Saved by the Sheriff

by Cindi Myers

  “I don’t know,” Lacy said, turning her back to him. “He’s almost too beautiful. And does he ever smile? He looks almost...dangerous.”

  “Mmmm,” Jan purred. “Some women like men like that. And you may not be interested in him, but he’s definitely interested in you. He’s looking right at you.”

  Lacy shifted in her chair. “I wish he wouldn’t,” she said. “Maybe someone should point out that it’s rude to stare. He makes me nervous.”

  “He doesn’t drive a black truck,” Jan said. “I saw him yesterday in a beat-up Jeep.” She sat back and sipped her coffee. “But I swear I’ve seen him somewhere before. That’s not a body—or a face—a woman forgets. But I can’t put my finger on where.” She shrugged. “I’m sure it will come to me.”

  The door opened and a second man entered. Lacy let out a groan and turned back around. “Do you know him?” Jan asked.

  “His name is Alvin Exeter,” Lacy said. “He’s a writer who says he’s working on a book about me.”

  “I don’t just say it, I’m writing it.” Alvin stopped behind Lacy’s chair, and the thought passed through her mind that this was what it must feel like for a mouse when a hawk hovered over it. Except she wasn’t a mouse.

  She turned to look up at the man. “Go away,” she said.

  “No.” He pulled out the chair on her other side and sat.

  “I don’t have anything to say to you,” Lacy said.

  “I didn’t come to talk to you. I came to talk to Ms. Selkirk.”

  “Oh?” Jan looked interested. “What about?”

  “I understand you were mayor of Eagle Mountain when Andy Stenson was murdered,” Alvin said. “I thought you would be the perfect person to give me a picture of what life was like here during that time.”

  Jan glanced at Lacy, then smiled at Alvin, coral-lipsticked mouth stretched over big teeth. “I’m sorry, Mr. Exeter, but you’ll have to write your book without my help. In fact, I think Lacy should write her own book. After all, it’s her story to tell.”

  “Maybe I will,” Lacy said, taking her cue, though she had no intention of reliving the last three years on paper.

  Alvin’s expression turned stormy. “If you don’t help me, you have no say in how you’re portrayed,” he said.

  “You’re assuming we care,” Jan said.

  He shoved back his chair and left the café. Jan picked up the carafe and refilled their coffee cups. “What an unpleasant little man,” she said.

  “I caught him watching my house through binoculars,” Lacy said.

  “I don’t suppose he owns a black truck,” Jan said.

  Lacy shook her head. “When I saw him, he was in a blue sedan.”

  “A pity. He’s just the type I would like for the villain.”

  “I met plenty of very ordinary-looking people in prison who did horrible things,” Lacy said. “For a while I celled with a white-haired grandmother who had poisoned three husbands.”

  The sudden silence that blanketed the café made her aware that everyone in the place was staring at her. Jan leaned forward and broke the tension. “Keep talking that way and they’re all going to want to see your prison tattoos,” she said.

  “I don’t have any prison tattoos,” Lacy said, her cheeks burning.

  “Everyone will be so disappointed,” Jan said. “When people come through a horrible experience like that, we expect them to wear their scars on the outside.” She leaned forward and grasped Lacy’s hand. “Don’t be afraid of shocking people. Sometimes that’s exactly what we need to wake us up to the real world. It’s very easy to get complacent, hidden away in this little town. We start to think we’re special—protected from the bad things that plague other people. We don’t like it when things—like murder—happen to remind us that’s not true, but sometimes it’s exactly what we need. You’re exactly what we need.”

  Chapter Nine

  Lacy was still trying to figure out what Jan Selkirk had meant at Kate’s that morning when Travis called. “Do you have time today to get together with me?” he asked. “I have some more questions for you.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Let me check my calendar. After all, I’m so busy these days, what with being unemployed and losing that boxing match and all. Well, what do you know? I have an opening.”

  He chuckled. “Why don’t I stop by around lunch time?”

  “Are you offering to take me to lunch? Because I’m going crazy sitting around the house.”

  “All right.”

  When he pulled up in his SUV a little before noon, Lacy was waiting on the front porch and walked out to the street to meet him. “The bruises don’t look so bad today,” he said.

  “You sure know how to lay on the compliments, Sheriff.” She opened the passenger door and slid in. “Thanks for agreeing to go out. My mom has been through so much, I don’t want to lose my temper with her, but her hovering is driving me nuts.”

  “She worries about you.”

  “Yes, but I need a little breathing space.”

  “Is it okay if lunch is a picnic?” he asked. “I picked up some sandwiches and stuff from Iris Desmet.”

  “The Cake Walk is open again?”

  “No, but she’s doing some catering and stuff out of her home. I guess being idle didn’t suit her any more than it does you.”

  “A picnic is fine,” Lacy said. “In fact, it would be nice to eat without everyone in the restaurant watching me. I’m beginning to feel a little bit like the local freak on display.”

