The Calamity Janes

by Sherryl Woods

  “Complicated, huh?” Ryan grinned. “Watch yourself, pal. Complicated women have a way of getting under a man’s skin and staying there.”

  “Emma Rogers is not getting under my skin,” Ford insisted, but even as the words left his mouth, he knew he was lying through his teeth.

  “The last man who said that wound up married to her.”

  Ford regarded him with surprise. “You knew her husband?”

  “We’d met. My sister knew him better.”

  “Teddy’s mom?”

  “No, my oldest sister, Adele,” Ryan explained. “She dated Kit Rogers for a while at college. That’s how he and Emma met. Kit was here visiting over the holidays one year—we were all at the same party. Then he got one look at Emma, and that was it for him and Adele. They broke up that same night. Can’t say I was sorry. For that matter, neither was Adele. She told me he had ‘control issues,’ which I took to mean that he was a possessive son of a gun.”

  Ford digested that news with a sense of astonishment. “I can’t imagine any man controlling Emma.”

  “Not for long, that’s for sure,” Ryan said. “Emma hasn’t said, but I suspect that’s what broke up their marriage. She might have tolerated it for a while, but she’s too strong willed to be anybody’s doormat.” He slanted a look at Ford. “A word to the wise.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” Ford said. “If I were interested, which I’m not, I’d know better than to think there was a single submissive bone in that woman’s very attractive body.”

  Ryan hooted. “All right!”

  “What?”

  “You noticed that Emma has a fabulous body. I was beginning to worry about you.”

  “I noticed,” Ford said, then added firmly, “not that I have any intention of doing anything about it…even if she’d let me…” He met Ryan’s gaze. “Which she won’t. She’s none too crazy about my profession, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “And that’s enough to scare you off?” Ryan asked indignantly. “You’re not even going to try to get her to see past that?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then maybe I’ll give her another shot,” Ryan said, his expression innocent. “We were pretty tight back in high school.”

  Ford scowled at him. “Whatever.”

  “You wouldn’t care?”

  “It’s not up to me.”

  “But you wouldn’t feel even the tiniest little twinge if I asked her out?” Ryan persisted.

  A twinge? He’d probably want to slug the man, sheriff or not. He refused to admit it, though. “Nope.”

  “Liar,” Ryan accused.

  Ford sighed heavily. “You got that right.”

  “Emma, sweetie, wake up!”

  Emma heard her mother’s voice, and for a moment thought she must have been caught up in a dream. Then she felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her.

  “Emma!”

  For the first time in months she had actually been in a deep, restful sleep. She came to slowly. “What is it, Mom? Caitlyn’s not sick, is she? Is it Dad?”

  “No, no, it’s Lauren. She’s on the phone. She needs to talk to you now. She says it’s urgent.”

  Emma tugged on her robe and raced down the hall, heart pounding. Lauren would never call in the middle of the night unless it truly was urgent. Was she sick? Were the tabloids about to break some story that could destroy her career? Had there been an accident? Or was it one of the other Calamity Janes? She had spoken to most of them during the day. They’d all seemed fine.

  Clutching her robe around her, she picked up the phone. “Lauren, what’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Emma, it’s so horrible,” Lauren said, her voice choked. This wasn’t the sexy huskiness she used on screen, but real emotion. “There was another fight between Donny and Sue Ellen. I had the windows open, and I could hear it all the way over here at the hotel. Donny chased her out of their house, screaming and cursing. I called the sheriff, but before he got over here, I heard a shot.”

  “Oh, my God,” Emma whispered. “Please tell me Donny didn’t shoot Sue Ellen.”

  “No, she shot him. He’s dead, Emma.”

  Emma’s heart sank. “Where is she?”

  “Ryan just took her down to the jail. He told me there wasn’t any point in my coming along, that he couldn’t let me see her. Can you go over there? Please. She needs an attorney, a really good one. I doubt she has any money, but I’ll pay for it.”

