Shadowmaker Read Free

shifted toward Mom, but I wanted to know the rest. “You said
burglaries
too. What about them?”
    “Yeah … Funny thing about ’em, they started around the time the shopliftin’ stopped and, like the shopliftin’, they didn’t amount to much at first—a few small office supplies, some auto tools, a case of beer. Then some folks got their homes broken into.”
    Mom looked interested in spite of herself. “Maybe that’s what was planned for us tonight.”
    “I doubt it,” the sheriff said. “Burglars don’t want to be seen or heard. It’d be too hard to burglarize a small house like this while people are in it.”
    “Hasn’t anybody been able to identify the burglars?” I asked.
    Sheriff Granger shook his head. “You’re thinkin’ of robbery, which is a more serious crime than burglary. Folks tend to get the two mixed up. Robbers are the ones who hold you up with a gun. Burglars come around when you’re gone or when you’re asleep and take what they want and get away fast. Usually, nobody sees burglars.”
    A sudden thought seemed to come to the sheriff. His eyes darkened and deepened, drilling into Mom’s eyes, and I realized he wasn’t always the easygoing man he seemed to be. “Let’s get back to your reason for calling me. Is there anything you haven’t mentioned, Miz Gillian? Like maybe a husband somewhere tryin’ to give you a bad time?”
    Mom closed her eyes, as though she wanted to shut out both the sheriff and unhappy memories. “My husband died in a car accident six years ago,” she answered.
    “Sorry,” he murmured, and his voice softened. “Then let me try a different direction. Anybody tryin’ to repossess your car? Anybody you’re havin’ trouble with?”
    I waited for Mom to bring up the Brownsville articles, but I remembered what the sheriff had said about Mom making people upset with her columns. She must have remembered too. She jutted her chin out stubbornly and answered, “No. Nothing like that.”
    “Then we’re through here,” Sheriff Granger said. “I’ll be goin’. If anythin’ else worries you, just give me a call. That’s what I’m here for.”
    Without answering, Mom led him to the door. The moment he was outside she locked it firmly, then turned and leaned against it.
    “It’s weird,” I said. “Sheriff Granger actually looks like he’s playing the part of a small-town sheriff on TV. I couldn’t believe it when he started to quote passages from great literature. Mom, it doesn’t add up.”
    “It does seem odd, but as a journalist I’ve learned never to assume I know what a person is going to be like. You’re trying to make him fit into a category,” Mom said. “We’re all guilty at times of categorizing people, even though we know better.”
    “But the sheriff has a stomach that laps over his belt, he drops his
g
’s, and he calls you Miz. Is he for real?”
    “Why can’t he have a good mind and a love of good literature?” Mom asked.
    “It’s still kind of weird,” I mumbled, unwilling to give up easily, “and even if you won’t say it, I know you agree.”
    “Tomorrow,” Mom said in a low voice, as she took another look at the door, “I’ll get some dead bolts and window locks at the hardware store, and a couple of bright lights I can string up in the backyard. Those French doorsn … I don’t like all that glass. Maybe at the store they can suggest something that will help me secure them.”
    “Mom?” I asked, shuddering from the chill that ran up my backbone into my neck. “You think whoever was out there will come back, don’t you? But it’s not connected to Brownsville and the articles, is it?”
    She looked surprised for a moment, and I had the strange feeling that she’d forgotten I was there. “Oh, Katie,” she said, and strode across the room to clasp my shoulders, hugging me tightly. “Don’t mind my ramblings. I was just talking to myself, just taking extra precautions. I didn’t mean to frighten