by Jeff Shelby
Having Sheriff Lewis searching my property was not a part of my well-laid plans.
Without a word, and without doing much searching, the sheriff headed for the open barn door.
“Where are you going?” I asked, following after him.
“To search the next building.”
I hurried ahead, planting myself in front of him. He sidestepped and continued shuffling along, his ample belly jiggling as he walked.
“Wait a minute,” I said as he turned toward the guest house. “My son is staying in there.”
“So?”
“So, you can’t just barge in on him,” I said.
“Of course I can. I have a warrant.”
This time, I sprinted in front of him and threw myself in front of the guest house door. “A warrant you haven’t shown me.”
He glared at me before digging in the pocket of his khaki pants and pulling out a piece of paper. He unfolded it. “Here,” he said, waving it in front of me.
I tried to grab it but he re-folded it and shoved it back in his pocket.
“What’s it for?” I asked.
“None of your business.”
My mouth dropped open. “It certainly is my business. You’re on my property! And…and you have to tell me what you’re looking for. It’s the law.”
I had no idea if this was true or not. The good thing was, I didn’t think Sheriff Lewis knew, either.
A frown flickered across his face. I was right, I thought, with a satisfied smile.
“Fine,” he said shortly. He opened the jacket he was wearing and reached for his trusty pipe. He slotted it between his lips. “You wanna know?”
“Of course I want to know,” I said, exasperated. “I’ve only been asking ever since you got here!”
He studied me intently, as if he wanted to gauge my reaction when he told me. “I have a search warrant for your property, Rainy Day,” he announced. “And I am looking for drugs.”
“Drugs?” two voices said in unison.
I turned to my right.
Luke and Laura were standing fifteen feet away, both of them bundled in their coats, and both of them wearing genuine looks of horror and surprise.
I leaned back against the guest house door and closed my eyes.
I didn’t know what was worse: the fact that Sheriff Lewis was at my house the week before Christmas with a search warrant that somehow indicated I was suspected of having drugs on my property.
Or the fact that my two grown children were standing next to me, witnessing the accusation.
SIX
“Drugs?” Laura’s voice was a squeak as she repeated the word, and I immediately thought of the mice I’d seen this morning and the mice she’d heard overnight.
“You heard me,” Sheriff Lewis groused.
His hand shot out toward the guest house door. It was unlocked, just as I knew it would be. Luke had no reason to lock it. The sheriff pushed the door open and I followed him in, trying to think of a way to stop this madness. Why would he think I had drugs on my property? What evidence could he possibly have that would lead him to believe that? And who in their right mind would have issued a search warrant based on that evidence?
But they were all moot questions. This was Latney, and if there was one thing I’d learned living in this small town, it was that rarely did things ever make sense.
Sheriff Lewis was standing in the small living room, his hands on his hips as he surveyed the room. There wasn’t much to look at: a small couch and chair took up one corner of the room, and there was a coffee table that served as an entertainment center to house the flat-screen television I’d purchased for the space. A pair of matching end tables had a few books stacked on each lower shelf. These were the only furniture pieces in the room, which meant there was very little to search.
A few of Luke’s belongings were scattered about. His guitar case was propped against one wall, open and empty. The guitar itself stood next to it, a shiny black acoustic instrument. A pair of balled-up socks littered the rug, right by the foot of the couch, as if he’d kicked them off while watching television and had left them there.
“What is going on?” Luke said from behind me, and I was reminded that my children had trailed in after us.
The front door to the guest house was still open and I leaned past Laura to shut out the cold. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Laura’s frown consumed her entire face. “Why would he think you have drugs here?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea.” For once, it was the most truthful answer I could give her.
The sheriff strode toward the couch and stared at it for a moment. I wondered if he thought he had some kind of x-ray vision, some gift that would make things not seen with the naked eye suddenly visible.
Except there was nothing to see.
He grunted, and lifted one cushion, then another, and gave a cursory glance. But this was all done half-heartedly, as if he really didn’t want to be looking or perhaps didn’t really expect to find anything. Another thought occurred to me, too, one that made even more sense of his lackluster attempts at searching: he simply didn’t know what he was doing.
“There are no drugs here,” I told him.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he snapped, giving me a glare from his stooped position over my couch.
He straightened and headed into the kitchen, and I had no choice but to follow him in there. There would be lots of cupboards to look in, and appliances, too. I knew what the freezer looked like—I’d stored a lot of my garden produce in there, choosing to freeze some of my harvest rather than can it—and was mentally preparing for him to clean it out in his search for whatever it was he was looking for.
He opened the narrow pantry door first and peered inside. “Aha!”
He turned to face us, a triumphant smile on his face as he held up a large white baggie.
Laura gasped. “Mother!”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s salt.”
“Salt?” The sheriff gave me a dubious look. “Who stores salt in a baggie? This here is cocaine!”