  “I’m on my way,” Emma said at once. “And don’t worry about the money. This one’s on the house.”

  Emma yanked on her clothes, explained the situation to her mother and raced to the jail. She was only moderately surprised to find Ford Hamilton there ahead of her. He was arguing with Ryan, demanding to see the sheriff’s report on the shooting.

  “Settle down,” Ryan told him. “This isn’t Chicago. We take our time and get things right. We don’t jump to conclusions. You’ll see the report when I have all the facts.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting—” Ford began.

  “Whatever,” Ryan said, waving off what was obviously the beginning of an insincere apology. “It’s going to take a while to talk to Sue Ellen and to the neighbors about what they saw and heard. In the meantime, why don’t you go get yourself a cup of coffee?”

  Ford frowned. “At this hour? Where?”

  “Stella will be in now,” Ryan told him. “Whenever there’s a crisis, she hears about it and opens early.”

  Emma’s gaze slid past the journalist, searching the room until she spotted Sue Ellen over by the window, still in her bathrobe, her bruised and battered face streaked with dried tears and blood. Her expression, reflected in the glass, was blank.

  “Let me talk to Mrs. Carter,” Ford said to Ryan. “Just a couple of questions.”

  “No way,” Emma said so fiercely that both men’s heads snapped around to face her.

  “Emma,” Ryan said, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. He looked exhausted and sad. “I didn’t expect you to show up here.”

  “Lauren called. She told me what happened.”

  “I’m glad,” he said, casting a worried look at the woman huddled in a chair across the room. “Sue Ellen’s going to need all the legal help she can get.”

  Ford scowled at them. “If you two are finished, do you suppose we could get back to business?” Ford asked. “I’d like to speak to Mrs. Carter, so I can get a couple of paragraphs into this week’s edition. Then I’ll get out of your hair.”

  “And I told you to forget about it,” Emma said. “She’s not talking to anybody, you or the sheriff, until I’ve had a chance to talk to her. How did you get here so fast, anyway? Do you have a police scanner in your bedroom?”

  “I’ve been up all night,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “Not that it’s any of your business, but Ryan was with me at the paper. I was getting it ready to go to the printer this morning. The call came in about an hour ago.”

  “Lucky for you, wasn’t it?” she said with biting sarcasm.

  His gaze never wavered. “Are you going to represent her?”

  “For the moment. We’ll have to see what Sue Ellen wants.”

  “She’s going to need the best,” Ryan said. “As much as I hate to say it, it’s an open-and-shut case.”

  Though she had a lot of respect for Ryan—partly because he’d let her play on his ball team years ago despite the ribbing he’d taken from his buddies—she wasn’t impressed with his lack of enlightenment on this particular issue. “We’ll see,” she said neutrally.

  She noticed that Ford’s piercing blue eyes narrowed just a little. What little mellowing she’d done where he was concerned vanished. He was just like all the other journalists she’d run across, after all. He was obviously more interested in a juicy story than in getting to the truth. There wasn’t a trace of compassion on his face.

  “You’re going to try to get her off on a cold-blooded murder charge?” he demanded.
<
br />   “It’s too soon to answer a question like that. Surely you know that she hasn’t even been arraigned on a specific charge yet. There were mitigating circumstances. You saw that for yourself. In fact, you’re just one of a great many people who witnessed the way Donny was treating her at the reunion dance a couple of weeks ago. I’ll be sure to include you on my witness list,” she said. Then she added with biting sarcasm, “After all, surely a journalist can be counted on to tell the truth, right?”

  “What I saw or heard that night has nothing to do with this. Nothing entitles her to shoot him,” Ford said emphatically.

  “Okay, okay,” Ryan said, intervening. “Let’s all cool down. We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Emma, go on over and talk to Sue Ellen. I’ll take Ford here out for a cup of coffee and explain a few facts of life to him.”

  Emma scowled at the reporter. “Just be sure Mr. Hamilton understands that what you’re saying is off the record, Ryan. In fact, you might want to get his understanding of that in writing.”

