Atonement
Chapter 1
I’m heading to the shower when the phone rings. Caller ID says it’s that pesky Ruth Ann Boyer.
I ignore it.
No doubt she’s near tears, aching to apologize for last night when she said, “I never, ever, want to see you again, Archie Schultz.”
She probably wants to make up by fixing my breakfast. Hah! Let her stew. After all, a man can only take so many, ‘I never, ever’s. Right? Although if I had a dime every time she’s said that to me, I’d’ve collected close to thirty bucks in the past few months.
By the time my toilette is complete, my specially brewed coffee has dropped about twenty degrees and barely raises blisters on the roof of my mouth.
There’s a pounding on the front door. My butler is temporarily away from the country, so I answer it myself.
The woman of my affections is standing there. The first words out of Ruth Ann ’s mouth are: “Sometimes, Archie, I can not fathom how you do your job.”
Her statement takes me aback. Yet, her love and kindness so eloquently expressed are almost more than I can bear this early in the morning.
She’s wearing her typical look of humbleness.
Her eyebrows look like furrows in Farmer Jones’ field. Straight and dark. Her mouth looks pretty much the same. Her right foot is slightly forward and she’s tapping her toe.
“And just why didn’t you answer the phone?”
My shoulders droop, my eyes look like a lost puppy dog’s, and I respond somewhat less than forcibly. “Busy?”
Obviously satisfied with my answer, she rushes into my arms to beg forgiveness, misses by at least six feet, and continues to the kitchen.
“Where the hell are your cups today?”
I marvel how she overcomes her faux pas.
She recovers, finds a cup, fills it, takes a sip and makes a face.
“Yuck.” Then Ruth Ann adds cream. Lots and lots and lots of cream. Good thing I wasn’t planning on making a strawberry/whipped cream dessert tonight. After she wrecks my ambrosia, she says, “I’ll lay it out for you. Mayor Jackman was found this morning.”
“I wasn’t aware he was lost. He told me himself, he and Helen were taking a week’s vacation to get some sun in Florida. Did Rupert take a wrong turn and head for Wisconsin?”
“No, he didn’t do anything of the sort. Let me take that back. He must have. He was found floating in Clover Bottom Lake. A rather large hole between his eyes.”