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  Once they’d walked out of earshot, he gazed at Shelley, who did not look at him. “I was in the produce department,” she said, “looking at the cantaloupes, and I overheard these two little old ladies, and they were talking mighty loud.”

  “Little old ladies do tend to do that,” he said.

  “And they were gabbing away, and then one of them said, suddenly, ‘You know, Myrtle, I’ve been seeing a lot of Mexicans in this area, lately.’”

  “She said that,” Rob said.

  “Yes, and she went on to say how she went to the Casino the other day, just to play with the one-arm bandits, and while she was there, she saw a group of Mexicans walking through the Casino.”

  “Did she say anything about how they looked? Or were they wearing uniforms?” Despite his assurances to the contrary, he was starting to get a bad feeling about this. What in the world was going on? Did Manuel walk a crew of Mexicans through the fucking Casino? He’d better check with Manuel and Steve before the next exchange.

  “No,” Shelley said, “and I hate to admit this, honey, but these two old birds noticed me, I guess I must’ve been looking at the melons too long—and” and she gave a sideways smile, to which he replied, “I’d love to look at your melons anytime,” which made her smile more openly, and he reached for her hand and squeezed it.

  “What’s going on, Rob?”

  “I don’t know, honey,” he said, honestly. “But I’m gonna check it out, see what’s going on.”

  “Do that,” she said, squeezing his hand and letting go. “I think something’s going on at Houser Farms, and nobody’s telling you.”

  “That does sound likely,” he said.

  The whole thing was making him uneasy.

  A few hours later.

  After dinner, and after some roughhousing with the kids in the backyard, and pushing them on the swing a million times, amid cries of ‘Higher, daddy, higher!’, until Shelley said it was time for baths and teeth-brushing, and reading of books, and then tucking them in, Rob, sensing his wife’s receptiveness to sex that evening—she always had sex with him when he came home with a big wad of money—took extra care during his evening shower and, sure enough, as he emerged into their bedroom, with a plush towel wrapped around his slender waist, he saw her sitting up in bed, nude, her breasts full and round and lovely in the warm light. She set aside the book she’d been reading and beckoned to him.

  “Come here, sweetheart,” she said, holding her arms out to him.

  He dropped the towel to the floor, watched with pleasure as he cock grew hard and she cooed at him and he got between the covers and she slid onto her back and widened her legs for him and he got between her legs and he plunged himself into her secret treasure.

  An hour later.

  After they reached their crises, he rolled over and, as she liked, he wrapped his arms around her slender waist and nuzzled her soft black hair with his mouth. She wept her tears of sorrow and joy and he thought she might fall asleep, as she usually did after good sex, but she surprised him by turning to face him, her brown eyes wide and warm and . . . frightened.

  “Hey,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Honey,” she said. “Are you putting yourself in danger?”

  He knew what she was referring to. Back when he first mentioned to her how he’d come by the first big stack of money, she’d lambasted him and grilled him better than the best district attorney in the land, until he finally admitted to her that the money had nothing to do with his work as a deputy sheriff, but in the clandestine operation they were running out at Houser’s Farm. Randy had warned him never to tell anyone of what they were doing, but Shelley could read him and she knew all his emotions and cares and concerns; they were her cares and concerns as well, and he thought she’d be happy with all the extra money, but all it did was make her worried.

  The operation had been in place for a year now, and thus far, she told him, he’d brought home close to four-hundred thousand dollars.

  He didn’t count the money himself. He trusted her, and he let her deal with it.

  And his take was much smaller than the Sheriff’s.

  “I don’t think so,” he said slowly.

  “You don’t think so,” she repeated.

  “You know there’s some danger involved.”

  “I know,” she said, “and that’s what’s got me worried.”

  “We’re gonna move it to another place, soon.”

  “Yeah, but when, Rob? I think Sheriff is getting complacent. He likes this set-up and he doesn’t want to disturb a great money train, but honey, it’s been going on for a while now, and the longer it continues, the more likely it is people are going to start talking.”

  He sighed, rubbed his hands through his hair and sat up in bed.

  “Honey,” she said. “People are talking about the Sheriff.”

  And again, such was his relationship with this woman, that he knew what she was talking about. The death of Mrs. Randalls.

  “I was at the supermarket today, and Mrs. Dowling walked right up to me and started haranguing me about how in the world did the Sheriff think the world wasn’t noticing how his wife’s death was being buried by the Sheriff’s Department, and what the hell did I think was going on at my husband’s place of business—and”

  “Mrs. Dowling’s stupider than shit,” Rob said.

  “And she kept on and on about it, as I was picking out apples, and saying how it’s a crime that the Sheriff didn’t call in a separate investigation and what the hell was going on in that Sheriff’s Office anyway, and when in the world was my husband going to grow a pair of balls and take on the Sheriff and order in a separate investigator?”

  “Wow, Mrs. Dowling sure shared a lot, didn’t she?” Rob said.

  “She did,” Shelley said. “And I had half a mind to deck her, but she kept on talking and talking and the more she talked, the more I started to wonder about it too.”

