slightly blurred shore of Gospel Lake and a few fuzzy aliens she’d retrieved from her CD-ROM library. She’d lined them up behind a rustic-looking table, and beneath the photograph she’d written the cutline, “Aliens place bets on unsuspecting tourist in Northwest wilderness area.” She was extremely happy with the way the feature had come together and was already working on a follow-up article.
She’d also read the newspaper articles she’d photocopied at the library, and she’d thought there was an interesting story to be told. Not about the salaciousness of it all, although there was plenty of that, but of a man whose personal and public lives were so diametrically opposed. How his personal choices had slowly consumed him until he’d become morally bankrupt in the end.
Hope slid the paper into her basket and picked through the sorriest bunch of avocados she’d ever seen. She’d been invited to the Aberdeen boys’ eighteenth-birthday barbecue that night, and afterward she planned to ask Shelly a few questions about Hiram Donnelly.
The cantaloupe weren’t much better than the avocados, but the lettuce was decent. Shelly had told her they were serving hot dogs, hamburgers, and the boys’ favorite-Rocky Mountain oysters. Hope was taking a salad with sweet dressing, which was wonderful with seafood. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d made her famous salad. Well, actually, when she thought hard enough, she could remember, but it had been a long time ago and was a sad commentary on her social life. Funny, she thought as she picked up a few household items, how moving to such a small town had emphasized the empty holes in her life. Funny how a few lunches with a woman she hardly knew, and an invitation to barbecue with her neighbors had left her wanting to get out more.
She thought about taking a bottle of wine to loosen Shelly’s tongue, but Dylan and Adam had been invited, and she didn’t want the sheriff to think she was a big boozer. She didn’t know why she cared, and she didn’t know what to think of the man who glanced at her from beneath the brim of his hat and stopped her heart. It was probably best not to think of him at all.
Hope took her place in line behind a couple decked out in REI and holding bottled water. Behind the counter, Stanley Caldwell rang up the purchases while his wife, Melba, bagged.
When it was Hope’s turn, she set her basket on the counter.
“How’re things out at the Donnelly place?” Stanley asked.
“They’re good. How are you, Mr. Caldwell?”
“I’ve got a bit of lower back pain, but I’m doing okay.” He took the avocados out of the basket and rang them up. “I hear you’re a writer.”
Hope raised her gaze from the basket to Stanley’s face. “Where did you hear that?”
“Regina Cladis,” he answered as he handed his wife the avocados to bag. “She says you’re writing a story about Hiram Donnelly.”
She glanced at Melba, then looked back at Stanley. “That’s right. Did you know him?”
“Of course we knew him. He was the sheriff,” Melba replied. “His wife was a good Christian woman who never knew sin.”
“At least that’s what she told everyone,” Stanley scoffed, ringing up the cantaloupe. “Makes you wonder, though.”
“Makes you wonder what, Mr. Caldwell?” Hope asked. Melba took the melon and placed it in the bag.
“Well, I don’t think just because a man’s wife dies, he goes so far off the deep end that he wakes up one morning and suddenly wants to put on leather underwear and get his hairy backside paddled.”
Melba shoved one hand on her hip. “Are you saying Minnie was like Hiram? For the love of Pete, her daddy was a preacher.”
“Yep, and you know how they are.” He handed Melba Hope’s copy of
Melba’s brows lowered and then a light seemed to dawn in her eyes. “Well, that’s true.” She shrugged and glanced at the tabloid in her hand. “There’s a really good story in there about an eighty-pound woman giving birth to a twenty-pound baby.”
Finally, a person who admitted to reading a tabloid.
“And another good one,” Stanley added, “is that article on aliens doing all those cow mutilations in New Mexico. Sure glad we don’t have alien shenanigans going on around here.”
Oh, you’re about to, Hope thought and wondered if they’d recognize themselves in her alien story. “Did you read about the cult of women who eat chicken bones? One of them choked to death and they tried to revive her in a ritualistic chicken ceremony.”
“Didn’t get to that one yet.” Stanley laughed and shook his head. “Who makes that stuff up?”
Hope laughed, too. “Someone with a creative imagination.”
“Or,” Melba said as Stanley hit total on the cash register, “someone who’s crazy.”
Hope recognized the music pouring from the boom box as country; other than that, she didn’t have a clue. She’d dressed casually in a khaki skirt, white tank top, and flat sandals. She’d put her hair into a ponytail and pulled it through the back of her Gap baseball cap.
The early-evening sun cut a blinding trail across the lake as Hope stepped through the Aberdeens’ back door. In her hands she carried her paper plate, half filled with the salad she’d brought and one of Shelly’s deviled eggs.
A dozen teenage boys and girls ate at one of the two picnic tables sitting in the partial shade of the backyard. The smoke billowing from the big Weber barbecue enveloped the two men manning the grill. Only their lower halves were visible from behind. One wore his Wranglers at the crack of a flat butt; the other wore Levi’s riding low on his hips. A breeze cleared the wafting smoke as both men stared down at the burning hamburgers, hot dogs, and Rocky Mountain oysters. Wally and Adam stood behind them with empty plates.
Paul turned at the waist and plopped a black weenie in each boy’s bun.
“It’s burned, Dad,” Wally complained.
“Put lots of ketchup on it,” Paul advised. “You’ll never know the difference.”
“I told him not to put so much charcoal in that barbecue,” Shelly whispered out of the side of her mouth as she and Hope made their way toward the grill. The breeze waned and the men were once again clouded with smoke.
From behind, all that appeared were two male butts and a glimpse of one green T-shirt, the other white. Hope didn’t need to see their faces. After following Dylan around her house the night he’d brought her home from the Buckhorn, she easily recognized the width of his back beneath his white T-shirt, the pockets of his Levi’s, and the worn denim hugging his hard buns.
Dylan looked over his shoulder at their approach, and the smoke curled beneath the brim of his beat-up straw hat. “What are you ladies up for?” he asked.
“Which are burned the worst?” Shelly wanted to know.
“The hot dogs are pretty crispy, burgers are extra well done, but the oysters aren’t too bad.”
“Keep those oysters away from me.” Shelly frowned. “Burger, I guess.”
Dylan flipped a patty into a bun and handed it to Shelly.
“Paul is gonna give us all cancer,” she grumbled as she walked away.
Dylan turned his attention to Hope, and through the smoke, his green eyes stared into hers. “What about you, Miz Behavin‘?”
“I’ll risk cancer and take a dog,” she told him.
“One black weenie.” He plopped a sizzling frank into a bun and set it on her plate. “Paul says to put lots of ketchup on it.”
“Yeah, sorry,” Paul added.
“Actually, this is just right,” she assured the cook. “I like black weenies. I don’t eat raw meat.”
Dylan chucked, but he didn’t say anything.
“Are you gonna try an oyster?” Paul asked her.
“Are they well done?”
“Sure are. How many do you want?”
“Just one.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Dylan told her while Paul placed a small breaded oyster next to her burned weenie. “Have you ever eaten one of those before?” he asked.
“Sure.” She’d eaten seafood cooked all sorts of ways. “Lots of times,” she added, then carried her plate across
