The Salt Maiden (Leisure Romantic Suspense)

by Colleen Thompson

  “I know what’s real and what isn’t,” he said, willing it to be so, “and what’s appropriate.”

  “Do you?” Abe asked. “Because the way I see it, screwing a missing woman’s sister isn’t. And it looks even worse since Angelina’s turned up dead.”

  Jay stared, wondering if Abe really did know about him and Dana. Or was he just guessing, bluffing in the hope that the new sheriff would simply admit the impropriety and leave town? Jay was pretty sure that Wallace had figured out where Dana had spent the night after she’d left the adobe. Had he bitched about it to the old man the way he’d bitched to Jay about R.C.’s supposed affair with Miriam Piper-Gold?

  It seemed plausible—one more step in his deputy’s campaign to snatch the top job—but Jay wasn’t so certain. Because for all of Wallace’s flaws, he had his own notions, like his mother, of the right and wrong of any situation. And if he was to be believed, those opinions had prevented him from reporting the last sheriff’s affair with Miriam Piper-Gold.

  “I do my job,” Jay told them, “and I do it without prejudice. Whatever you think of anything that might or might not happen during my off time.”

  “What we were thinking”—Abe’s voice was as icy as the sun was blistering—“is that you might be happier somewhere else.”

  The statement hit Jay with the precision of a laser-guided smart bomb. So these three were among those who had worked with his uncle to root out Rimrock’s “undesirables.” And now they had decided he was one of them.

  “And if I refuse, what’s next? The ass-whipping, or will you jump straight to the arson? Because I promise you, not even all three of you together want to meet me on a dark night. And I wouldn’t recommend you get within ten miles of my place with gasoline and matches either. I’d hate to accidentally leave Estelle a widow, or your Mae-Anna, Henry.” He zeroed in on Carl. “Just like I’d hate to get on the wrong side of Bill’s temper. But I’d do it.”

  His words had an immediate effect. Henry turned pale behind his round-rimmed glasses, and Carl’s normally placid demeanor fell away, revealing a barely controlled fury. Abe’s upper lip curled back, reminding Jay of Dorothy Hobarth’s “smiling” terriers. Clearly they understood that someone had been talking. One of their own, or maybe even one of those assembled.

  “You might want to look for someplace else,” Abe said, “that’s all. Of course, we didn’t mean to threaten, if that’s how you took it.”

  “That’s a damned good thing,” Jay told them as the dog trotted over to investigate a rustling near the base of a tar-bush, “because even in the unlikely event that you got the drop on me, two dead Sheriff Eversoles would raise a lot of eyebrows. From the FBI to the Texas Rangers, this county—and your asses—would come under the kind of scrutiny that’d turn this past week into a pleasant memory from a bygone day. You get my meaning?”

  Abe shrugged and flashed a creased version of his son’s sullen look. “You’re mistaken. But we heard you loud and clear.”

  Jay stood sweating in the heat as all three filed past his Suburban on the way to their respective pickups. As he turned to catch Max’s collar and—with some difficulty—drag the dog from the spot where he was industriously digging, doors clunked shut and engines started. Jay looked up in time to see the gritty sand from each truck swirl up behind it, and watched until three dust devils danced on the horizon’s heat waves like harbingers of hell.

  So it should have come as no surprise, when he was driving home some ten minutes later, that his right front tire failed as he hit a bump.

  The click of Dana’s low-heeled sandals echoed off the marble of the Rimrock County courthouse. The sound conspired with the musty smell to resurrect the memory of the first day she had arrived here, exactly three weeks earlier. Only that day she’d had no idea of what she was walking into.

  Anxiety pulsed inside her, for this time she knew that the venom found in so many of the desert’s creatures extended to its human inhabitants as well. Or at least to some of them, she thought, recalling Mamie Lockett’s kindness and the way Estelle Hooks had stepped up to help her after Angie’s death. And Dana would never forget how Jay had touched her, the words he’d used to chip away at her self-loathing.

