Chapter 10
I held the door open as Sheriff McClaine stepped inside. He greeted me, raising his bushy eyebrows when he noticed Josie. He nodded to her, a polite Southern gentleman to the core. “Ma’am,” he said, though he stretched the word out until it had an extra syllable and sounded like MAY-um.
She jumped up, nearly crashing into the rustic coffee table. “Did you figure out who did it, Sheriff? Do you know who killed Nell?”
“No, ma’am.”
As he turned those slow roaming eyes of his to the main room of Buttons & Bows, I once again got the feeling that underneath the indifferent gaze, he was a sharpeyed officer of the law. What I couldn’t imagine was what he was looking for.
The front door jerked under my hand, slamming shut, almost of its own volition. I spun around, half expecting to see Meemaw, her iron gray hair piled on top of her head in a loose bun. But of course she wasn’t there. My imagination—or simply the deep-seated wish that my great-grandmother was still with me—was getting the better of me.
His gaze settled on me for a beat before landing back on Josie. “I need ya to come on down to my office, Miss Sandoval.”
She rested her palm against her chest. “M-me?”
“Yes, ma’am. I got a few more questions for ya.”
There it was again, that Southern charm that concealed a razor-sharp knife.
Josie’s left eye twitched and she looked as if she’d been sucker punched and pushed into a hole that she would never manage to claw her way out of. “Do . . . do I have to?”
The sheriff lowered his chin, his jaw working. “No, ma’am, ’course you don’t, but I’d be obliged if you would.”
She reached for her purse and pulled out her phone. “I . . . uh . . . can I c-call Nate?” She tried to punch the numbers, but her hands trembled. Her cell dropped with a dull thud onto the pecan planks of the hardwood floor.
I could feel her panic like it was rising up in me, and I stooped to pick up the phone. If she couldn’t form a coherent sentence in this house, there was no way she’d be able to manage under the manipulative charm of Sheriff McClaine on his home turf.
A sudden pocket of cold air surrounded me, instantly growing warmer as it enveloped my body. I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t let Sheriff McClaine drag Josie out of here, scared half to death. I put my arm around her shoulder, hoping the warmth enveloping me would seep into her. “Why do you need her?”
Hoss McClaine gave me a beady-eyed look. “Like I said, I got a few questions for her, is all.”
I channeled all the gumption I’d had to muster up every day when I lived in New York and leveled my gaze at him. “Can’t you ask your questions here?” I asked, hearing the South creep back into my voice.
His dark brown hair was particularly dull this morning, and his thick mustache and soul patch gave him a weathered cowboy look. He didn’t waver, blast him. “No, ma’am, I don’t believe I can. I’d rather Miss Sandoval come on with me.”
I felt all my Southern roots spread through me as if they were stretching through the soil, searching for water from a long-past thunderstorm. “Well, then, I guess I’ll come along. If it’s all the same to you, Sheriff.” My mama might well be dating the man, but I wasn’t. And at this moment I wasn’t too fond of him.
Josie squeezed my hand. “Would you?”
Wild horses couldn’t have stopped me. Josie needed a friend and here I was. “I was fixin’ to go out for a morning walk, anyway.” The lines on her forehead smoothed and her grip on my hand loosened.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Anytime.”
The Sheriff’s Department, which used to be the old Baptist church, is within spittin’ distance of Buttons & Bows. Once the church had finished its new, modern building just off the main thoroughfare, the city bought the old building, gave it a minor facelift, and moved the city offices into it.
I ran upstairs and changed out of my cutoffs. In record time, I slipped on the first thing I could get my hands on—a prairie dress, belting it on my hips—tethered my hair in two low ponytails, stuck on a cadet hat that I’d made years ago, and pulled on my favorite Frye burnt red harness cowboy boots. “Ready, Sheriff,” I called, hurrying back downstairs. Although what I was ready for I didn’t know.
The sheriff looked me up and down, but whatever he thought, he kept it to himself. Smart man.
Josie was facing the wall that held my display board, her cell phone pressed against her ear.
“Miss Sandoval,” McClaine said, gesturing to the door.
Josie held up one trembling finger as she frantically whispered something into her phone. A moment later she was being ushered out the door, followed by the sheriff. I brought up the rear. I’d barely made it out when the door slammed behind me. All by itself. I threw the house a backward glance, puzzled, but the mysterious happenings were just one more thing I’d have to think about later.
Chapter 11
The Sheriff’s Department still looked like a church with its faded brick siding and peaked roofline. The building had been around since the late 1800s. A fresh coat of paint, some stain, and a few nails couldn’t shake the worship out of the old building.
We walked into the vestibule. To the left was the old sanctuary, which still looked like a . . . sanctuary. Even the pews were still there, though they were pushed up against one wall. The whole place retained a solemn air and I got the sense that the town officials didn’t know what to do with it or how to make it feel like government offices. I wondered if they had much leeway. It seemed likely that the building was part of the historic registry.
Josie and I stayed a step behind Sheriff McClaine. Even his walk was lazy, his bowed legs making him look like he belonged on a horse rather than in a police car. Josie clutched my arm, slowing me down. “What do you think he wants to ask me?” she said in a feathery voice that still seemed too loud for the former church.
I couldn’t even speculate. Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead and The Murder at the Vicarage had not prepared me for a real murder. “Routine questioning?” I said, hoping I was right and that McClaine just wanted to fill in whatever gaps his deputy might have left from the night before.
“He’s not going to arrest me, is he?”
“I’m sure he’s not,” I said, praying that I was right.
“So I’ll just answer his questions and he’ll let me go. Not cooperating would be bad, right?”
She seemed to need reassurance. I offered what little I could. I nodded.
It seemed enough to bolster her. As she shuffled to catch up to the sheriff, I glanced over my shoulder. Still no sign of Nate screeching to a halt just outside the door, ready to barrel in, Josie’s knight in shining armor.
It was quieter outside than a field of cotton.
We walked up the ramp across from the sanctuary, turned right, and made our way down a hallway that used to lead to the church classrooms but now seemed to house all the actual city offices. Brown placards engraved in gold identified the occupants of each space. We passed the mayor’s office, the council members’ offices—one for each of them—animal control, business services, public works, personnel, and finally, at the end of the hallway, law enforcement.
There was a separate entrance with a counter and a clerk who probably dealt with traffic violations and such. Poor Josie. By the look on her face, the scenic route through the building had done a number on her.
We stopped in front of McClaine’s office. He took the toothpick from his mouth and used it to point to a hollow aluminum-framed chair. “You can have a seat there,” he said to me.