“Lucky you.” With the tip of his index finger, he pushed back his Stetson. “What are you busy working on today? Your flora-and-fauna article for that Northwest magazine?”
“Actually, this afternoon I’m going to take pictures of the area.”
His gaze slid to the front of her shirt, framed in the car window. “Dressed like that?”
“I thought I’d change.”
He placed his hands beside hers on the doorframe and slowly raised his eyes back up to her face. “Where are you going to take your pictures?”
“I’m not real sure. Why?”
“ ‘Cause I don’t want to get another call like last night.”
“Are you saying last night was my fault?”
“No. I’m saying you have a talent for trouble, and maybe you should just stay close to home for a while.” His hands brushed the outsides of hers and she felt his touch clear to her elbows.
She stood a little straighter and tried to ignore the sensation. “Maybe you shouldn’t think you can tell me what to do.”
“And maybe you should do something about that smart mouth.” He leaned closer. “I’ve never said this to a woman, and it’s just an opinion.” He paused, and she thought he might kiss her, but he didn’t. “Maybe you should consider becoming an alcoholic. You’re a lot nicer when you’re loaded.”
“Thank you, Sheriff. But in the future, when I want your opinion, I’ll ask you for it.”
“Really?” A slow, evil smile curved his mouth. “Honey, are you going to ask me on the bone phone, or should I make other plans?”
Hope felt her brows pinch together. That phrase was not only offensive but juvenile. She hadn’t heard it since college, when she and her friends used it to refer to oral sex. She opened her mouth to tell him to grow up, to tell him real men didn’t talk to women like that; then she recalled in perfect detail their conversation last night about the busty blonde in the Buckhorn.
She made a long, mental groan and quickly climbed into her car. “You should make other plans,” she said and tried to shut the car door.
Dylan easily held it open. “Just in case, do you want my number?”
She gave one hard tug and he finally let go. Without a word, she fired up the Porsche and shoved it into reverse. She already had his number and it was 666.
Hope pulled the Porsche into the parking lot behind the Gospel Public Library. She hadn’t written anything nonfiction in a while, but the first place she always liked to start was with old newspaper articles. It wouldn’t hurt to check and see what the library had stored on the late Sheriff Donnelly. Shelly had seemed hesitant to talk about Hiram, and Hope didn’t know anyone else in town-except Dylan. There was no way she’d ask him for anything. Not now. She didn’t want to be within a mile, let alone speaking distance, of him. Not after he’d told her she should become an alcoholic. And especially not after the way she’d humiliated herself the night before. Her cheeks still burned when she remembered what she’d said, which had always been her biggest problem with booze and why she rarely got tanked. She thought she was funny when she wasn’t.
If she wanted information, she would have to rely mostly on FBI files. It could take a while for them to comply, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to write an unsolicited article. That was a lot of work for no guarantee, and even if she did decide to write it, she didn’t know what angle she would use-if she would slant it more toward a publication like Time or People. But the more she discovered about the old sheriff, the more intrigued she became. How had he gotten caught? And exactly how much money had he embezzled? Last night Dylan had mentioned something about videos. Had they been circulated through town? What was on them, and who’d seen them?
The Gospel Public Library building was about the size of two double-wide trailers stuck end to end, and the compact windows let in very little natural light. The inside was crammed with shelves and tables, and the front desk was piled with books. Regina Cladis stood behind the desk, her white hair a perfect dome on her round head. She studied several Goose Bumps books held close to her face, then shoved her Coke-bottle glasses down her nose and turned her head to study the covers out of the corner of one eye.
“Wash your hands before you open these,” she admonished three boys as she pushed her glasses back up her nose. “I don’t want any more black fingerprints on the pages.”
Hope waited until the boys had left with their books before she approached the desk. She looked into the librarian’s enormous, slightly out-of-focus brown eyes and noticed Regina’s irises were huge and cloudy.
Hope figured the woman had to be legally blind, at the very least. “Hello,” she began. “I need some information, and I was hoping you could help me.”
“Depends. I can’t check out library materials to anyone who hasn’t resided in Pearl County for less than six months.”
Hope had been expecting that. “I don’t want to check out library materials. I’m interested in reading local news reports from five years ago.”
“What specifically are you interested in reading?”
Hope wasn’t certain how the town would react to an outsider poking into its business, so she took a deep breath and just jumped right in. “Anything associated with the late Sheriff Donnelly.”
Regina blinked, shoved her glasses down her nose, then turned her head and looked at Hope out of the corner of her eye. “Are you the California woman living in Minnie’s old house?”
Such intense scrutiny was more than a little unnerving, and Hope had to force herself not to back away. “Minnie?”
“Minnie Donnelly. She was married to that no-good Hiram for twenty-five years before the good Lord called her home.”
“How did Mrs. Donnelly die?”
“The cancer. Uterine. Some say that’s what sent Hiram over the edge, but if you ask me, he was always a pervert. In the third grade he tried to touch my heinie.”
Hope guessed she no longer had to wonder if people would talk to her.
Regina pushed her glasses back up. “What do you want with the news reports?”
“I’m thinking of writing an article about the old sheriff.”
“Have you ever published anything?”
“Quite a few of my articles have appeared in magazines,” Hope answered, which was the truth, but it had been a long time since she’d had anything appear in more mainstream publications.
Regina smiled and her eyes got even bigger. “I’m a writer, too. Mostly poetry. Maybe you could look it over for me.”
Hope groaned inwardly. “I don’t know anything about poetry.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I also wrote a short story about my cat, Jinks. He can sing along with Tom Jones to ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’”
Hope’s silent groan turned into a throat cramp. “You don’t say.”
“It’s true, he really can.” Regina turned to a file cabinet behind her. She took a key from a rubber bungee cord around her wrist and, feeling for the lock, opened a file drawer. “Let’s see,” she said as she pushed her glasses to the top of her head. “That would have been August of ‘95.” She stuck her face into the drawer and studied several small white boxes at close range. Then she straightened and handed Hope two rolls of microfilm. “The projector is over there,” she said, pointing to a far wall. “Copies are ten cents apiece. Will you need help with the projector?”
Hope shook her head, then realized Regina probably couldn’t see her. “No, thank you. I’ve had lots of experience with these things.”
It took Hope a little under an hour to copy the newspaper articles. Because of the grainy projector screen, she didn’t take the time to read them. She skimmed mostly, and from what little she saw, it seemed the late sheriff had been involved in several fetish clubs he’d found via the Internet. Over the course of a few years, he’d embezzled seventy thousand dollars to meet with other members. He’d met with them in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, and toward the end, his taste in girls had gotten younger and more expensive. In the last year of his life, he’d become so careless he’d paid for a few of them to come to his house. What Hope found most surprising was that for all his recklessness, no one in town knew a thing until his death. Or did they?