Page 2 of The Aster Valley Collection, Vol. 2

The GPS directed me to a very out-of-the-way mountain road I wasn’t familiar with yet. Even though I’d been living and working in Aster Valley for over six months already, there were still plenty of areas I hadn’t had a chance to explore yet.

Thistledown Cove was one of them.

The old mountain cabin homes along the street became fewer and farther between until I got to the end.

The road simply stopped in a pile of dusty pine needles and a tangle of downed branches.

The gravel driveway to my right sported an old brown truck that looked about as tidy and clean as the pile of debris on the road.

I parked and reached into my glove box.

“Bear spray,” I told the deputy. My utility belt held pepper spray, but bear spray was both stronger and able to deploy over greater distances. I had no intention of getting closer to the bear than I had to.

Shawn nodded, like wild animal calls were just a part of life, and it occurred to me that growing up in Meeker, which wasn’t much bigger than Aster Valley, it probably had been.

It turned out we didn’t need to bother with the bear spray.

After following high-pitched yelps and calls for help, we found our way into the cabin’s small, cluttered kitchen where a big, burly man sporting a thick, ragged beard and wide, bugged-out eyes stood on the table clutching one hand to his chest with the other.

“It bit me!” He pointed in the direction of the violent perp.

A fluffy squirrel looked at me and, swear to god, rolled its eyes as if to say, “Yeah, no shit. Drama much?”

I looked back and forth between the squirrel and the mountain man. “The squirrel bit you?”

He nodded rapidly. “Get it out! Get it out!”

“If it bit you, we need to trap it to test it for?—”

“ Get it out of here oh my god get it out! ”

I blinked up at the big guy and wondered if there was substance abuse involved. “Sir, if we don’t have the animal tested, you’ll have to be presumed exposed to rabies. That means?—”

He roared, leapt off the table, hopped over a pile of newspapers and empty cardboard boxes, and yanked open the back door before running out of it. The squirrel looked at me for a beat before bolting after him. Shawn and I exchanged a brief, incredulous glance before darting after the squirrel.

Outside, the man was now standing on a picnic table, whimpering and sniffling through tears. “Hurts like a son of a bitch.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out some gloves before asking to see his hand. Sure enough, there was a tiny bite mark on the meaty part under his thumb that was welling an impressive amount of blood.

“You’re going to have to go in for treatment. I really wish you’d let us trap him.” I peeled off the gloves and called dispatch to give them an update. “The first shot has to be given as soon as possible. Come on. I’ll drive you. Save you the cost of an ambulance ride.”

On the ride to the hospital, I asked the man—turns out his name was Coleman—what had happened.

“You see, it’s like this,” he began, hugging his now bandaged hand to his chest. “I love animals. I do. So, sometimes I like to feed them, you know? Just do a little something nice for my fellow creatures. And I have a raccoon that comes around. I call him Jolly. Well, Jolly is pretty particular about his breakfast foods.”

Why did I ask? This was like the Candy-Corn story all over again.

But in the passenger’s seat, Shawn was nodding along, like picky raccoons named Jolly were all in a day’s work.

“He likes berries, but only if I serve them with something else, like chicken or mice or frogs.”

Welp, that escalated quickly.

“And this morning, I sprinkled some nuts over the top. So, really, it’s my own damned fault. Squirrels like nuts, you know?”

I nodded solemnly. “So it seems.”

He shrugged. “I left the door open because I like to watch and see if Jolly likes his breakfast. We have kind of a… camaraderie, you could say.”

I bit my tongue against pointing out Jolly represented the largest rabies risk to him among his menagerie. No raccoon friendship was worth a fatal rabies infection.

“But then, easy as you please, in comes this jackass squirrel. As if I’d prepared him a meal or something.”

As if. The gall of that wild animal pursuing nourishment. Quelle surprise.

Once again, I wanted to say many, many things. But I figured none of them would help. I kept my mouth shut and let him get his story out.

“So then I tried to grab him to take him outside, and that’s when he bit me.”

I glanced over at him to see if I was being played. “You… tried to grab a wild squirrel. With your bare hand?”

He set his jaw and nodded. “Little punk-ass needed to be taught a lesson.”

Oh, now he was Mister Big Scary Mountain Man. Mm-hm.

