Sheriff Takes a Bride

by Gayle Kaye

  If she hadn’t been so caught up with Cam lately she would have been more vigilant. She wouldn’t have let Granny’s late nights slide, she’d have gotten a few answers out of the old girl.

  If Granny Pearl had herself mixed up in some sort of mischief...

  Hallie sighed. She’d promised Cam that wouldn’t happen.

  Just then her gaze fell on Granny’s sewing basket beside her old rocker. She dropped the phone and started toward it The sinking feeling in her stomach was fast hitting bottom.

  Just as she thought

  Granny’s quilting needles were there—all of them. So were her favorite thimble, her spools of quilting thread, the small pair of scissors she always used.

  Hallie groaned. The old woman and her friends were up to something—and Hallie would bet it wasn’t something good.

  Chapter Nine

  This time Hallie wasn’t going to waste efforts trying to get answers out of her grandmother, the sphinx. She was taking the bull by the horns. She was turning private detective.

  Hallie had never done this before, but tonight when Granny Pearl left—sans quilting needles again—Hallie tailed her. She kept the little Subaru some distance behind Granny’s green jalopy, not wanting those keen eyes catching a glimpse of it in the rearview mirror.

  The old fox headed toward town, then took a detour that doubled back to the abandoned property smack dab next to Granny’s. Sam Wilhelm’s old place, Hallie remembered.

  Several other equally antiquated clunkers had already gathered. The quilters, en masse. And Hallie would just bet they didn’t have quilting needles, either.

  Each had parked their vehicle out of sight of the road, fairly hidden by a clump of tall pines. The casual observer wouldn’t have noticed them—but Hallie wasn’t a casual observer.

  The tiny group of gray-hairs took off through the piney woods and underbrush with Granny in the lead—and Hallie in hot pursuit, a safe distance behind.

  Hallie didn’t feel the slightest qualm about following her relative. Granny Pearl had been released into her custody; she was her responsibility—which Cam would be all too happy to point out to her.

  Besides, she loved Granny—and she didn’t want anything to happen to her.

  She moved slowly, careful not to snap a twig and alert the ladies to her presence. She’d just bet their ears were as keen as their penchant for getting into mischief.

  Hallie cursed under her breath as her toe caught in a rabbit hole and she twisted her right ankle. But it didn’t slow her down. She kept up with the crew ahead of her, though each step hurt like hell.

  The pain made her more determined than ever to find out what the old biddies were up to.

  She’d turned detective for the night, and that was what she intended to do—detect.

  Their route wound this way and that until it neared... Granny’s property—the back edge of it. Not far from the area Hallie and Cam had searched and found nothing.

  Just then the group stopped. Hallie did, too, hiding behind a large oak tree, which afforded her a clear view of just what the little outlaws were doing.

  What they were doing was removing five or six dead tree branches to reveal...

  Hallie had never seen a still before in her life, but she knew in an instant that’s what it was. The still Cam had seen earlier, and Hallie hadn’t been able to find.

  And now she knew why.

  Granny and her cloak-and-dagger friends had spirited it away onto neighboring property, where Hallie hadn’t thought to look for it.

  She groaned and thought evil thoughts about six little old ladies.

  The group was adept at assembling the pieces. Hallie waited and watched with growing ill humor until the apparatus began to gurgle and bubble. They were making moonshine—there was no doubt about it.

  Hallie had caught them red-handed—and unless she did something, they were all headed for jail.

  She stepped out from her hiding place behind the tree and marched toward the brew crew, advancing on them like a conquering general.

  A gasp went up when they saw her approach.

  “Oh, my!”

  “The jig is up!”

  “Hallie!” This last from Granny. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, though Hallie thought that should have been her question.

  “Hello, ladies,” she said as sweetly as if she’d just joined them for afternoon tea. “I thought I’d stop by and see how your, um, quilting is coming along.” She marched over to the crafty little still and took a deep sniff. “Refreshments, I see.”