I marched up to him and he held the bag high, out of my reach. “Don’t you touch this,” he warned. “This is evidence.”
“Did you see the label?”
He glanced up at the bag dangling from his hand.
“See what it says?” I asked. The label was clearly visible.
The sheriff lowered the bag and brought it close to his face to inspect.
“Open it,” I suggested, trying to keep my tone as even as possible. “And taste it.”
The sheriff hesitated, then slid the plastic piece to the left to open the bag. He dipped a gnarled finger into the white granules and brought it to his nose and sniffed. His frown deepened as he tentatively touched his finger to his tongue.
“Well?” I said expectantly.
He glared at me. “You shouldn’t store seasonings in bags. Makes it look like drugs.”
“I don’t store seasonings in bags,” I pointed out. “The mail order company I buy them from stores seasonings in bags. Especially when customers buy them in bulk.”
The sheriff just grunted and dropped the bag back in the pantry, and I was suddenly glad that the salt was the only thing I’d purchased in large quantities. The other spices and seasonings I’d ordered—all of which were in the main house—were in appropriately labeled glass jars.
“What’s it doing out here, anyway?” Sheriff Lewis groused. “Thought you lived up in the big house. You do your cooking out here or something?”
I didn’t feel like answering. He wasn’t entitled to one. But the expectant look on Laura’s face, as if she too were waiting for an answer to his question, made me think twice.
“I was toying with doing some pickling this fall,” I said. “Cucumbers and peppers. I bought some salt and some canning jars—those are in the pantry, too. I was going to do it in this kitchen, here in the guest house. But I never got around to it.”
The sheriff
frowned. “You need pickling salt for that.”
My cheeks turned red. “Yeah, I know that now.” I hated that the sheriff knew more about pickling than I had when I’d ordered the salt. He’d demonstrated on several occasions just how ignorant he was, in a multitude of areas, so the fact that he was more knowledgeable even in one small area did not sit well with me. At all.
“You were going to pickle things?” Laura asked, her eyebrows raised in disbelief.
I nodded. I’d also had intentions of learning how to can things, too—until I started reading articles that talked about sterilizing containers and making sure jars were sealed properly to prevent botulism. Making food that could potentially kill me while living alone in a house miles from medical assistance did not sound like a particularly good idea, so I’d shelved the idea.
Sheriff Lewis had moved to the fridge. He opened the freezer door and once again said, “Aha!”
I answered before I even knew what was in his hand. “Parsley. From the garden.”
He pulled out the bag and stared at the green leaves inside of it.
“Go ahead and try it,” I said.
He wrinkled his nose. “Don’t much care for parsley.” He stowed the baggie back in the fridge.
We stood there in silence for a minute, the sheriff scanning the rest of the kitchen and my kids and I taking turns staring at him and each other.
Finally, Luke spoke. “Are you done?”
Sheriff Lewis blinked. “What?”
“Done,” Luke repeated. His expression was calm but I knew my son, and I could hear the edge in his voice. “Because this is absolutely ridiculous. You have no business coming here and snooping around my mother’s property.”
The sheriff frowned. “Of course I do. I’m the sheriff and I have a search warrant.”
“A search warrant that has turned up nothing but salt and parsley,” Luke said.
“Luke, let him do his job,” Laura said, under her breath.
I glared at my daughter but she ignored me. If I had to pick whose side she would take if things went south in the search and the sheriff by some miracle found what he was looking for, I would place a bet that it wouldn’t be mine.
I watched the sheriff with a mixture of irritation and resignation. I was furious that he was on my property, searching my buildings, and I had questions—lots of them—about just what was in the search warrant and why it had been issued.
But more importantly at that moment, I just wanted him gone.
“I think you should go,” Luke said.
“I’m not done,” Sheriff Lewis growled. “And just who are you, anyway?”
“I’m her son,” Luke responded. “And I’m telling you now that you have the wrong house. The wrong property. If you don’t want a lawsuit coming your way for illegal search and seizure, I suggest you leave now.”
Laura gasped. “Luke. He’s a police officer.”
The sheriff frowned. “Sheriff,” he said, correcting her. “Look, sonny, I have every right to be here.” He patted the pocket of his khakis, and the paper rustled in response.
Luke shook his head and fished his phone out of his pocket. “You have Mack’s number handy?” he asked me.
I’d worked for Mack Mercy for years, handling all of the office responsibilities for Capitol Cases, his private investigative firm.
“Mack?” I repeated.
Luke nodded. “Pretty sure he can tell us how legal all of this is. Or isn't. Considering how well versed he is with the law.”
Sheriff Lewis’s frown deepened. “Who’s this Mack person?”
“You’re about to find out,” Luke warned. “He’ll know right away if what you’re doing is legal. And if it isn’t, well, he’ll let you know that, too.”