I asked him a few more questions, gently suggested he change his wildlife feeding habits, and wished him well in his intense two weeks of treatment.

When we finally handed him off to the friendly intake personnel at the hospital, I sat in my vehicle and typed up the incident before laughing to myself.

Potentially rabid wild animal attacks weren’t common in Los Angeles, but it was nice to know both human hubris and fear were universal.

“You handled that well,” I told Shawn as we headed back to town. He’d grabbed us some fresh coffee from the cafeteria while I’d written the report. “I’m guessing you’ll be right at home here. Did you miss exciting stuff like this in a bigger town? Is that why you moved away from Durango?”

He smiled. “Partly. I wanted to move closer to my family,” he admitted.

“But I have no desire to work for Jay, so I couldn’t move back to Meeker.

This was the next best thing. As you can imagine, my mother is thrilled I’m a little closer.

I’ll be able to go on the father/son annual fishing trip again.

And don’t be surprised if the entire Graham clan turns up in the department one day to meet everyone, and if she tries matchmaking everyone in sight distance, I apologize in advance. ”

“You’re a bigger man than I,” I admitted. “My parents live in LA, and I’m enjoying the distance. They’re wonderful but very opinionated.”

Shawn’s laughter was warm and easy. “Well, to be honest, Jay being chief of police isn’t the only reason I didn’t want to go back to Meeker.

My mom truly is hell-bent on getting grandkids.

And dating any of the women in Meeker would be like dating one of my sisters.

No, thanks. Being an hour away is just about perfect as far as I’m concerned.

I only hope it won’t take too long to make some friends here.

I don’t care about the dating scene so much as having folks I can kick back and enjoy a beer with.

It never really happened for me in Durango, even after five years of trying. ”

“Then I’d guess you’d better come with me to Pie Hole tonight. I’ll introduce you around.” I closed my laptop and made sure I had my phone and keys. “You like football?”

His grin widened. “Hell yeah. Cowboys all the way, baby.”

I shook my head. “Tonight you’re a Houston Riggers fan, I’m afraid. Tonight’s a going-away thing for Tiller Raine. He’s headed to Texas for the preseason tomorrow.”

The look on Shawn’s face was priceless. “Tiller Raine? The Tiller Raine? Heisman winner and Super Bowl MVP?”

Maybe being friends with celebrities wasn’t quite so bad.

As long as they weren’t Hollywood actors.

“Yeah. He and his boyfriend got engaged last night, so I guess we’re celebrating that, too.”

“No shit? That’s awesome. I read an article about them buying a place in Colorado, but I didn’t put two and two together it was Aster Valley.”

I spent the short drive explaining that Mikey and Tiller had purchased Rockley Lodge and the old, defunct ski mountain in hopes of reviving it and reopening it in the future.

“It’s part of why they agreed to let this film crew come in and film on location here,” I said, stifling a sigh.

“They’re hoping to start getting some positive media coverage about the place.

The ski mountain was closed down twenty years ago after an unfortunate accident, and they want to replace those old stories with some new, feel-good ones. ”

“Oh man, I’d love to live in a ski town. I’m not great at it, but I’d love to learn.”

I pulled up outside the new bakery in town.

“Gonna grab some donuts and bring ’em over to the fire department,” I told Shawn.

“I want to thank Russ Grant and his crew for their amazing response to a false alarm over at the high school last weekend. Half the firefighters were playing a softball game in Valley Park, and they dropped everything to race over there in case any summer school kids were in the building. Thankfully, the building was empty, and the alarm had somehow been tripped accidentally. But they went above and beyond.”

“Best part of living in a small town,” Shawn said happily.

And he was so right. That was the kind of thing I should be focusing on. Not hot, entitled troublemakers. I was determined to put the movie people out of my mind entirely, and I did…

For about four minutes.

“I don’t understand,” I told Darius behind the counter. “What do you mean no bear claws?”

“I mean… we delivered them all down to the Gold Rats set. For craft services, you know? That movie has been amazing for business,” he enthused. But whatever expression he saw on my face had him licking his lips nervously. “Sorry about the bear claws, though, Sheriff.”

“Not at all. Don’t give it another thought.” It wasn’t Darius’s fault that the movie people were on a mission to destroy my breakfast and my peace of mind.

But the strikes against Gold Rats —and seriously, what was that name even about? —were adding up.