  The ladies shuffled uncomfortably. A few of them had the good grace to look chagrined. But not Granny. Her chin raised brazenly. “You were spying on us, Hallie Cates,” she said. “How could you do that?”

  “I prefer to call it...detecting—and how could I do it? Because I care. Because you are all in deep hot water the moment word of this gets back to the sheriff. Because...”

  Hallie was so angry she couldn’t think of another reason. She wanted to throttle each and every one of them.

  Instead, she surveyed the still like a demolition engineer, then jerked a large coil piece from the apparatus, thus ending the gurgling and bubbling—and hopefully incapacitating it for good.

  Then she turned back to the group and faced each one squarely. “Ladies, you are out of business.”

  “It’s just rheumatiz’ medicine,” Miss Hattie, the town postmistress explained, when Hallie lined up fourteen bottles of their makings on Granny’s kitchen table.

  The coil from the still, along with a few other vital parts, were safely locked away in Hallie’s trunk to ensure that the clever little group didn’t resume operations again any time soon.

  She had assembled the ladies at Granny’s, intending to give them a stiff talking-to—and to make them understand what they were doing was against the law and could send them up the river for ten to twenty.

  And most in this group didn’t look like they had ten to twenty left to spare.

  “That’s right,” explained Cora, “we was just providin’ a service to the county. Most of the people around these parts are old, and our squeezins makes ’em feel better.”

  Hallie sniffed a bottle of the stuff. She’d just bet it made them feel better. In fact, a few ounces of it and they’d feel no pain whatsoever.

  “Well, I’m really sorry I broke up your little, um, pharmacy here, but I can’t let you do this,” she explained. “I can’t let you all get caught and put in jail. You’ll just have to find something else to cure your aches and pains, girls. Sorry.”

  A collective grumble went up from the group—but Hallie was sticking to her guns.

  Throughout the stern lecture Granny was strangely quiet, and Hallie hoped the old girl wasn’t hatching some new method of operation in her mind.

  Finally she spoke up. “I s‘pose you’re plannin’ to tell that sheriff ’bout this the minute our backs are turned, aren’t you?” she said with a loud sniff.

  The old gal was clearly put out with tonight’s developments, but that was just too bad.

  As for her remark...

  Hallie had no idea what she should do about informing Cam. He’d be mighty unhappy if she didn’t, if she kept this to herself. On the other hand, if she told him, he’d probably put the women in jail—and then how would Hallie feel?

  Not very pleased with herself.

  Cam was a man who went by the book. Hadn’t he made that clear to Hallie? He wouldn’t easily look the other way, not where the ladies were concerned.

  Her brow pleated and she rubbed her temples where a headache had begun to pound. Why did she always end up in some dilemma where Cam was concerned? At odds with the man?

  “I’m going to have to give this some consideration,” she said. “I just can’t think right now. But I promise you, before I’d inform the sheriff of anything , I’d give you fair warning.”

  It was the most she could offer them.

  She’d boxed herself in, but good, by
stumbling onto Granny’s little undercover operation.

  And, at the moment, she was terribly angry with her relative for putting her in that position.

  Hallie began to relax as the week progressed. She’d averted disaster.

  Granny was home every night, feeding her two goats, baking cookies and other goodies, and generally behaving herself. She’d even agreed to go and talk with a lawyer about her pending court case. They had an appointment in two days.

  Hallie was pleased.

  Her relief was undeniable.

  Hopefully there would be no further trouble—and Cam wouldn’t even need to know about the events of the other night. In fact, Hallie had decided to keep it to herself. She’d handled things quite effectively on her own. She’d shut down operations, dismantled the still, and disbanded the ladies.

  She’d even gotten rid of the last remaining supply the women had on hand. She couldn’t do anything about the bottles the old girls had already sold off—and that worried Hallie some. But she didn’t want to think about that tonight.

  She was feeling too pleased with herself, certain that all would finally be all right—that her world, and Granny’s, would at last be sane again.

