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  ‘Stop!’ Paula said, taking a deep drink of the wine. ‘Now they’re just going to compare that description to the husk they see before them!’

  ‘What husk?’ Holly said. ‘You look wonderful.’

  Paula snorted. ‘I’ve heard about southern hospitality, but this is ridiculous!’

  Jean patted Paula’s hand. ‘You look fine,’ she said, noticing that the bottle of wine Paula had brought back from the wet bar only a short while ago was already half gone.

  Jean couldn’t help remembering how Paula liked to drink in their undergraduate days. She would stay out all night with one boy or another, then go to class still drunk but managed to make an ‘A’ anyway. In medical school, though, things had gotten a little tougher for her. There was that time at the end of their first year when Paula had got drunk and totally missed the final testing. She’d lost her first year and had to start over again. Jean couldn’t help but wonder if her drinking was still a problem.

  ‘What do you mean, dead?’ I demanded of Anthony.

  ‘Well, what we normally mean when we say dead, Sheriff. As in not breathing, bit the big one, kicked the bucket, gone to the big double-wide in the sky—’

  ‘Stop!’ I said, and got up and followed him back to the cells.

  And there he was – Darrell Blanton – lying on the cot we called a bed, looking like a little boy asleep. Except he wasn’t. There’s a stillness in death that doesn’t mimic sleep. Even in sleep there is animation – not so in death. In death, there’s only the shell left – everything else, even with a Blanton, is long gone.

  ‘Jesus H. Christ!’ I muttered under my breath. ‘What happened?’

  Anthony shook his head. ‘No idea. Can’t find a mark on him.’

  ‘Call the ME,’ I said as I walked into the cell to check out the body.

  Chandra Blanton put her hands under her swelling belly and lifted the baby to get a little relief for her bladder. She could barely count the number of times she’d been to the bathroom that day for nothing more than a false alarm. And Chandra, unlike many Blantons, could actually count. She wasn’t sure if it had been a good idea to tell her mee-maw about the sheriff’s wife’s party going on upstairs at the Longbranch Inn, but somehow it had seemed to please Mee-maw, and anything that pleased Mee-maw was a relief to Chandra and her mama. A happy Mee-maw was a calm Mee-maw, and everybody wanted a calm Mee-maw.

  Chandra had gotten the job at the Longbranch Inn right after she found out she was pregnant. She hadn’t told her soon-to-be employers about the pregnancy, though, because she’d been pretty sure she wouldn’t have gotten the job. Once on the job, however, she knew they couldn’t fire her because of her pregnancy. When the time came, she planned on saying the baby was a preemie, no matter how big he was. And yes, wonder of wonders, she was having a boy. The last ten pregnancies in Blantonville had produced girls, which didn’t bode well for weddings in fifteen or sixteen years. But her son would have his pick of anybody he wanted to marry. And because his own daddy wasn’t a Blanton, Chandra was pretty sure he’d be one up on most of his cousins.

  Chandra’s job at the Longbranch Inn was to answer the phone, file paperwork and jot down money in and out in a ledger that went to the accountant every two weeks. She was good at her job and the powers that be were happy with her work. So it was with some misgivings that she looked up and saw her mee-maw, Eunice Blanton, her mama, Marge Blanton, and her uncle, Earl Blanton, all coming in the front door of the Longbranch Inn. Uncle Earl was walking like he had a corn cob up his butt, Chandra thought. She came around the desk and tried to stop them before they got far enough into the inn to be seen by her boss.

  ‘What’re y’all doing?’ Chandra asked, with just a touch of panic in her voice.

  ‘Where’s that sheriff’s wife having her party?’ Eunice demanded.

  ‘Ah, Mee-maw, I can’t give out that information! It’s against the rules!’ Chandra tried, knowing it was to no avail.

  ‘Piss on your sorry rules! I’m gonna teach that sheriff a lesson, jailing my boy! I mean, he didn’t mean Joynell no harm! That was an accident, clear as day!’

  ‘What happened?’ Chandra asked.

  ‘Nothing!’ Eunice said. ‘Darrell was cleaning his gun and it musta accidentally gone off and killed Joynell. And now that damn sheriff’s locked up my boy! I ain’t having it! So tell me where that party thing is happening!’

  ‘Mee-maw, I can’t!’ Chandra wailed.

  ‘You want that baby born out in the streets, girl? Or you wanna come home to your mama and me and have that baby in a bed?’ Mee-maw demanded.

