by Linda Turner
Nothing stood in her way when she smelled a story, and there were more than a few things in his past he'd rather not have laid bare for the paper.
In the outer office, phones rang above the clatter of computer keys, and at the coffee machine in the staff room, John Sanchez and Myrtle Purvis, the mouthy dispatcher who had been part of the office long before Riley had come on the scene, argued over the possibility of the Dallas Cowboys winning another Superbowl this year.
He had his own ideas on the subject, but next year's budget projections littered his desk, and if he didn't get the numbers together and to the city council, he was going to have more explaining to do.
Blocking everything out, Riley was bent over his desk, scowling, when there was a perfunctory knock on his door. He looked p to find Gable Rawlings striding into his office as if he owned it. A slow grin turned up one corner of Riley's mouth.
"Well, come on in, man," he drawled, motioning to the chair the rancher had already dropped into.
"Make yourself at home."
Humor glinting in his light blue eyes, Gable did just that, stretching out his long legs.
As head of the Double R Ranch, one of the most successful spreads in southwestern New Mexico, he could, at times, cut a commanding figure. But never with his friends. And he'd claimed Riley as a friend from the moment he'd first been elected sheriff and started cleaning up the corruption of his predecessor.
"Don't give me a hassle, Whitaker. You've got a problem."
"More than one," Riley replied flippantly, frowning down at the alarmingly high figures he'd just come up with.
"Which one were you referring to?"
"Becca Prescott."
Riley's head snapped up.
"What is it with that woman?" he complained crossly.
"I only just learned of her existence last night, and now she's all anyone wants to talk about!"
The humor fading from his weathered face, Gable said, "I'm not surprised. Josey can't stop singing her praises."
Frowning at the thought of one of his best friends' wives supporting his competition, he sat up straighter.
"She's met her?"
He nodded.
"At the elementary school. She's a teachers aide there, and Josey ran into her a couple of days ago when she stopped to make sure all the kids had their shots. She thinks you're going to have a fight on your hands. Riley, and so do I. Have you hired a campaign manager yet?"
"No, of course not. You know I never mess with that kind of stuff."
"Because you've never had any competition before. You haven't got that luxury this year. The lady could give you a run for your money."
"Oh, come on," Riley scoffed.
"We're talking about a woman. A little bitty woman," he stressed, using his hands to indicate her height and build.
"Sure, she could probably run the office without too much trouble, but how's she going to handle Dan Trainer when he gets plastered every payday and starts pushing his wife around?
Even drunk he'll be able to swat her out of his way like a gnat. Can you honestly see the men in this county taking her seriously? "
"In case you've forgotten, men aren't the only ones who have the vote around here," Gable said dryly.
"A lot of women are going to like what Mrs. Prescott has to say, especially when she zeroes in on the mistakes that have been plaguing your office for the last couple of months. When the ladies step into the voting booth, you could be history."
Far from resenting his friend's remarks, Riley had to give him credit—he didn't beat around the bush but shot straight from the hip.
"That's why I just had a long discussion with Sydney O'Keefe. I wasn't making excuses, but I wanted her and her readers to know that I've hired more new people this year than I have in all the other years I've been in office combined. And rookies make mistakes. But they'll learn—you just have to give them time. Once the voters understand that, they'll see that Beeca Prescott has far more liabilities than I do."
It was a sound argument, but Gable still wasn't convinced.
"Maybe, but the lady's obviously got a lot going for her, and a good campaign manager would know how to handle her.
And you know how short people's memories are. A lot of them are going to forget all the good things you've done and just remember the screwups"— As if his words had conjured up the main perpetrator of those screwups, Mark Newman knocked at Riley's of rice door and only then noticed he had a visitor.
"Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I got a message that you wanted to see me, but I didn't mean to interrupt. I'll come back later." Normally, Riley would have preferred to speak to the younger man in private, but his shift ended soon, and if he didn't talk to him now, he wouldn't get a chance to until tomorrow.
"That's not necessary," he said, motioning him in.
"Have a seat, Mark. I understand you issued a disturbing-the-peace citation this morning."
"Yes, sir!" Always eager to talk about his work, Mark sank into the chair next to Gable's like a 1ooselimbed puppy," his brown eyes alight with indignation as he related the incident.
"I stopped a woman for jaywalking on Main Street. She cut across the street right in front of me!"
"Were you in your patrol car?"
"No, sir. I'd just stepped out of the City Diner, where I'd had breakfast."
"Were there any other vehicles on the street? Did she almost get hit?"
"No, but it was a clear violation, sir, no question about it. And after your memo the other morning, I couldn't just let it slide. So I stopped the lady and explained to her that she was violating the law by not using the crosswalk."
Hot color, nearly as red as his cropped, curly hair, stole up his throat into his cheeks.
"That's when shemchewed me out like a kid caught throwing spitballs in school. And she was loud, sir! Everybody in the diner heard her, so I had no choice but to cite her for disturbing the peace. "
His lips pressed into a flat line, Riley didn't dare laugh, or look at Gable, who was suddenly staring at the ceiling with fierce interest.