I don’t know who was more surprised by Luke’s words, me or the sheriff. Luke was about the least confrontational person I knew. He preferred to use humor to diffuse conflict, but here he was, issuing thinly veiled threats to uniformed law enforcement personnel.
The sheriff’s frown disappeared, and he suddenly looked uncertain. He took a step back, his eyes scanning the unopened cupboards in the kitchen.
He cleared his throat. “Uh, it looks like there’s nothing here,” he said. He tipped his hat, almost as if in apology, but I could see the anger in his eyes. “I’ll be on my way.”
The sheriff exited the kitchen and headed toward the door of the guest house, and I followed him out to watch him leave.
I took a deep breath. My heart rate had slowly started to return to normal. I had so many questions: why had Luke reacted so strongly to what the sheriff was doing? And why had the sheriff come to my property in the first place?
But the most pressing question was one I knew I’d have to deal with first.
How was Laura going to react once the sheriff was gone?
SEVEN
“When are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
The questions started as soon as we were alone in the living room of the guest house, and they continued as we made our way across the yard and up the drive and on to the front porch.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said, giving her another one hundred percent true response. I really didn’t have a clue as to why the sheriff had come onto my property with a search warrant.
“Drugs,” Laura said. “The sheriff thinks you’re hiding drugs.”
We were back in the living room of the main house and I didn’t know if I wanted to go back to bed or pour myself a glass of wine. I didn’t even care that it wasn’t even lunchtime yet.
I opted for neither of those options and sank down on the couch. “Well, I’m not,” I told her, leaning back and closing my eyes.
“Well, I would certainly hope not!” She plopped down beside me and I forced my eyes open. Her arms were folded across her chest and she was giving me her best stern teacher look. It was moments like this that I knew I wouldn’t want to be a student in her classroom. “But why would he even think that?”
“I have no idea.”
Luke had disappeared into the kitchen. He returned with a plate and a half-eaten piece of French toast casserole. He cut off a piece and ate it. “Better question is, how did he get the search warrant?”
It was another question I didn’t have an answer to. I’d never been involved in the logistics of Mack’s work at Capitol Cases, so I was woefully ignorant when it came to procedural things. But I did know that search warrants had to be signed off on by a judge, and that there needed to be probable cause in most cases before one was issued.
“Who cares how he got it?” Laura said. “The point is, he has one. And he thinks Mom is hiding drugs.” She watched Luke fork another mouthful of casserole into his mouth. “How many pieces have you had?”
He held up his hand as though he were waiting for a high five.
“Five?” Laura asked in disbelief.
He nodded, his mouth still full.
She sprang up off the couch. “I only had one.” She hurried to the kitchen, jostling her brother as he made a half-hearted attempt to block her from going down the hall.
“Be nice,” I said, but there was no warning in my voice. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. The anger and the worry had drained me, and I was still left with more questions than answers.
But at least Laura hadn’t given me the third degree.
Yet.
There was a knock on the door and I groaned. The last thing I wanted was another unexpected visitor. Or another visit from Sheriff Lewis. Maybe he’d realized he’d done a shoddy job with the search and had come back to finish up.
I forced myself off the couch, steeling myself for whatever might be waiting for me on the other side of the door.
Declan Murphy was standing on the porch, wrapped in a thick brown coat and holding a large paper shopping bag. His copper-colored hair was hidden underneath a knit cap, and his cheeks were tinged red from the cold.
He smiled and leaned in to give me a kiss.
I spun around.
Laura was approaching, a plate in her hand and a frown on her face.
He straightened and shuffled the bag from one hand to another. “I…I didn’t realize you had company already,” he stammered. “I wasn't sure whose car that was, but--”
“Both kids came early,” I said. “Luke called on Sunday.” I lowered my voice to almost a whisper. “I would have called to tell you, but I knew you were busy with services and I had to scramble to get the house ready and—”
He cut me off with a smile and a wave of his hand. “Completely understand. How are you feeling?”
Declan knew I’d been sick; it was one of the main reasons we hadn’t seen each other in over a week.
“Better,” I told him.
His smile widened. “Good. I was starting to worry.”
His words warmed my heart and gave me goose bumps, all at the same time. I didn’t know if he was worried because that was his job as a pastor and someone who cared about the people living in his town, or if those feelings of concern were specifically for me because of what I was to him.
I stole a quick glance at Laura. She had moved a little closer and was watching our conversation with marked interest. She caught my eye and raised her eyebrows, the question on her mind obvious: what was going on with me and Declan?
I quickly averted my gaze and returned my focus to the man standing in front of me. “Thank you for stopping by to check on me,” I said, louder than I needed to. But I wanted to make sure Laura heard me. I didn’t want her to think Declan was here for any other reason than a quick check on someone who had been sick.
His brow wrinkled, but then he smoothed it out and gave me another easy smile. “Any time.” He turned his attention to Laura. “And how are you?”