  “People are curious, but it will pass,” he said. “But it suits me if we skip the restaurant today. Your mother and my office manager aren’t the only people in town who are interested in what we have to say to each other. And it’s never a good idea to discuss a case in public. You never know who might overhear something they shouldn’t.”

  “I don’t think I was prepared for all the attention I’m attracting,” she said. “I was in Kate’s this morning and said something about being in prison and you would have thought I had confessed to kicking small children for fun.”

  “They’ll get over it,” he said.

  “I guess that curiosity is what sells books like the one Alvin Exeter is writing,” she said. “By the way, he came by Kate’s this morning and tried to interview Jan Selkirk. She shut him down.”

  “Jan is quite a formidable woman. One of her last acts as mayor was to invite—or rather insist—that I present a report to the town council. She wanted to know what the youngest sheriff the county had ever had was planning for their community. It was like standing for inspection with an army drill sergeant. I thought she would send me away if I had a scuff on my boots or a spot on my tie.”

  “She told me I was what the town needed, to remind them they aren’t as special and safe as people think they are here.” She stared out the window, at the passing vista of mountains and wildflowers. “I was kind of hoping it would be special and safe here.”

  “I guess if that was really true, I wouldn’t have a job,” he said. “Though I would just as soon stick to helping lost tourists and chasing off the occasional shoplifter.”

  “You’d be bored silly if that was the case,” she said. “Admit it—you like the adrenaline rush of going after the bad guys. You wouldn’t be a cop if that wasn’t true.”

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “All right. Maybe some of that is true.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t hold it against you.” She could even say she admired that about him—his determination to right wrongs. Though that aspect of his character had helped put her in jail, it had also made him work tirelessly until she was free. Another man might not have been so willing to admit he had made a mistake.

  He headed over the bridge out of town, to a picnic area on a small lake with a view of Mount Rayford. “I remember coming
here for a cookout with the senior class of Eagle Mountain High,” she said as she helped him carry their lunch to one of the concrete tables. They had the place to themselves and settled in the shade of the canopy over the table.

  “A local tradition,” he said. “The year of our picnic it rained. You’d be surprised how many teenagers you can fit under one of these canopies.”

  “That all seems so long ago,” she said. She had been a different person then, one who had thought the bad things of the world would never touch her.

  “They still do those senior picnics,” Travis said as he laid out their own meal. “One of the advantages of a smaller school—you’re able to keep up traditions like that.”

  “It’s nice to know some things haven’t changed,” she said. “I was only away three years and there’s so many things I don’t recognize—new people and businesses. And this Pioneer Days Festival—that’s new.”

  “Some people thought Jan was crazy to suggest it,” he said. “But it’s been a big success. It’s a real boost for local business. Though I’ll admit, it keeps our department busy. Nothing big, but you bring a lot of people in from other places and crowd them all together, and you’re bound to see an uptick in petty crime—shoplifting, public drunkenness, minor things like that.”

  “At least you’re not up to your ears in serious crimes,” she said. She bit into a ham sandwich.

  “I went out to see Henry Hake this morning,” he said, reminding her of the one very serious crime he was investigating. “He says he got some threatening letters from people who didn’t want the resort project to go forward and Andy was looking into them.”

  Lacy set down the sandwich. A chill shuddered through her in spite of the warm day. “So whoever wrote the letters might have killed Andy to stop him?”

  “Maybe. Did Andy mention anything like that to you?”

  “No,” she said. “What did the letters say?”

  “I don’t know. Hake said he destroyed them. But they frightened him enough that he hired a bodyguard for a while.”

  “The only people I know who were against the development were the Utes and Paige Riddell’s environmental group. But they weren’t subtle about their objections to the development—they went after Hake directly—in court. And they won.”

  “And Hake says after they won—well, after Andy died—the threats stopped. And the development never did go forward.”

  “That surprises me,” Lacy said. “From what I remember, they had sunk a lot of money into the project.”

  “He says they’re restructuring—‘they’ being him and some partners he insists want to remain silent.” He took a bite of sandwich and chewed.

  “I wonder if the partners know any more about the source of the threats?” Lacy asked.

  “I’m going to see if the district attorney can subpoena him for the names,” Travis said. “But that will take a while, and Hake says some of the original partners are dead.”

  “And that makes me wonder how they died.” She plucked a grape from the bunch he had set in the middle of the table. “Then again, maybe I read too many murder mysteries. The prison library was full of them.”

  “I like that you don’t mind talking about it,” he said. “Especially around me.”

  “I can’t pretend it never happened.” She crunched down on the grape. “Later, I hope I don’t think about it so much, but I’m still too close to it. I still wake up in the morning thinking I’m back there. I’ve missed head count and I’m going to lose my exercise privileges, or access to the commissary, or any one of a dozen punishments they can mete out for the slightest infraction.”

  He nodded, his mouth tight, the lines around his eyes deepening.

  “I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad,” she said.

  “Why are you telling me, then?”

