“You know Bruce?” asked a slightly surprised Connors.
“He’s been a big help in my first year on the job. Showed me a lot of the local ropes, and I still talk with him frequently.”
“In that case,” said Tomasek, “I’d give good odds that it was Bruce who helped break you in on his own, rather than any help from Wallace.”
Her boss seemed to have a solid reputation as a certified asshole.
“Well, I can’t comment on all that, except to say that Bruce has been very helpful.” Meaning she couldn’t overtly badmouth Sheriff Wallace to others.
“Back to the interview list,” redirected Connors. “Give me your email address, and we’ll get it off to you as soon as it’s ready. I’m sure we’ll add many names later, although the first version will get us going.”
Greta pulled out her wallet and extracted a card, then handed it to Connors. He looked at it quizzically. In large letters were her name, title, email address, and official cell phone number over the Tillamook emblem background. On the bottom were the address and phone number of the Tillamook sheriff’s office, along with Wallace’s name as the sheriff. She’d had the cards made and paid for them out of her own pocket.
“Naturally, it’s best to contact me directly, instead of through the sheriff’s office in Tillamook,” she said.
“Naturally,” Connors said dryly.
The activity for the day settled, she bid her goodbyes and walked out. Alex accompanied her halfway and parted with, “Good impression on Connors, Greta. We’ll be in touch.”
The sun hovered, touching the fog bank just offshore, as she walked to her vehicle. The air chilled her, and the inside of the cab felt good after husbanding the sun’s heat. She pulled out of the police lot onto 101, heading back north at a quarter to six. She merged into what passed for rush hour traffic, meaning five or six vehicles in front of her at stoplights. She decided against eating dinner in Lincoln City.
It took an hour and forty minutes to get home to Pacific City. The winding road and the passage through a number of smaller communities—Agate Beach, Otter Rock, Depoe Bay, Lincoln Beach, Gleneden Beach, then Lincoln City and on to Tillamook County and Neskowin—all combined to keep her average speed down.
She pulled into her garage about half-past seven. The typical evening fog had rolled over her neighborhood and hid the stars. The first thing she wanted to do was take a hot shower, but she also needed to talk to Bruce. She shed her outer work clothes and started building a fire while she dialed.
“Hello?” answered a gravelly voice.
“Hey, Bruce. It’s Greta.”
“Hi, there, Greta. How’s the deputy sheriff business?”
“Depends on your point of view, I guess. We’ve got a murder case.”
“You mean the one on the news? I thought that was in Lincoln County.”
“They found the body right at the Lincoln-Tillamook county line. Since the initial report went to the Lincoln City police, and the victim lived there, Lincoln County is handling it. However I managed to get myself involved.”
“And Sheriff Wallace didn’t object.”
“I didn’t figure to bother him with the details as long as Tillamook didn’t have to register a murder.”
“Good girl. Can it be my mentoring got through to you?”
They both laughed.
“Say, Bruce, how about breakfast tomorrow? I’ll like to get any advice you might have on this. You know, from a wise old gray-beard.”
“Breakfast sounds fine. Doris’s about seven-thirty?”
“Can we make it eight? I need to get my routine in tomorrow morning. I’ve missed the last couple of days.”
“Eight, it is. See you then.” Click. Penderman wasn’t one for long phone calls.
After a hot shower, Greta donned a fluffy hot pink robe and padded into the kitchen. She cut generous pieces of Tillamook cheese, garlic medium cheddar and extra sharp cheddar this evening.
When she was deciding on job offers, her final choice rested on two factors that would have dismayed a professional career counselor. She had never seen the ocean, so that eliminated all but offers in four states: Florida, Maine, Oregon, and California. She eliminated Florida after a look at Google Earth satellite images showed the state to be too flat. She’d grown up in flat countryside and wanted to experience non-flat. Maine’s yearly weather table on Wikipedia.org made her shiver just reading it. California . . . was too California. Oregon won. There were three offers—the police departments of Portland and a smaller town near Portland and the Sheriff’s Department of Tillamook County on the coast. The visit to Tillamook showed it was rural enough to remind her of home, but the winning factor was that Tillamook City was the home and main processing plant for Tillamook Cheese.
She loved cheese. Candy, sodas, or other intense sweets never especially appealed to her. However, cheese and Greta were made for each other. Her favorite from as early as she could remember was Tillamook Medium Cheddar, the only Tillamook cheese sold in Nixa or Springfield stores. Macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, cheeseburgers, scalloped potatoes, cheese and crackers . . . hell, just plain cheese. It was a revelation when she learned Tillamook was an actual place that made the cheese and not just a brand name. She was also surprised to discover other Tillamook cheeses besides medium cheddar—more than twenty different types that didn’t make it to southwest Missouri. Given the tossup with the finalists for which Oregon position she might accept, the cheese factor tipped the scale.