Lawful Engagement - Linda O Johnston

by Intrigue Romance

  Cara sat on a small wooden chair near the edge of Shem’s filthy desk, which looked as though a hurricane had gone through the office. “I didn’t lie in my article. I laid out facts as I’d discovered them. And, gee, what a surprise. They formed one, big, interesting pattern that suggested your customers were not getting what they paid for. And right now I merely asked if you happened to know a murder victim.”

  “Of course I didn’t—” He stopped, glaring from Cara to Mitch, then obviously thought better of lying. “Yeah, I knew her. But Mustang Valley’s not a big town. People know people here.” He slipped back onto his chair. “And Lambert & Church was my law firm—at least till a few weeks back, when they filed for bankruptcy. I knew Nancy from when I visited their offices, but not well. And I sure as hell didn’t kill her.”

  From the corner of her eye, Cara noticed Mitch’s mouth open. “No one suggested you did,” she said smoothly, cutting off whatever Mitch was about to say. Arms crossed, he leaned against the wall beneath a picture of Shem shaking hands with the now-deceased mayor, Frank Daniels.

  Was the former mayor the Ranger Corporation connection? If so, what did it mean?

  “Actually, Shem,” she continued, “we’re here following a lead on another matter that probably has nothing to do with Nancy’s murder.” She hoped he’d be so relieved not to be under suspicion that he would cooperate.

  “What matter?” He crossed his skinny arms belligerently.

  “Unfortunately, we can’t reveal it yet. But it has something to do with a contractor that’s not local.”

  Indirectly, Cara thought. Maybe. She glanced at Mitch, prepared to send him a look begging him to let her run with what she made up as she went along. His face was impassive—except for a slightly raised dark eyebrow that gave him both a quizzical and a deliciously rakish look.

  “Although I can’t identify that contractor,” she continued, “we’ve just come from the Ranger Corporation offices and believe your competitor may be engaged in unfair business practices. Perhaps is even ready to use extortion to gain Ranger as its account. We just wonder what criteria you’ve used for submitting your bid for Ranger’s project.”

  “You mean some out-of-town slimeball’s trying to muscle in here based on lies and blackmail?” Shem, tense once again, stood and paced behind his chair. “Hell, Roger Rosales at Ranger hasn’t done much with me so far beyond tossing me a crumb or two and checking on my availability for a project so big he won’t even tell me what it is. But I’ve assured him we’ll make the time. He said there’ll be a lot of excavation, so I quoted him a per-unit price based on cubic yards of dirt we’d move and dispose of. And gave him references that show we do a damned fine job of conforming to an architect’s plans for constructing commercial stuff, like office buildings, shopping centers, schools, playgrounds, whatever.”

  Interesting, Cara thought. Though it still didn’t tell her what she wanted to know. “No residential?” she asked. In her mind, she’d assumed Ranger Corporation was buying land in Mustang County to build a huge, amenity-filled bedroom community for the Dallas/Ft. Worth area an hour away.

  “Sure. That, too, though Rosales seemed more interested in commercial.”

  Cagey Roger might be hiding his real interests by pretending Ranger’s focus was on something else…. Cara wouldn’t put that past him.

  “I see.” Mitch took a few steps away from the wall. Cara shot him a warning glance. She was in charge of this interview. But he wasn’t looking at her. “Then you don’t know any vulnerabilities Ranger has that would leave them open to being strong-armed into hiring the wrong outfit?”

  Hey! Cara liked that question. The right answers could steer them toward any number of useful leads: rumors in the construction industry about Ranger. Things Shem liked and didn’t like about the secretive development company—hopefully supported by facts or innuendos he’d reveal. Score one for Mitch.

  “Vulnerabilities?” Shem repeated. He shrugged and again took his seat. “Well, any outfit as big as Ranger sometimes gets involved with projects that don’t pan out. Too much government regulation, that kind of thing.”

  “Do you know of specific ones that failed lately?” Cara asked.

