A hand moved the sheet aside, and Stan froze. “Holy shit.”
Jo met his eyes.
“What . . .”
“More like who,” Jo corrected him.
“Is this one of Cherie’s dogs?”
“Yeah.”
Stan glanced behind him. “Who found it?”
“A couple of my track kids. I asked them to fan out and search for a missing dog. This isn’t what I thought they’d find.” She’d not make that mistake again. Even finding the dog deceased on the side of the road would have been a better outcome than this.
He motioned to the camera in her hand. “Are you done with the pictures?”
Jo looked around, snapped a couple more. “I’m good.”
“Okay. Let’s get her out of there.”
Stan was tall. He removed his utility knife from his belt and proceeded to cut Jezebel down. The weight of the dog hit the ground with a thud.
Jo hoped no one was close enough to have heard it.
Mr. Miller winced.
Jo took a few more pictures, rolled the dog over, and took a few more.
Then she laid her hand on the head of the animal and gritted her back teeth together.
“Did you call animal control?” Stan asked.
“What for? The dog’s dead. This was done on purpose. Cause of death is irrelevant. Animal control will simply lay pressure on Cherie to move her dogs faster. We’d be better off calling in a doctor to prescribe the lady some Xanax.”
“I have black collection bags in the back of my car, I’ll get one. I can take the dog to Waterville if you’d like, make it easier on Cherie.”
“Get the bag, I’ll talk to her.”
In her years as sheriff, Jo had never needed to tell a loved one that someone had died. The benefits of a small town and a population that normally took care of one another. Although Cherie knew her pet was gone, the circumstances of the dog’s death were horrific.
Talking to Cherie about her dog left Jo raw and at the same time pissed her off to the point of seeing red.
“You found what?” Gill was on the phone with Jo. They had gotten in the habit of texting or calling at the end of their day. On occasion he’d send a flirty text midmorning, followed up with something sexy by the afternoon . . . and then on to a how was your day conversation by the evening.
“My dog problem has turned criminal,” Jo said.
“Someone hung her?”
“From a tree not far from where the owner lives.”
Jo’s strained voice told him a lot.
“People who torture animals are a special breed of monster.”
“I know. I talked to all the neighbors, the ones who complained in the first place . . . you know what I got?”
“Tell me.”
“A round-the-clock feeding team for the puppies that no longer have a mother. And neighbors willing to step up and house the dogs until permanent homes can be found.”
“They don’t sound like your suspects.”
“No, they don’t.”
“I know you have this, but if you need to talk it out, I’m here.”
He heard her sigh over the phone. “Do you ever get that sixth sense thing going . . . the one that tells you something is way off?”
“I get it all the time.”
“Do you ever ignore it?”
“Never.”
“Me either.” Jo sighed again. “Tell me about your day.”
He and Shauna had two more small-time dealers they were following in hopes of finding their source. Gill kept the details short, not used to talking about his cases with anyone but his partner or his boss. He knew he could speak in confidence with Jo but always worked in some sort of silence to avoid possible leaks in his cases.
“What are your weekend plans?” Gill asked, hoping to lure her in his neck of Oregon for an overnight stay.
“Starting guns and timers,” she said.
It took Gill a minute for her words to register. “Track meet.”
“Yeah. River Bend High has an annual invitational that brings in about a dozen teams to compete. It’s our big fundraiser. I’ll be helping with setup on Friday, and the meet is all day Saturday.”
“Looks like I’ll see you Sunday morning.”
“You don’t have to drive all the way—”
He cut her off. “Teenagers party on Friday and Saturday nights. Sunday is better for me.”
“Gill, it’s a long way.”
“Jo, I want to see you.”
“But—”
“Do you know when the last time I drove two hours for a date was?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Never.”
There was a pause on her end. “Why now?”
“Walk into your bathroom.”
“What?”
“Just do it. Walk into your bathroom.” He waited for thirty seconds. “You there?”
“I feel stupid.”
She was there.
“Are you looking in the mirror?”
She sighed . . . an annoyed sigh that translated over the miles.
“Now take your hair out of that rubber band.”
“How do you know my hair is in a rubber band?”
“Is it?”
She sighed again.
Gill laughed.
“I need a haircut,” she said.
“Haircut aside, look at yourself. Tell me what you see.”
Women never saw what men saw. He was fairly certain of how she’d answer his questions.
“I see a washed-up thirty-year-old with dark circles under her eyes.”
“You know what I see?”
Jo barked out a laugh. “A washed-up thirty-year-old with dark circles under her eyes and a rack.”
The thought of her rack warmed his belly. “I do see your rack.”
Jo laughed.
“I see,” he started. “I see your smile under sexy, tired eyes that dilate into a deep, soulful blue when I’m kissing you. I see a woman who works hard and isn’t afraid to sweat for all the right reasons. I see a firm body with a soft rack that turns me on in ways I didn’t know existed.”
“Gill—”
“I’m not done. I see a caring woman who is pissed off she cares so much and doesn’t know how to control it. I see compassion, integrity, and loyalty.”
