The Police Chief's Lady

“Sure. We can walk over to your office right now.”

“It’s not at the office. It’s at my house,” Barry said. “I was hoping you could stop in on your way home.”

Now, that was a tough one, Ethan thought ironically. He’d just been invited to the very place where Jenni, Karen et al were probably dissecting him and the town’s other single men.

Discretion urged him to schedule a visit some other time. But he’d like to get his outreach program started this summer, and if he had a chance to join the conversation, he might be able to enlist the support of the other ladies.

He supposed the tactic might irritate Jenni. On the other hand, she could hold her own, and Ethan was in the mood for a round of sparring.

“That would be fine,” he replied.

Barry crumpled his paper napkin. “Let’s go.”

THE LOWELLS’ TWO-STORY BRICK HOUSE on Heritage Avenue rang with lively voices and good fellowship. Jenni found it hard to believe she was the center of attention, accepted by the other women as if she belonged here.

She wasn’t accustomed to belonging. They almost seemed to have mistaken her for someone else—although she knew that wasn’t true.

Karen had set out her best patterned china on the cloth-covered dining table, along with a plate of deviled eggs and platters of cold cuts and sliced bread. She’d waved away Jenni’s offer to cook something, as well—a relief to Jenni, since her chief culinary skill was reheating pizza.

Jenni was surprised to discover that Karen’s women friends ranged in age from their thirties all the way up to 80, but in a town this small, she learned, people didn’t segregate along age lines—and the menu proved the big winner. Gwen Martin had brought incredible pastries from her café. Rosie O’Bannon, the forty-something owner of the beauty parlor, produced a multilayered taco dip with sour cream, guacamole and refried beans. She proudly offered it as a California recipe in Jenni’s honor.

Rosie’s niece, Leah, a first-grade teacher, was introduced as Karen’s best pal since childhood. She’d prepared not one but two dishes—a green bean casserole and a Jell-O mold. Leah radiated goodwill, appearing not the least threatened that her closest pal had acquired a new friend.

From the nursing home, Karen had fetched Mae Anne McRay, the liveliest octogenarian Jenni had ever met, who’d prepared a fruit salad. Despite being confined to a wheelchair due to osteoporosis, she served on the city council.

Two people were missing. Renée Lowell, Karen and Barry’s mother, whom Jenni had met previously, had stayed at the convalescent home because of a headache. A quadriplegic since a tractor hit her car years earlier, Renée had inspired Karen to apply her business administration training to running the convalescent center.

In addition, Amy Arroyo, the police chief’s notoriously absentminded secretary, hadn’t shown up by the time the women began taking their places around the table. Karen went into the kitchen to call her and returned a few minutes later.

“She forgot,” she reported.

“No surprise there,” Gwen responded.

“She said she’s taking a bubble bath and reading a book. Naturally, she didn’t remember to fix any food, either.” Karen shook her head indulgently. “I urged her to come anyway, but she declined. I think she was embarrassed.”

“She should be,” Mae Anne observed.

“I hope it’s a good book. Still I doubt it’s worth missing this feast,” Jenni said.

“Amy ought to pay more attention to real life,” the hostess replied. “I hope you aren’t offended.”

“Not at all,” Jenni responded. “I learned a long time ago that it’s healthier to forgive and forget.”

“Does that include Ethan Forrest?” Karen teased as she took a seat.

Across the table from Jenni, Leah let out a low whistle. “Getting a little personal, aren’t we?”

“He didn’t mean to attack her in front of the council!” cried Rosie, who, Jenni was learning, tended toward the dramatic. “Surely she doesn’t hold it against him.”

“Of course not. The woman isn’t blind.” Mae Anne helped herself to the Jell-O mold. She’d positioned her wheelchair at the foot of the table, where the food gravitated toward her. “He’s the best-looking single man in Downhome. How could anyone hold a grudge against Ethan?”

“He was at the café earlier.” Gwen tilted her head, apparently visualizing him. “It’s a darn shame he’s still carrying the torch for his late wife. That man’s too good to waste.”

“There are other desirable men around here,” Jenni protested. “Like your brother, Karen.”

“Not in his current state,” her hostess replied promptly. “He’s got too much to prove before he can even consider getting involved with anyone.”

She’d explained earlier about her brother’s murder conviction. Sharing a house with a killer had made Jenni uneasy at first, but Barry had reassured her with his openness and his intellectual curiosity about almost everything. She’d come to believe he really was innocent.

“Rosie’s son Mark is cute,” volunteered Gwen. “He’s a lieutenant at the police department.”

“Too young for me, even if he wasn’t my cousin,” Leah noted. “He’s only twenty-eight. I’m surprised he doesn’t have a girlfriend, though.”