  This time Ford scowled at the sarcasm. “I know what off the record means.”

  Emma gave him a frosty smile. “Glad to hear it,” she said as she walked away to talk to Sue Ellen. She could feel the man’s gaze on her as she crossed the room and sat down. The effect was vaguely disconcerting, especially in light of her recent conclusion that her first impression of him had been the accurate one. The sensitivity he’d displayed that morning when she’d been feeling a bit down had obviously been an aberration.

  Then all thoughts of Ford fled as she sat across from Sue Ellen and watched her old classmate dissolve into tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Sue Ellen whispered brokenly. “I’m so sorry.”

  “For what? Not for killing a man who repeatedly beat you, I hope.”

  Sue Ellen gasped. “Donny was my husband.”

  “He was an abuser,” Emma corrected. “You were a victim, sweetie. I’m not saying that shooting him was a good thing, but it was understandable. Now tell me what happened tonight. I can’t defend you if you hold anything back.”

  “You’re going to represent me?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “But why?”

  “Because you need me. Now, start at the beginning and tell me everything.”

  Sue Ellen nodded. “He…Donny found that card you had left for me,” Sue Ellen told her, choking back another sob. She clenched her hands together and steadied her voice. “It was in my purse. I thought he’d never find it, but he was looking for money. He’d run out of beer and wanted to go out and buy some more. He dumped everything on the floor, and when he didn’t even find any loose change, he began to rip open all the compartments inside the purse.”

  Emma shuddered, suddenly feeling responsible for everything that had happened. She had known what Donny might do if he learned that she’d interfered, but she had gone over there anyway. She’d wanted to be the avenging angel who dragged Sue Ellen out of there. Instead, she had just made matters worse, triggering tonight’s attack and ultimately the tragedy that would scar Sue Ellen forever, even if Emma got her acquitted.

  “What did he do then?” she asked Sue Ellen.

  “He asked me what it meant, who had given it to me.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t want him to come after you. He would have, too. He threatened my mom once, and all she did was take me to the doctor after he’d told me not to go.”

  “So, there’s a record of your injuries on file with your doctor?” Emma asked.

  Sue Ellen nodded. “But I told him I was attacked coming out of the bank, that someone had tried to steal my purse.”

  Emma doubted that the doctor had bought it, not with everyone in town aware of Donny’s mistreatment of Sue Ellen.

  “That’s okay. It’ll still help,” she reassured her client. “I’d like to get your doctor in here tonight to see you. Is that okay?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sue Ellen said despondently. “Nothing matters.”

  “Of course it matters,” Emma said fiercely. “We’re going to win this. You were defending yourself against a man who had brutalized you time and again.”

  “But I haven’t even told you how it happened, how the gun went off.”

  “And I want to hear that, but it’s the history of abuse that will really matter to a jury. That’s the heart of your defense. Remember that, Sue Ellen. I heard you went to the hospital a couple of times, too. Is that right?”

  “Those were accidents,” Sue Ellen insisted.

  Emma sighed, though she wasn’t all that amazed that Sue Ellen was still lying to the world, if not herself, about what had happened. “Let’s concentrate on tonight then. Finish telling me what he did. Did you argue about the card he found?”

  The details weren’t surprising. Donny had been infuriated by the hot line number that Emma had left. He had begun brandishing a gun, but he was drunk. He had fallen and the gun had gone off.

  “Where did the bullet go?”

  “It broke the light in the ceiling fan.”

  Emma made a note to ask Ryan if the bullet that hit the fan light had been recovered. “And then what?”

  “Donny was groggy from falling down. I thought I could get the gun away from him and he would just fall asleep like always, but he didn’t. He chased me outside. I tried to go back in and lock him out, but he was too fast. He caught me and slapped me. Then he knocked me down and kept on hitting and hitting. He had the gun in his hand. I kept trying to knock it away, but he wouldn’t let go.” Tears welled up in her eyes again. “And then the gun just went off. For a minute, I waited to feel the pain, but there was nothing. And then there was all this blood.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and began rocking back and forth, her stare vacant. “So much blood,” she whispered. “So much blood.”

