The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

by Kathleen Creighton

  He greeted Roan with a cordial “Howdy, Sheriff,” which was echoed by most of those already occupying stools at the polished antique pine wood bar. The saloon keeper plunked Roan’s “usual”-a mug of black coffee-down on a paper napkin on the well-scuffed surface, and after a glance along the bar to see if his regulars were likely to be needing refills any time soon, folded his beefy arms, placed them on the bar and leaned on them.

  “Figured you’d be in tonight,” he said in a low, rumbling voice he probably thought passed for a whisper. “Helluva thing about ol’ Jase, ain’t it?”

  Roan didn’t answer as he laid down a dollar bill for the coffee and slid onto a stool. Buster leaned in closer.

  “Don’t guess I oughta be sayin’ this, given the circumstances, but hell-can’t say I’m surprised. Lotta folks’d say Jase had been askin’ for it for years. Sooner or later, somebody was bound to oblige him.”

  Roan didn’t smile. He sipped coffee, then swiveled a casual half turn on the stool, gave the saloon keeper a sideways glance then looked away. “You got anybody particular in mind?”

  Buster gave a snort, the breeze of it stirring his thick gray walrus mustache. “You could start with the Hart County phone book.”

  This time Roan let his mouth tilt sideways in a grin. He drank more coffee. “Let’s narrow it down a bit. How ’bout…say, last night? Was he in here?”

  “Oh, hell yeah-like always.” Buster shook his head. “Man, this place ain’t gonna seem the same…”

  “He get into it with anybody? More than usual,” Roan added with another crooked smile, beating Buster to the punch.

  Which the barkeeper acknowledged with a grunt, then straightened up, looking uncomfortable. In response to some signal from the other end of the bar Roan hadn’t noticed, he busied himself filling a couple of beer glasses with draft, expertly raising the head to just the right level. When he’d delivered them to the customers and deposited payment in the huge silver antique cash register that rose like an altar behind the bar, he came back over to Roan, folded his arms and hunkered down again with a heavy sigh.

  “Well, gosh darn,” he muttered, “I sure do hate to put anybody on the hot seat…”

  “Why don’t you let me worry about that?” Roan said mildly.

  Buster gave him an unhappy look, smoothed down his mustache with a meaty hand, then immediately undid the effects of that by exhaling like a locomotive blowing off steam. “Hell. Okay, well, I did notice he was hitting pretty hard on that little ol’ gal from the beauty shop. The one that bought out Queenie when she retired and moved down to Phoenix last winter,” he elaborated, when Roan responded with a slight shake of his head.

  “Don’t know her.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. She hasn’t been here long-six months…maybe a little more, but definitely an out-of-towner. And, she’s kinda quiet-seems like a real nice girl, not the type to show up on your radar screen, if you know what I mean.” He frowned as he straightened up once more, looking thoughtful. “Funny thing is, you wouldn’t think she’d show up on Jase’s radar, either. Kind of a mousy little thing, not bad to look at, you know, just…not exactly a head-turner. Her name’s Mary,” he added almost as an afterthought. “That’s kind of what she looks like, too. The way you’d expect somebody named Mary to look. Definitely not ol’ Jase’s usual type, but for some reason, he was going at her pretty good last night.” He shook his head. “Not that she was buyin’. She made it pretty clear she didn’t want any part of what he was sellin’.”

  “She got a boyfriend? A husband?” Like…a very jealous one? Roan thought. Jealous enough to murder.

  Buster shook his head. “Not that I’ve ever seen or heard of. If you saw her, you’d understand why-she’s…like I said. Quiet. Nice, but kind of shy. Stand-offish.”

  “If she’s such a nice, sweet, shy girl, what was she doing in here?” Roan half grinned and let his eyes crinkle at the corners to show he hadn’t meant any offense by it.

  Buster snorted and gave him half a grin back to show he hadn’t taken any. “Not drinkin’, I’ll tell you that. Don’t think I’ve ever seen her order so much as a glass of wine or that weasel whiz they call lite beer. Naw, truth is, she likes ol’ Pedro’s cooking.” He jerked a nod in the general direction of the kitchen. “I guess Queenie told her before she left he was the best cook in town, and the poor thing never had the sense to learn better.” He guffawed a little at his own joke; everybody knew The Last Stand did have the best food in town, in spite of its seedy looks and rowdy reputation.