“He went to the senior prom with Amy, but he doesn’t have a girlfriend now,” responded her aunt. “He’ll probably die a bachelor and I’ll never have grandchildren!”

“Aren’t there any other cute guys over thirty?” Jenni asked.

“Pepe Otero.” Rosie clapped her hand to her mouth. “I didn’t mean to say that! He likes Gwen.”

“He does not,” said the café owner. “Besides, he wouldn’t dare ask me out. It’s kind of a long story, Jenni. See, he gets food at a discount from Beau Johnson, who’s mad as a wet hen because I organize a once-a-month Farmers Market that he considers competition for his grocery store. Beau ups the prices anytime I walk in the door, so I buy my supplies out of town.”

Rosie nodded. “When she needs milk, I pick it up for her.”

Jenni wondered if they were joking. “You don’t mean the grocery store changes prices for different customers!”

“Just Pepe and me,” Gwen explained. Heads nodded. “Pepe gets a discount—because Beau figures his restaurant is my competition.”

“Well, if Pepe won’t ask out the woman of his dreams because he might have to pay more for milk, he’s a pretty poor prospect,” Jenni said.

“I agree,” Gwen volunteered. “A man ought to have the courage of his convictions. A woman, too. If I were young enough, I wouldn’t give up a chance at Ethan Forrest, even if it meant paying triple for everything.”

“Could we not talk about the chief?” Jenni asked, and then realized she’d probably revealed more than she meant to about the state of her thoughts.

Tactfully, no one pointed out that she wouldn’t mind if they were discussing, say, Beau Johnson’s romantic attributes. Or anyone else’s.

“Okay,” responded Karen. “Who has news to share?”

During the brief silence that followed, Gwen handed around a plate of cookies. At last Leah spoke. “I guess this is as good a time as any to make a confession.”

Karen paused with a gingersnap in one hand. “About a man?”

“No! About myself.” The teacher steepled her hands on the table. “I suppose I should have discussed it with you before, Karen, but I came to this decision on my own. I’m going to leave Downhome.”

A flurry of shocked responses filled the air. “Why?” and “Since when?” and “Where would you go?”

Jenni listened with a trace of envy. She couldn’t help recalling that no one at the hospital in L.A. had seemed distressed upon hearing of her impending departure.

“I’m not sure where,” Leah explained. “Next month, I’m going to visit my cousin in Austin, Texas, and then an old friend in Seattle to apply for teaching jobs. It could take a while to land one, so my departure isn’t imminent.”

“What brought this on?” Karen looked the most stunned of anyone.

Leah gazed around the table. “Certainly not a desire to leave my old friends. Still, except for college, I’ve lived my whole life in Downhome. If I don’t leave, I’ll grow old here without ever having an adventure. I guess that sounds kind of naive, but it’s what I want. And I’d like to have children, too.”

“I can relate to that,” Karen admitted. She and Leah were both thirty-two, a year younger than Jenni.

She understood their feelings. Sometimes when she held a baby or examined a child, she was overcome by a longing to have one of her own. However, her parents had set such a poor example that she wasn’t sure how well she would handle motherhood. She might risk it if she met the perfect guy, but how likely was that?

“You were always such a shy child,” Rosie said. “Then you turned from a duckling into a swan in high school and scared off the guys.”

“Is that what happened?” Leah asked ruefully. “They sure steered clear of me. It was painful.”

“Is finding Mr. Right part of your plan?” Karen asked.

“Not really.” Her friend gave her an apologetic smile. “I want to do exciting things, get to know new places, do something wild. I can’t act that way here. A guy—well, he might hold me back. I’ve been thinking about adopting a baby from a foreign orphanage.”

“I had a brief spell of wanting kids when I was in my thirties, but I got over it,” said Gwen. She’d never married, Karen had mentioned.

“Congratulations, Leah,” Mae Anne said.

“Because I’m taking a risk?” the teacher inquired.

“No. Because you got our minds off Ethan Forrest for about five minutes.”

Chuckles sounded around the table, then broke off as, in the next room, the front doorknob turned. Jenni still hadn’t grown accustomed to the Lowells’ habit of leaving their house unlocked during waking hours.

Barry entered. Peering through the archway between dining and living rooms, Jenni was startled when she glimpsed his companion.

“Uh-oh,” Rosie muttered.

“Well, now, that just blows the whole thing, doesn’t it?” commented Mae Anne, sending them into gales of laughter.

In the living room, Ethan wore such an endearingly baffled expression at their mirth that Jenni almost sympathized with him. Then she remembered telling him that she’d planned to attend this party tonight. He’d accompanied Barry knowing full well she would be here.