What, he wondered wildly, was he going to do with the kid? He'd tried to be patient with him, to get him to temper his enthusiasm with common sense, but every time Riley thought he was getting through to him, Mark pulled a stupid stunt like this. Jaywalking, for God's sake! No wonder Becca Prescott had chewed a strip off of him—the whole damn thing was ridiculous. And trouble he couldn't afford with the election just around the' corner.
Unclenching his jaw, Riley leaned back in his chair and surveyed his deputy, letting the silence stretch just long enough to let Mark know he was less than pleased.
"I realize that must have been difficult for you," he said finally.
"Especially if you were in the right and she really was jaywalking.
But sometimes the hardest part of the job is hanging on to your temper and not letting someone goad you into making a bad decision. Which is what happened here. "
"But she broke the law!"
"A misdemeanor," Riley countered.
"Jaywalking is hardly a federal offense. And if you were so concerned about the law she broke, you should have given her a ticket for that, not for disturbing the peace because she argued with you. Old ladies speak their minds. It's a free country.
You can't go around ticketing them because you don't like what they say. So next time, try to be a little more tactful, okay?"
He posed the order in the form of a suggestion, but Mark wasn't dense.
Pushing to his feet, he nodded stiffly. "Yes, sir. I'll do my best. Now, if you'll excuse me, I" got some ports to finish."
Like a kid escaping from a principal's office, he wasted no time in leaving. The minute he was out of earshot, Riley checked the phone book and dialed Margaret Hawkins's number.
"Margaret, this is Sheriff Whitaker," he said, gratingly easily as soon as she answered the phone.
"I understand you had a little trouble with one of my deputies this morning."
&nb
sp; As expected, she gave him an earful, but Riley sympathized with her and assured her he understood perfect! As sheriff, he wasn't just a law enforcement officer, but a friend, confidant and advisor to the citizens of Hidall County.
He'd learned a long time ago that talking—at listening—to people could accomplish a lot more than playing the heavy, so when he hung up a few minutes late he and Margaret had an agreement.
He would tear up the ticket, and she would try to remember to use the zeros walk from now on.
"The minute Becea Prescott hears about this, you know what's going to happen, don't you?" Gable asked as soon as he hung up.
"She's going to accuse you of tearing that ticket to win votes."
"Let her," he said with a shrug.
"No one will belie her. It's common knowledge that I've been tearing frivolous tickets for years."
"I still think you need a campaign manager."
"Why? He'll just tell me to put up some more poster and work on the speeches I've already got scheduled, relax, will you? I've got everything under control. Becca Prescott hasn't got a prayer."
Still miffed in spite of the fact that she'd given her opponent a well-deserved piece of her mind, Becca would have liked nothing better than to forget she'd ever laid eyes on him, Winning the lottery would have been easier.
The word was now out that she was running for sheriff, so when she stopped at the elementary school where she worked to pick up Chloe from kindergarten, the only thing her friends and co-workers wanted to talk about was the election and Riley Whitaker. When she and Chloe stopped at the printer's to pick up the posters she'd ordered to advertise her candidacy—posters she had, thankfully, paid for before Riley hit her with that outrageous ticket last night—she couldn't look at them without thinking of the man she was challenging.
The real killer, however, was when she drove into her driveway and found her three neighbors waiting for her on the wide porch that stretched across the front of her grandmother's wood-frame house.
Seated next to her in the passenger seat of her ten-year-old Jeep, Chloe straightened at the sight of their visitors, her blue eyes, so like her father's, sparkling with anticipation.
"Look, Mom, the grannies are here."
Becca grinned at the eagerness in her daughter's voice. The three ladies had claimed Chloe as all adopted granddaughter from the moment she and Becca had moved in. Invariably, at least one of them was waiting for her on the porch after school with a special treat.
"If they keep bringing you cookies, I'm going to have to go on a diet."
Chloe giggled and was out the door like a shot the minute the car stopped. Shaking her head at the five-year old unflagging energy, Becca retrieved the posters from the back seat and followed more slowly, her heart warming as she watched her three elderly friends hug Chloe and fuss over her.
They ranged in age from seventy-eight to eighty-one and were as different as night and day.
Clara Simpson, short and plump, was a sweet-tempered gossip who adored a good love story. Unapologetically vain, she would rather bump into things than wear her in public, and she never left her house without rouge and lipstick on. Lucille Brickman, on the other hand, had no patience for cosmetics, kept her iron gray hair cropped close to her head and was as straightforward as she was tall. She never called a spade anything but what it was, but she was a soft touch when it came to kids. She'd never had any of her own and would have walked over fire for Chloe.
And then there was Margaret. Surveying the potter's latest getup, Becca made no attempt to hold back a broad, fond smile. Wearing a purple-and-yellow muumuu and clunky gold earrings, she greeted Becca with a fierce hug.
"You're the sweetest thing for talking to the sheriff!" she exclaimed, enveloping her again in a perfumed embrace.
"He called me."
"He did?"
Practically beaming, her parchment-fine cheeks blushing like a schoolgirl's, she nodded.