  Shem looked up, as if trying to find the answer written on one of the stained acoustical ceiling tiles. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “There was a big housing development back east somewhere last year that tanked. Boston? Baltimore? I don’t remember. But it was too close to the city, and activists got involved, everything from tree huggers to guys who insisted that half the homes be designated low income. That kind of thing. It could have made Ranger go a little nuts if they came up with another pet project and some contractor threatened to make enough noise to crater that one if they didn’t get the work, right?”

  “Maybe,” Cara said. Her mind whirled. She’d done some research into Ranger but had missed this, despite how big it had been. “You said this was a Ranger project. Was it in the name of some subsidiary?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Something with the name of the city in it, maybe.”

  Something similar to Eastern Mustang Property Acquisition or Texas Mustang Valley Sites, but local to that project? Cara would have to see.

  “I don’t suppose Ranger has hired you yet for a portion of the project, like getting a surveyor onto the site?” Mitch asked.

  “Actually, it has,” Shem said. “A small thing like that, to see how well we work together. We’re checking out water rights.”

  “Are any other contractors being tested like that?” Cara kept her excitement inside.

  “We weren’t told, but I’ve heard rumors that a couple guys out of Dallas are getting Phase I environmental reports started. You know, the historic background of properties in that area for uses that could have caused contamination, like oil production, that kind of thing.”

  “You’ve been a big help,” Mitch finally said, pushing off from his backrest along the wall. “If you think of anything else to help us help Ranger Corporation, please give me a call.” He handed Shem a card.

  Cara considered doing the same, but figured that the chances of Shem calling her for anything except to swear at her again were slim. She was surprised that he’d been as cooperative as he had. Or maybe he’d been relieved that he wasn’t the subject of their investigation.

  Not that Cara could absolve him from all suspicion.

  They now had a good reason for O’Hallihan Construction’s name to have been on a letter on Roger Rosales’s desk. But the existence of these tenuous connections didn’t mean there weren’t stronger ones.

  Shem O’Hallihan had known Nancy Wilks. But he was right. Lots of people in a small town like Mustang Valley had known her.

  At the door, Mitch behind her, she turned. “Bye, Shem. Thanks for the help.” She reached for the knob, then again turned back. “By the way, in case you did kill Nancy Wilks, or know who did, keep in mind how fast I was at digging up the facts about your drywall before.”

  Before either Shem or Mitch could react, she was out the door.

  BACK IN CARA’S CAR, Mitch was proud of himself for not blowing up at her. Even so, when he not so gently pointed out her imprudence, the beautiful but brutally forthright reporter was having none of it.

  “Of course I doubt O’Hallihan killed Nancy,” she admitted to his frustrated question, glancing over at him at a stop sign. Her tone was as exasperated as his.

  “Then why did you accuse him that way? You’re not keeping something back from me, are you?”

  “I don’t do things like that,” Cara snapped back as if accusing him, then cooled her tone a bit. “I thought my rationale was obvious.”

  “So pretend I’m a dense son of a bitch and enlighten me.”

  She shot him a grin. In the close quarters of her car, he breathed in her soft scent that reminded him of the fresh-washed sky after a rain or a flower-laden mountain. How could someone who smelled so lush yet innocent be so irritatingly reckless in what she said?

&n
bsp; “I want to make sure everyone stays on his toes,” she said. “As an officer of the law, you can’t use poetic license or imagination to stir up suspects till one rises to the surface as the killer, but as a reporter, champion of First Amendment rights, I can.” She frowned. “Speaking of poetic license, I can’t even count how many metaphors I just mixed.”

  Mitch didn’t want to laugh, but he did. In fact, he wanted to reach across the seat and play with a couple of red curls that bobbed each time Cara swung her head from watching the road then back to him. The strands just seemed to beg for him to try to tame them.

  Sure. Like he was going to tame Cara. Get her to keep her lovely lips closed instead of goading everyone in town to want to do her harm. That might nab them a murder suspect, and it might just push someone otherwise innocent to kill Cara.

