Page 45 of Mistletoe and Mischief

The second officer was in his car, talking into the radio.

“Step away from the vehicle,” Pierpont instructed, keeping his weapon trained on them.

The three brothers could’ve been playing the children’s game,Mother, May Ias they each moved forward one giant step.

“What were you doing on private property?” Pierpont bellowed as if he’d caught them red-handed inside the bank vault at Fort Knox.

“We’re looking for our sister,” Mel blurted out. “She ran away this morning. We’ve got to find her.”

“She’s about to have a baby,” Linc said, feeling some clarification was required.

“Then why are youhere?” the deputy asked, his tone none too friendly.

“Because,” Linc said, fast losing patience, “this is where wethoughtshe’d be.”

The second officer approached them. His badge said he was Deputy Rogers. “We had two separate phone calls from neighbors who claimed three men were breaking into this house.”

“We weren’t breaking in,” Mel insisted, turning to his brothers to confirm the truth.

“I looked in the window,” Linc confessed, shaking his head. “I didn’t realize that was a crime.”

Pierpont snickered. “So we got a Peeping Tom on our hands.”

“There’s no one at home!” Linc shouted. “There was nothing to peep at except a crazed cat.”

“I tried to open the back door,” Mel said in a low voice.

“Why’d you do that?” Rogers asked.

“Well, because...” Mel glanced at Linc.

As far as Linc was concerned, Mel was the one who’d opened his big mouth; he could talk his own way out of this.

“Go on,” Rogers prodded. “I’d be interested to know why you tried to get into this house when your brother just told us you were searching for your sisterandthat you knew there was no one here.”

“Okay, okay,” Mel said hurriedly. “I probably shouldn’t have tried the door, but I suspected Mary Jo was inside and I wanted to see if that elderly couple was at home or just hiding from us.”

“I’dhide if the three of you came pounding on my door.” Again this was from Deputy Rogers.

“What did I tell you, Jim?” Pierpont said. Mel’s comment seemed to verify everything the officers already believed. “Why don’t we all go down to the sheriff’s office so we can sort this out.”

“Not without my attorney,” Linc said in a firm voice. He wasn’t going to let some deputy fresh out of the academy railroad him. “We didn’t break any law. We came to the Rhodes residence in good faith. All we want...all we care about is locating our little sister, who’s pregnant and alone and in a strange town.”

Just then another car pulled up to the curb, and a middle-aged man stepped out, dressed in street clothes.

“Now you’re really in for it,” Pierpont announced. “This is Sheriff Troy Davis.”

As soon as Sheriff Davis approached, Linc felt relieved. Troy Davis was obviously a seasoned officer and looked like a man he could reason with.

The sheriff frowned at the young deputies. “What’s the problem here?”

They both started talking at once.

“We got a call from dispatch,” Pierpont began.

“Two calls,” Rogers amended.

“From neighbors, reporting suspicious behavior,” Pierpont continued.

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