up with an inmate at Montana State Prison. She said she’d changed but …
It’d been a week. He’d call the victims’ officer again.
He drove to the west side of town and pulled to a stop in front of the Honey Creek County Sheriff’s office. Getting out, he walked into the building, passing the front counter and heading to his office directly behind that, and sat behind his desk. He leaned back and let himself stare at nothing for a while, thinking about Lily. Maybe he should start to worry about how much he was beginning to like her.
The legal pad on his desk caught his eye. It was full of scribbled notes about Mark Walsh’s murder case. He’d jotted them down earlier. Some were centered around the money-laundering angle the FBI was investigating, others were on the note found on the body of the man who murdered Jake Pierson’s partner. Jake was the first FBI agent assigned to the money-laundering investigation and Jim Willis had been his partner. Since this whole thing started, Wes had gotten to know both of them. Jim had been a good friend to both him and Jake. He shouldn’t have died like that, shot by a hit man who was after Jake for information the investigation had uncovered.
The note found on Jake’s partner’s body hadn’t been signed, but it was on a special kind of stationary that had bothered Wes ever since he’d seen it. The stationary was expensive. Not just anyone would use it. He’d been all over town tracking down possible sources. One lead had taken him to the Colton ranch, where he’d found some in his dad’s office. Was that significant? Probably not. The stationary could have been ordered from an office-supply catalog. Anyone could have ordered some. It would be tough narrowing down a suspect that way. And of course, there were no prints on the paper other than those belonging to the hit man.
A knock on the open door brought his head up. Deputy Ryan King stood there. He was a six-foot lean-framed man with fine, light brown hair whose light green eyes kept the women coming around, but he never strayed from his wife.
“Come in,” Wes said.
Ryan closed the door and moved closer to Wes’s desk. “Sorry to bother you, Sheriff. I’m not one to give gossip much thought, but my wife told me something I thought you’d want to hear.”
Leaning back in his chair, Wes waited.
“She goes to that quilting group that meets in town. You know the one?”
“Yes. What about it?”
“Well, Terri said there was talk about you and that Masterson woman spending time together. Someone saw her drop you off here at the office and said you looked like you were getting along really well.”
How long before it got around he’d just left the library? Wes chuckled. Didn’t those women have anything better to do than talk about people?
“Some people take offense to you getting messed up with someone like her,” Ryan said. “You’re the law in this town. If people don’t respect you….”
“It’s been fifteen years since Lily left this town.”
“That doesn’t matter. It’s your integrity in question.”
“She isn’t the same person. She’s grown-up now. People will see that after a while.”
“But if you continue to see her …”
Now he was beginning to get annoyed. “It’s just talk.”
“People are wondering where you were with her, where you could have met her.”
“It doesn’t matter how or where I met her.” He looked pointedly up at his deputy. “I could have met her anywhere in town before that.”
“I’m sorry, I know it’s none of my business. It’s just … your reputation.”
“I’ll worry about my own reputation, but thanks for letting me know.”
“Come time for reelection …”
Wes looked up from the pile of papers on his desk and lifted his brow.
Ryan frowned, but relented.
When his deputy had left, Wes couldn’t focus on the mound of work he had to do. Maybe he should pay more attention to what the town was saying. What if something got around that would hurt Lily? What harm would it be to use Ryan as a way of monitoring the gossip? He didn’t care what was being said, but Lily did. And that was reason enough for him.
He picked up his phone and dialed Ryan’s extension.
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