  Mitch felt grimness settle over him like a filthy old blanket. He wouldn’t let that happen. He would make sure Cara stayed safe.

  And he wouldn’t give up trying to get her to tone down her provocation of everyone she met.

  “Should I just drop you off at the Sheriff’s Department?” Cara asked.

  Not hardly. At least not right now. It was barely lunchtime, and she’d already received a threatening phone call that day and goaded a man who had previously loathed her to breathe fire at her. Shem O’Hallihan had sworn like a demon at Cara’s last words to him, even though, outside the office, she probably hadn’t heard. Mitch wasn’t about to let her out of his sight.

  “I’m hungry,” he said, noticing they had reached downtown Mustang Valley. “Let’s grab lunch.” He pointed at Dot’s Sandwich Shop, practically beside them.

  “Okay,” Cara agreed, and parked her car. Joining him on the sidewalk, she said, “You know, according to my article we’re supposed to be sworn enemies. Our being seen together in town so much may not be a good idea.”

  An understatement, Mitch thought ruefully. And not just because of their manufactured feud. Ben Wilson had made it clear he didn’t want Mitch hanging out with Cara. Hadn’t Ben said something like, if Cara insisted on interviewing a member of the Sheriff’s Department, she was to be sent up the ladder to him?

  And Mitch was in uniform, as he too often was when he met with Cara. Everyone would assume he was on official business, on duty.

  But like he’d told himself, he wasn’t going to leave her alone when everyone she knew and probably some she didn’t were pissed off with her. And one was a killer.

  “We’ll deal with it,” he said. “We can always stage an argument for effect.”

  A minute later, after alerting the dispatcher he was on break, he pushed open the restaurant door with one arm extended so Cara could slip by him and enter. Except, she brushed his chest with her arm, bare beneath her short-sleeved blouse, as she walked through the open door, and the soft, quick touch nearly drove him nuts. He wondered, as he had so often before, what it would be like to touch more of her bare skin, other even more sensual places, when he was so awake after innocent contacts like this one.

  Stay focused, he commanded himself. Entering after her, Mitch did his usual scan of his surroundings. Dot’s, a popular local hangout, was busy, despite it being later than the traditional lunchtime. A Lee Ann Womack country song filled in the few spaces between the sounds of the conversing patrons. At least there was one high-backed booth available along the wall. He gently took Cara’s elbow and steered her toward it.

  Only after they sat down did he notice that his inspection of the place had been faulty. A couple of other deputies were seated at a booth way over in a corner. One was Hurley Zeller. And his stare at Mitch was one unpleasantly pleased sneer.

  CARA HAD TO ADMIT to herself that lunch with Mitch was delightful.

  Whether or not it was advisable for them to be seen together, there they were in public, so they agreed not to discuss the murder investigation. Despite how busy the place was, someone might overhear, and she didn’t really want to stage a fight. Though Cara knew maybe half the patrons and didn’t see a known suspect among them, people around here had big lists of friends, and even bigger mouths.

  They kept their conversation light. Somehow it wended its way to a discussion of Shotgun Sally legends.

  “Do you really think she was involved in half the escapades the stories told about her?” Mitch asked, then took a bite of his barbecue sandwich.

  “Sure,” Cara said after chewing a bite of her turkey croissant. “And most, even the ones that contradict each other, can be explained by her being a crusading reporter, out to expose all sorts of corruption in the Mustang County of her time.”

  There was a wistfulness in Mitch’s grin that made Cara want to stroke his dark hair. Maybe give his large and altogether too sexy body a hug. “My mother told me a lot of stories when I was a kid,” he said, his voice so low she had to strain to hear him in the noisy restaurant. “Most were outrageous, fables about coyotes outwitting foxes, and our Earth Mother teaching them both lessons. I don’t know whether she took them from stories of her people or whether she made them up, but they always contained the lessons she wanted to teach me.”

  “Your mother’s Native American, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.” His face was suddenly expressionless. Wasn’t he proud of his heritage? Cara knew that, even these days, there were too many prejudiced jerks who scorned people of American Indian ancestry. She’d even heard some of the bigoted gibes against his father for having a Native American wife years earlier. How had that affected Mitch? She was suddenly eager to know.