She reminded herself not to make assumptions. Maybe he had business to conduct. Besides, the warmth with which some of the other women greeted him made her realize how much female attention he must attract wherever he went.

Determined not to reveal her mixed feelings, Jenni gave the men a lazy grin and stretched like a cat. “Hi, Barry. Good to see you, Chief.”

Ethan’s appreciative gaze made Jenni blushingly aware that the movement had drawn her knit top tightly across her breasts. Darn it, she’d been trying to act casual, she thought as she shifted to a more modest position.

“Good to see all of you,” Ethan said. “Carry on, ladies. We have a few things to discuss.”

With a nod, Barry headed for the stairs. “Want to take some food with you?” Karen offered.

“No, thanks.” As usual, her brother was in a hurry.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Ethan strolled to the table, his powerful build inside the tailored suit drawing more than a few pairs of admiring eyes. As he claimed a cookie, he graced them all with a knowing wink that brought a round of smiles. Then he followed Barry up the stairs, leaving behind the sophisticated scent that had plagued Jenni’s senses all week.

Nobody spoke until, upstairs, a door closed. “That man,” Gwen said at last, “has charisma.”

Jenni didn’t bother to argue.

Chapter Five

For one inexplicable instant downstairs, the entire room had vanished except for Jenni Vine. Ethan didn’t understand it. He’d never been drawn to blondes, and he considered this one an ill fit to the community. Yet he’d battled the urge to stand there drinking her in, as if she cast a sunny spell over him.

She’d been perfectly aware of the effect she created. She’d stretched provocatively, while he, who made a point of keeping a friendly distance between himself and anything resembling male vulnerability, had stood there verging on meltdown.

This wasn’t entirely her fault, he conceded. As Gwen had said earlier, men all over town were scheduling their long-delayed physicals for a chance to be around her. Reducing adult males to the level of lusty adolescents had probably become second nature to her.

He almost wished he weren’t so scrupulous, or so cognizant of his position. If circumstances had been different, Ethan might have enjoyed a fling with the lady before she decamped for more interesting surroundings. Assuming she wanted a fling, of course.

No, he thought, he wasn’t the love ’em and leave ’em type, or the love ’em and be left by ’em type, either. When he’d fallen in love with Martha, he’d stayed in love. Heaven help him if he ever made that mistake with Jenni.

“What’ve you got for me?” he asked, following Barry into an upstairs rec room converted to a large office. Amid the file cabinets, desk and computer equipment was a bulletin board covered with old clippings and hand-drawn charts.

“Although nobody seems aware of it, Ethan, you’ve got an unsolved murder in this town,” Barry replied.

That caught his attention, all right. “Who’s the victim?”

“Norbert Anglin.”

Anglin was the farmer Barry had been convicted of killing. So this was about that case. “Go ahead.”

“The coroner said the killer struck him three times. I only hit him once,” Barry said.

“With a shovel,” Ethan reminded him dryly.

“He attacked me with a pitchfork.” Barry and his friend Chris McRay, Mae Anne’s grandson, had aroused Anglin’s wrath one night when he caught them freeing chickens at his farm. “Maybe I hit him harder than I thought, but I know I didn’t land more than one blow.”

“I’ve heard this before,” Ethan reminded him, studying the piles of papers in dismay. To see such a talented man unable to move beyond the past bothered him. “They said you might have lashed out two or three times without realizing it.”

“But I didn’t. And the cops were so quick to finger me they never tried to figure out who really killed him.” Barry selected a chart. “I’ve diagrammed his property and re-created the movements of everyone at the farm that night—Mrs. Anglin, the hired man, that transient who was supposedly sleeping in the barn—and, of course, Chris and me.”

Ethan resisted the urge to dismiss the matter. The editor had invested too much work and too much emotion to let go that easily. “I reviewed the case at your request last year, as you’ll recall. I can’t say the police did as thorough a job as they might have, but they had an eyewitness.”

“Chris.” Barry’s voice rang with resentment. “He’s the one who put me in prison.”

“He testified to the same thing you did—that you smacked Mr. Anglin with a shovel,” Ethan noted.

“No, he didn’t!” the editor replied. “He said I was yelling and flailing around, so he couldn’t be sure the shovel didn’t connect more than once.”

Ethan saw no point in debating. Better to go right to the point. “Are you telling me you’ve identified another suspect?”

“Yes, I have.”

That startled him. “Who? The transient?” He’d been ruled out because Chris had testified to seeing him some distance away as the two boys fled.

