moment, my dear?” Warren murmured to Janet before gesturing with one hand to suggest he was sorry for the interruption.
“I am not waiting on tables forever, Warren.”
“I will find you some shorter ones. You have my word.”
Janet moved off in the direction of what was to be the bake stand, but not before stepping into Hadley’s path and pulling her in for a warm embrace.
Warren observed the two of them without reacting to their public display of affection.
Hadley had been the one to give Janet answers after almost fifty years of asking the wrong questions of the wrong people.
The loyalty Hadley had earned from the older woman was not one money could buy, and it bothered him immensely.
He’d spent years ensuring his pieces stayed where he’d set them on the board, and Hadley’s alliance with one of the unspoken leaders was a piece he’d continue to monitor closely.
“Chief Dawkins,” Warren greeted her after clearing his throat. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Warren.” Hadley had stopped about three feet short of him, which was usually the distance one kept when one did not intend to be friendly. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve her ire this morning, but he was clearly about to find out. “I need a few minutes of your time.”
“You have many of them, dear.” Given her demeanor, Warren suspected the topic was rather delicate. “There is a table at the far end of the lot that nobody is using yet. Shall we?”
Hadley gave a curt nod of agreement, so he walked her down the slope to the last folding table in the row that sat in the shade of an old crabapple about thirty feet from the nearest volunteer.
He thought about pulling out the two chairs tucked underneath, but he didn’t believe that Hadley would want this discussion to last longer than necessary.
“What can I do for you, Chief Dawkins?”
“Why did you tell Reed to drop the trespassing charges against Roland Mercer?”
Warren generally did not allow himself to be caught off guard by anything in a public setting.
Yet he was unable to prevent his jaw from tightening at her insinuation that he’d overstepped his position.
The Mercer business was over a year in his rearview, and frankly, he’d not thought about the man in all that time.
“Now, where in the world did you come across that name?” Warren asked, more to himself than to her. He needed to get the grounding back under his feet before he answered any of her questions. “Last year, you say?”
“It’s my job to investigate Reed’s death, Warren.”
She delivered the line without inflection. Warren took it for what it was—a refusal to give him her source, and he respected it. That didn’t mean he had to like the evasion.
“All right.” Warren folded his arms as he came to a decision. Honesty was the best policy in this situation. “I will tell you what I told Reed last year, which is that the citation was not worth the cost of writing it down. Waste of paper.”
“Earl Vinton wanted to press charges.”
“Earl Vinton wants to press charges about everyone and everything that moves on his land after dark. He wanted to press charges last spring against the Beecham boy for cutting through to get to the creek. I swear, that man would round up the local wildlife if he could. Earl is a fine farmer, but he’s also the kind of man who would have a fence around his airspace if the law would let him.
I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, Chief Dawkins. ”
“Roland Mercer was trespassing on Earl’s property after eleven o’clock at night, Warren. You’re lucky that he didn’t grab his shotgun and take care of business himself.”
Hadley had positioned herself to monitor the volunteers and vendors setting up the tables and chairs. Warren noticed that her gaze had strayed to Pastor Wayne Beeler a few times.
Did she know about the pastor’s history of borrowing from the church’s funds?
She certainly seemed to know everything else that happened in this town. That was her job, of course, but she hadn’t yet learned how to move gracefully through the political arena.
“Warren, let’s cut to the chase. You’re the only one who could have convinced Reed not to press charges, and we both know that. I want to know why.”
“Timing, dear,” Warren replied truthfully.
Again, he didn’t see the harm in explaining his reasons for such an odd request. “You were here last year. The press had descended on this town for the year-anniversary coverage of Missy Claymont’s disappearance.
A swarm of locusts is what they were...are, though I’m hoping this year is different. ”