  “Anyhow, she stops in most nights on her way home from the shop and picks up something to take home for her dinner. Told me she hates to cook.” He shrugged. “You just missed her, in fact. She left here just a couple minutes before you walked in.”

  “This lady got a last name?” Roan asked casually as he slid off the stool. “An address?”

  “She’s renting Queenie’s place over on Custer. Don’t know her last name.” Buster threw another quick glance at his regular customers, then draped a dishtowel over one massive shoulder and lumbered down the two steps and around the end of the bar. He followed Roan out to the saloon’s big double-doored entry, which was well-lit by the dozen or so neon beer signs crowded in amongst the Plains Indian paintings and artifacts on its knotty pine walls. The worn wood floor was crowded, too, with a couple of coat and hat racks, an assortment of gumball, candy and toy vending machines, and racks offering a variety of free advertising publications.

  “Look, Sheriff,” the saloon keeper said, nodding at the dove-colored Stetson Roan had just taken from the rack, “I know what you’re thinkin’, but if that gal had anything to do with shootin’ Jase, I’ll eat that hat a’yours. Right here and now.”

  Roan threw him a mild glance as he settled the hat on his head. “You know I’ve got to ask.” He tilted his hat brim toward the door of the saloon, through which he could hear the thumping accompaniment to an old Dwight Yoakum classic somebody had just programmed into the antique jukebox. “Chances are looking good you people in here are the last to see Jason alive. And you did say he was hitting on this woman pretty hard.”

  “I never said she might not’ve had cause to kill him,” Buster muttered, looking uncomfortable again. “Just that I can’t believe she would.” Recognizing there was more the man wanted to say and wise enough not to push him, Roan waited him out. Finally the saloon keeper blurted it out in a muttered undertone. “Look-the fact is, I know something did happen between those two last night-Jase and Mary. He followed her out to the parking lot-you know, after she brushed him off? He had a smile on his face and a bad look in his eye-she’d given him the brush in front of a whole barroom full of regulars, and Jase wasn’t happy about it, you could see that. I thought about going out to make sure she got to her car okay. Only I got busy right then-somebody got to pushing and shoving at the bar, a glass got broke…you know how it is.” He dabbed his face with the bar towel on his shoulder and scowled at the Plains Indian dream-catcher hanging on the wall next to a neon Coors sign.

  “Anyway, a few minutes later-maybe five or ten, like I said, I was busy-Jase comes back in. He’s dabbing at his lip-I could see it was bleeding-and I mean he was ticked. Couple of the guys started raggin’ him-well, hell, it was pretty obvious what’d happened. Jase was riled up, pushing chairs around, cussin’ and generally making an ass of himself. Then he knocked back what was left of his drink-he’d already had plenty, I was ready to cut him off anyways-and he slammed down some money for his tab, and out he went.” He paused…let out a breath. “Never did come back. That’s the last any of us saw him, I guess.”

  “Except for the one that shot him,” Roan said, and got an angry look in return.

  “Like I said, I can’t believe-”

  “Like I said, I have to follow it up. You know that.” Roan laid a calming hand on the big man’s shoulder. “I appreciate you telling me about this.” Buster muttered something unintelligible but was obviously unhappy, and R
oan clapped him good-naturedly on the back. “Hey, come on, you know I’m gonna be fair. If this lady’s as innocent as you say she is, she’s got nothing to worry about. But I am going to need to talk to her. Tonight.” The easy smile on his lips tightened into grimmer lines. “Be seein’ you, Buster. You take it easy, now.”

  The sheriff touched the brim of his Stetson and plunged through the door and into the twilight.

  “You can stare at me all you like, but that’s all you’re getting,” Mary said firmly to the beast watching her avidly from his perch atop the kitchen counter. “The rest is mine. You’re getting too fat anyway.”

