Chapter 22
Jack
When we walked into the sheriff’s offices, we could still hear Riverton’s jerk of a sheriff yelling at Susan. The sound made me so angry I wanted to shift into tiger shape and swat him across the room and out the door.
Alejandro let loose with a string of melodic words that I was sure would have turned the air around us blue if I’d understood them.
“This sheriff is a fool,” he said tightly. “I’m going to play the fed card and pull rank over him, but I don’t want to step on Susan’s toes.”
“She called us in,” I reminded him. “She probably wants a more diplomatic solution to this than pulling out her gun and throwing his butt in jail.”
“I’m not ruling that out.”
We waved at Dead End’s newest deputy, Lizzie Underhill, who was sitting at a desk and clearly worried. The deputy was tall and lean in her neatly pressed uniform. She had dark brown eyes, short brown hair, warm brown skin, and a serious demeanor. She also had a lovely, shy smile when she wasn’t caught in the middle of a situation like this one.
Lizzie was going to be a great law enforcement officer, but she was still pretty new. She was also already partially a werewolf, and it occurred to me that Riverton’s Deputy Reynolds might be an excellent resource for her, if she’d agree to talk to him.
But that was for another day.
Right now, we needed to make a show of force for Susan.
Alejandro, as the one with a badge, led the way, and I followed right behind him.
Sheriff Lawless was in Susan’s office, bellowing. “And if you think?—”
Susan cut him off. “Here is what I think, Bernard. First, you will leave my office before I arrest you for disturbing the peace, which, trust me, I really, really want to do. Second, you will cease and desist trying to arrest Brenda, a resident of Dead End, for an alleged crime that took place in Dead End, which even you will have to admit is my jurisdiction. Third, if you leave right this minute, I might even agree to keep you informed on what I discover.”
His face turned so red I wondered if he’d spontaneously combust.
One could hope.
“Hello, sheriff. You called for the FBI?”
Lawless whipped around to stare at us. He’d been yelling so loudly he hadn’t heard us arrive. “You,” he growled, pointing at me. “You—you?—”
“Yes, it’s me,” I said in my most bored voice.
“I am the sheriff of Riverton,” Lawless shouted at us. He pointed to the silver star pinned to his shirt.
His face reddened even more until it was almost purple, but then Alejandro pulled out his federal agent badge and held it up. “Mine is bigger.”
Lawless sputtered something almost unintelligible, and then he shoved past us, being sure to hit me in the side with his elbow as he passed me. When he reached the front door, he turned back and shook his fist at us. “You’d better call me when you hear anything, little girl!”
Then he slammed his way out.
“Did he actually shake his fist, like a cartoon character?” I started laughing.
“At least he didn’t call you a little girl,” Susan said tiredly.
“I think he meant me,” Alejandro said, grinning at her.
“How did lowlifes like those Lawless buffoons ever get elected to sheriff?” I didn’t understand that one at all.
Susan sighed. “Their grandfather was actually a great guy, according to my granny. A war hero, a community leader, and a very honorable man. The name Lawless, ironically enough, came to mean law enforcement around here. His son and daughter and their sons, the Lawless men you’ve met, followed him into law enforcement. But the grandfather’s stellar character sure didn’t carry down to the grandsons. I think they got elected by the name alone. Nobody in either town will ever make that mistake again.”
Alejandro and Susan started talking jurisdictional issues, and I wandered back out into the central office space to say hi to Lizzie. When she saw me, she stood and waved me over.
“Hey, Jack. Ms. Pennywhistle wants to talk to you.”
“She needs a lawyer.”
“She doesn’t need a lawyer. Sheriff Gonzalez isn’t going to arrest her. There’s no evidence she had anything to do with either Truckman disappearing.”
“Susan makes you call her Sheriff Gonzalez?”
Lizzie flushed. “No, she keeps asking me to call her Susan.” She leaned toward me and dropped her voice into a whisper. “It doesn’t seem proper, though.”