"He was so nice! He said the ticket was all a misunderstanding—he was sure I just forgot to use the crosswalk. So he's going to tear it up and we can forget this unfortunate incident ever happened. Wasn't that thoughtful of him?"
Lucille, sitting straight as a poker in the porch swing, humphed at that.
"It sounds like election year shenanigans to me."
Shaking her head in exasperation at her friend, she said affectionately, "I swear, Margaret, sometimes you're so incredibly naive. Of course he tore up the ticket. The man was trying to buy your vote."
Wide-eyed, Margaret gasped.
"No, he wasn't! Was he?"
"Riley Whitaker's not like that, and you know it, Lucy," Clara scolded, shooting Lucille a chiding frown.
"If he tore up a ticket, it was because it never should have been given in the first place. Which doesn't mean I'm voting for him," she assured Becca quickly, in case she'd misunderstood her defense of the man.
"I just don't think we should accuse the poor boy unjustly."
Becca wanted to smile at that—no one but Clara would describe Lordsburg's tough, ruggedly masculine sheriff as a boy—but somehow she managed to keep a straight face.
"Whatever his motives were, the ticket's been torn up and that's all that matters." Deliberately changing the subject, she said, "I picked up my posters while I was out.
Come take a look and tell me what you think."
"We're going to put them up all over town after supper," Chloe confided excitedly as they followed Becca inside the house to exclaim over the professionalism of the notices, which Becca had designed herself.
"Mama said I can put some up, too. But we have to make sure they don't come down or we could get in trouble for littering." Lucille gave a quick, teasing tug on her ponytail.
"You got that right, spider. Some of us" — she gave Margaret a pointed look "—have already tangled with the law enough for one day, so we'd better mind our p's and q's.
Why don't we help you and your more, and then you'll he finished that much faster? We can divide them up, then each go in our own car, and cover the whole county fore dark."
Margaret and Clara immediately seconded the suggestion, chattering excitedly about the places they thought the handbills would get the most attention, but Becca hesitated, not sure the idea was a good one.
Clinging to their fiercely guarded independence as long as they dared, they all still drove—though the times they actually went out alone were becoming rarer and rarer. And every time they did, Becca found herself holding her breath until they returned.
Lucille had a heavy foot, Clara had a tendency to crawl and Margaret, God love her, was usually off in a world of her own making. And none of them could see well late in the day when the light was fading.
Afraid to let them out of her sight, Becca wracked her brain for an excuse to turn them down, but even as the words hovered on her tongue, she took one look at their expectant faces and knew she couldn't say them. Since her grandmother's death, the three of them had become like family to her and Chloe, and she loved them dearly. After all the times she had run errands for them, this was a rare opportunity for them to do something for her, and she couldn't deny them. Even if she knew she'd be worried sick about them the entire time they were running around the countryside by themselves.
"Let me get a county map," she said, giving in gracefully, "and we'll decide who goes where."
Even with help, putting up the posters took longer than Becca had expected. With Chloe's enthusiastic assistance, she covered the north end of Lordsburg and the county, tacking handbills on strategic fence posts, utility poles and, when she was lucky, a lonely tree. By the time she put up the last poster and headed for home, the sun had long since sunk below the horizon, and Chloe was falling asleep in the passenger seat.
Pulling into the driveway of her darkened house, Becca cut the engine.
Chloe only sighed and settled more comfortably against the padded console, which she'd been using as a pillow for the last fifteen minutes. Glancing
down at her ragamuffin of a five-year-old, Becca grinned.
The little imp was dirty, her hair a tangled cloud around her face and her stomach full of Clara's chocolate-chip cookies, which she'd snacked on ever since they'd left the house.
She needed a bath, something nutritious for supper, then bed, but Becca didn't have the heart to wake her. She was tuckered out, poor baby.
Coming around to the passenger side, Becca scooped her up and carried her inside to bed.
Exhausted herself, she would have liked nothing better than to call it a night. But the minute she'd pulled into her driveway, she'd noticed that all three of her neighbors' houses were shrouded in darkness, their driveways empty. Returning to the front porch after making sure Chloe was out for the count, Becca frowned at the blacktop county road that ran in an unbroken line all the way to town ten miles away. There wasn't a headlight in sight.
Concern knotted her stomach. They should have been back hours ago.
She'd taken most of the posters with her just to make sure they wouldn't be out after dark, yet here it was going on nine o'clock and there was no sign of them. Dammit, where were they?
As if in answer to her silent query, first one, then a second and a third pair of headlights appeared on the western horizon. Her heart pounding crazily in relief, Becca dropped into the porch swing and sent up a silent prayer of thanks.
"Oh, Becca, we've had the most marvelous time!" Margaret cried in greeting as she surged up onto the porch with Lucille and Clara right on her heels.
"I haven't had so much fun in years!"
"We've been everywhere—just everywhere!" Lucille added with more enthusiasm than Becca had ever seen her show.
"I had no idea this county was so big."
"And look what we found!" Clara said gaily.
"Aren't they great?"
In the yellow glare of the Porch light, they held up dozens of posters for the upcoming election. And from everyone of them, Riley Whitaker glared back at Becca almost accusingly.