AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“My brother was like her,” she replied quietly. “I miss him every day.”
“I miss my wife,” he said. He drew in a breath. “We carry scars inside us that never heal.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
He looked down at her, his dark eyes quiet and soft. “We’ve both been through the wars. I’m sorry I made things harder for you, when you’d just lost your brother and sister-in-law.”
She tried to smother the memory. It was still disturbing. “I’ve never had feelings that ran that deep for anyone,” she confessed. “Well, maybe once, but that ended badly. I had a friend, just a friend, one of the men in Lawrence’s law office. He was crazy for this girl he’d met in a bar. She was really beautiful. He was crazy about her and even bought a ring because he wanted to marry her. Then he discovered that she was a paid escort. Everybody in the office felt sorry for him. One day he didn’t come to work and nobody knew why. They found him in his apartment, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.” She shivered a little. “He really loved her, but she only saw him as a client. Poor guy!”
“Men get involved with a lot of the wrong sort of women before they find the one good one.”
She nodded. “Deborah was one of the kindest people I ever met. I imagine she was a very good doctor.”
“One of the best.” It hurt him to talk about her. He glanced toward the detective, who was still on the phone and almost yelling now, something about not coming home and people needed to mind their own business. He hung up and stood smoldering until he realized that two other people were staring at him curiously.
“My office,” he announced importantly, lifting the cell phone before he put it back in its holder on his belt. “A few hitches. Nothing serious.”
“This, er, body,” Sheriff Cody said. “About your height?”
The other man paused, glancing at the lawman’s taciturn face. “Well, as a matter of fact, yes, he was!”
“And you have no idea where the body went?”
“No,” he replied. He grinned. “But we’ll have to search for it, right?”
“If we have to get all my personnel out here to search for a body we might not find, how am I going to explain the loss of time in man-hours that we spend here? Salaries have to be paid, you know, and this would amount to a lot of overtime.”
“Oh, I could make a sizeable contribution, if that’s all,” he said airily. “Because we have to find the body.”
Sheriff Banks pushed his hat back over his blond-streaked brown hair and stared down at the man, his dark eyes watchful. “I’d like to see your credentials. And I don’t know your name.”
“But I told you. It’s Mike Steele.”
“Driver’s license, please.”
The other man’s face lost color. “Driver’s license?”
“Yes. Let’s see it.”
He hesitated. “But I told you...”
Cody moved a step closer. He looked intimidating now. “I want to see your driver’s license, Mr. Steele. Now.”
There was no way out of it, the man saw. He grimaced, but he pulled out his license and handed it to Cody. He looked at it closely. “Horace Whatley,” he read. He looked up. That name was familiar. Don Blalock had told him the story about his fictitious livestock foreman, laughing all the while. This was the same man. But nobody was laughing.
Cody handed back the license. “Mr. Whatley,” he said coolly, “reporting a false crime is an actionable offense. It wastes time and resources. I really should arrest you and let you speak to the judge when your case comes up.”
“Please don’t,” the little man said, his bravado dissolving. “They’ll make me go home to my sister.” His face fell. “She treats me like an idiot. They all treat me like an idiot. They want to dose me so strongly that I won’t know my name, and put me...put me away.” His pale eyes looked up into the sheriff’s. “I’m not as far gone as they think I am. I just like acting out my fantasies sometimes.” He sighed. “I’m independently wealthy. I can take care of myself, and I would, if they’d just let me! I’ve never hurt anybody in my life. I never would.” He looked up again. “Please don’t make them send me back to Miami.”
“I gather that your sister was just speaking to you on the phone?”
He grimaced. “They called her, about when I was pretending to be a livestock foreman. She’s been out of the country. They couldn’t reach her until today—her attorneys, that is. I didn’t mean any harm. I really do have some good ideas about livestock feed. I’ve read all the journals, all the expert opinions. Please don’t send me home,” he added again, and his expression would have melted a harder heart than Cody’s. “I’ll stop trying to work on ranches. Honest!”
Cody pointed at his chest. “You stop making up dead bodies,” he said firmly. “You get one second chance. After that, you’re back to your sister’s. You got me?”
“You mean, I can stay?” he exclaimed, and fought tears. “I’ll stay out of trouble. I promise! I’ll be the best citizen in town. I’ll work at it real hard! I promise!” he said again.
Cody laughed softly. “Okay. But no more experimenting with cattle feed and pretending to have experience with ranching, and mostly, no more fictional dead bodies. You got that?”