“Susan cares more about talent than protocol, and she thinks a lot of you. Keep that in mind.”
I’d been out of the rebel commander gig for a while, but what I’d learned about motivating the troops would never leave me. Treating people with respect and letting them know they were appreciated went a long way toward building morale. I knew that’s how Susan operated, too. It would just take Lizzie a minute to find her confidence in her new job, but I was sure she’d get there.
“Oh. Remind me to talk to you about a werewolf on the Riverton police force when we get a minute,” I said.
Her eyes widened. “You didn’t tell anybody about me, did you?”
“No, and I never would without your permission. Let’s talk about it later, okay?” Because I could hear Susan and Alejandro wrapping it up. “Take me to see Brenda.”
We walked down the short hallway to the jail cell. Brenda sat inside on the narrow bench, her head in her hands.
“You locked her in?”
Lizzie shook her head and pushed the door, which swung open. “Ms. Pennywhistle, here is Mr. Shepherd for you.”
Brenda looked up, and I was surprised to see her ravaged face. She’d been crying.
For Ace?
Worse—for Probie?
“Hey, Brenda. How’s it going?”
“Not my best weekend, I gotta tell you, Jack.”
“I’ll leave you to talk,” Lizzie said. “Let me know if you change your mind about something to eat, Ms. Pennywhistle.”
We watched her walk away in silence.
When the hallway door closed behind her, Brenda sighed. “That girl may be too sweet for this job.”
“Dealing with hardened criminals like yourself?”
She snorted a laugh. “That’s me. Brenda Pennywhistle, CPA and criminal mastermind. Jack, I need to tell you some things. Are you still hired as my private investigator?”
“You never actually hired me in the first place,” I pointed out. “And I’m pretty sure you need a lawyer, not a P.I. If it’s a matter of money, I’m glad to?—”
“No. No but thank you. You’re a nice guy, too, Shepherd.”
“Nah. I’m just worried about our softball lineup.”
She rolled her eyes. “Just listen. First, what I didn’t tell you the other morning? It’s this. Ace was on the phone with a woman named Celine when I went over to his house a couple of weeks ago. He didn’t hear me come in, clearly, because he was setting up a hookup.”
I winced. “Ouch.”
“Exactly. We had a big fight when I told him I’d caught him. He had ‘I’m guilty’ written all over his face and refused to explain what was going on. Since I’ve met Celine before, I know that she’s absolutely gorgeous. So, I knew exactly what he was up to. I broke up with him that night.” She looked up and saw something on my face that made her frown.
“Look. I know Ace comes off as a total jerk a lot of the time, but when he’s not competing for something, he can be funny and charming. Well, when he’s not trying to defraud the government in his business tax return. Oh, heck, I don’t know what I saw in him! Let’s just chalk it up to momentary insanity.”
“Is it possible he’s been with this Celine all this time he’s been missing?”
Her eyes widened. “I never even thought about her. But even if she had something to do with him disappearing, you’d never be able to prove it. She’d just use magic to hide the evidence.”
I’d been pacing the small space, and I froze. “Wait. She’s a witch?”
“Yes! And?—”
“A witch? Brenda, we just had somebody smack our team in the face with a bad-luck charm. And Ace, the Riverton team captain who wants to crush us, was talking to a witch, and you didn’t think to mention this before?”
Susan and Alejandro walked up to the cell, and Susan’s face was grim. “Brenda, what the heck? Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
Brenda’s face flushed. “You warned me about Ace, and I went out with him, anyway. I was embarrassed to admit he was cheating on me with Celine.”
The sheriff put her hands on her hips. “Not that! That he was talking to a witch!”
Lizzie rushed into the hallway. “Sheriff! You’d better come quickly. There are at least a dozen Truckmans in the parking lot, and they’re all yelling at two old guys who are standing in front of the door.
This time, it was Susan who turned the air blue.