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  Hannah's eyes riveted on the breakfast room's damaged wall, expecting it to burst into flames. Then from the great room came a faint and rather cheesy rendition of "Me and Bobby McGee."

  Her cell phone. The secret cell phone that allowed her to maintain the appearance of being on duty in Valhalla Springs while she was at David's. It was still in her purse on the desk where she'd left it.

  "What was what?" she blurted, praying Delbert's ears weren't as sharp as his vision.

  "That noise," he said, coinciding with the cell phone's second ring. "Now it sounds like an ice cream truck going by."

  Delbert slid off the bar stool just as Malcolm the Wonder Dog streaked from the utility room. Burfburfing like a maniac, the dog blew by, nearly knocking Delbert out of his sandals. "Glorioski zero, this is a goddamn fruitcake factory."

  For once, Hannah was thankful that Malcolm was genetically predisposed to burf at the front door when the phone rang, and burf at the phone when the doorbell rang.

  "Malcolm, hush up!" she yelled. Louder, boy.

  A pause, then a fresh blast of burfing indicated the mutt was slow on the telepathic uptake, or the stupid cell phone was singing again.

  Muttering something about muzzles, Delbert stomped over to fetch his toolbox, then past Hannah and out the utility room door. Her relief that another guilty secret was safe didn't offset the shame of having so many.

  Sneaking around behind Delbert's and everyone else's backs was over. He hadn't given her engagement to David a seal of approval, but that wasn't the problem. Even grouchy father figures don't believe any man on earth is good enough for their daughter figures. What he'd never forgive was finding Hannah gone, if an emergency arose.

  Strange though it was that Valhalla Springs residents slept better knowing she was there, they did. As if the development were a horizontal apartment complex and Hannah was the doorman—an omniscient, easily ignored presence vital to their peace of mind.

  Malcolm gallumped into the kitchen, a triumphant knight in shaggy armor who'd saved the fair maiden from The nobody's home look in his eyes said he wasn't sure what, but bravery with or without a clue should be rewarded.

  She peeled open a can of Vienna sausages and dumped them in his bowl, then popped an English muffin into the toaster for herself. She'd buttered it, topped off her coffee and sat down at the bar before she realized the old fart had taken the newspaper with him.

  2

  David Hendrickson rolled a stubby pencil back and forth across his knuckles. His other hand held the telephone receiver away from his ear. Truth be told, he could have laid it on the desk and not missed a word of Mrs. Bumgartner's weekly 911 call.

  "That roofer charged me a hundred-and-sixteen dollars just to fix some loose shingles," she squawked. "Stole me blind, he did. Now, you get off your duff and arrest him. Right this very minute."

  "Ma'am, I can't—"

  "What do you mean, can't? You're the sheriff, aren't you? I'll have you know, my taxes pay your salary."

  David's taxes paid his salary, too, but he doubted that she'd appreciate the irony. Nor did she want the roofer arrested, any more than the pharmacist who'd allegedly shorted her a pill last week, or the mechanic who'd worked on her car the week before that.

  Sad, how often the world's lonely and alone alienate the few friends they have left, then manufacture excuses to call strangers just for somebody to talk to.

  David looked out the door to his office. Chief Deputy Jimmy Wayne McBride was munching a slice of cold pizza and staring off into space. The understaffed, underfunded Kinderhook County cop shop wasn't blessed with slow days. David's second-in-command only appeared to be lollygagging. And he ought to know better than to do it in plain sight.

  "Tell you what, Mrs. Bumgartner," David said into the phone. "I'll send a man over to take a complaint report. But don't you go to baking cookies or anything. He might be obliged for a glass of sweet tea, but he can't stay longer than ten, maybe fifteen minutes."

  Judging by the hum on the line, that wasn't the response the Macedonia Free Will Full Gospel Church's organist had expected. David grinned. All's fair in love and law enforcement. Jimmy Wayne wasn't expecting to waste an hour writing a report destined for the shredder, either.

  Mrs. Bumgartner sniffed, then sniped, "It's about time you did something about the scoundrels running amok from one end of this county to t'other. I'll have you know, Clara Haines told—"

  "Beg pardon, ma'am, but the quicker I hang up, the quicker I can send that deputy."

  "Of all the—Uh, well, all right, but you tell him to wipe his shoes on the mat. I won't abide him tracking in dirt on my fresh-mopped floors."

  David was still chuckling when he shut his office door on Jimmy Wayne's verbal resignation. An estimated thirty seconds would elapse before he passed off Mrs. Bumgartner to the handiest rookie.

  His oak banker's chair squeaked and groaned as David sat down again. It and the massive desk were relics of an era when Sanity, the county seat, was a one-horse town with the ugliest courthouse in Missouri. The century-old, three-story brick box disproved the notion that no-bid government contracts and construction kickbacks were modern inventions.

  David's gaze lowered from a top-floor view of the square's west side to a farm truck nosed into the curb. A bumper sticker affixed to its rear window was a smaller version of the yard signs that leaned against the office gun safe.

  On both, the message spelled out in bold red ink was Reelect David Hendrickson for Kinderhook County Sheriff on August 3. Brief and to the point, he granted, but a skosh shy of accurate.