  “C’mon out on the porch, Granny Pearl. The stars are beautiful tonight. I want to just sit and look up at them.”

  The night was, indeed, beautiful—even her upsetting feelings about Cam seemed distant at the moment.

  “Why, we ain’t watched the stars since you was a little girl,” Granny said, appearing at the door, a reminiscent smile on her face. “But I think we need some o’ my fresh-baked cobbler to go along with all that stargazin’.”

  Hallie agreed. “Sit down, Granny—I’ll dish us up some.”

  Yes. she was glad she hadn’t bothered Cam with the events of the other night. Hallie had handled it all just fine herself. In fact, Cam should be proud of her for her efforts.

  Cam had arrested eleven people in town for drunk and disorderly conduct—and the night wasn’t over yet.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess. This jug of ninety proof is some of Pearl Cates’s concoction, isn’t it?” he said to the latest group of prisoners he’d ushered into his establishment.

  “Tha’ li’l old gal’s hooch is the best in Ark’n’saw,” Jed Brewster answered, a commercial recommendation that didn’t exactly put Granny’s case in good stead at the moment.

  At least not with the sheriff.

  “Yup,” his brother Jonah added. “Pearl knows howta whip up a batch o’ squeezins that’ll put hair on any man’s chest.”

  It was too bad it didn’t add a little hair to these men’s heads, Cam thought with a grimace at the elderly group. At least then it would have been useful for something besides stirring up brawls in otherwise civil, law-abiding individuals.

  Some of the old boys were already trying to sleep it off, others were singing, and Jed and Jonah continued to praise Pearl’s talents and attempt to wheedle Cam into leaving the old gal alone to make her moonshine. After all, what was it hurting?

  Cam wished they had his job just for tonight.

  He rubbed his aching temples and headed out to try to restore law and order to tiny Greens Hollow. If he could get his hands on Pearl Cates at the moment he’d wring the old biddy’s neck.

  And Hallie... He’d thought he could count on her, thought he could trust her, but she’d blindsided him.

  And that was one thing he’d promised himself he wouldn’t let happen. Not a second time.

  What would she have to say for herself?

  He wasn’t even sure he wanted to hear her excuse. He’d come here to remote Greens Hollow—the last sensible place on earth, he’d thought—hoping to find some peace in his life, some sanity, but what he’d found instead was more dishonesty.

  He’d reached out to Hallie, opened up to her, only to discover she couldn’t be trusted any more than his old partner—or his ex-wife.

  Damn it all, he only had himself to blame for this.

  His brain had warned him to keep his distance from Hallie, from any female who might intrigue him, but when it came to Hallie Cates his heart and his insistent set of hormones had led, instead.

  By the time the night was over, Cam had put in six more hours rounding up brawlers and general, all-around rowdies, imbued with Granny’s firewater.

  What did the woman put in the stuff?

  And how much of it had she sold?

  Cam could be busy for days.

  He cornered another rough-and-ready group and herded them into the patrol car and carted them off to jail to sleep it off along with the others he’d apprehended.

  The whole lot of them would have riotous headaches in the morning, he predicted. And they’d be full of apologies.

  He supposed Hallie would have her apologies to offer about this, as well, apologies about Granny’s moonshine disturbing the town’s peace and quiet. Cam’s peace and quiet, too.

  But those apologies wouldn’t mean a thing.

  They’d just be more hollow words.

  By morning the news of Cam’s arrests was all over town. Hallie had heard it from Miss Hattie, who’d phoned Granny bright and early.

  Granny had tried to keep from telling Hallie, but Hallie had demanded to know the details.

  The details were not good.

  Cam had put in a hard night. Half the county, it seemed, had ended up in his jail—and he was going to blame Hallie for it.

  At least for not being honest with him.

  A short while later Hallie appeared at the sheriff’s office. Though the men had all been released to their families and sent home to suffer their hangovers out of range of Cam’s earshot, the place still reeked from stale booze.