  The animal, a huge and amazingly ugly orange tabby tomcat, blinked at her in slow motion and went right on staring. He’d come with the house, and allowing him to remain there, as well as providing him with food and other feline comforts, had been another of the conditions under which Queenie Schultz had consented to leave her home and business in Mary’s custody. So, she tolerated the creature, and since he had no name that she knew of and because he reminded her-with a bittersweet ache of longing for a place and time lost to her now-of Audrey Hepburn’s cat in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, that’s what she called him. Cat.

  For his part, the animal seemed to have accepted the alien presence in his domain, although he did insist on staring at her with unnerving intensity, as if he expected her to turn back into Queenie at any moment, in a puff of magical smoke.

  Mary picked up the last triangle of her smoked turkey club on whole wheat bread and was about to sink her teeth into it when Cat startled her by coming abruptly to life. He leaped down from the countertop to land with a heavy thud on the linoleum floor, then vanished into the nether regions of the house. An instant later, there came a knock on the front door.

  Her heart leaped, then plummeted, a fair imitation of the maneuver Cat had just demonstrated. Who on earth? Her eyes went automatically to the oversized purse on the table that sat in the dimly lit living room just to the right of the front door. In all the months she’d lived in Hartsville, she’d never had anyone knock on her door before. And at this time of night?

  But then a strange sort of calm settled over her. Because, of course, she knew.

  She laid the uneaten sandwich carefully on its plate, picked up the pair of dark-rimmed glasses lying on the table and arranged them on her face. She touched the tender place on her jaw and skimmed her teeth across the swelling on her lower lip. Then she drew a deep breath, rose and walked to the door.

  She paused to open the wide mouth of the purse and shift it slightly so as to put it within easier reach of her right hand, before taking a deep breath and calling out, “Who is it?”

  “Sheriff Roan Harley, ma’am. I’d like to talk to you, if you wouldn’t mind.” The voice was deep and growly, pleasant and even soft in pitch, but there was no mistaking the iron authority in it.

  Mary closed her eyes briefly, then reached once more for the purse, this time picking it up, then bending over to tuck it under the table. She unlocked the door and opened it a cautious crack, leaving the screen door latched. And a moment later was clutching it for support as she felt herself tumbling headlong into a memory she thought she’d put away and forgotten long ago.

  I thought Diego DelRey was the most handsome man I’d ever seen. Tall, dark and exotic, he was standing in the middle of that vast hotel lobby in a shaft of sunlight from the leaded-glass skylight, smiling at me through the cascading waters from a Moorish fountain.

  “Throw a penny in the fountain and make a wish,” he said in a voice softly accented and exotic, sensual and dangerous as a tiger’s purr. “Tell me what it is and I’ll make it come true.”

  And I thought, as I smiled back at him, Oh, but I think you already have.

  Why do I remember this now? This man is nothing at all like Diego DelRey. If he reminds me of anyone it’s the Marlboro Man.

  Still clutching the latched screen door, she said politely, “May I please see your I.D.?”

  The man standing on the front porch seemed surprised by the request, as if it wasn’t one he was accustomed to getting. While he fumbled to pull the folder containing his badge from his shirt pocket with one hand-the other was full of a big light-colored cowboy hat-Mary had time for more analytical thoughts.

  He was tall. She was tall herself, but he was taller by half a head, with hard, sinewy flesh arranged sparingly but well over big bones. His hair, sculpted in classic cowboy fashion by the press of the hat brim, gleamed like tarnished gold in the overhead porch light. His features were strong-maybe too strong to be called handsome, with high cheekbones and a square-cut jaw-but his mouth looked as though it might smile easily and well. There were depressions in his cheeks that lacked the benign cuteness of dimples, but rather lent his face a rakish kind of charm that seemed somehow at odds with the somberness of his profession. And even though it was coming on night and his eyes were in shadow, they seemed to squint a little, as if from a lifetime spent gazing at sunshot horizons.

  He stepped forward into the light and handed over his identification. She took her time studying it, then deliberately met his eyes for a long unflinching moment as she gave it back to him. His eyes, a cool glittery blue, returned her appraisal for a time that seemed just a little too long.