  “I know,” he said, and sighed. “Randy did call in the Shelbyville PD, but they didn’t really do anything.”

  “Why didn’t they do anything?”

  Rob shrugged. “I really don’t know.”

  “Maybe Mrs. Randalls killed herself,” Shelley said skeptically, as if she didn’t really believe it, “but it was wrong of the Sheriff to let any of you anywhere near that case. You should’ve called in a special investigator or something.” She plucked absently at the pineapple motifs on the comforter. “It really bothers me, Rob.”

  “I know it does, honey.”

  “And this whole money thing,” she said, her voice trailing off.

  “You don’t mind the money, do you?” he asked, half-jokingly.

  “The money’s great, but Rob, it’s almost of no use to us, well, right now, at least.”

  She watched detective shows on television, and she’d been hooked on Breaking Bad, and she used to tell him in depth what she thought she would’ve done if she’d been Skyler White, played by Anna Gunn. She would’ve done things completely differently. She would’ve gotten safety deposit boxes all over the tristate area and stuffed the money into security boxes to hide it, and that, apparently, was what she’d been doing with all the money he’d been bringing home to her, every other week or so. At last counting, she told him, he’d brought home four-hundred grand, and she’d gone all over the state to find banks to store it in. She had it all written down somewhere, in a diary of hers, where she stored the safety deposit keys as well, and she said she had twenty-five thousand tucked away in sixteen different banks, so that if they ever got caught, and some of the safety deposit boxes got sacrificed, she still had more money tucked away elsewhere.

  And she made him live within his salary. She did not let him go out and buy a Trans Am like he wanted, and they still had the same clunky old dishwasher that made a racket whenever the dishes ere washing, she said they had to keep up the appearance of him being a regular Joe, and normal Deputy Sheriff Assistant, working away at an honest day’s wages.


  He’d asked when she’d ever let him use some of the money, half-jokingly, saying, will be dead before you use it, to which she’d replied, “You never know, Rob, I may just do that.”

  And he believed her.

  “You gonna let me buy that trans am when I retire?” he asked her, nuzzling her chin.

  At least nobody could accuse him of living lavishly. He and Shelley agreed, when he collected his first wad of bills, that they’d keep this secret, and he lived his life out in the wide open, clear blue sky, and nobody suspected him of being involved in anything nefarious, other than letting his boss get away with murdering his wife, that is.

  “I might,” she said, and smiled faintly, but the furrow between her brows did not soften.

  Something troubled her.

  “What’s the matter, honey?” he asked.

  “We’ve made more money than we can ever spend in a lifetime,” she said.

  “Are you kidding?” he scoffed. “Some of those magnificent houses you’re so in love with down in Nashville, Tennessee, start at four-hundred thousand, and that’s only if they’re a wreck.”

  She smiled, faintly.

  She’d grown up in Nashville, was close to her folks, called them every single day. She’d talked of wanting to retire to Nashville, and he was fine with that. Anything to get away from this town.

  But right now, he still had a good thing going.

  She laid her soft hand on his right thigh. “Rob, honey, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, and I’ve been worried about this for a long time.”

  “I know you are.”

  “And I really think . . . I really think . . . it’s time you stopped.”

  He gazed at her. He’d been expecting this talk for a while now. He’d promised himself, that once she gave him this talk, he’d accept it, agree with her that yes, they’d had a good long run of it, and they’d gotten away with it for this long, and that was an amazing thing, and he’d made a lot of money for them, but even as he absorbed her words, tinged with her tears and love, he realized something else. He didn’t want to stop, ever. He didn’t ever want to stop coming home with those big green wads of money that gave off such a glorious odor, the smell of money, and which, despite her protestations to the contrary, made her very happy.

  The sex was always amazing when he came home with a wad of bills.

  But now she looked at him with a tinge of fear in her eyes. “You promised me you’d stop when I said so, and I’m saying so now.”

  “Oh, man, Shelley, it ain’t that easy.”

  “You promised me,” she said, her brown eyes dangerously dark. “You promised, Rob.”

  “I know. Are you hearing things?”

  “No,” she said uneasily, “but folks in town are already kind of upset with Sheriff Randalls and the way he handled his wife’s death investigation, and I think people are just looking for a reason to shut him down.”

  “But you’re not hearing anything?”

  “No, but this thing with the girls, it’s bad, and besides, it’s un-Christian, and I’m tainted too, because I’m taking this money, and I’m stashing it away for a rainy day—”

  “Huh,” Rob said. “You’ve got enough stashed away for an epic flood.”

  “We gotta be careful, Rob, not to spend it now. The money will come in handy as our retirement, and by then I can pretend I inherited it or something, and nobody will think twice about it, but what with your boss and his wife, and the whole town up in arms about there not being a proper investigation, well, eventually, somebody’s gonna start taking a close look at your Sheriff and his activities.”

  “I know,” he said glumly.

  “And your chances of taking over the office when he retires are starting to look mighty dim,” she added.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  She was right. Randy had said, years ago, that he wanted Rob to succeed him, but Randy had tainted everyone in the department with this fake investigation process into Miranda’s death. Rob wondered if he should’ve done more to distance himself from the investigation, but realized it was useless; no matter what happened, he’d always be faithful to the Sheriff.