  Technically he wasn't an incumbent. The governor promoted him from chief deputy when the duly elected sheriff, Larry Beauford, died in office. And August 3 marked the county's primary election, not the general one.

  It might as well be, though, David admitted. He'd filed as a Republican because Beauford won three terms from that side of the ballot. David's nemesis, Jessup Knox, filed the same way, for the same reason. Whoever won at the polls in three weeks had nobody to beat in November, except a Democrat who once ran unopposed and lost to a write-in candidate.

  All politics is local, they say. Whoever they were, David fervently believed that sheriffs should be hired, like chiefs of police. Being a "come-here," not a native Kinderhook Countian, he might not get the job, but in a place where everyone seemed to be everyone else's Cousin Bob, it was a neat trick to arrest scofflaws and win a popularity contest at the same time.

  Fingers laced behind his head, he leaned back in his chair and stared at the paint flaking off the stamped tin ceiling. The three hours' sleep he'd managed last night after that meth lab blew to Kingdom Come had him feeling closer to sixty-seven, than thirty-seven. Legs outstretched, he'd settled in for a sweet little nap, when some fool with a death wish rapped on the door.

  Lucas Sauers, his personal attorney and campaign manager, didn't wait for an invitation. "You busy?" he asked, closing the door behind him. "I told 'em to hold your calls for a few minutes."

  David grunted an obscenity. "What this office needs is a maximum-security dead bolt. A big brass sucker that locks from the inside. With a key."

  Luke dragged a chair closer to the window air conditioner. The unit lacked for BTUs, but sounded like a Harley stuck in first gear. "Sorry I didn't make the Sunrise Optimists' meeting. How'd your speech go?"

  "Nobody threw eggs at me. All but a couple of members came up afterward and said I had their votes."

  "Oh, yeah? How many turned out for it?"

  "Twelve, maybe fourteen all told." David's sigh expressed his love of politics in general and campaigning in particular. "Could be the makings of a landslide."

  "Don't we wish." Luke removed a business-size envelope from an inner jacket pocket. "But this'll knock some planks off Jessup Knox's platform. The ones stamped 'Hendrickson is a fiscal liability.'"

  A drum roll was almost audible as Luke ripped the envelope in half. "That, my friend, was a hearing notice for Lydia Quince's wro
ngful death lawsuit against you and the sheriff's department." The asundered envelope sailed over the nameplate on David's desk. The pieces landed on a stack of requisition forms awaiting his signature.

  Luke gestured ta-da, his expression as smug as a terrier with a mole in its mouth. "Just as I predicted, the plaintiff fired her counsel and dropped the suit."

  The million-dollar civil complaint had hung over David's head for three months. At the outset, Luke vowed to stall by every available legal means. The court system's molasses-in-January momentum seemed to lend credence to his opinion that Mrs. Quince preferred getting on with her life to putting it on hold for a jackpot that might not materialize.

  Subtle encouragement from her cousin, Jimmy Wayne McBride, probably convinced her to give up. David ordered him to zip his lip, but suspected insubordination. Friendship and loyalty aside, his chief deputy didn't want to be the sheriff—officially, or de facto, which he would be, if Knox were elected.

  Neither the anguish of shooting Quince's estranged husband, even in self-defense, nor the resulting lawsuit's recrimination would vanish like smoke in a wind. Not for David, anyway. He regarded the mangled envelope. "What's the catch?"

  "No catch. No settlement. No strings. The slate's clean." Luke chuckled. "Here's where you start waxing poetic about what a genius you have for a lawyer."

  Still skeptical, but relief quickening behind his breastbone, David tipped forward and extended his hand. "Mr. Sauers, for a lawyer, you're a bona fide, nickel-plated genius."

  They shook on it, Luke accepting David's thanks with a joke about the forthcoming bill for services. "Too bad I'm not a psychic genius." He motioned at the unread Sanity Examiner atop David's in-basket. "You'd owe me a bonus, if I'd picked up a vibe yesterday afternoon when the suit was actually dropped.

  "I can't swear ChaseWingate would've stopped his presses, but waiting till next week's edition to get the word out puts us seven days closer to primary day."

  The timing wasn't a surprise to David. The plaintiff's attorneys weren't his biggest fans. You'd think they would be, considering the ratio of clients in need of defending rose in proportion to the increase in arrest warrants since David took the oath of office.

  Then again, the son of one of the firm's partners was awaiting trial for arson and related charges. The fifteen-year-old and two buddies celebrated the Fourth of July by torching a fireworks stand. No one was hurt, but David refused to write it off as a prank in exchange for their fathers' paying restitution.

  He said, "You'll have a press release about the suit ready for next week's paper."

  "Absolutely. A full-blown feature, if I can swing it. It won't be as splashy as Wingate's headline story when Quince filed it against you, but I'll push for every inch I can."

  Trusting your instincts was a law enforcement officer's stock in trade. David's weren't infallible, but he'd regretted ignoring them far more often than he'd regretted following them. "One of my dad's favorite sayings is 'Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.' Maybe that applies here."