  Chandra had no alternative. She knew her mee-maw wasn’t kidding around. She’d throw her out on the street in a New York minute. Chandra sighed. ‘Suite 214, second floor.’ Mee-maw grabbed Chandra’s arm. ‘Lead the way, girl!’

  ‘Gonna have to take the body back to the morgue and do an autopsy. First blush, can’t see a thing wrong with the boy,’ the county coroner said.

  ‘Could it be a heart attack?’ I asked him.

  ‘Could be,’ he said. ‘Or just about anything. Except a gunshot or stabbing. Oh, or strangulation. Or suffocation—’

  ‘Got it,’ I said, and walked out of the cell.

  The coroner’s staff bundled up Darrell, put him on a stretcher and carted him off. It was the second time that day we’d had an ambulance at the front door.

  I wandered into the bullpen and saw Anthony shutting down. We closed the office at around six on a Saturday, with an on-call person answering phone calls or emergencies – except when we had guests. Anthony had been on babysitting duty tonight, with Dalton on-call, as both their women were busy elsewhere. It was after seven in the evening now, and with our two guests gone Anthony was no longer on babysitting duty. I walked up to him and asked, ‘Hey, since our wives are both at that shindig at the Longbranch Inn, you wanna go grab a bite to eat?’

  ‘Ah, wow, Sheriff, yeah that would be great, but I just called Nita’s husband and made some plans. There’s a Doctor Who festival on TV tonight and we’re gonna barbeque. You wanna join us?’ Anthony asked as an afterthought, I’m sure. Nita Skitteridge, another deputy, was Anthony’s cousin and the first African-American woman deputy in the history of Prophesy County, Oklahoma. I’d hired ’em both, me being the forward thinker that I am.

  ‘No, that’s OK. I’m not a big Doctor Who fan. Got a ball game on tape at home. Think I’ll pick up some fried chicken and head that way.’

  ‘You sure? I make some mean pork ribs! And Will said Nita made a mess of beans before she left.’

  I sighed. ‘Sounds good, but I best head home. Y’all have a good time,’ I said and headed back to my office. Should I go pick up my son? With Darrell dead, I could put Joynell Blanton’s murder down as done. I put my feet up on my desk and watched as the lights down the hall blinked off.

  TWO

  Aunt Jewel called Matt’s mom and asked if Matt could come over, and his mom said of course, so Johnny Mac went to the front porch to watch for him. He saw Matt come out of his front door just as a boy was coming up the street on a bicycle. He waved frantically to Matt, who went to meet the boy on the sidewalk. Matt waved Johnny Mac over and Johnny Mac met the two boys at the base of Aunt Jewel’s driveway.

  ‘Hey, Johnny Mac, this is Cody.’ To Cody, he said, ‘Johnny Mac lives out in the country but his aunt lives right here.’ Cody stuck out his hand and Johnny Mac shook it like his dad had taught him.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘Hey,’ Cody said.

  Cody was short and stocky, with dark hair, blue eyes and pale skin. He was in Matt’s sixth-grade class, so Johnny Mac figured they were all around his age – eleven or twelve.

  ‘Matt, listen,’ Cody said. ‘I saw this guy dragging a dog into the woods over there,’ he said, pointing toward the forest of trees behind the last house on the cul-de-sac. ‘I think he’s gonna kill it. I’m gonna go try to stop him. Y’all wanna come?’

  Matt and Johnny Mac looked
at each other, and Johnny Mac looked back at his Aunt Jewel’s house. ‘What do I tell her?’ Johnny Mac asked Matt.

  ‘She doesn’t have a PlayStation, does she?’ Matt asked.

  ‘Uh uh,’ Johnny Mac answered.

  ‘Then tell her I got a new game for my PlayStation and we’re gonna play it at my house.’

  ‘Cool,’ Johnny Mac said, and went in his aunt’s house to spread the lie.

  There was a knock on the hotel suite’s door and Jasmine whispered to Jean, ‘That’s got to be Rex the stripper!’

  ‘Oh, God, no,’ Paula said, shaking her head. ‘This has got to be the redneck version of hell.’

  Jasmine refused to look at Jean’s friend or in any way acknowledge her comment, and headed to the door while the other women in the room stuffed their faces with appetizers and booze.

