LITMIR.BIZ

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Maggie said with only a faint tremor running through her words.

      Gideon’s heart clenched. Poor thing. She was holding together pretty well, considering. “Excellent idea,” he encouraged her as they stepped out onto the aged brick patio and turned toward where the triangular cellar doors let out from the basement. He groaned as they approached.

      The hinges had been pulled free of the aging wood. The break-in job probably hadn’t been very difficult—a crowbar would do it. But what disturbed him even more was the fact that whoever had made entry into the house hadn’t even tried to hide what they’d done.

      Why weren’t they more careful? Why weren’t they afraid?

      “Gideon?” Maggie’s voice came out too highpitched.

      He turned his attention back to her and realized the situation was catching up with her. This couldn’t be easy for her to see. “Let’s have a seat a second,” he suggested, taking her by the arm and guiding her toward an old double glider by the garage. The rusty old swing had obviously spent too many winters outside, but it looked sturdy enough to hold them.

      Gideon sat down beside her.

      “What was it?” she asked, the fear in her blue eyes magnified by the curvature of her thick-rimmed glasses. “Why was there a team investigating my father’s death? Do you think someone may have killed him?”

      So she’d put two and two together already, had she? Gideon recalled from their school days that she was pretty bright. She obviously hadn’t missed anything this time, either, though he wished he could go back in time and replay his first phone call to her. If he’d had to do it over again, he’d have told her from the beginning that there was some possibility her father had been murdered.

      Because if anything, it was worse having to tell her now.

      “We suspected he may have been murdered.” He watched her carefully as she absorbed the news. No screams, no crying, not even a gasp. She just kept staring at the broken cellar door.

      After a minute, she took a gulp and asked, “And the fact that somebody broke into the house?”

      “It’s hard to say at this point,” Gideon said, tempering his response, “but there’s a very good chance the two are related.”

      She nodded slowly. “Why would the murderer re turn?”

      “I don’t know.” Gideon didn’t want her getting any more worked up than she already was. Besides, they needed to call the sheriff’s office. If it had been his house, he’d have placed the call already. But then, his house, though only a couple of blocks from this one, was inside the city limits, and the Holyoake cops would have answered the call. The house on Shady Oak Lane was outside of town, and therefore in the sheriff’s territory.

      Since he wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with the ongoing sheriff’s investigations, he needed to leave well enough alone. The last thing he wanted to do was make it look as though he was trying to heavy-hand a case. If he ever wanted to be sheriff again, he needed to respect the boundaries that had been erected. Which meant Maggie would need to place the call.

      “Do you have your phone on you? Can you call the sheriff’s office to come investigate?”

      She looked up at him with wide eyes. Funny, he’d always thought her plain before. Mousy brown hair, dorky glasses, a little on the short side. But close-up, her thick, long eyelashes fluttered against her lightly freckled cheekbones. Maggie Arnold was pretty.

      Gideon shook off his thoughts, wondering what had gotten into him. Whoever had broken into the house could be getting away while he sat there thinking about how Maggie Arnold looked. Worse yet, whoever had murdered Glen Arnold could be plotting to kill someone else. “Do you have your phone?” he asked again.

      Maggie blushed and pulled a cell phone from her pocket. “Sorry. I’m still trying to sort this out.”

      “Leave that to the sheriff’s department,” he advised.

      Gideon paced the brick patio while Maggie placed the call. He couldn’t see any footprints, but the weed-filled backyard was an untamed mess. A crowd of people could have gone tromping through without leaving any discernible marks. When Gideon heard Maggie say goodbye, he returned and sat down by her again.

      “They’re on their way,” she reported, her expression now more drawn than frightened.

      “That’s good.”

      “Yes.” She looked away from the cellar door and met his eyes. “So tell me. What makes you think my father was murdered?”

      Gideon tried to state the facts as simply as possible. “About twenty minutes before I discovered his body, your father called the sheriff’s office. He asked to speak to me specifically. You know I used to work for him on the weekends and summers back in high school, correct?”

      “That’s right.” Maggie nodded. “You helped him fix up his rental houses.”

      “He taught me most of what I know about construction,” Gideon confessed. “That’s part of why I chose to become a handyman while I’m suspended from being sheriff. Construction is the only thing I know besides law enforcement.” He shrugged. “Anyway, your father always felt comfortable talking to me and had called about little things before, so I wasn’t even sure this was an official call until we got into the conversation.”

      “What did he say?”

      Gideon shook his head, trying to recall the older man’s words exactly. “He said he had something I had to see. At that point I thought it was just some new discovery he wanted me to take a look at. You know, he once found a Civil War musket in a box of balusters he bought at an estate auction. I thought it was something like that from the way he was talking. I asked him to tell me more about it. That’s when—” Gideon broke off as a sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the bricked parking space alongside the garage.

      “I’ll finish the story later,” he assured her as she rose to her feet. “You don’t mind if I hang back for now, do you? I’m not supposed to get involved with investigations.”

      “Do what you have to do,” Maggie said quietly, though Gideon could still hear the fear in her voice.

      As promised, Gideon stayed on the swing while Maggie spoke with the officers who’d arrived. He knew Deputy Bernie Gills and had worked with him closely for years. The man had some annoying habits and wasn’t particularly professional or friendly when he didn’t want to be. But he was a competent officer ten years Gideon’s senior, and Gideon had never encountered any major problems with him.

      The woman driving the vehicle was someone Gideon had only met twice before—Kim Walker. Kim had grown up in Holyoake but had been a police officer in Des Moines for almost a decade. She had faithfully applied for deputy positions on the Holyoake force whenever any jobs had come open. Though she’d narrowly missed out on those positions, the County Board of Supervisors had chosen her as interim sheriff. The way he understood it, they’d wanted someone new—someone free of any possible ties to the meth production ring that had brought Gideon down. Probably a good idea, as long as she was up to the job of being sheriff.

      Gideon sat back and watched while Bernie and Kim split up to check the house.

      Maggie returned and sat next to him on the swing. “They’re going to make sure there’s no one still around,” she explained.

      “That’s good.” It was what he’d have done. While he didn’t want to judge Kim’s work—she’d been rightfully appointed, after all—he still felt a lot more comfortable knowing she was proceeding according to the book. Step one was always to secure the location.

      “Do you think I should ask them about…?” Maggie paused, her blue eyes watching him, full of trust.

      “About the ruling on your father’s case?” Gideon supplied.

      She nodded and looked relieved. Obviously she felt hesitant

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