  But all that’s over now, she warned herself, unable to bear the thought of walking away from that beautiful mirage again. He had been right when he’d told her there could be no future for them. Just as she’d been right to say that it was time for her to grow up and take care of what she must.

  And right now she was here to take care of her niece and not her own needs. Jay was a means to that end and nothing more. But before she could convince him to help her with her search, she had to find him. And she figured that Deputy Wallace Hooks, whose pickup sat beside the empty spot where Jay most often parked, would be the best person to tell her where his boss was.

  She paused to read the absolutely no press—this means you sign taped to the door, and smiled to see that some frustrated reporter had scrawled, Read Up on the First Amendment, Sheriff! This Means You!

  She tapped on the door before poking her head inside. Wallace, who was on the telephone, took his feet off of his boss’s desk and gave her a wait-a-minute gesture, irritation spreading across his handsome features like a rash.

  He might have been politely respectful after Angie’s death, but Dana suspected that his manners formed no more than the thinnest veneer over his disdain for her sister’s lifestyle choices. She recalled Jay telling her that Wallace had found Angie drunk once, not long before her disappearance. Though her journal had made no mention of a time she’d fallen off the wagon, Dana had seen such lapses in the past and knew that they weren’t pretty. Her sister could have easily earned the deputy’s contempt that day, and then some.

  “I’ll check it out as soon as I can,” Wallace said into the telephone. “And I’ll be sure to pass on your message to Eversole as soon as I hear from him.”

  The deputy cradled the old-fashioned black telephone’s receiver, then came around the desk and gestured to a chair. “I hadn’t heard anything about you coming back.”

  Instead of sitting she offered him her hand, and for the first time realized that at five-six she was a shade taller than he, in spite of his boot heels. His mouth gave an irritated twitch, as if he noticed, too, and didn’t like it. What was it with men and their obsession with height?

  “I thought I was finished here, too,” she explained. “But something else has come up, and I’d like to discuss it with the sheriff. Do you know if he’s out on a call somewhere? I tried him a little bit ago, but I wasn’t able to reach him.”

  Even as she said it, a disturbing thought struck her, provoked in part by the sight of Wallace sitting at the sheriff’s desk, comfortable enough to rest his feet there. Could Jay have been dismissed already? She recalled how adamant he’d been about refusing to accept help from the government in the form of either disability or treatment. What on earth would he do if he’d lost his job? And how would she figure out the identity of Nikki’s father without his help?

  “You know, I haven’t been able to get hold of him either the last little while,” Wallace told him. “Don’t know where he’s off to at the moment.”

  His gaze skated toward the window. Was he looking for a sign of Jay’s SUV or avoiding her eyes to hide his own dishonesty?

  After glancing back at her, he shrugged. “I’ll try again in a few minutes. He must be driving through a dead spot. Plenty of those around here.”

  Her discomfort deepened, though she couldn’t pinpoint why. “So he is on duty?” she pressed.

  Once more Wallace shrugged. And once more he avoided her gaze. “Could be. Him and me, we’re all there is here, when it comes to law enforcement. We don’t punch a time clock. We just work whenever things need doing, any hour of the day or night. Lots of hours lately. But sometimes we have to squeeze in our own personal business, too. And the sheriff doesn’t always check in with me about his visits to his women and the like.”


  So that was it, she realized. Wallace somehow knew that she and Jay had been together, and the deputy was jealous. No, that couldn’t be it, for he’d never seemed the slightest bit interested in her as a woman. More likely he disapproved of the relationship for other reasons. Maybe he considered it a conflict of interest on Jay’s part.

  She could have assured Wallace she had no intention of falling into Jay’s bed again—or onto his kitchen table, she thought regretfully. But she wasn’t about to either confirm his suspicions or acknowledge his ridiculous attempt to make her jealous.

  She leaned over the desk and picked up a message pad, then jotted, Jay, I’m back in town. Please call me, along with the number of her new satellite phone, once she had fished it from her purse. Glancing up at Wallace, she said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d see that he gets this message.”