  When Jasmine opened the door she saw Rex, the college kid she’d hired to strip, standing there, but he appeared to be asleep. He then fell on top of her, knocking her to the floor. Three people barged in behind him. Even from her position on the floor, Jasmine’s cop training came in useful. She memorized their descriptions for later: an old woman came in first, in her late sixties/early seventies, with white hair and blue eyes covered in cat’s-eye-framed glasses. She had a high forehead and several missing teeth. Immediately behind her was another woman, possibly in her mid- to late-thirties and about fifty pounds overweight, with impossibly red hair in the old Farrah Fawcett cut from the seventies. She had the same blue eyes as the older woman, with nearly identical glasses. The man who came in behind her was short, blond and chubby, and was trying desperately to pull something out of his pants. It only took a moment for Jasmine to realize it was a shotgun. Unfortunately, as he tugged the shotgun out, his pants fell down, exposing dirty whitey-tighties and hairless thighs.

  ‘For God’s sake, Earl!’ the old woman said between clinched teeth. ‘Pull up those pants and make yourself decent!’

  The last one in the door, Jasmine noticed, was a seriously pregnant young woman, probably still in her teens, who clung to the walls and appeared as scared as the bachelorette party members.

  ‘OK, listen up, you bitches!’ Eunice Blanton shouted, silencing the noise from the women, some of whom were still screaming due to the intrusion, while others were still laughing at Earl’s whitey-tighties. ‘Which one of you is the sheriff’s wife?’

  Jean used one of her crutches to rise up from the sofa where she sat between Holly and Paula. Both grabbed her arm, trying to get her to sit back down, but Jean shook them off.

  ‘I’m Jean McDonnell. The sheriff is my husband. Who are you and what are you doing here?’

  ‘Shut up!’ Eunice said. Turning to Jasmine, she pointed her gun and said, ‘You! You’re a deputy, right? I saw you when you served papers on my cousin Wilmer. Marge, check her for a weapon.’ Turning to the rest of the women, she said, ‘OK, how many more of you whores are deputies?’

  Nita raised her hand. The woman said, ‘Earl, check her for a weapon. Anybody else carrying? ’Cause if I find a gun in somebody’s purse, everybody’s gonna get hurt, understand me?’ To her granddaughter, she said, ‘Chandra, go check the purses—’

  ‘Mee-maw, I can’t get involved in this! I’ll lose my job!’

  ‘Shut up and do as I say!’ Eunice shrieked.

  ‘I never carry where there’s alcohol,’ Jasmine said.

  ‘Me neither,’ Nita said.

  ‘OK,’ Eunice said. ‘But don’t mind me if I check anyway, as you bitches are probably lying! Chandra, go check them purses! Now, you, Deputy,’ she said, pointing the gun at Jasmine, who was still stood near the unconscious body of the stripper, ‘go sit with these other bitches.’

  Jasmine did as she was told. Jean was still standing, and addressed Eunice. ‘Please tell us what’s going on,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, now it’s “please,” is it?’ Eunice said, smirking. ‘Didn’t hear no “please” earlier, now, did I, Mrs Sheriff?’

  ‘We can’t help you if we don’t know what you want,’ Jean said, her tone moderate.

  ‘Well, aren’t you the fancy one,’ Eunice said. ‘Being all helpful and all butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth! What makes me think you’d knife me in the back given half the chance?’

  ‘I mean you no harm,’ Jean said. ‘I’d just like this over with as quickly and harmlessly as possible.’

  ‘Well, I’m with you on the quick, but not so much on the harmless,’ Eunice said. She walked further into the suite and picked up the room phone that sat on a table next to the sofa. ‘Now, Mrs Sheriff, you sit down here ’fore you fall down – didn’t know you was a gimp – and call your hubby. You tell him to let my son go in the next hour or I start shooting a hostage every ten minutes after that, okie doke?’

  I had my hand on the side door to the parking lot when my cell phone rang. I checked the screen and saw it was my wife. Grinning, I picked it up and said, ‘How drunk are you?’

  ‘Milt, there’s a situation,’ Jean said, and she didn’t sound drunk or even happy.

  ‘What’s up, babe?’ I asked, heading back into my office to sit down.

  ‘There’s a woman here who says you’ve arrested her son.’ There was a short silence and then she said, ‘Darrell Blanton. She says to release him in the next half hour or she’ll start shooting hostages.’

  ‘How many people she got?’ I asked, my stomach sinking to my knees.

