“I thought it through,” Aidan protested. “None of the other things I thought of would fit.”
Doug Parker sighed a sigh that tapered into a moan. “This is what you have to look forward to, Eli, if you have kids.”
“Can’t wait,” Eli said dryly.
But the notion made him feel restless again. He thought it might be kind of fun to have a kid who was rascally enough to spray paint a sign, as long as he only tried it once.
“We’ll pay for the sign or any damage, Eli. More specifically, Aidan will pay for the sign out of his allowance, and he’ll be working his butt off this sum—”
Eli’s phone buzzed. His heart gave a little lurch.
It was Leigh Devlin.
“Hang on, Doug. It’s the big boss. I gotta take this.”
He strode about fifteen paces down the gravel verge out of earshot of Doug’s harangue and answered the call from Leigh Devlin.
“Sir. How are you?”
“Excellent. How are things there, Eli?”
“Scintillating. Just checking out a...” If he mentioned it to Leigh, he’d be obliged to write Aidan up, and he hadn’t decided whether to do that yet. “...rumor about a homeless encampment up at Coyote Creek.” Which he was about to do.
“Listen, I was hoping you’d come up here to county for a meeting sometime in the next few weeks. Don’t want to go into it over the phone, but let’s just say it involves your ideas regarding your future career direction. Thought we could have lunch after we meet. Amy would love to see you, too, I know. You interested?”
Amy was Leigh’s wife.
“Of course. It would be my pleasure, sir.”
“Great. Pull together any insights you might have about law enforcement in the county and ideas about where you’d like to see yourself in a few years. I’ll have my assistant mail you a few dates, you pick one, get back to me?”
“Sounds perfect.”
Devlin ended the call.
Eli was still a moment, staring down at the phone.
Then he glanced back up the road.
He wasn’t certain whether he’d miss hollering at twelve-year-old vandals when he wasundersheriff.
If he was undersheriff.
But damned if that didn’t provide a little extra glow to this challenging day.
He started to smile.
And then his smile faded.
And hell, maybethatwas Kismet. He’d be working closer to Sacramento. Which is where Bethany Walker lived. That didn’t provide quite the “ping” in his gut he thought Kismet ought to.
“Hey, Doug,” he called to Parker, who was still lecturing his now thoroughly penitent son. “If Aidan does a little litter clean up and helps clean that sign, I’ll let him off with just a warn—GODDAMMIT, FRANCONE!”
The blue Porsche was roaring by him at around seventy.
The nerve of that motherfucker.
He could have sworn he saw Francone’s arm waving gaily at him out the window.