Especially without the enormous earrings she’d made famous as a Nashville country star.
But I couldn’t unsee the semblance now.
This was Lucy Ross without the glitz and glamour.
As a hot-blooded man, I preferred this version. As a sheriff, I was tempted to run her out of town. Having a celebrity here could only mean trouble, especially if the rumors about her were true.
I listened to the radio often while I was in my office doing paperwork or when I was driving around town. I preferred country to the rock and pop music these days, and the stations had been speculating for two weeks about Lucy.
She’s disappeared. Where? No one has a clue.
It must have something to do with her assistant’s death.
Her publicist released a statement today asking for privacy at this time. But no one has seen her.
Where is Lucy Ross?
She’d been hiding out in Wyoming and Montana, busy facing off against a herd of bison and getting lost with her friend in the wilderness. She’d fallen off the mainstream map and landed right in the middle of mine.
“Why are you here?”
“That’s a long story,” she muttered. “Are you going to give me a ticket?”
I handed her back her license. “Depends on this long story.”
“Please, please don’t give me a ticket,” she said. “I just . . . I’m here to disappear. Which, if you take a bribe, will be a lot easier.”
I wasn’t taking a fucking bribe. What kind of man did she think I was? What kind of cop did she think I was? I had morals, for fuck’s sake.
“Please, Duke. I just want to blend in. I’ll be hanging out at my house. You’ll never even know I’m in town. Just don’t give me a speeding ticket.”
Blend in? Ha.
Her appearance, her car, screamed tourist. Lucy would stand out in Calamity like a lightning bolt streaking through a midnight sky.
A car drove past us in the opposite direction and she shielded her face with her hand.
The side of the road wasn’t the place to have a drawn-out conversation about her disappearance. It would only bring more attention to her because my truck, like her Rover, wasn’t exactly subtle.
“Where are you meeting your landlord?” I asked.
“At the house.”
I nodded and pushed off the side of her door. “Lead the way.”
“But . . .” She looked forward, then back at me. Then forward again, down the road like it was to freedom.
If she decided to tear out of here and leave me in her rearview, I wouldn’t stop her.
“What’s it gonna be, Ms. Ross?”
She put both her hands on the wheel and muttered, “Okay.”
I turned and strode to my truck, climbing inside and shutting off the flashing lights. I buckled up and waited. Seconds passed, enough to equal a minute. Then two. For a woman in a hurry, she was taking her sweet time. Finally, her taillight blinked yellow and she eased onto the road.
Following her down the highway was painful. She drove five miles per hour under the speed limit. I rolled my eyes, stifling a string of muttered curses, and called into the station.
“Hey, Carla,” I said when my deputy and lead dispatcher answered.
“Hi, Duke. What’s up?”
“I’m not going to be in for a while, so if you need anything or something comes up, give me a call.”
“Will do.” Had I been there, she would have given me her standard mock salute.
Carla had never been military, but she’d been saluting me since the day I’d taken over as sheriff. She was the kind who loved orders and followed them to the letter. She loved the law and she was good at enforcing it. But when it came to the gray areas, she had a hard time comprehending a bend to the rules.
It was a good thing Carla hadn’t pulled Lucy over. Not only would Lucy have been issued a ticket and a fine, she would have also been arrested for attempting to bribe an officer.
Then I would have had a hell of a mess on my hands.
The people of Calamity loved their small town. I loved my small town. But we were far removed from city life and anything close to a celebrity. Our gossip centered on who was cheating on who or who’d gotten too drunk at the bar Saturday night.
News of Lucy Ross’s residence would spread like a drought-year forest fire in August, and it wouldn’t stop at the town limits. She’d have everyone in the county knocking on her door and poking around. The local paper would probably run a special feature, photos and all.
So before things got out of hand, Ms. Ross and I were going to have a lengthy conversation about her stay in Calamity.
Lucy’s brake lights flashed and she slowed, her blinker on for a left turn.
Son of a bitch. I should have suspected this was where she was headed. There was only one place that she could have rented down this gravel county road.
Widow Ashleigh’s farmhouse.
One of a few constant thorns in my side.
Ever since the widow had passed five years ago, I’d been dealing with a host of issues on the property. Widow Ashleigh had left her estate to her niece, who lived in Oklahoma. Everything had immediately been sold, and the family who’d bought the farmhouse had been from Texas.
The year they’d moved in, we’d had a miserable winter. Most rural roads, including the gravel one I was driving on now, had drifted shut. The people living in the farmhouse had called the station hourly, for three days, asking when the plow would be out to rescue them. Eventually, the county transportation department had cleared their road, but not before the owners had threatened to sue me, my deputies and basically everyone in Calamity for abandoning them.
I hadn’t been surprised to see the house up for sale that spring.
But much to their dismay, it hadn’t sold. Instead, the property had sat empty for years with little to no care. The neighboring farmer had reported squatters three years ago and I’d been the one to evict them. The year after that I’d gotten a call to come out because every window had been broken by vandals—I suspected the squatters I’d chased out of town had returned. Though I’d never caught them, there’d been rumors of familiar faces passing through. And lately, my trouble with Widow Ashleigh’s place had been from teenagers using the property for keggers.
But about a year ago, the owners—who’d returned to Texas—had finally dropped their price to something reasonable and a local had snatched it off the market.
Kerrigan Hale had made quite the name for herself since she’d moved back to Calamity two years ago. She’d been buying properties around town to flip or lease. She’d even bought a couple of buildings on First Street. Rumor was she’d stretched herself thin, mostly because she bought the places no one else wanted and sank some money into cleaning them up.
I wasn’t sure how much she’d invested in the farmhouse, but it was a hell of a lot nicer than it had been years ago, even when Widow Ashleigh had been alive.
Kerrigan was probably overjoyed to have a tenant. Word around town was that she was asking a steep price in monthly rent. As far as I knew, she’d had some vacation rental interest, but for the most part, the farmhouse had been empty. I doubted she knew her new lessee’s real identity and that Lucy could probably afford twice the rent Kerrigan was charging.
The farmhouse’s white paint glowed under the bright summer sun as it came into view from around a copse of leafy trees. The house was surrounded by a sea of golden wheat fields. I hadn’t been out here in a month or so, and since then, Kerrigan had added a couple of rocking chairs to the wraparound porch. A planter beside the front door was bursting with pink blooms. The kelly-green grass of the sprawling lawn was freshly mowed.