  He won’t miss much, she thought. No, there’s no resemblance to Diego at all. But…maybe it’s that supreme and unshakable self-assurance that’s the same.

  A shiver found its way past her defenses and scurried away down her spine as she stepped back and held the door open, wordlessly inviting him in.

  “Sorry to bother you so late, ma’am,” he said in his soft, rumbly voice, and shifted his feet as he moved past her, as if he would have liked to wipe them on a doormat that wasn’t there.

  In the better light, she amended her thoughts about his eyes. They seemed tired, she thought. Or sad. Remembering Miss Ada’s tale of this man’s personal tragedies made her tone warmer than it might have been.

  “That’s all right, I just got home myself, actually.” She closed the door and turned with a gesture, directing her visitor through the shadowy living room toward the lighted rectangle of the kitchen doorway.

  And as she did that, she was aware of each of her movements as if a camera’s eye was scrutinizing her face and body in the finest detail. She was conscious of every expression, every muscle and nerve, in a way she hadn’t been even in those long-ago times she’d spent in front of a real camera.

  And she was conscious, too, and even ashamed, of the room they were passing through. She tried not to see the comfortable but drab brown tweed sofa and worn beige fake leather rocking chair, or the faded green braided rug that could only have come from a long-extinct mail-order catalog. Even the attempts at decoration made her cringe: The mass-produced and overly sentimental prints of cats and dogs-or worse, houses with impossibly lovely gardens and lighted windows-that hung on the walls, the bowl of artificial daisies that shared the coffee table with a book of Life magazine photographs and a ceramic rooster, the basket of pine cones and the stuffed blue calico cat on the hearth in front of the unused fireplace. Nothing wrong with any of it, and the homey little knickknacks were pretty enough, she supposed, but so…alien to her. It felt like a set, and she walked through it like an actor on a stage.

  But this is who I am, now. Shabby…ordinary. I should be used to it by now. And I must not forget it…ever.

  “I was just having a bite to eat,” she said, touching her mouse-brown hair in a self-conscious way that was only partly artifice. “If you, um…wouldn’t mind talking in the kitchen? I’m sorry things are such a mess…as I said, I just got home.”

  She’s nervous, Roan thought. He didn’t make too much of that, nervous being a pretty usual way for people to be around officers of the law, he’d found, even the ones who had no reason to be. Especially the ones who had no reason to be.

  Like Buster had said, the woman fidgeting her way from table to sink to fridge as she cleared away the re
mains of her evening meal definitely wasn’t the head-turner type. Not the kind of woman to stand out in a crowd in spite of how tall she was. Not the type to stir a man’s juices to lust, either, not at first glance anyway. Though that may have been due in part to the fact that whatever figure she did have was all covered up by the loose-fitting pink nylon smock she wore.

  All together, he decided, she wasn’t bad-looking or what he might call homely, just…plain. As in, ordinary. Her hair was kind of a neutral brown, neither curly nor straight, without much body or shine to it and no particular style either, just sort of twisted up on the back of her head. Which struck him as kind of odd for somebody who made her living fixing up other people’s hair. Her eyes were unremarkable, too, a flat greenish-gray in color, like old moss-though it was hard to tell much more about them, hidden as they were behind a pair of dark-rimmed glasses even he knew were both too big for her face and years out of style.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked as she brushed some imaginary crumbs off the tabletop. “Some… coffee?”

  “Oh, no ma’am, thanks, I just had a cup over at the Last Stand.” He laid his hat on the tabletop she’d just cleared off and pretended not to notice the way she’d twitched when he mentioned the saloon. “I’ll try not to take up too much of your time. I just need to ask you a few questions…”

  “Oh-of course.” She leaned her hip against the countertop and folded her arms in a way he didn’t have to be a student of body language to know was defensive.

  He regarded her for a moment, watching her throat move as she swallowed, not intending to make her more nervous than she already was, but simply pondering the best way to proceed with this woman. He felt a little bit like a hunter stalking a doe, part of him not wanting to spook her, but a part of him secretly hoping she’d wake up to the danger she was in and get herself out of his gunsights while there was still time.