Free Maud's House by Sherry Roberts Page B

friend.”
    Eventually, after two beers, T-Bone began to relax. We talked of other things, the weather and vans and apples. Thomas said he bought the bushel in the back of the van at a roadside stand. Apples for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When he was a child, he said, his father told him he could brush his teeth by eating apples. But only on camping trips.
    It was growing dark when T-Bone stood to leave. He looked pointedly at Thomas. I told Thomas he was welcome to stay the night. He accepted the invitation with a flash of teeth. T-Bone grunted.
    Without comment, he walked outside. I left Thomas nursing a soda at the kitchen table. T-Bone’s hands were shoved in his pockets and his head was turtle-sunken into his jacket. We waded through the leaves to his truck. At the truck, he faced me.
    “Are you going to be all right? Did the doctor give you some painkillers?” I nodded. “Eat some supper, okay? Promise.” I promised and he sighed. I touched his arm.
    “You know there isn’t a motel room to be found this time of year,” I said. “They’re probably already putting up people in the National Guard Armory. It’s only for one night.”
    “I know.“
    I watched him out of sight. I stood in the twilight, trying to see him clearly, long after he’d gone. Finally, I noticed the night chill and my throbbing palm. I turned back toward the house and Thomas.

6. The Crime Wave Begins
    T he day went down in Odie Dorfmann’s case book as the beginning. The note read in the typically dramatic style of the books he reads:
Someone is stealing Round Corners’ art.
    If it smacked too much of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, you had to remember that Odie the lawman sees everything through the grimy pane of crime. His nose constantly sniffs for the smell of gunpowder. His ears are perpetually perked, like a cat’s, for the sound of the hammer of a gun being stealthily cocked behind him. Except for when he’s building birdhouses, he hardly ever relaxes.
    Odie was on the alert that morning, sitting beside me on my porch step, scraping the label off an old beer bottle. (Odie wouldn’t think of drinking on duty.) He snapped the bubble gum in his mouth. Odie is a long-time bubble gum fan, probably something to do with all those baseball cards he used to buy. When he quit smoking last year, he became a certifiable addict. Giving up cigarettes had been George’s idea. When he died, George was pestering Odie to launch a regular running program.
    Odie’s visit was one of many by my friends and neighbors. My farm had become the Grand Central Station of Round Corners. People dropped in night and day. They interrupted meals. When they didn’t come in person, they telephoned. And they all had the same thing on their minds: the painting.
    “It’s a virtual campaign,” said Thomas, who was still bunking on the couch in his sleeping bag. In a week, he’d taken over the cooking and the laundry. Ella and Wynn think he’s cute. Reverend Swan wants to know how long Thomas intends to stay. T-Bone just growls at him. And Sheriff Odie Dorfmann, protector of the innocent and artists who don’t know better, doesn’t trust him.
    “You can’t take in everyone who comes to the door, Maud,” Odie said, attacking the beer label with his thumbnail.
    “I took in George,” I said, watching Thomas. Across the yard, he raked leaves into one pile after another, pushed the piles together, then whisked them onto an old blanket. When the blanket became full, he dragged it to the road and dumped the contents on a bigger pile, a mountain of leaves as high as a snow drift, ready to burn.
    The autumn sun was deliciously warm if you were relaxing on a porch trying to ignore nosy public servants, but plumb hot if you were bullying around thousands of leaves. Thomas flung his flannel shirt on a bush. Underneath the shirt he wore a gray T-shirt with the words “Rock Is On a Roll” printed on the front. Underneath the T-shirt were young, healthy muscles.