  “Sure thing,” he told her, but his eyes said the note would be confetti before she left the building.

  “I need to run down some paperwork for the insurance,” she said, though it aggravated her to have to whip up a lie to gain his cooperation. “They’re insisting I get their stupid papers signed by both the sheriff and whichever FBI agent’s in charge of the investigation.”

  Wallace’s expression eased, making her wish she’d dreamed up this story sooner. Almost everyone, at some point, had to jump through insurance company hoops to settle a claim. And everyone, to a person, hated it.

  “I’m kind of in a hurry,” she added. “I need to get back to my practice as soon as possible.”

  “Well, the feebs—I mean, the special agents—have left town already. I’m pretty sure they’re back in Albuquerque. Still workin’ on our case, they tell me.” Wallace surprised her with a cocky grin and added, “If we don’t beat ’em to an answer.”

  “You think you’ll find out who…who shot my sister?” she asked.

  “Nothing would make me happier than to be the one to do that, Dr. Vanover,” he said with what sounded like genuine conviction. “Nothing in this world.”

  As Dana left the office, she suspected Wallace’s desire was based less on a need for justice than a desire to boost his own career. Clearly he had no love for the federal agents who had taken over the investigation, but she’d be willing to bet that the person he most hoped to outshine was Jay himself.

  Wondering where to go from there, Dana made a pit stop in the ladies’ room. On her way out, she came face-to-face with Rimrock County’s tax collector.

  “Why, isn’t this a surprise?” Estelle Hooks asked, looking as pleased as, say, the average kidney-stone patient.

  “Hello, Mrs. Hooks.” Dana decided to trot out her lie sooner rather than later this time. “I’m afraid my insurance company’s made me come back for some signatures—they’re giving me a tough time about the damage to my car.”

  “After all you and your family have been through!” Estelle exclaimed. “Is there any way that I can help you?”

  “Not unless you can tell me where Sheriff Eversole might be.”

  “He told me he was heading to an accident scene,” Estelle said. “No one’s hurt, but there’s a bull down over on Ranch-to-Market Road One-seventy.”

  Dana squinted, thinking. “Is that the one I passed on the way to the adobe where my sister lived?”

  Estelle nodded. “He said it was about a mile and a half west of that junction.”

  “Do you think it would be okay if I drove out there? I’d, ah, I’d like to get this business taken care of as soon as possible. So I can get back to my mother.”

  A slight nod attested to Estelle’s approval. “I don’t see why not. But maybe you should ask Wallace first if Jay is still there. He should have called in by now.”

  “Jay would tell him?”

  “Oh, yes. He always lets my boy know where he’s going and when he might be back, and Wallace does the same. Otherwise, if there was trouble, one of them could get stuck—and in this heat, that’s no small matter.”

  “I see.” Apprehension tightened Dana’s stomach. So Wallace had been lying to her from the start. Was it only out of casual malice, or was there some darker reason that Jay was incommunicado? “I’ll be sure to check in with him, then. Thank you, Mrs. Hooks.”

  A smile bloomed beneath the beehive hairdo. “I hope you won’t mind if I call you Dana. And please, it’s Estelle, dear.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The strange thing is, he told me about this place back in rehab, told me about its empty spaces and its defeated dwellings baking in the desert sun.

  He claimed he hated it, that he was never going back there.

  Yet who should I run into within days of my arrival but the man who now pretends he doesn’t know me?

  For old times’ sake, I pretend right back, even though it hurts like hell and has me wishing for a bottle or a little magic dust.

  For anything to take the edge off of the memories…

  But I’m finished running.

  Finished, so I breathe in a deep draft of desert and turn back to my loom.

  —February 3 (loose page)

  Angie’s sobriety journal

  (recovered following close of investigation near Red Wolf Wildcatters bunkhouse)

  “Looks like it’s just you and me, dog,” Jay told Max, who stood panting in the shade of the Suburban.

