Page 40 of Dead Men Tell No Shells

“I can imagine. And then having the sheriff drive you home...” She paused, clearly waiting for me to provide the rest of the story.

I placed the cat food in my basket and tried to keep my expression pleasant. “My car was at the festival, and it was late. Josiah was making sure people got home safely.”

“Of course, dear. I only wondered whether you two had been talking again.”

I gave her the politest smile I could manage. “We talked.”

Her eyes brightened, but to her credit, she didn't press me. “Well, I hope you're alright. And I hope they find out who did it.”

“So do I.”

I turned down the next aisle, added a few more groceries to my basket, and resolved not to visit another shop until the town found something else to discuss. At this rate, I was going to need a disguise to buy milk.

When I finally got home, Sylvester was waiting on the porch. He rose as I approached, stretched luxuriously, and wound around my legs as if I'd been gone for weeks rather than an hour.

“I've brought you something,” I told him.

He followed me inside with considerably more enthusiasm than he'd shown when I left. I put the groceries away, then opened the packet of treats and gave him one. He crunched it happily, rubbed his cheek against my hand, and settled on the rug beside the kitchen table. I sat down with my cinnamon roll and coffee, watching him for a moment. For all his thieving, boundary-crossing ways, Sylvester was a comforting presence. He asked nothing of me except food, attention, and the occasional opportunity to commit a minor property crime.

It was a simpler arrangement than most of my human relationships.

I finished eating, then called the sheriff's office to confirm that I could retrieve my car. A deputy told me the vehicle was outside the secured perimeter and that I could collect it after checking in at the festival entrance. I thanked him, relieved that the deputies had remembered not to ticket it while it had been left there overnight. I'd half expected to find a notice tucked under the wiper, given how long it had been parked, and I was grateful that someone had recognized the circumstances. More importantly, I had promised Josiah I'd check in with a deputy before going anywhere near the festival grounds, and I intended to keep that promise. Whatever else was complicated between us, I wasn't going to make his job harder by ignoring a perfectly reasonable instruction.

I gave Sylvester another scratch behind the ears and got ready to go.

“Don't steal anything while I'm gone.”

He blinked at me.

“I mean it.”

He yawned.

I locked the door behind me and headed for the festival grounds.

The festival looked different in daylight, with the stalls dismantled or being packed into vans, the rides standing idle, and the last of the banners coming down. The event was over, and the grounds had the untidy, hollow look of a place after a party, with litter being collected, cables coiled, and workers loading equipment while vendors cleared away what remained of their stands. The area around the bandstand remained cordoned off. The place where we'd spent Sunday evening listening to music and talking with friends had become a crime scene, and the contrast was unsettling.

I checked in with the deputy at the entrance, gave my name, and waited while he confirmed that I was there to collect my car. I made a point of explaining that I'd called the sheriff's office first, as Josiah had asked. The deputy checked his notes, then escorted me along the permitted route, keeping us well away from the bandstand and the area behind it.

My car was parked where I'd left it, looking absurdly ordinary among the dismantled festival equipment and the empty spaces where the stalls had stood. I checked the windshield out of habit and felt a small, ridiculous surge of relief when I saw there was no parking ticket tucked beneath the wiper. I hadn't expected a ticket, not really, but finding none was one less thing to worry about. I thanked the deputy, unlocked the car, and sat behind the wheel for a moment before starting the engine.

I should have felt relieved to have it back. Instead, I found myself thinking about Harvey's watch, the threatening text, and the woman's account of the argument at the bank.

You should've let sleeping dogs lie! That was twenty years ago!

I had no idea what it was, or what someone had wanted Harvey to leave alone. I didn't know who had said those words, whether the man had been connected to the text, or whether either had anything to do with Harvey's murder. But the meaning was close enough to make me uneasy, and now it had appeared in another account from before his death.

I wasn't going to investigate on my own. I wasn't going to go around questioning people or rummaging through things that didn't belong to me. I'd make sure Josiah knew what the woman had heard and let him do his job. That was the sensible thing to do, after all.

I started the car and drove away from the festival, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling that whatever Harvey had been trying to keep hidden was beginning to surface. And if the town had anything to say about it, I suspected I'd hear about it before the day was over, probably at the same time I learned that I was now marrying Josiah and we were adopting five kids and several dogs.

CHAPTER TEN

COFFEE WITH THE SHERIFF

MAX

By the time I’d showered, changed into clean jeans, and made myself a second cup of coffee, I’d decided that spending the morning worrying about Josiah Mercer was a spectacular waste of perfectly good writing time.