The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

where I go?” she demanded then, a freshet of anger making her incautious, and perhaps, illogical-a fact her unwelcome companion lost no time in pointing out.

“I’m the sheriff of this town,” he said in a soft and dangerous voice, “and you’ve been charged with murdering one of its citizens.” He lifted a hand to her cheek and, ignoring her quick, startled intake of breath, carefully slipped a finger under the misbehaving strand of hair and guided it behind her ear. “That makes everything you do my business, Miss Mary, from now until you come to trial.”

Her heart seemed to leap into her throat and catch there. Her lips felt stiff and dry. She licked them, to no effect whatsoever, and mumbled, “What happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty?’”

“Just want to make sure you stick around long enough for a jury to decide which one you are,” the sheriff drawled, facing forward again.

“I’m out on bail,” Mary said acidly. “Where do you think I’m going to go?”

“Oh, I don’t know. People charged with murder have been known to jump bail. Especially when it’s somebody else’s life savings they’re forfeiting.”

She gave a little gasp, anger and shame making a hard knot in her chest. “I’d never do that to Miss Ada. Never!” I would have left the deeds to Queenie’s house and salon to pay her back! Appalled at how near she’d come to blurting that out in her own defense, she managed to say in a choked voice, “Is that the kind of person you think I am? Not only am I a murderer, but someone who would…who’d do…”

As she struggled to find words adequate to describe so un-pardonable an act, her steps slowed to a halt. She found herself staring, uncomprehending, at the back of Queenie’s Beauty Salon and Boutique…at the criss-cross of yellow crime-scene tape and the unfamiliar padlock on the door.

Chapter 7

“See, that’s the thing, Miss Mary,” Roan said as he took a key out of his pocket and stuck it in the padlock. “I don’t know what kind of person you are.”

The lock sprang apart in his hands. He disposed of the crime-scene tape with a sweeping gesture, then pushed the door open and held it while he looked back at the woman standing there in the hard-baked dirt alley, huddled like a refugee inside his jacket. Her eyes were shimmering behind the lenses of those damned ugly glasses she wore, and he grabbed and held on to his anger like a desperate man. “Fact is,” he continued, hardening his voice, “I don’t even know who you are. Do I?”

She stood where she was, ignoring both his remark and the open door, and said in a voice tight with impotent fury, “You searched my shop?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s what happens when you get charged with murder. You coming in, or not?”

She moved grudgingly through the doorway, throwing him a hot bitter look as she passed him. “My lawyer said you’d searched my house, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. What did you expect to find? My bloody shoes? A smoking gun?”

“That’d be nice,” Roan said affably, “but no, actually.” He closed the door while she flipped a light switch and they moved together through a storage room that smelled of the permanent waves his mother used to get every spring and fall, past a tiny bathroom that held a toilet, a vanity and an assortment of mops and brooms. “I have a lot more respect for your intelligence than to expect anything like that. Fact is…” He paused to let her go ahead of him through a pink-curtained doorway. “I was hoping I might find something that’d tell me a little bit about you. Like…you know, what your real name is…where you come from. What the hell you’re doing in my town.”

She was moving ahead of him through the salon, between rows of hair dryers and wash basins, slowly, as if in a daze. She hadn’t turned on the lights, and even though the front of the shop was mostly glass, with the weather being gray and overcast like it was, the room had that ghost-town look closed places get when you’re used to seeing them full of people and chattering voices and laughter.

She said without turning, in a soft, weary voice, “My name is Mary. And I didn’t shoot Jason Holbrook. That’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” he said just as softly, as he moved close behind her. “If I could believe it.”

She turned her head quickly to one side as if she meant to reply, and the jerking movement made his jacket slip off her shoulders. He caught it before it fell and settled it around them again.

Then, somehow, without any thought or guidance from him, his hands came to rest there, too, as if that was where they belonged. Before he could think of all the reasons why he shouldn’t be touching her, or, God knew, even talking to her, he found himself curving his fingers around her shoulders and turning her to face him.

“Dammit, Mary,” he said in a low, guttural voice that wasn’t familiar to him, “I almost do believe you. But the problem with one lie is, it poisons everything you say. I know you lied about who you are, so how am I supposed to know if you’re telling the truth when you say you didn’t kill Jason?”

She gazed at him for a moment, her eyes that opaque gray color he was beginning to hate because it reminded him of shuttered windows…and felt like a door slammed in his face. Then she turned her face from him in a hopeless way that made him want to shake her. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you. If my lawyer…”

He was frustrated enough that he did give her a little bit of a shake, just enough to bring her eyes back to him. “For God’s sake, Mary, forget the lawyers. I know the damn protocol. Just…give me a reason to believe you. That’s all I’m asking.”

Instead of answering, she slipped off his jacket and handed it to him-though he supposed that was a kind of answer, just not the one he was hoping for. Then she moved away from him, rubbing her arms as she gazed distractedly around her at the clutter left by the searchers.

Roan drew a breath, reining in and gentling himself down the way he’d seen Boyd do with a riled-up horse. Even so, he couldn’t keep his exasperation out of his voice.

“Look-all I care about is getting the person who did this thing. But I have to tell you-and the reason you’re being charged with it-at this point the right person looks like you. Do you understand that? There might not be much in the way of physical evidence against you, but that isn’t gonna matter. This is a small town and this is a personal killing. Jason was a jackass, especially where women are concerned, but the fact is, there isn’t another person around here who had a big enough beef with him to go and shoot him over it.”

He paced a few slow steps to the windows and stood looking out at the street, which was mostly empty here in spite of all the hullabaloo going on just a block away at the courthouse. He watched a couple of scrub jays courting one another in a yellow-flowered shrub across the way, apparently oblivious to the un-springlike weather, and felt a certain edginess in his spirit. He was dragging a restless hand through his hair when he remembered it was a favorite habit of the senator’s and made himself stop.

“Mary,” he said with a sigh, “to a certain extent, my hands are tied here. The father of the man you’re accused of killing is a United States Senator, a powerful man with a lot of pull. If I hadn’t arrested you, he’d have found somebody else to do it-the state lawmen, probably.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Her voice came from behind him, faint and breathless.

He turned, and because he knew he had to, hardened his eyes and voice. “Because if you didn’t kill Jason, then whoever did is still walking around somewhere in this town. My town. That idea doesn’t sit too well with me.” He shrugged into his jacket and said distantly, “Look, if you want to get whatever it is you came in here for, I’ll run you home.”

She jerked slightly and her arms came across her body in a defensive embrace. Almost whispering, she said, “You don’t need to do that.”

“Well, since your car’s been impounded-” He stopped when she gasped softly. “Yeah,” he drawled with a humorless smile, “so in case you were thinking of leaving town that way, I guess you’re gonna have to come up with a plan B.”

He watched her while she struggled with it, the tension in her body and the fire in her eyes the only outward signs of the battle he knew she must be fighting against emotions he could only imagine: anger, fear, frustration and despair. And then, as she turned slowly to survey the disarray left by the searchers, he saw her shoulders sag with defeat-or was it only a temporary retreat? Maybe even a feint to throw him off? How in the hell was he supposed to know what was going on inside her head when she shuttered her eyes like that?

Trembling deep inside, Mary picked up a pink smock that was lying over the back of a chrome-and-leather