Saved By The Sheriff

“You’re very thorough.”

“I’m determined not to make any mistakes this time.”

And I’m determined not to let you, she thought.

* * *

ANDY STENSON’S STORAGE unit was located in a long metal shed at the end of Fireline Road on the edge of town. Weedy fields extended beyond the chain-link fence that surrounded the shed on all sides, the land sloping upward from there toward Dakota Ridge and the mountains beyond. With no traffic and no neighbors, the location was peaceful, even beautiful, with the first summer wildflowers blooming in the fields and a china blue sky arching overhead. But there wasn’t anything beautiful about Travis’s errand here today.

Brenda agreed to meet him, and when he pulled into the rutted drive, he found her waiting at the far end, key in hand. “You open it,” she said, pushing the key at him. “I haven’t been in here since before Andy died. I paid a cleaning company to move all his stuff out here.”

“Are you okay being here now?” Travis asked, studying her face. Tension lines fanned out from her mouth, but she didn’t look on the verge of a breakdown.

“I’m okay,” she said. “I just want to get this over with.”

He unfastened the padlock and rolled up the metal door of the unit. Sunlight illuminated jumbled stacks of file boxes. Furniture filled one corner of the unit—several filing cabinets and some chairs and Andy’s desk, scarred and dusty. The chair he had been sitting in when he died, stained with his blood, was in a police storage unit, logged as evidence.

Brenda traced a finger across the dust on the desktop. Was she thinking about her young husband, who had been taken from her when they were still practically newlyweds? She squared her shoulders and turned to study the file boxes. “There’s a lot of stuff here,” she said. “Do you know what you want?”

“I want to look at his case files.” Travis studied the labels on the boxes, then removed the lid from one with the notation Clients, A through C. “I know you said you didn’t know much about his work, but who would you say was his biggest client at the time he died?”

“That one’s easy enough. Hake Development.” She pointed to a box on the bottom of the pile, with the single word HAKE scrawled on the end. “Andy couldn’t believe his luck when Henry Hake hired him instead of one of the big-city firms. Mr. Hake said he wanted to support local business.” She chuckled. “He did that, all right. Hake Development accounted for a big percentage of Andy’s income that year.” Her voice trailed away at these last words, as if she was remembering once more the reason the good fortune had ended.

“All right, I’ll start with this one.” Travis moved aside the stack of boxes to retrieve the Hake files, and found a second box, also marked Hake, behind it.

He set the boxes on the desk, then went to his car and retrieved the evidence tape and seals. “You’re verifying that I haven’t opened the boxes or tampered with them in any way,” he said.

“I am.” He ran a strip of wide tape horizontally and vertically across each box, sealing the tops in place, then asked Brenda to write her name across each piece of tape.

“I’ll video opening the boxes,” he said. “With Lacy’s parents as witnesses. That ought to satisfy any court that we aren’t up to anything underhanded.”

Brenda watched him, arms folded across her chest. “I hope you find something useful in there,” she said. “Though I can’t imagine what.”

“What was Andy doing for Hake, do you know?” Travis asked.

“Just the legal paperwork for the mining claims Henry Hake had bought and planned to develop as a vacation resort. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that environmental group got an injunction against the development and Andy was fighting that.”

“I remember a little about that,” Travis said. “They had a Ute Indian chief speak at a council meeting or something like that?”

“He wasn’t a chief, just a tribal representative—a friend of Paige Riddell’s. She was president of the group, I believe.”

“Maybe someone who didn’t want the development thought taking out Hake’s lawyer would stop the threat of the injunction being overturned,” Travis said.

“If they thought that, they were wrong. Hake hired another firm to represent him—someone out of Denver this time. I don’t know what happened after that, though I guess he hasn’t done anything with the property yet.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to check it out,” Travis said.

He picked up the first box as his phone beeped. Setting it down, he answered the call. “A car just crashed through the front window of the Cake Walk Café.” Adelaide sounded out of breath with excitement. “Gage is headed there. Dwight and Roberta are in training today. I can call someone from another shift in if you want me to. The ambulance is en route from Junction.”

