Jack Murray, Sheriff

“Oh, sweeties!” Beth swept them both into a hug so hard her muscles quivered. Tears burned in her eyes, but she lifted her head and smiled shakily. “Did you have a good visit with your dad?”

Eight-year-old Lauren had been crying, Beth could tell. Her older sister’s face closed at the question, and she glanced nervously over her shoulder. “It was okay.”

“You guys get your stuff and go on in,” she told them, trying to sound casual, natural. “I need to talk to your dad.”

Stephanie said in a low hurried voice, “I think he’s mad at me ’cause I asked him when we were going home. He said that his apartment was home. But it’s not! I was scared—” She broke off abruptly, a sixth sense seeming to tell her that her father had grabbed their bags out of the back of the pickup and was approaching.

Both girls lowered their heads and turned to meet him, taking their overnight bags from him and obediently accepting his hugs. Then they fled into the house, leaving their mother and father facing each other on the front walkway.

Despite her best effort to speak levelly, Beth’s voice was trembling with suppressed anger. “You are three hours late. I’ve been worried.”

He shrugged and smiled. “We were having a good time. What’s the hurry?”

Dear God, to think she had once been attracted by that slanted, lazy grin! Now she wanted to erase it, once and for all.

But, heaven help her, he was her daughters’ father. Somehow she had to convince him that they counted more than his feelings of anger.

“You scare them when you do this,” she said. “Please be a father Steph and Lauren can rely on. Please.”

His grin faded, all right, as his lips drew back from his teeth. Just like that, he was shouting. “I’m not the one who drove their father from them! You want to run your own damned household, run it, but don’t tell me how to run mine! You got it?”

Her own anger exploded. To her eternal shame, Beth couldn’t stop herself from yelling back, “You bring them home late one more time, and you won’t take them again. If you can’t be a decent parent, then forget you ever were one!”

A few equally nasty exchanges later, Beth retreated to the porch, but Ray followed as far as the steps. When she reached for the doorknob, a clay flowerpot smashed into the door, barely missing her. She turned around and screamed, “Go away! Just leave, or I’ll call the police, I swear I will!”

“Don’t push me,” Ray snarled. “This was my house, too, and I haven’t seen any bucks from my half!”

“The court order…”

“I don’t want to hear about the goddamned court order! You know what you can do with it? You can…”

Beth darted inside, slammed and locked the front door, then with shaking hands fastened the chain. With her back to the door, she whimpered for breath. Stephanie and Lauren were huddled on the bottom step of the wide staircase, staring at her with identical looks of terror on ghost-white faces.

There was momentary silence outside. Would he go away? Seconds ticked by, then a minute. Beth straightened and bit her lip. Should she look? What if he was still standing there? He had a key, and the chain wouldn’t stop him if he really wanted to come in.

At that moment something else hit the door and shattered. Beth jumped away and clapped her hand over her mouth. Behind her one of the girls screamed, and the door quivered again under the hammer of fists.

“I’m scared!” Lauren wailed.

Suddenly a siren gave one ear-splitting burst outside, and Beth saw the reflected dazzle of blue and red lights off a living room window.

Through the heavy door she heard an obscenity, and then Ray’s feet thudding down the steps. Beth wrenched open the front door and hurried out, stumbling over the shards of broken flowerpots. A big man in a dark suit, the jacket pulled back to show the butt of a gun in a shoulder holster, was coming up the front walk. Behind him the lights of the cruiser still flashed.

Ray waited at the foot of the porch stairs. “This is none of your business,” he said loudly.

“Domestic disturbances are our business,” the man replied, his voice carefully dispassionate. He extended a badge, his gaze flicking past Ray to where Beth stood silhouetted in the open doorway. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

“Yes, I…” she faltered, pressed her lips together.

“I believe he was just leaving.”

Ray turned. “I told you not to call the cops!”

“I didn’t!” she flung back, before remembering the audience. How had her marriage, her life, come to this—two people arguing so violently that they had frightened the neighbors, that the police felt compelled to intervene?

