I nod too. If you say so.
Burke’s phone rings and he pulls out his cell. I make to leave but he holds up his hand. “It’s Sams.”
Kid brother Mulligan. I make a face because it hits me. “Danny’s birthday party. It’s tonight.”
Danny Mulligan held a birthday party every year and invited his entire precinct. After his death, Bets still held the bash in his honor. I’ve never missed it, to my knowledge. How could I? Danny was Eve’s father, and an icon in the force.
Burke is nodding. “I can tell him you’re not going.”
“She probably wouldn’t want me there,” I say to him, to his conversation with Sams.
Burke makes a face, but I pull the door closed behind me and stand in the hallway, the sense of loss bitter in my mouth.
Around me, in the bullpen, a few of my colleagues—some familiar, some not—are eying me like I might be made of diesel and ammonium nitrate.
C’mon, give me a break. I think I’m holding it together rather well.
But if I don’t get some answers…
And then it hits me.
I know exactly who can sort this out.
3
The 1930 Tudor home of watchmaker Arthur Fox is still standing, a couple blocks west of Water street in Stillwater, and I pause at the corner, just taking in the changes.
The first time I saw it, it had a vintage Japanese Maple, in bloom, in the front yard and Hosta that lined the walk. Aged but still stately, a little like its owner, Art, who refused to let me in and told me only that my broken watch was clearly working.
Clearly. Because I saw him again twenty years earlier, and the next day, when said watch began to tick. Art still wasn’t the warmest coat in the closet, but I met his wife, Sheila, who turned out to be a real peach and offered me lemonade without enough sweetener in it.
That time, Art left me with the same cryptic words from the back of the watch, Be Stalwart.
I remember the lemonade as I stare at the house and the addition of a wheelchair ramp at the front steps.
The fist is back in my stomach as I approach.
The air is still, cicadas buzzing as if in warning. A shift of the wind reaps the fragrance of hydrangeas nearby.
I ring the bell.
It bellows deep in the house, something mournful and appropriate. The inner door opens and the bars on the outer door dissect a woman’s body. “Can I help you
?”
She’s in her mid-twenties, maybe, with blonde hair, cut short, and kind eyes. She’s wearing a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt, her feet bare.
I’m jarred, and for a second, I lose my words. Maybe Art doesn’t live here—
“Meggie, who is it?”
The voice is gnarled, crabby and I’m so relieved I even smile. “I’m looking for Arthur Fox.”
She considers me. “Why?”
“I need to talk to him about my broken watch.”
“Dad doesn’t fix watches anymore.” She cocks her head, folding her arms over her chest.