“I’ll handle it. I’m on my way.” Travis hung up the phone and studied the boxes. He could take them with him, but after what happened yesterday, he didn’t want to risk someone trying to get hold of them. He returned the keys to Brenda. “Lock up after I’ve left. I’ll have to send someone to retrieve these later.”

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Apparently, someone crashed into the café.”

Brenda covered her mouth with her hand. “I hope no one was hurt.”

“Me, too.”

In the car, he called Lacy. “I picked out two boxes of files from Andy’s storage and got them sealed, but now I have to go on a call. It will be a while before I can get back to them.”

“I can pick them up,” she said. “If they’re already sealed, it shouldn’t make any difference, should it?”

He debated as he guided his SUV down the rutted dirt road leading away from the storage facility. “Ride out here with Brenda and have her deliver you and the boxes back to your house.” Before she could protest, he added, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I don’t want to give any lawyers the opportunity to object.”

“All right. I’d like to visit with Brenda, anyway.”

“I’ll get back with you to set a time for the two of us to get together,” he said, and ended the call. As much as he wanted to find the person who had killed Andy Stenson, his job wouldn’t allow him to focus all his attention on one case. Right now he had a mess to clean up at the café.

* * *

LACY ENDED THE call from Travis and looked out the front window. The glass company had been out this morning to replace the broken pane and she had a clear view of the street. The car she had noticed earlier was still there—a faded blue sedan that had been parked in front of a vacation cottage three doors down and across the street from her parents’ house. The cottage had a For Sale sign in front, but Lacy was pretty sure no potential buyer had been inside the cottage all this time.

She retrieved her mother’s bird-watching binoculars from the bookcase by the door and returned to the window, training the glasses on the car. A man sat behind the wheel, head bent, attention on the phone in his hand. He was middle-aged, with light brown hair and narrow shoulders. He didn’t look particularly threatening, but then again, looks could be deceiving. And it wasn’t as if it would have taken that much brawn to throw that rock through the window yesterday afternoon.

She shifted the binoculars to the license plate on the car. BRH575. She’d remember the number and think about asking Travis to check it out. He owed her more than a few favors, didn’t he? She had almost mentioned the car to him while they were talking just now, but she didn’t want to give him the idea that she needed him for anything. She didn’t like to think of herself as hardened, but three years in prison had taught her to look out for herself.

She brought the glasses up to the man in the car and gasped as it registered that he had raised his own pair of binoculars and was focused on her. She took two steps back, fairly certain that he couldn’t see her inside the house, but unwilling to take chances. What was he doing out there, watching the house? Watching her? She replaced the binoculars on the shelf and headed toward the back of the house. As she passed her mother’s home office, Jeanette looked up from her computer. A former teacher, she now worked as an online tutor. “Who was that on the phone?” she asked.

Lacy started to lie, but couldn’t think of one that sounded convincing enough. “Travis canceled our meeting to go over Andy’s files,” she said. “He had to go on a call.”

“I hope everything’s all right.” Jeanette swiveled her chair around to face her daughter. “You’re okay, working with Travis?” she asked. “I know you don’t have the warmest feelings toward him, and I’ll admit, I had my doubts, too. But when I saw how hard he worked to clear your name...” She compressed her lips, struggling for control. “I really don’t think you’d be standing here right now if it wasn’t for him.”

“I wouldn’t have been in prison in the first place if it wasn’t for him, either,” Lacy said.

Jeanette said nothing, merely gave Lacy a pleading look.

“I’m okay working with him,” Lacy said. “I don’t know how much good going through those old files will do, but I’m willing to help.” She turned away again.

“Where are you going?” her mother asked.

“I thought I’d take a walk.”

“That’s nice.”

Lacy didn’t wait for more, but hurried toward the back door. All the houses on this street backed up to the river, and a public trail ran along the bank. She let herself out the back gate and followed this trail up past four houses, then slipped alongside the fourth house, crossed the street behind the blue sedan, and walked up to the passenger side of the vehicle. The driver had lowered the front windows a few inches, so Lacy leaned in and said, loudly, “What do you think you’re doing, spying on me?”

The man juggled his phone, then dropped it. “You—you startled me!” he gasped.