“We’ll talk about it later,” Ray snapped, and stalked across the lawn past the police officer.

“Ma’am?” the officer repeated, a note of inquiry in his slow, deep voice. “Are you, or is anyone else, hurt?”

“No.” Her knees suddenly wanted to buckle, and she grasped for the porch railing. “No, it was just…angry words.”

He was beside her so quickly she hadn’t seen him coming. One large hand closed firmly over her elbow and steered her into the house. He kicked a large piece of clay pot aside. “More than words,” he commented.

The wide entry hall was deserted. She had a mother’s moment of panic—where were the girls?—before Stephanie poked her head cautiously out of the dining room. Her frightened gaze took in the stranger before she asked, “Is Dad gone?”

“Yes. Oh, sweetie…” Both girls stumbled into her arms again. All the time Beth held them, she was conscious of the police officer waiting. After a moment, she eased her daughters back. Looking into first Stephanie’s eyes, then Lauren’s, she said, “Guys, your dad is angry and upset right now, but he’s never hurt any of us, and I don’t believe he ever would. He was just…throwing a tantrum.” She actually managed a smile, and Lauren giggled weakly. “Now, you two go take baths and get ready for bed. Lay out your clothes for school tomorrow, and I’ll be up in a few minutes to tuck you in. Okay?”

They both nodded, collected their bags from the floor where they had been dropped and started up the stairs.

Beth took a deep breath and turned to the officer. Only then did she become aware of how tall he was, of the breadth of his shoulders and the bulge of the gun nestled beneath his smooth-fitting suit jacket. Only then did she recognize him, from the article a few weeks ago in the local paper. The witness to her humiliation was the Butte County sheriff and former Elk Springs police chief. She had heard him speak at Rotary Club and Chamber of Commerce luncheons, although they had never met.

Only then did she realize that he had no jurisdiction here, because she lived within the Elk Springs city limits.

Elk Springs had once been a small ranching town nestled at the foot of Juanita Butte and the Sisters in eastern Oregon, while the county had been entirely rural; thanks to the new ski resort on the butte, development had sprawled far beyond city limits. Even the new high school and middle school complex was Jack Murray’s problem, not the Elk Springs PD’s.

So what was he doing on her doorstep in Old Town Elk Springs?

Quietly, she said, “You must have been passing. Did you see him? I…thank you.”

His dark eyes were perceptive enough to make her uncomfortable. He nodded toward the porch. “You have a real mess out there. That was quite a temper tantrum.”

She was gripped again by shame. How would she be able to face the neighbors after this, knowing that they had heard every word tonight, had seen the revolving lights on top of the police car in her driveway?

“I…we…” Beth stopped, tried again. “We divorced some months ago. By my choice. I’m afraid my ex-husband is still very angry.”

“I live on Maple.” He nodded toward the cross street half a block away. “I’ve heard from neighbors that this isn’t the first time you and your ex-husband have had this kind of exchange.”

She was already flushed; now Beth was assailed by a wave of dizziness. “Would you mind if we sit down?” she asked.

She must have swayed, because that large, competent hand gripped her elbow again. A second later she found herself planted at the kitchen table. “Let me make you some tea or coffee,” he said, already filling the kettle.

“Thank you…that cupboard… The sugar bowl’s on the counter.” She sounded like one of those virginal heroines in a Victorian novel, swooning whenever confronted with a crisis. Beth was disgusted with herself, which helped clear her head.

The kettle made noises; he sat at the table without waiting for an invitation and held out a hand. “I’m Jack Murray, with the Butte County Sheriff’s Department.”

“I recognized you.” They shook hands solemnly, and she said, feeling inane, “How nice to meet you. I’m Beth Sommers. I own Sisters Office Supply.”

A small pun, she had intended the name of her business to be: a reference to the triple mountains rearing jaggedly to the west, and to the fact that she, a woman, was sole owner.