The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

as if he’d slapped rather than caressed her. Instead, in ignominious retreat, she cringed back from his arm and the too-intimate warmth of his body, grasped the door with both hands and held on to it for support as she slipped blindly from the car. With the pavement firm under her feet, she turned to slam the door, only to find the sheriff still leaning toward her, one arm across the back of the seat she’d just left. The other hand was holding out a key.

“You’re gonna need this.” He nodded toward the house. “It’ll open both locks, here and the one at your shop.”

She took the key and managed a stiff and grudging, “Thank you.”

The steely blue eyes seemed to darken as they stabbed into hers, and his mouth curved into what she knew better than to think was a smile. “I’m going to be watching you, Miss Mary. Count on it. So do yourself a favor-don’t try to leave town.”

Then she did slam the door. As she hurried up the walkway, she heard the SUV roar to life and drive away, but she didn’t look back. She wouldn’t look back.

Alone on the porch she paused, shivering with anger and cold and hopelessness, bathed in the scent of lilacs that was almost too sweet to bear. She stood staring at the criss-cross of yellow police tape and the padlock on the front door, with the key to the padlock a nugget of warmth in her cold hand. Warm from his hand… And the thought of lifting it and inserting it into the lock, of opening the door and going alone into that stranger’s house, made her very soul cry out with loneliness.

Caught up in her misery, she almost didn’t notice it at first…the peculiar ratchety humming sound that seemed to come from nowhere…and all around her. And then…something soft, warm and heavy bumped her leg. As Mary stared down at the broad feline head covered with moth-eaten fur and sporting a pair of scarred and tattered ears, it nudged-incredibly-at her ankles. The strange snarling sound grew in volume. The mottled back arched and the raggedy tail quivered as the sinewy body twined and rubbed itself around her legs.

“Oh, Cat,” she whispered. And a tear fell with a soft plop to make a tiny wet stain on the wood porch floor.

The days that followed were easier than Mary, in the long dark hours of that first sleepless night, had feared they’d be.

No sooner had she left the house the next morning, filled with dread but determined not to crawl into a hole and hide like a coward, than a sheriff’s department SUV came cruising down the street and pulled up beside her. Her heart gave a drunken lurch and slammed into her ribs as the window slid down and a familiar rumbling voice drawled cheerfully, “Mornin’. Just happened to be passing this way, thought I’d give you a lift to your shop.”

“Yeah, right,” Mary muttered without pausing. She’d almost been looking forward to walking the half-dozen blocks in spite of the persistent wind and a hint of frost in the air…remembering a long-ago life in a faraway place where walking to work in all kinds of weather was the normal way of things. New York, New York… She’d had so much there…friends, an exciting career…and Joy, who’d been more like a sister than a friend. Why wasn’t it enough? Why wasn’t I happy with what I had?

Why am I letting myself remember all this now? I can’t think about this now.

“Thanks,” she said distantly as she strode briskly along, “but I’m fine.”

The car rolled silently, keeping pace with her, and the growl from within was deeper and somewhat less cheerful. “Mary, get in the car.”

She halted and turned, hugging her sweater around her and lifting her face to the wind, grateful for that wind now, hoping it might be blamed for the breathlessness of her voice and the flush she could feel burning her cheeks. “Am I being detained?” she inquired in a cool, polite tone. “Should I get in back? I assume that’s where you put prisoners.”

The sheriff made an exasperated sound. “Don’t be ridiculous. My department’s impounded your car. I’m giving you a ride to work.”

“All part of your service to the community.”

“Right…keeping dangerous criminals off the street.” He leaned his long body across the seat to yank the passenger-side door open, the way he’d done the night before. “Mary, don’t make me come out there and get you.” Though his tone was mild, she caught the glint of a dangerous light in his steel-blue eyes.

Her pitiful rebellion fizzled as quickly as it had flared, and she even felt an odd sense of relief as she got into the SUV, pulled the door shut and clicked her seatbelt into place. The thought flashed into her mind: I’m safe now.

“That’s better,” the sheriff said, sounding almost as if he were purring. He glanced at her as he put the SUV in gear. “Did you sleep well?”

Mary looked back at him and thought the gleam in his eyes seemed more amused now than dangerous. “Please don’t try to pretend this is a just a friendly favor,” she said evenly, though her heart was still beating hard and fast. “At least respect my intelligence enough for that.”

A wry smile tilted his lips and deepened the dips in his cheeks as he transferred his narrowed gaze to the road ahead. “Fair enough,” he said.

The SUV pulled into the street, and Mary rode to work in a tense and humming silence.

Throughout the rest of that day, as she was cutting someone’s hair, dabbing on color, sweeping the floor, answering the phone or ringing up someone’s check, and happened to look out the window or catch the street’s reflection in a mirror, more often than not she’d notice a sheriff’s department patrol vehicle cruising by. Her heart would quicken, her stomach clench and the sour taste of fear rise into her throat, but she would only return a serene gray gaze to whatever client she was working on at the time and murmur a reply to whatever had been said, as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place.

I’ll be watching you…

Her clients, too, seemed anxious to maintain the myth that nothing had changed at Queenie’s “We Pamper You Like Royalty” Salon and Boutique…that the quiet and retiring lady wielding scissors and pouring noxious chemicals on their hair hadn’t just been charged with committing a cold-blooded murder. Mary had dreaded going into the shop, had wondered whether she’d have any clients show up at all, but to her surprise, not a single person cancelled her appointment that first day. In fact, as the week progressed she seemed to have even more business than usual. She suspected Ada Major of having a hand in that; it was a small county, and virtually everyone in it had served on Miss Ada’s juries at one time or another and could probably expect to do so again.

Mary thought she also had Miss Ada to thank for the fact that almost no one stared at her openly or whispered when her back was turned-although some did try too hard to be upbeat and cheery, and her older clients-those of Miss Ada’s generation-did tend to give her motherly little pats of sympathy. Mary didn’t mind. She was grateful to have people around, work to do, to keep her from thinking about what lay ahead.

The sun hadn’t set when Roan turned his department SUV into the alley behind Queenie’s Salon and Boutique, but at that time of year it was already well into the dinner hour and the last patrol car to drive by the front of the beauty shop had reported its owner appeared to be closing up, getting ready to leave for the day.

He pulled up beside the back door of the salon and turned off the motor and keyed his radio mike. “Donna, this is SD Mobile One, I’m gonna break for dinner. Call me if you need me.”

“What do you mean, ‘dinner,’ Sheriff?” the dispatcher’s scratchy voice came back. “Don’t you think you oughta go home?”

Roan chuckled, signed off and settled down to wait.

Sitting alone in his car as the evening quiet nestled around him, he began to feel a peculiar sense of restless anticipation that had nothing to do with the possibility the woman he was waiting for might try to escape his jurisdiction. The way it felt to him was more like the first time he’d asked Erin out on a real date, when he’d knocked on her door and was standing there on her front porch where he’d stood a hundred times before, hearing Boyd’s heavy footsteps coming across the hard pine floor. A hundred times before he’d stood there, but this time his heart was beating like a tom-tom, his belly was quivering, his palms were wet and his mouth was dry, and he’d kept telling himself, Man, what’s wrong with you? It’s just Erin, we’ve known each other since we were babies! Only he’d known good and well the way he felt inside was trying to tell him something he needed to listen to, which was that it wasn’t just Erin anymore, and never would be again.

He knew it was one thing, though-feeling like that over a girl he’d known all his life and had known he was going to eventually marry for about half of it, and who was his best friend besides-and that it was something else entirely to be getting a quiver in his belly over a woman he’d just arrested and seen charged with murder, and who