  They had too much history between them to break his relationship with the Sheriff now. If the Sheriff sank like the Titanic, then Rob was gonna be on board, beside the orchestra, playing as the ship went down.

  “Babe,” he said, “we’ve got one more run. I gotta do it.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said.

  “Yes, I do, honey.”

  “You only think you do, but you don’t.”

  “I’ll do this last one, and then I’ll stop, I promise.”

  “Make sure you do,” she said evenly.

  “You’re scaring me, honey,” he said, half-jokingly, but the next thing she said sent a chill down his spine.

  “I want to scare you,” she said. “I don’t want a husband in prison.”

  23

  Tuesday, April 2, 8:59 a.m.

  Rob walked into the Sheriff’s office and closed the door behind him. “Boss, we need to talk.”

  “Be right there,” Randy said, jerking his head to the right, indicating outside.

  Rob walked out of Randy’s office, walked through the building, and out the side door, and stepped outside to the shady picnic area where the smokers liked to hang out. Shady, a nice breeze, and no smokers around. A moment later, Randy joined him.

  Without preamble, Rob started. “People are getting upset about that step-daughter of yours saying what she did at the viewing, and nobody following up on it.”

  “I know. He shoved his hands into his pockets, rocked back on his heels, and spat ruminatively. “Did you tell Shelbyville to interview her?”

  “I didn’t tell them anything, one way or the other, but maybe I oughta, just to get people off my back.”

  “I wonder if she’s the kid doing the paper route?”

  “What do you mean?” Rob asked, a thread of worry lacing through his heart. What kid delivering a paper route? Did that mean the rumors were true? Was this kid delivering a newspaper on the morning Miranda died and see something going on in the dining room? Rob had always had implicit faith in Randy, but this . . . well, maybe the rumors were true.

  Maybe Randy really did kill his wife.

  Randy hesitated. “There’s a kid who delivers our morning newspaper, and when Brittany pointed at this one girl at the viewing, and started screaming her nutty stuff, I wondered . . . did this girl see something?”

  “Do you know the name of this kid?” Rob asked. “Or maybe I can find her?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Randy said, and Rob realized, with a stab of alarm, that’s exactly what Randy wanted him to say. Randy wasn’t going to hunt down this kid; he’d let Rob do it.

  And then, Rob supposed, once he found the kid, what was he supposed to do with her?

  Rob had a funny idea he already knew the answer to that question.

  “I’ll look into it, Boss,” Rob said.

  “Sounds good,” Randy said, and he turned on his heel and walked out to the employee parking lot, got into his cruiser, and drove away, off to God alone knew where, leaving Rob standing there, feeling like a fool.

  What was he getting himself into?

  A few minutes later.

  “Hey, Kathryn, didn’t you interview that little girl, the one who found her mother dead?” Margie asked Kathryn.

  Kathryn stood in the break room, pouring herself a cup of coffee. She offered the coffee pot to Margie, who nodded, and poured a dollop into Margie’s mug. “Um, yeah, I did.”

  “Well, something happened at the viewing.”

  “What?”

  “The little girl started ranting and raving and she accused Randy of killing her mother.”

  Kathryn considered. “She didn’t make any statement to me to that effect.”

  “Hm,” Margie said. “Check your notes. She pointed to another child who was there, at the viewing, and said this girl wi
tnessed it.”

  “Oh, you’re kidding me.”

  “Nope.”

  A break in the case?

  “I’ll consider it,” Kathryn said.

  “See that you do,” Margie said, and turned and walked out of the break room.

  A few hours later.

  “God-dammit, Josie, why’d you fuck up now, when things are so bad?”

  “You’re just mad at me, because an old man dropped dead on your front lawn.”

  “You didn’t do that, at least,” Randy said, and snorted.

  She gave him a dangerous look. “Don’t take it out on me, Randy. Don’t you fucking dare.”

  “Look,” he said, “I’m just a bit stressed out right now.”

  Josie gazed at Randy with wonder. He’d asked to come over tonight, saying he wanted to see her; said he was sad, he was this, he was that, but the minute he walked in through the door, he started yelling at her and carrying on and blaming her for all the problems that’d happened over the last several days, and she’d reached her limit.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last.

  Well, it was a concession, at least.

  And for a minute there, she’d been that close to breaking up with him. He wasn’t getting Miranda Delacourt’s clone, no, siree. He was getting Josie Barnhart, and Josie did not put up with shit, that was for good and certain.

  Her mother had called her up earlier in the day, claiming she just wanted to talk, but the moment Josie said sure, Mom, let’s talk, her mother lit into her.

  Everyone in town’s talking, they say he killed his wife.

  Mom, that’s all just foolish rumors.

  And then this old man goes and drops dead on his front lawn. Some people say Randy had something to do with it.

  Mom, that’s just bullshit, and you know it.

  Did you know, when his first wife divorced him, she said there’d been domestic violence during their marriage, which was why she got out?

  Yeah, Mom, Randy’s told me about that, but a lot of the charges she filed were false.