  ‘Two others and—’ Jean started, then I heard a new voice.

  ‘Listen to me, Mr Thinks-he’s-all-that! I’m not kidding around! I want my boy back. You know it was an accident him killing Joynell! That boy never meant nobody no harm! So you let him out or your missus and her friends here are gonna be hurting real bad!’

  ‘Mrs Blanton, listen to me—’ I started, but she interrupted.

  ‘I ain’t listening to a thing you say, Mr Sheriff! I’ve said my piece! Let my boy go and I’ll let your women go, got that?’

  Then she hung up in my ear.

  We have this doohickey installed on Holly’s phone where, with just a punch of three code numbers, you could contact all the deputies’ cell phones at one time and talk to them on speaker. I ran out to the bullpen and hit the code.

  Chandra didn’t know what to do. She didn’t find any guns in the purses, like the lady deputies had said, but each had a cell phone. She picked one out of a purse and stuck it in her pocket. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do. All she knew was she didn’t want to be part of this, didn’t want to be involved in hurting anybody, and she sure as hell didn’t want to have her baby in prison! She’d heard they took your baby away when you had it in prison and, since her whole family was here in this room, if she went to prison they’d all be going to prison too, and her baby would go into the system as there’d be no immediate family to care for him. Maybe she should use the phone in her pocket to call Mike, the baby’s father. She’d been attracted to him in the first place because he was smart. She didn’t know a lot of smart people, living in Blantonville and being home-schooled, so to speak. At least, that’s what the Blanton mamas told the truant officers when they came snooping around. Chandra was lucky that she liked to read – as opposed to most Blantons – and had basically schooled herself. She thought maybe Mike could take the baby, or, even better, figure a way out for Chandra. She really didn’t want to go to prison.

  ‘Mee-maw,’ Chandra said, ‘I gotta go make.’

  ‘Baby dancing on your bladder?’ Mee-maw said with a frown. ‘They do that.’ To the sheriff’s wife, she asked, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’

  The sheriff’s wife pointed and Chandra hauled ass into the bathroom. It hadn’t been a lie. She did have to make, but she also intended to call Mike. She turned on the water faucet in the sink to cover the sound of her conversation, turned on the deputy’s cell phone, and dialed.

  It took less than fifteen minutes for my staff to show up. Emmett Hopkins, whose wife, Jasmine, was at the scene; Dalton Pettigrew, whose
betrothed, Holly, was there; Anthony Dobbins, whose wife, Maryanne, was there; and Nita Skitteridge’s husband, Will. Will’s not on my staff but his wife was also at the scene.

  After I’d placed the call to my staff, I’d placed another one to Charlie Smith, police chief of Longbranch. After all, the deed was being done within the city limits. After I explained what was going on, Charlie said, ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Wondered if I could borrow some guys in case we need to take down the inn,’ I said.

  ‘You got ’em for whatever reason. And me too. You got a plan?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ I admitted. ‘But I got my guys coming in. Hopefully we can think of something.’

  ‘I’m on my way to your place.’

  ‘Thanks, Charlie.’

  Jean wasn’t particularly surprised that the only women visibly upset by this turn of events were the civilians – Anthony’s wife, Maryanne, and Dalton’s cousin, June. Loretta, the longtime Longbranch Inn waitress, had basically seen it all and didn’t seem the least bit fazed, although she might just have a tough exterior, Jean thought. The remaining civilian, her old friend Paula, seemed more pissed off by the whole thing than scared. The rest of them – two deputies and Holly, the civilian clerk, were outwardly calm, but Jean could see the wheels moving behind the eyes of both Jasmine and Nita. She hoped they wouldn’t do anything rash, but knew someone had to do something. She also knew her husband. He wouldn’t let a prisoner out of jail because his mother was holding them hostage. And it sounded like this woman’s son had killed his wife, so there was no way Milt was letting a murderer go. But there were three Blantons with guns. The good guys had none.

  Mike Reynolds was a very sad young man. The girl he loved was having their baby but refused to marry him. He’d been warned by everybody he knew not to mess with a Blanton girl, but love wants what love wants, and Chandra Blanton was his woman now and forever more. Lately, though, she wouldn’t even see him, not even when he came into the Longbranch Inn for lunch. When his cell phone rang, he didn’t recognize the number, and was happily surprised when he heard Chandra’s voice on the other end of the line.