  Still jittery from his struggle to slow his vehicle without rolling over, Jay glared down at his cell phone’s tiny screen. Not a single bar, of course—though he’d had service earlier, at the location of the alleged accident. And Estelle and Wallace either didn’t hear his radio or wouldn’t answer.

  If he stuck around this county, Jay vowed to convince the commissioners to fund the cost of a foolproof satellite communications system. His second order of business, he determined, would be finding someone other than a damned Hooks to watch his back. Or better yet, he’d throw in with Dennis to run the whole bunch of them right out of Rimrock.

  If Dennis was still speaking to him…

  Jay pulled a gallon jug from the emergency stash he kept in the rear of the Suburban. The water was warm and tasted of plastic, but it would keep both him and Max going through the tire change.

  One way or another, Jay would have ended up doing the work himself, but he’d feel better if he could have told someone his location. Though the sun rested on the horizon, the rock and soil cast off a day’s worth of hellish heat, enough that Jay would bet his next cold beer that it remained close to one hundred in the shade.

  Even a healthy man could die exerting himself in such conditions. He took another drink and looked to see what had happened to his tire. The roads were so rough around here, he expected to see a spot where a sharp stone had torn through the shoulder. He was surprised to find that neither rock nor rut had caused this flat.

  Instead he spotted a slash across the sidewall. Though it would be impossible to prove, it looked to him as if someone had sliced through it with something sharp. A hunting knife, perhaps, and the idea nudged a memory. Something he’d discussed with the agent from Monahans, Steve Petit. What the hell had it been? Tough to remember at the moment, with both heat and fatigue pressing in on him. Hard to concentrate…He shook his head in an attempt to clear it.

  As Jay twisted off each frozen lug nut and laid it in his upturned hat’s crown, he cursed Hooks, Navarro, and Schlitz under his breath. Angry that he’d turned the tables on their attempt to intimidate him, one of them must have done the damage while Jay was busy with the dog. Probably they’d simply meant to cause him the aggravation of a tire change, but because the cutter had been in a hurry the tire hadn’t immediately gone flat. Instead, after heating and bumping along the dusty road, it had suddenly given up the ghost—in a manner that could have gotten Jay killed if he’d been driving any faster.

  As he pulled off the ruined tire, a different sort of remains came to mind. Miriam Piper-Gold’s, to be specific, or whatever her real name was.

  The medical examiner had made note of
the strips of flesh removed from the body’s thighs and abdomen. That was what Jay had been trying to remember—Petit’s suggestion that the victim might have been tortured antemortem by someone with a sharp knife.

  And Jay recalled something else as well. The three young heifers Weevil Jenkins thought had been slaughtered by some weird cult, or maybe aliens. Though Jay hadn’t been around when the first two animals died, he remembered hearing his uncle complain about Weevil’s passion for conspiracy theories. Besides, the third carcass hadn’t looked particularly suspicious. Sometimes predators brought down an animal and got scared off by something before they finished eating. Other times they killed when they were too full to do more than nibble on the tenderest portions.

  He’d assumed that was all it had been, but when he put it into the larger context, Jay now wondered if the pattern might be part of something more disturbing. Something that involved one of the three men who had lured him to the desert far from town before slashing his tires.

  Dana’s best-laid plans went awry when Mrs. Lockett flagged her down on her way out of the courthouse.

  “Come in and have some cheesecake,” she’d invited. “I made some for the children, but they haven’t come in from playing yet. I could have sworn…I think…I don’t know.”

  The old woman turned around, the hem of her thin housedress fluttering around her bony knees. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she asked, “Where are those children off to? Trudy-Lynn, Nestor, Sheldon! Come inside—it’s getting dark.”

  She looked so bereft in her confusion, so vulnerable and hopeless, that Dana had gone in and had a slice of cheesecake with her. She’d intended to stay only long enough to set the old woman happily adrift among her memories, but when Dana caught sight of a huge—and undoubtedly painful—abscess on the orange tom’s neck, she decided to do a makeshift procedure to alleviate the old cat’s suffering.