  She considered the question, a warmth blossoming in her chest as the answer came to her. “Because I want you to know me,” she said softly. “And that’s part of me.”

  He slid his hand across the table and took hers, his fingers warm and slightly rough against hers. They sat that way for a long moment, holding on to something precious, neither wanting to break the spell.

  A gray jay circled overhead, screeching at them in a bid for part of their lunch. Lacy pulled away and straightened, suddenly self-conscious. “I shouldn’t keep you from your work,” she said. “And my mother will be wondering where I’ve gotten to.”

  “I was hoping you’d have time to go through that second file box this afternoon,” he said. “I want to see if we can find anything more about these threats of Hake’s silent partners.”

  “As I said before, my afternoon just happens to be free.”

  * * *

  TRAVIS FELT WARMED by more than the sun as he drove Lacy back to her house. There in the park, he had felt her truly softening toward him. When she talked about her time in prison, she didn’t come across as someone who had been scarred by the experience. He would give her back those lost years, if there was any way possible, but at least he could let go of the feeling that he had ruined her life.

  In the Milligans’ dining room, they opened the second file box and each took half the papers. This box contained mostly legal documents—the deeds for the various mining claims that made up the proposed resort, copies of surveys, title searches, newspaper articles about the project and dense legal contracts relating to everything from water and mineral rights to public right of way on historic trails. After an hour, Travis tossed aside a sheaf of papers and rubbed his eyes. “I think I’ve found a cure for insomnia,” he said.

  Lacy laughed. “It does get a little dense at times,” she said. “One reason I’d never want to be a lawyer.”

  “Have you found anything interesting?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Not a thing.”

  She stretched her arms over her head, a gesture that lifted her breasts and made his mouth go dry. He looked away and cleared his throat. “Maybe we’ll find something in the other boxes.”

  “Let’s go out there now,” she said. “That is, if you have time.”

  “Let me check in with the office and see.”

  Adelaide reported that the office was “as dead as Methuselah’s cat,” and Travis wondered if she lay awake nights trying to come up with colorful expressions to add to her repertoire. “I’m going to make a run out to Andy Stenson’s storage facility to look at some more files,” he said. “Call me if anything pops up.”

  “Who else would I call?” Adelaide said breezily. “Say hello to Lacy for me.”

  “How did you know I’m with Lacy?”

  “Your SUV is parked in front of her house. If you really want to sneak around, you’re going to have to learn to be more subtle.”

  “I am not sneaking a—” But Adelaide had already hung up.

  Lacy said goodbye to her parents and she and Travis headed out the door. They were almost to his vehicle when Alvin Exeter stepped out from his car, which was parked across the street, and held a cell phone to his eye.

  Lacy froze. “Did you just take our picture?” she asked.

  Alvin grinned. “You two make a handsome couple—or you will when those bruises heal.” He studied the screen of his camera. “This makes a more touching image, I think. The victim and the lawman.”

  “You’re on thin ice, Exeter,” Travis said, barely controlling his anger. “I’ve warned you about harassing Ms. Milligan.”

  “I’m standing in a public street and so are you. I know my rights as a writer.”

  Lacy took Travis’s arm. “Come on, let’s go,” she said.

  Travis held the passenger door for her, then went around the driver’s side. Exeter watched, smirking and taking picture after picture with his camera. “I’d like to rip that phone out of his hand and stomp on it,” Travis said.

  �
�He gets a charge out of being confrontational,” she said. “The best way to deal with someone like him is to ignore them.”

  Travis glanced at her. “You’re pretty smart for someone so young.”

  “I keep telling myself the old children’s rhyme still holds true,” she said. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never harm me.”

  He pulled into the street and headed for Main. “Words can do plenty of harm and we both know it,” he said when they had left Exeter behind.

  “Only if I let them,” she said. “Being in prison was hard, but it taught me that I need to be my own best friend. I can’t really rely on anyone else.”

  “You can rely on me,” he said.

  He could feel her eyes on him, though he kept his gaze on the road. “Yes, I’m beginning to believe that,” she said.

  They were both silent until he turned onto Fireline Road. A dusty brown Jeep blew past them and sped onto the highway.

  “I think that was Ian Barnes,” Lacy said, looking over her shoulder at the dust that hung in the wake of the Jeep’s passing. “Jan said he drove an old Jeep. What was he doing out here?”

  “There are some rock cliffs out this way that are popular with climbers,” Travis said. “Maybe he was checking them out.”

  Lacy faced forward once more. “What do you know about him?” she asked.

  “Not much. I met him at Eagle Mountain Outfitters. I think he’s a friend of the owners. Wade Tomlinson told me he’s an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran and suffers from PTSD. Why?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s just something about him I find...unsettling. Maybe it’s the way he watches me.”

  “Maybe he’s trying to work up the nerve to ask you out.” His throat felt tight as he said the words.

  “Hah! Trust me, the way the women around here are always ogling him, he could get a date with any one of them. He doesn’t need me.”

  “But maybe you’re the one he’s attracted to.”