  “Tell me about her,” Cara urged.

  Mitch blinked as if just recalling who he was with. When he smiled, it was rueful. “She always kept me guessing. She’d use her heritage to tell me those wonderful stories that made me proud of where she came from, but then, almost in the next breath, she’d say something scornful about people who were defeated and refused to live in the real world of their conquerors.”

  Compassion flooded through Cara at the thought of the confused little boy he must have been. “I’ll bet that was hard for you,” she said.

  “Sometimes. But she said she’d always intended to live in a town, with different kinds of people around. And she and my dad were close, and he was always there for her, until…” His voice tapered off, and Cara knew he was thinking of his father’s suicide. Before she could say something sympathetic, Mitch continued, “She came from hardy but mixed stock herself. Though she was all Native American, her background was a combination of Chickasaw and Chocktaw and maybe more. That gave her a lot of understanding of what it was like for me to be of mixed heritage, and she talked about it a lot, helped me to be proud of having the best characteristics of all my ancestors. Except…”

  “Except?”

  He shrugged again. His eyes rested over her shoulder for a moment. She turned and glanced in that direction. Some deputies were rising from a booth. One was that lout Hurley Zeller, who’d burst in on her interrogation after Nancy Wilks’s murder. She knew that Zeller was no friend of Mitch’s.

  Mitch nodded coldly toward Zeller as he passed. He must have made a gesture Mitch didn’t like, for Mitch’s eyes narrowed angrily, but he said friendly things to the others as they left.

  Cara figured, with the stiff set to Mitch’s shoulders, that their conversation was over. That he might just want to leave, possibly without saying anything else to her.

  Instead, he said, “You’re a good reporter, you know?” He didn’t sound especially pleased about it, and the gold in his eyes glinted irritably. “You hardly have to say a word to get people to spill their guts to you.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “But this was just a discussion,” he said coolly. “Off the record. You’re not going to do any story on me, only on the investigation. And then only things that I agree you can print.”

  She blinked, reeling under his sudden attack on her and her integrity. And the unjustness of his insistence that she write only what he permitted.

  Sh
e’d ignore it, of course. As much as she could get away with.

  “I’ll comply with the terms we agreed on before,” she said, keeping her tone much more level than her angry glare at him.

  She finished her sandwich in silence. Damn him! And now she missed their earlier camaraderie. She at least wanted him to finish his earlier sentence: “Except…” She realized how much she didn’t know about Mitch Steele and where he’d come from, who he was now. It seemed very important for her to know.

  Because, despite his commands, she would need information when she wrote the story in which she’d describe the Nancy Wilks murder investigation, and how it was solved, and how Deputy Mitchell Steele—with her help, of course—tied it to the other murders.

  More realistically, she knew she was totally, foolishly captivated by Mitch. She wanted to know what he was thinking. What made him tick.

  As she reached for her purse, intending to pay the check, her cell phone rang. She dug only a few seconds before she found it. Oddly, the caller ID indicated the source of the call was the line in her own office at the Gazette.

  “Hi, Cara,” said the voice at the other end. “It’s Della Santoro. I’m in your office. I’ve collected some stuff about Shotgun Sally to show you.”

  “Great. I’m on my way.”

  “Good.” Cara was about to hang up when she heard Della’s voice again. “I skipped lunch today, so is it okay if I have a piece of the candy that’s on your desk?”

  “Of course.” Good thing she’d loaded up earlier on the malted milk balls in her glass jar.

  Cara again tried to drop Mitch off at the Sheriff’s Department, but apparently he’d decided to become Velcro to her—the prickly side that nettled her. She wished she understood him. One moment he was issuing her orders, impugning her honor as a journalist. The next he was sticking to her side as if he gave a damn about her.

  More likely he was making sure she didn’t unearth a clue in the investigation without sharing it with him. Never mind that he was the one guilty of that little sin.