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“Here.” Dal put a key in her hand. “One of my men’s watching the house right now, but he has to leave at five. That’s when you’ll need to relieve him. The other men will all be out with the pregnant heifers. Another snow storm’s headed our way.”
She wanted to protest, but she couldn’t find a way out that didn’t involve slapping that smirk off Dal’s sensuous mouth.
“All right,” she said shortly.
“I’ll leave the check on the telephone table,” Dal added. “Thanks, Jeff.”
He walked out without another glance at Meadow.
Nice, she thought, thanking her boss and without a single word of approval for her. That was Dal.
“Sorry about that,” Jeff said when his friend was gone. “I tried to ward him off, but he’s in our jurisdiction. And he’s my friend . . .”
“Not to worry, I don’t mind,” she added. She frowned. “That was the table that one of the major surrenders was signed on when the Civil War ended, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes, it was. It’s worth a fortune. It was handed down in Dal’s family. His grandfather sold it on one of his drunken binges,” he added. “Took Dal’s father a year to make enough to buy it back. Sad story. It’s sort of a family heirloom.”
“Like the pipe organ and the Victorian lamp that belonged to former presidents.” She was thinking aloud.
“I had the same thought,” Jeff replied. “Our thief is very selective about what he takes. If it’s the same man—I’m assuming it’s a man, because we’ve never had a female thief do break-ins locally—then it was probably him who tried to get into Dal’s house while we were all at the dance. Good thing his foreman was in the house getting a bill of lading at the time and heard the noise in the back of the house. Chased the thief, but lost him in the woods.”
“Nobody called us,” she complained.
“Dal would have, but he was,” he hesitated, “incapacitated at the time.”
“He was with his girlfriend,” she said, trying to hide her irritation.
“He was stinking drunk,” Jeff corrected. “Dana had to drive him home and get him to bed. She said he slept the whole way home. One of his cowboys helped her when they got to the ranch.” He shook his head. “Never saw Dal drunk in my life. He hates liquor. His grandfather beat him when he was little, when his daddy went away on cattle sales. He never got over it. Said he’d die before he’d turn into a lush.”
She gritted her teeth. “Poor man,” she said reluctantly.
“We get a lot of deputies who come from homes like that,” he mentioned. “They go into law enforcement trying to save other kids from what they went through. Sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes we don’t.”
“That’s true,” she confessed. “We’ve all been there, where you try to arrest a drunken husband for beating his wife, and the wife either refuses to testify or attacks you when you try to arrest him.” She laughed. “One threw a whole gallon of milk on one of our officers in St. Louis. Soaked him to the skin. We called him ‘the milkman.’” She laughed at the memory. “He was a good sport.”
“Don’t get me started,” he said. “I’ve got some stories of my own.”
She grinned. “Okay. I’ll get to work.”
“Plenty of opportunities for that. There are several new files on your desk,” he added apologetically.
“No sweat. It’s what I get paid for.”
He glanced at her. “It stung you, what Dal said about your gun.”
She shifted restlessly. “He hates me. He said I looked like a call girl in my red dress.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it.” He defended his friend. “You looked very elegant, I thought.”
“Thanks, boss.”
“Dal says things he doesn’t mean. He’s always sorry, and he tries to make amends. I don’t know why he’s so hard on you,” he added, frowning. “It’s not like him. He loves women. He goes out of his way to make sure the ranch wives who work for him have anything they need and a lot of things they just want.”
“It’s a long story,” she replied, recalling the first incident, her red dress that met a terrible fate in the coal. “I know he doesn’t like me. It doesn’t matter. In this business, you get used to being disliked.” She chuckled. “I’ll just go do my job.”
“Good idea. I’ll go earn my paycheck, too.”
“The county commission will love you for it.”