  "How?"

  "What if all that story does is remind undecided voters that I was suspended from duty and a tick away from a grand jury indictment for second-degree homicide?"

  To his credit, rather than responding with a knee-jerk argument, Luke mulled the possibility at length. "I'm afraid that's a risk we have to take. If we don't go public, what's to stop Jessup Knox from continuing to use it as a campaign issue?"

  "Who says he won't, anyway?"

  "If he does and constituents know it's been dropped, they'll know he's slandering you outright." Luke noted the look on David's face. "I hear ya. That's his entire strategy. Let me think about it. We have almost a week before Wingate puts the next Examiner to bed."

  He sat back in the chair. "Which reminds me, did you talk to Hannah about my idea?"

  David rolled his eyes. "No."

  "Why not? I promise you, a boxed come-one, come-all wedding invitation in the paper the week before the election would bring people out in droves."

  "I am not—"

  "Then front and center in the August 3 edition, there'll be photos of the sheriff and his lovely bride." Luke bracketed his fingers like a picture frame. "Even if we had it, money can't buy that kind of warm fuzzy publicity. I don't have to tell you, we need it."

  Rather than grab his enthusiastic but occasionally insane campaign manager by the belt and throw him out the nearest window, David groaned and scrubbed his face with his hands.

  "Unless you and Hannah elope, you'll have to invite half the county to the wedding, anyway," Luke said. "So what's the difference? Elvis can lie till he's blue, but he can't steal thunder from a romantic Sunday-afternoon wedding in the park."

  The nickname for David's opponent derived from Knox's slicked-back pompadour and muttonchop sideburns. Elvis's wannabe twin also had less law-enforcement experience than his idol. The late King of Rock 'n' Roll never wore a badge but did serve two years' active duty in the military. Jessup Knox hadn't even rung a bell at Christmas for the Salvation Army.

  "Sauers, I'm telling you for the last time. Hannah's stuck at Valhalla Springs until she hires her own replacement. But even if that happened tomorrow, there isn't going to be a wedding until I can count on more than three weeks' worth of job security."

  Luke crossed his arms. "Worst case scenario, it'd be next January before Knox is sworn into office. That's more like six months' job security."

  "Good plan," David shot back. "Then me and Hannah will both be unemployed."

  His loan payments on the new house and the cost of hiring contractors to finish it, had already put the hurt on his checkbook. If he lost the election, alternative job prospects were nil. Bump down to deputy with Knox in the sheriff's seat? Elvis probably wouldn't hire him and David had serious qualms about working for an idiot. The Sanity Police Department would be a demotion of a different but equally undesirable stripe. Some were born to be highway patrol officers; David was not.

  That left federal branches of service, most of them known by acronyms, and none conducive to a Kinderhook County address.

  "Doing something is better than this stalemate you're in," Luke said. "You want to get married. She wants to get married. So get a license, rings, an event permit from the Parks Department and get married already. Everything after that's just details."

  David visually measured the window casing. It was plenty wide and tall enough for him to push Luke through. But with his luck, Luke would land in the shrubbery, dust himself off and be yapping across the desk at him again before David sat back down in his chair.

  As Genius Lawyer said when he'd originally suggested his dumb-ass nuptials-as-vote-getter idea, desperate times called for desperate measures.

  "Tell you what, Sauers. If you can talk Hannah into it, I'll do all the above, find a preacher, get measured for a tux and reserve the limousine."

  "Really? You mean it?" Luke's voice yodeled up the scale like a middle-schooler's. "Seriously?"

  David's tongue pressed his teeth to keep a straight face. If Luke managed to survive that little chat with Hannah, his ears ought to stop ringing by about Friday noon.

  Unless Hannah said yes

  Which, David thought, was about as likely as his having to scrape snow off his windshield tomorrow morning.

  3

  Wednesday morning, a throbbing sun graphic backdropped the KJPP weatherperson's forecast of a scorcher. True to prediction, the midday heat index hovered near the century mark.

  Hannah was huddled over the stove stirring her last can of chicken noodle soup when the doorbell rang. A vaporous mewl of joy burst from her lips. She turned off the burner and scuttled from the kitchen as fast as her fuzzy plush house shoes allowed.

  The savior she'd expected to find on the porch was not tattooed on his respective biceps with an anchor and an arrow-pierced heart. Nor was he named Henry Don Tucker.

  The Grounds and Greens Department supervisor was flanked by his assistant and son-i
n-law, Pinky Dobbs. A trio of younger, sweatier employees slouched behind them. All five exchanged owl-eyed glances. As a group, they faded back a step and stood as inert as a Martian expeditionary force encountering their first Earthling.

  Henry Don slowly removed a straw cowboy hat, as though demonstrating how to comply with a no-false-moves order. His Adam's apple bounced, then his mouth moved.

  "What? I can't—" Hannah peeled off her earmuffs. "Sorry about that. You were saying?"

  Henry Don's basset-hound eyes traveled from the sweater under her chenille robe to her fleece-lined sweatpants and up again. "I—uh, well, seems like a silly question, but I asked if you was ailin'."