Hickey finished his survey, and the road crew had even done the portion from our gates to within ten feet of the house. Rain at that point slowed work...on the Lane until it dried out some, but a day or so later, they started bringing in the rock for the base course. Margie and Robert were busy during all of that as it appeared that they now had two Portals in operation; one to the equipment yard and the other to the crusher site for the delivery of crushed rock. The steam tractor was now towing. He spotted Tim Speckler and headed for him. Tim was past retirement age and had been Ed's first partner when Ed got out of Police Academy. Ed surveyed the group to see if any of his old adversaries from the force were around. Not seeing any, he walked up to Tim."How's it going Tim?" Ed said, "What's going on?" Oh, just a girlfriend murdered her boyfriend in his office," Tim replied, "He had his pants off, so he probably wasn't doing it right."The hairs on the back of Ed's head stood up. He. Being sent home in disgrace wouldn't set well with my parents. It would also put me at odds with my brother. I didn't give a shit if his professor retaliated against him, but I did care if Vic retaliated against me.Missy had been watching me as I worked out a plan. I leaned over, and kissed her, making her smile, contentedly. She really wasn't a contentious person. I believed that she didn't know how much her silence was worth to Elizabeth."How many days do you have off?" I asked."I'm supposed. To me and my friends, Valentine's Day was a day of candy and anonymous valentines dropped in lockers.Every time I went to my locker, there were either valentine notes taped to it or dropped inside and all were signed, which defied the whole point, at least to my way of thinking. Some of them were from the girls I knew and I didn't mind, slipping the awful cutesy ones Claire bought for me into their lockers, too. But an alarming amount were invitations to the dance by guys who's names weren't.