Page 12 of Ardently Yours

I pull my little blue hatchback to the gravel berm on the isolated country road and blow out a grateful breath that my month-old baby is sleeping soundly in her rear-facing car seat. If the siren had woken her, this would be a hundred times worse.

I can hardly breathe when I hear her cry now.

In the passenger seat, Rochelle swivels to glare at Sheriff Calvin Marsh as he saunters toward us, one hand on his service revolver.

“What is wrong with that douche?” she hisses. Fury and a healthy amount of fear has been her default expression for the last month anytime the sheriff comes up in conversation.

The man has it out for me, and we both know it.

Sheriff Marsh taps on my driver’s side window, smirking under his dark mustache. He’s one of those rangy guys who still manages to have a paunch. His skin leans toward sallow, but his cheeks and nose are ruddy.

The almost amiable expression he’s wearing is typical for him. If I took his features individually, I’d say it made up a non-threatening, mostly nice family man. Total good ol’ boy. The voters sure seem to think so.

“Asshole,” I mutter under my breath and roll down my window.

He props a forearm on my door and leans in far closer than necessary, the smell of his chewing tobacco wafting over me. “License, proof of insurance, and registration.”

I give him a flat look. “It’s the same license, registration, and insurance I had last week and the week before that.”

He sucks in an audible breath through his nose. “License. Proof of insurance. Registration. Unless you’re angling for a ride in the back of my cruiser?”

I reach into the glove box and pass him the registration and insurance card. Then I dig my driver’s license out of my wallet and pass it over. “What is it this time? Did I run another nonexistent stop sign?”

The corners of his mouth turn up, though his eyes are hard. “You failed to signal at an intersection.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Well, now, that’s my word against yours, isn’t it?” He spits on the road.

I grit my teeth. “This is harassment.”

“I’m just keeping an eye on the riffraff, and you, Charlie Miller, are the riffraff.”

I don’t bother addressing the fact that he and Polford are the only people who have ever called me “Charlie.” “I already told you I don’t know where Polford is. I was home, with witnesses, and healing from childbirth when he left town. Ask his wife where he went. I haven’t spoken to the guy in years.”

“There’s folks seem to think you had it out for him. You told a lot of lies about a good man. Now that good man goes missing. Not hard to put the pieces together.”

“Apparently it is for you, because you’re following an innocent woman with a newborn baby all over the county for no reason.”

“Then you won’t mind opening your trunk for me.” His sneer exposes dark grains of tobacco between his teeth.

My salivary glands choose this moment to go into overdrive, and I suppress the sudden urge to toss my cookies all over his tan uniform. Rubbing my temple, I feebly attempt to ward off an oncoming migraine. “You have no search warrant and no reason to go through my car. If you do, it’s going to wake up the baby. It’s a hatchback with a glass window, just open your eyes andlook.”

Proving he already did, he asks, “Care to explain why you got a shovel and a bag of kitty litter in there?”

I give him my best “you are such an idiot” face. It’s nottheshovel. But if he moves the giant bag of litter, he’s going to find a bleach stain in the carpet. “Because we live in Pennsylvania, and I might need them to dig the car out of a snowbank or a rut of mud. Are you saying you don’t have those things in yours?”

He passes back my paperwork and scribbles on a pad of paper.

“Are you seriously giving her another ticket for something she didn’t do?” Rochelle demands.

He gives her a creepy up and down leer. “I say she did, and my word is law.”

She shakes her head. “Charlotte, you have to call that lawyer. This is out of hand.”

The sheriff scoffs. “She can’t afford a lawyer for a citation. It’s a waste of time. Nobody in this county is going to touch her with a ten-foot pole, anyway.”

“This is about you and the department harassing her without cause. She won’t be going to court to get out of a ticket. She’s going to get you fired,” Rochelle says.

---