“Let me explain first so you’ll understand.” Barry selected a paper bearing a shaky signature. “I had to track Lou Bates—the transient—all the way to New Orleans, but I managed to interview him. I found the hired hand in Oklahoma six months ago.”

Barry had attended a newspaper conference in Louisiana the previous month, Ethan recalled. He supposed the Oklahoma trip had involved work, as well. “So that’s why you’ve been traveling so much.”

Barry forged ahead. “They both said the same thing. They spotted two figures running, and then a few minutes later they saw one of them sneak back.”

Ethan weighed the implications. “At the trial, the transient said he might have seen you head back.”

“And the DA implied that if I didn’t strike Norbert more than once the first time, I returned to finish the job,” Barry added. “But both told me they only made those statements because the police asked leading questions. They really didn’t think the man moved like me, only they were afraid to contradict the authorities.”

“After so many years, they probably don’t remember what happened.” Ethan had to play skeptic, no matter how much he sympathized with Barry. “Besides, Chris said he couldn’t find you afterward.”

“We split up while we were running, and I laid low for a while in case Anglin came after me. I was pretty scared.”

Ethan could envision a number of possibilities, including the witnesses conspiring to lie for some reason of their own. Since neither had profited from the farmer’s death and they’d had no criminal histories, however, such speculation couldn’t clear Barry. “You said you have a suspect.”

“It’s Chris. He must have done it.” The paper rattled in Barry’s hand. “He was the one who’d had an argument with the farmer the week before. That was why we were picking on him.”

“What did they quarrel about?” Ethan didn’t recall the subject appearing in the trial documents. Probably it hadn’t been relevant to the DA’s case, and Barry’s lawyer hadn’t introduced it, either.

“The old coot accused him of flirting with his wife. Which is ridiculous, considering she was twenty years older than we were, but he embarrassed Chris in front of other people.” Barry moved restlessly around the room.

“That explains the prank, but it’s hardly a motive for him to go back and kill the guy, then pin it on you,” Ethan observed.

“I don’t think he intended to frame me,” Barry conceded. “We focused on the fact that Anglin tried to stab us. But he also threatened to bring charges.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“It bothered me, but it must have upset Chris a lot more. I mean, he was planning to be a doctor. They’re held to high standards.” Barry pushed a wing of overgrown hair off his forehead. “An arrest record would have hurt his chances of getting into medical school. So I guess he wanted to shut Anglin up permanently.”

“Didn’t you have the same concern?” Ethan asked. “Or aren’t journalists held to high standards?”

The editor paused in front of his computer screen, glanced at a couple of flashing instant messages and then clicked them shut. “Being an ex-con has shut off certain avenues, but it doesn’t stop me from running the Gazette, because I inherited it. Chris wasn’t going to inherit a medical practice.”

“So he might have had a motive and opportunity,” Ethan said. “That isn’t evidence, Barry.”

“You could reopen the case and dig some up.” The editor’s movements grew more agitated. “How do you think it makes me feel that he’s gone on with his life, while mine has been torn apart? My dad never got over it. He died of a heart attack while I was in prison.”

“While Chris went on to become a pediatrician.” Ethan knew all about that, because McRay had applied for a position at the clinic. “But he left town. He must have felt bad.”

“Of course! He was ashamed to face me and my family,” Barry said. “Chief, he got away with murder. The evidence has to be there. The witnesses are still alive. Why not give it a chance?”

“Barry, this case is fifteen years old,” Ethan told him regretfully. “What you’ve found isn’t even close to enough evidence to persuade the DA to file charges. I’d be wasting the town’s resources to reopen the case. I respect the work you’ve done, but the truth is likely to stay buried. You’re only hurting yourself with this obsession.”

“I’m going to clear my name. Whether you help me or not. It’ll make a terrific story when I run it. Maybe I’ll even get a chance at the big time, after all. Chris threw my whole life off track. I only went along that night to do him a favor. He has to pay for what he did.”

“Make sure you stay on the right side of the law.”

“I’m not stupid. The last thing I’d risk is being charged with another crime.”

“Please keep me informed of what you find.” Ethan wished he didn’t have to leave it at that. However, he couldn’t get involved in a personal vendetta.

Unfortunately, he could tell from Barry’s narrowed eyes that the man wasn’t likely to give up. And that he now considered Ethan an obstacle, if not an outright antagonist.

FOR A WHILE after Ethan went upstairs, the conversation centered on police matters. Jenni was puzzled to learn that someone had been stealing family portraits.

“Just the pictures?” she asked. “Nothing else?”

“Not that anyone has mentioned,” Gwen told her. “Except the frames, of course.”

“It might be just the first step,” Rosie warned. “This man could be studying his victims and planning to murder them in their sleep.”

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