Tempting The Sheriff. Kathy Altman
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“I have a feeling any punishment your mother dishes out will be worse than a stretch in one of my holding cells. What you’re doing isn’t illegal, but it is dangerous. What if a car came around that corner too fast and swerved onto the shoulder? What if a driver wasn’t paying attention and drifted off the road?” She broke off. The possibilities had her lungs floundering.
Jared looked unimpressed.
She breathed in, then out. “How did you even get out here?”
“Our neighbor brought us.”
Right. Lily did remember seeing Mrs. Yackley drive by in her lime-green Beetle. “She didn’t ask why you and your brother wanted to be dropped off in different locations?” Or wonder if she should leave a twelve-year-old and an eight-year-old out on the highway alone? “What’d you do, tell her you were on some kind of secret mission?”
Jared shook his head. “We told her the truth. She was cool with it, but she said if her taxes went up she wouldn’t knit us any more hats.”
Lily huffed a laugh. “Okay, then.” Apparently Mrs. Yackley had an issue with authority. Or maybe just a soft spot for restless preteens.
Jared picked up his cooler and followed Lily to her patrol car. She agreed to let him sit up front until they collected his brother. After that, the boys would have to share the backseat—no way was she going to play referee while they argued about who got to sit where.
She drove back to the logging road and eased around the curve beyond it. There stood fair-haired Scottie, wearing a banana-colored T-shirt that hung to his knees and holding a sign identical to his brother’s. Except for the message.
Lily snorted. These kids had the perfect setup. After Jared warned drivers of the speed trap, Scottie asked them to show some gratitude.
He held a bucket in his left hand and in his right a sign that read Tip$.
The moment it registered exactly whose car he was signaling, Scottie dropped the sheet of cardboard. The bucket he hugged to his chest.
Once again, Lily steered the car onto the shoulder. This time she parked behind Scottie on the left, so he wouldn’t have to cross the road. “Clever scheme,” she said.
Jared never glanced up from his perusal of the switches, lights and video screens on her dash. “I know, right?”
Less than five minutes later, Lily had both signs tucked away in her trunk and both Ensler brothers buckled up in her backseat. She nodded in approval at the sound of plastic crackling as they guzzled water. She cranked up the AC and pulled back onto the road, then checked out her passengers in the rearview mirror. “You two trying to earn money for something in particular? A birthday gift for your mom, maybe?”
Jared shot her a disgusted look. “I told you, our Xbox isn’t working.”
“The red ring of death,” Scottie said. His voice was closer than it should be. A glance to her right showed he had his head thrust between the front seats, wide eyes glued to the same panel of switches that had fascinated his brother.
“I need you to sit back, buddy. I know you’re curious, but the time to look around isn’t when the car’s in motion. Jared, make sure your brother’s buckled in. So what’s the red ring of death?”
“Happens when your console’s broke,” Scottie said. “The red lights around the power switch come on. When Dad couldn’t fix it he said it was about as useful as tits on a boar hog.”
Jared hooted, and the sound had her shoulders curving in, her stomach muscles bracing against a surge of acid regret. Stop that, she told herself firmly.
She swallowed the misery coating her throat and forced a chuckle. “I doubt your dad would appreciate you repeating that. How much did you make today, anyway?”
Paper shuffled as Scottie counted. After a whispered consultation in the backseat and a muffled “No, give it back” and “It’s not a secret,” he announced, “Forty-five dollars.”
Good God. How many tickets should she have written this afternoon?
Jared grunted and crossed his arms. “You gonna confiscate that, too?”
“Not if you promise never to pull something like this again.”
“Aw, man.” Scottie threw his head against the seat back and groaned up at the roof. “But we don’t have enough money yet.”
“I’m sorry,” she said firmly. “You’ll have to find a safer way to earn it.”
“Shit,” Scottie mumbled, and it was so unexpected, Lily was hard put not to laugh. She pressed a palm to her chest again, this time wishing she could trap the unfamiliar lightness there.
“Shh.” Jared darted a worried glance at the rearview mirror.
“What? Not like she can arrest us for cussing.” A brief pause. “Can she?”
Wait for it...wait for it...
“Sheriff Tate?” Scottie asked meekly.
There it is.
“Yes, Scottie?”
“Can you get arrested for using a bad word?”
“Not unless you’re threatening someone. It’s never a good idea to be mouthy around the police, though, and it is bad manners. I doubt your parents would approve, so why don’t you try and keep it clean, okay?”
He sighed, then grudgingly muttered, “Okay.” Neither brother said a word after that.
The sullen silence lasted until she pulled into the Enslers’ driveway. “Your mom or dad inside?”
“Dad is,” Jared said morosely.
“Before I walk you to the door—” Scottie groaned “—let me set you straight on something.”
“He only said that one word and he’s sorry,” Jared said quickly.
“I’m really sorry,” Scottie squeaked.
“Neither of you is in trouble.” She retrieved her wallet from the center console, pulled out a twenty and dropped it in Scottie’s bucket. “I didn’t confiscate your posters,” she said. “I bought them.” Even though they were about as useful as tits on a boar hog.
Twenty minutes later, Lily had just backed into a new hiding place and pulled out the radar gun when her cell vibrated again. She picked it up and immediately wished she hadn’t. The mayor’s office. Shouldn’t his staff be at Hazel’s barbecue?
She swallowed a groan. Chances were that’s what they wanted to ask her. If the mayor summoned her, she’d have to go. A drop of sweat skated down her temple and she swiped it away with the heel of her hand.
Maybe she’d get lucky and they’d assign her to the dunk tank.
She took the call and moments later dropped her phone back into the cup holder with a scowl. The mayor had summoned her, all right—to his office. On a Saturday?
This did not bode well.
* * *
LILY PARKED HER patrol car behind the courthouse, a single-story, faded brick building the sheriff’s department shared with the county clerk, the treasurer, the commissioner of revenue and the mayor. With the colossal, pineapple-shaped sugar maple that for decades had served as the front lawn’s centerpiece, and the surrounding century-old oaks and lush camellias scattered like guests at a cocktail party, the property was lauded as being especially eye-catching in the autumn. Lily no longer paid attention. Fall had officially become her least favorite season.
The mayor’s assistant wasn’t at her desk—not surprising, since it was Saturday—so Lily knocked twice on Rick Whitby’s open door and strode into his office. Or candy store, as Lily’s dispatcher, Clarissa, liked to call it, since the mayor had