  Emma hunkered down in front of Sue Ellen and clasped her hands tightly. “It’s going to be okay, Sue Ellen. I swear to you that it will be okay.”

  Sue Ellen regarded her with a defeated expression. “I can’t pay you. Maybe you should just let the court appoint somebody.”

  “No. Unless you don’t want me, you and I are in this together from here on out.”

  “But you live in Denver.”

  “I can be here whenever I have to be,” Emma reassured her. “You’re not going through this alone. I’m a member of the Wyoming bar, thank goodness, and I’m going to provide a first-rate defense for you, Sue Ellen.”

  Suddenly she recalled the way Ryan had looked at the baseball game when he’d first talked about Sue Ellen’s plight and begged Emma to intercede, and again tonight when Emma had shown up at the jail. Despite what he’d said earlier about it being an open-and-shut case, Emma had a feeling that when push came to shove, the sheriff would be in Sue Ellen’s corner as well.

  Chapter 5

  Ford hated crusading feminists. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind after the scene at the jail that that was exactly what Emma Rogers was. She had reaffirmed his first impression from the night of the reunion dance when he’d found her sleek, cool appearance all too reminiscent of some women he’d run across in Atlanta and Chicago. Barracudas in the courtroom. No personal lives to speak of. Ice in their veins.

  Of course, he had caught a glimmer of heat just now when Emma had turned on him to keep him away from her client. It had been an interesting little hint of passion, reminding him of the sparks that had sizzled between them when they’d danced. Too bad tonight’s evidence of that passion was so misguided.

  Sue Ellen Carter was guilty as sin, no matter what had driven her to the fatal deed. Since it was too late for major coverage of the killing in this week’s paper, he intended to lay out all of the facts proving the crime on next week’s front page. He wouldn’t have to convict her in an editorial—the truth would do that very nicely. There wouldn’t be a word in the article that Emma could argue was inaccurate.

  Not that he expected her to pr
aise the piece he was already beginning to compose in his head. Their earlier conversation about libel came back to haunt him, reminding him to report only the facts that weren’t in dispute.

  “Any idea why Emma’s taking this case?” he asked Ryan when they were in a booth at Stella’s, coffee cups in front of them.

  A surprising number of locals had, indeed, turned out despite the early hour, drawn by the desire for information on the tragedy that had occurred overnight. Sorrow seemed to cast a pall over the place. Conversations were quieter than usual, silences longer.

  “Loyalty,” Ryan said succinctly. “That’s the kind of person she is.”

  “But I thought she specialized in corporate law.”

  “The way I hear it, that’s what pays the bills. She takes on cases like this pro bono.”

  “Why this particular kind of case? I got the feeling this is about more than her friendship with Sue Ellen. It’s not as if Emma Rogers and Sue Ellen Carter have maintained close ties all these years, is it? She said as much to me at the reunion.”

  Ryan shrugged. “I doubt it, but I have no idea. What difference does it make? Sue Ellen needs the best lawyer there is, and by all reports that’s Emma. We certainly don’t have anyone in town who’s up to this.”

  “Representing Sue Ellen is going to be damned inconvenient with Emma living in Denver, though.”

  “Apparently she doesn’t think so.” Ryan’s gaze narrowed suspiciously. “You did agree that all of this is off the record, didn’t you? I’ll be real unhappy if any comments I make about Emma wind up in the paper.”

  Ford nodded. “Not a problem. This is just background.”

  “The tension back there between you and Emma…you’re not going to let it get in the way of giving Sue Ellen a fair shake, are you?” Ryan asked, his expression even darker.

  “Reporters and lawyers are natural enemies when it comes to something like this, at least until the dust settles and everyone knows whose side everyone else is on.”

  “Do you have a side? I thought journalists were supposed to be impartial.”