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“She doesn’t seem like the type, but she was sure jumpy when I happened to come up behind her on Main.”
“Run a background check on her?”
“I haven’t had cause. Not yet, anyway.”
Clay snorted. “I was county sheriff thirty-six years before moving back here to retire. Believe me, keep a close eye on that one. Apples don’t fall far from the tree—especially a bad one like her father.”
“I remember hearing something about the Daniel Hanrahan murder case. That was him?”
“Yeah. Frank Grover was a wonderful guy. He’d do anything for this town and the people in it, and he was a good friend. For him to die that way, out on some back road with a bullet in his gut...” Clay shook his head. “It still makes me sick thinking about it.”
“Was there ever any question about the murderer?”
“Not at all.”
“The evidence?”
“Daniel Hanrahan was found at the scene. We got his fingerprints off the gun, and he had blood on his clothes.”
“My folks shipped me off to boarding school long before then. What was the local reaction?”
“I don’t think anyone here ever forgave him for what he did to Frank—or for the fact that he took his own life before going to trial. If his widow had been smart, she would’ve moved someplace far, far away.” Clay glanced at his watch. “See you tomorrow.”
Nathan nodded to Clay as he left, then crossed his office to the bank of files along one wall. Interesting.
He’d left the Minneapolis police department to work with the sheriff’s department in Hawthorne, so he could leave hectic city life for the north country, then gladly accepted a transfer to his hometown. That was all for the good.
But he hadn’t expected the office to be so out-of-date.
Most everything current was on the county’s computer system, but local cases going back ten years or more were still jammed into crumbling manilla folders—yellowed documents, tattered notes, and old photographs held together with brittle rubber bands.
He’d intended to work through all those files and review every case soon after arriving, but with a hundred square miles under his jurisdiction and just one relief deputy, he’d only made it through three years’ worth. Now, he thumbed through the files, looking for the Hanrahan case.
Ollie Nielsen, his part-time secretary, rapped lightly on his office door, then stepped inside with a handful of mail and a package.
She could play the perfect Mrs. Santa Claus, with her snow-white hair and grandmotherly face, but he knew better than to say so. Ollie still jogged two miles every day, wore spandex pants with glittery silver shoes, and had recently earned her brown belt in taekwondo.
“It’s one o’clock.” She handed him the box, labeled D.A.R.E.—Drug Abuse Resistance Education. “And these new brochures just arrived. You’re due at the middle school in fifteen minutes.”
“Thanks.” He thumbed through a few more files, found the one he wanted and tossed it onto his desk. “I’ll be back around two-thirty.”
During his time with the Minneapolis Police Department, he’d been a street cop until being assigned to community education, but here in Ryansville, he covered a full spectrum of a deputy’s job. This Wednesday afternoon class was one of his favorites.
“You watch out for those young teachers, now, you hear?” Ollie winked at him. “Down at the beauty shop, I heard that a few of them have their eyes on you.”
“Thanks,” he said dryly. “But I doubt that’ll be a problem during my class.”
Or any other time.
Most of the teachers were middle-aged and married, while the sweet young things just out of college were so...so young. A few women in town had openly flirted with him, but he had no interest in starting gossip, had little time for casual dating, and definitely didn’t have the time for anything longterm.
Not that he took much notice of rumors, but the disrespect of the town’s young people wasn’t something he wanted to earn.
Ollie put the stack of mail on his desk. When her gaze fell on the folder he’d set aside, she paled and drew in a sharp breath. “I...um... you know I don’t like to pry.”
“You’re the soul of discretion.” He couldn’t help but grin. “I still say you could be a private investigator. You have a better eye for detail and more patience than anyone I know in the field. And you could probably take down and cuff anyone who dared look at you cross-wise.”
Usually she laughed and shot back a comment about how he’d never manage without her in the office. But this time she hesitated, her mouth working and eyes filled with pain, as if unsure about what she should say. “I couldn’t help but notice the file you just pulled,” she said finally.