“Gill—” Her voice was soft.
“I see,” he didn’t let her finish, “all the qualities in a woman a man like me can want.” He hadn’t meant to be so open about his own feelings but left them on the table.
There was a long pause before Jo said anything. “Two people in our profession getting together is a recipe for disaster.”
“Good thing we like danger.”
“You should find some demure debutante who needs you to take care of her.”
He thought of an ex-lover and quickly shook that memory away. “You need me, you just don’t know it yet.”
“Is that right?”
“It’s okay, you’ll catch on.”
Jo laughed, and he could see the smile on her face if he closed his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-One
“I’m being cheated out of my Jo time.”
Jo listened to Mel’s complaint over a stack of colorful paper, scalloped scissors, and glitter that they were using to make name tags for the upcoming reunion.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Your off time is either on the field at track meets or in the sheets with Gill.”
Instead of denying the truth, or what had been the truth for the better part of a month, Jo poured glitter over the wet glue edging the paper she was working on. It smudged everywhere.
Glitter and glue were not her thing.
“You’d deny me my hookin’ up time?”
Mel rubbed her still flat belly. “No.”
Her denial was unconvincing.
Jo made another attempt at glittering paper. “Why are we doing so many extra of these?”
Yes, she was whining, no, she didn’t care.
“It’s not extra.”
“How is that possible?” The count was triple the normal graduating class.
“The kids from Waterville were bused in because of the fire, remember?”
The information rang a bell. “That’s right.” She attempted to flick glitter from her fingers, failed miserably. “Zoe would pick this week to go to New York.”
Mel took another stack of papers and lined them up to cut. “If it makes you feel any better, she’s agreed to help with the food.”
“That’s her thing. She cooks. Glitter isn’t my thing. I’m a cop, I cop.”
Mel frowned. “You’re a friend, you friend.”
Jo scowled. “You’re pushing the friend card.”
Mel blew her a kiss from across the table and nudged the glitter closer to Jo’s side.
She pushed it back. “How about I write the names on these?” Jo removed the list of names of the graduating class that would be attending the reunion.
“I’ve seen your penmanship. You should have been a doctor and not the sheriff.”
No matter how Jo spun that statement, there wasn’t a compliment to be found. She eyed the names on the list and only recognized a third of them. There had been a lot of traffic in and out of River Bend the year her father died.
“Are you going to supervise the prom?” Mel asked.
Jo cringed. “No one wants me hanging out at prom.”
“You were the shit at our prom.”
“Yeah, well, now I’m just the shit. I’m getting used to it.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“Yeah, Mel. I do. I can’t look the other way when a responsible kid is doing something he shouldn’t do. Even if I don’t think it’s going to screw him up. Even if that kid is doing exactly what I did at their age.”
“Like drinking.”
“Like all of it.” Jo lifted her hand, made an invisible line in the air. “Everyone needs to be right here. Congenial, friendly . . . keep the conversation going, give everyone the opportunity to voice their thoughts, opinions. But the minute I give someone an inch . . . like Cherie and the freakin’ kennel she’s been running, look what happens.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“I’m not blaming me. It’s just hard. I don’t want to be the hard-ass all the time. I wanted to laugh when Principal Mason dragged me into his office to discipline Drew for connecting his phone to the TV as a remote.”
Mel’s eyes lit up. “Wyatt downloaded that app. Works great.”
“See? Kid was smart, and that shit was funny.” Glitter and glue forgotten, Jo sat back from Mel’s kitchen table, which doubled as a crafting zone.
“You’re up for election next year. Maybe you should reconsider running.”
She had, more times than Jo could count. “The thing is, I don’t mind being a cop. And now that I have someone in my life occupying my thoughts, it’s even harder to do my job.”
“I would think it gave you some stress relief.”
“How so? I haven’t left town since I got here. I can’t even get my car in for the recall. This weekend is the meet in Eugene. The first time I’ll have an opportunity to see how Gill really lives.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“I have to squeeze in a personal life. Even then I’ve gotten some slack from the fine churchgoing women in town asking me about my male friend.”
“Oh, no.” Mel had given up on the crafting.
“Oh, yes. Complete with enough snide comments to let me know that my father wouldn’t approve of me living in sin.”
“They didn’t use that term.”
“They did, and do. Part of the problem with my being everyone’s friend. I suppose they’d still call me out if I wasn’t. I’m not sure how my dad did it.”
“Your dad was a widower, it was different.”
“My mom died fourteen years before my dad. He’d celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday the fall before he died.” She stopped to think about that. “A forty-one-year-old widower . . .”
“I can’t even think about how that felt.”
“I remember him crying the day of my mom’s funeral. It all feels like a black-and-white still frame in my head. I remember hurting, and sleeping next to him for about a month. Then he forced me to my room.”
“Probably for the best.”
“Yeah. But still, forty-one. He never once brought a woman home.”
Mel stared at the wall across the room. “He must have really loved your mother.”