  Cam felt a secret delight when Hallie wrinkled up her pretty nose at the smell.

  The woman had it coming.

  And Pearl Cates had worse coming. He hoped the judge would throw the book at her.

  Still, a part of him harbored a tinge of sympathy for what Hallie was going through with Pearl—and for having to endure the unpleasant smell of this place.

  Cam had had enough of the place, as well. He flung open a few more windows and ushered Hallie outside where a soft fresh breeze stirred and the morning sun slanted down. A few wildflowers bobbed in the small patch of earth near the front entrance. Their fragrance was a delightful counterpoint to the smell of a jail that had housed drunken men for the night

  “Thanks,” Hallie said as she settled herself demurely on a bench up against the front of the building.

  Did she have to look so fresh and pretty? The sun turned the red in her hair to golden fire and her green eyes looked misty and troubled.

  He redoubled his efforts to hold on to his anger.

  “I know you must think this is all my fault,” she said hesitantly and toyed with the faint crease in her white denim shorts.

  Her legs were long and tanned beneath them. Her toenails, poking out of her open sandals, were painted a pearly pink. Her breasts rose and fell a little more rapidly than was normal beneath her Dallas Cowboys T-shirt.

  And Cam struggled for calm.

  “I suppose you didn’t know a thing about this, that Pearl is innocent, and I’m off my rocker for even considering that your sweet, charming, little grandmother had anything to do with the firewater the men were drinking last night.”

  He was working up a full head of steam.

  “We had an agreement, Hallie. You were going to find out what Pearl was up to and report back to me. I thought I could trust you to do that.”

  Her breasts rose again, this time convulsively. Cam averted his gaze and studied a furry squirrel searching for a buried nut in the grass.

  “I was, Cam. But I couldn’t find the still—at least not at first. Then...then I found Granny’s recipe hidden in the flour canister and suspected she might not be as innocent as she claimed—”

  “Her recipe?” His eyes flashed to hers. “When was this? How long ago? And when were you going to te
ll me about it? Or were you?” His gaze scanned her face. “You weren’t going to tell me.”

  Hallie glanced away. She didn’t know how she could make him understand her reasons for keeping quiet, how she could make him understand she was afraid for Granny, afraid the woman would end up behind bars again.

  Cam was angry. His eyes glittered. The veins stood out in his neck. He pushed a hand through his hair, showing his frustration with her, with Granny, the whole, entire situation.

  She just wished he didn’t look so all-male in that uniform, so in authority. It frightened her. He frightened her.

  “I’d intended to tell you, Cam, but...” She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  “I trusted you, Hallie.” His tone was cold, flat.

  She knew how he felt about trust. He’d told her about his partner, what had happened back in Chicago. But this was different.

  At least in Hallie’s eyes.

  “This isn’t about trust, Cam. It’s about loyalty. My loyalty to Granny Pearl. She’s my grandmother, family. My family. I couldn’t let her go to jail again.”

  Cam stood in front of her, not giving an inch. “So you ignored the law and appointed yourself judge and jury. That’s great, Hallie, just great. It seems you didn’t feel you could trust me, either.”

  His hand dragged through his hair again, and he turned his back to her. To contain himself?

  “There’s more, Cam.”

  He might as well hear it now. He’d learn about it later, anyway—and then it might be worse for her. For Granny. Maybe she should have told him sooner, but she loved her grandmother.

  He turned around, his gaze raking her face. “Let’s hear it, Hallie. All of it.”

  “While we were together—I mean, you and I, Granny was busy with her own agenda, and...being secretive about it. I should have guessed something was up, but her preoccupation meant she wasn’t questioning what I was doing, who I was seeing.”

  His eyes softened for a moment, as if he might be remembering a few of those nights they’d had together, a few of the kisses they’d indulged in, what they were beginning to mean to each other. At least, Hallie thought they were beginning to mean something to each other, something...special.