“He did. He talked about her all the time. But he was still a man.”
Mel moved her eyes to Jo. “What are you getting at?”
“I’m thirty and get turned on hearing Gill’s bike driving down the street.”
“You always were the wild one.”
“That’s not what I’m getting at. How long did you have between lovers?”
“Nathan was an ass. And I had Hope by then.”
Jo lifted her palms to the air. “That doesn’t mean you didn’t find the time to have sex at some point.”
“Yeah. But not often.”
Jo did the math in her head. “So you had Hope, were still with the ex-asshat for a while after. By the time you were back in River Bend and hooked up with Wyatt, Hope was seven, right?”
“Right.”
“And in between there was one, two lovers?”
“About.”
The details didn’t matter . . . the math did. “Even I managed a few as sheriff over the years, now Gill.”
“What are you getting at?”
“What is the likelihood that my dad didn’t have one single hookup in fourteen years?”
Mel leaned forward on her elbows. “You think he had a lover?”
“My dad was kinda hot.” Jo cringed when she said it, but Mel knew it was true.
“He was.”
He didn’t have tattoos, but he had been a big man who wasn’t afraid of hard work and building muscle. “If he had a lover, someone had to have known about it. It makes sense that he had someone. Even if it was casual.”
“Your dad didn’t strike me as a ‘casual’ guy.”
“Then finding his lover that was less than casual shouldn’t be that hard,” Jo said.
Mel made a whistling noise. “Finding a lover of a decade past, one who didn’t come out of hiding when he died, isn’t going to be easy.”
“It’s a small town. People talk. Gossip is a pastime best spent with a cold beer or cheap wine. Someone has to know something.” And if not, why was it such a secret? And if her father could keep it hush-hush, then there might be a link to how he died. It was the only new thing itching in her head in ten years, and Jo needed to follow the lead.
Mel stood and crossed the room to the refrigerator, pulled out a beer as if Jo was making a suggestion. Though Jo had to admit, a beer while talking about her dead father’s sex life was a fabulous idea.
“Why would he keep it secret?” Mel opened a bottle of sparkling flavored water for herself while Jo popped the top of her beverage.
“That’s easy to answer.” She took a drink. “This town is full of conservative individuals that feel as sheriff I shouldn’t be keeping the company of men.”
Mel’s look of astonishment should have been recorded. “I’m having a hard time with that.”
“Yeah.” Jo went on to give Mel names of the neighbors who’d approached her and those who said nothing with their mouths but everything with their eyes. “It’s only a matter of time before their respect of me drops in the toilet.”
“People can’t expect you to be Virgin Mary.”
“They want it hidden. Even Josie told me that when I stopped by R&B’s yesterday.”
“Josie thought you needed to hide your relationship with Gill?”
“No,” Jo corrected Mel. “She said in her years as a single woman in this town, she’d been told more than once that she shouldn’t be seen keeping me
n overnight. And she runs a freakin’ bar.” Jo pointed to her own chest. “I’m the sheriff. Next to Minister Imman’s family, I’m up there for censure.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Might be stupid, but it is what it is. I doubt it was any better ten years ago when my dad was alive.”
“It was probably worse. Your dad was a single father raising a daughter.”
“I didn’t think about it that way. I bet he had a lot of women telling him how to parent.”
Mel leaned back, placed her feet on an opposite chair. “Maybe one of these moms from Waterville who was in River Bend shuffling their kids was the lover?”
Jo glanced at the list again. “How many of these kids had single moms?”
“Or unhappily married moms?”
Jo shook her head. “An affair? That wasn’t my dad.”
Mel stared her down. “I wouldn’t close my eyes to that if I were you. If there was a lover, she didn’t come forward when he died. Why would a woman stay hidden?”
“Maybe she didn’t want people judging her.”
“Okay . . . or?”
Jo did not like the fact that Mel had a point. “I still think someone had to have known about a romantic relationship, if my father was having one.”
“What about Karl?”
Jo swallowed some of her beer. “Even if he did, the man wouldn’t tell me. Especially this month.”
“Would Glynis know?” Mel asked.
“Glynis can’t keep a secret. If she knew something, I’d know something.”
Mel’s foot did this nervous twitch thing when she was thinking. “Josie? Everyone talks to the bartender.”
“Maybe.”
“I always talk to my hairdresser. Did your dad go to Russell’s barbershop?”
“Back when Russell Senior cut hair.”
“Worth a shot to ask around.”
Jo had to admit that Mel had some great ideas of places to start the search for the woman her father had some kind of involvement with.
“We could be wrong. Your dad might have just sworn off women,” Mel said.
“I’m craving Gill and it’s only been a week.”
Mel smiled. “Wait until you’re pregnant. Everything funnels right down here.” She made hand gestures to her groin and squirmed in her seat. “Pregnant women shouldn’t be this horny.”
“I bet that makes Wyatt a very happy man.”
Making It Right (A Most Likely To Novel Book 3) Page 21