High in Trial - By Donna Ball Page 0,7

settling back into her seat. “She must have spooked after he fell.”

“I guess,” I murmured. I returned Miles’s phone to him absently, watching Neil limp out of the ring with Flame in his arms. “It’s just that…”

“What?” Miles, who was learning to read me too well, glanced at me curiously.

I shook my head. “Nothing. I thought I saw something, but it’s silly.”

“Oh, look,” said Aggie, waving happily to someone below as the ring crew came in to set up the equipment for the next class. “There’s Ginny.”

“I’m going to help set up the ring,” I said, handing Cisco’s leash to Miles. “Stay right here. Keep your eye on him. And no food.”

Miles tucked his phone back into his pocket and held up his hand in a solemn promise.

“And don’t let Cisco play with the other dogs.”

“I won’t.”

I started down the stairs. “And don’t let anyone pet him.”

He gave me a long-suffering look. “Maybe Cisco and I should just wait in the car.”

You see, if I had an RV I wouldn’t have this problem.

“Just stay here.” I hurried down to the ring.

~*~

THREE

Hansonville, North Carolina

Twenty-eight hours before the shooting

The sign on the door said “Sheriff” in bold, stenciled letters and below that “Buck Lawson,” written in black marker on a piece of poster paper taped in place. It was just another reminder, as if he needed one, that he wasn’t the real sheriff, and his place in this office was only temporary. Some days that suited him just fine. Other days, like today, it got under his skin like a bad rash.

Buck was currently serving out the unexpired term of Roe Bleckley, who’d been elected sheriff of Hanover County nine consecutive times and whose well-worn boots, to put it mildly, were hard to fill. Roe had retired after a heart attack and it surprised no one that Buck had been tagged to step into the job, not only because he was the senior man on the force, but because, having been married to Roe’s niece Raine for over ten years, he was practically family. The fact that his marriage to Raine had been over long before Roe’s unexpected retirement hadn’t figured into most people’s thinking. Neither, if truth be told, had the possibility that Buck might not want the job.

Buck Lawson was a good law officer, but he hated being sheriff. He hated working fourteen-hour days and spending twelve of them behind a desk. He hated drawing up duty rosters and filling out payroll forms. He hated attending budget meetings. And he hated opening piece after piece of mail addressed to “R.O. Bleckley, Sheriff.”

“Rosie!” He ripped open yet another envelope addressed to the former sheriff, leaned toward the open door, and shouted more loudly, “Rosie!”

Her reply came distantly over the buzz and hum of activity from the outer office. “Yes, your lordship!”

Rosie’s official title was Head Dispatcher, but she’d been with the Sheriff’s Department even longer than Buck and was the only person on board who really knew how everything worked. The budget, as Buck discovered all too soon, didn’t allow for an office manager, so Roe had solved the problem by changing Rosie’s job description, but not her title. It was that kind of creative thinking that was sorely missed around here by everyone, including Buck.

She appeared at the door, a middle-aged woman with a poufy faded-brown hairdo that hadn’t changed in twenty years and too much eye makeup. She wore a wireless telephone headset in one ear and a pair of glasses pushed into her hair. “You bellowed?” she inquired politely.

“Sorry,” he muttered. His former desk had been only steps from hers, and it had been easy to call over to her when he needed something. He couldn’t get used to being stuck back here in the middle of a hallway with a door between him and the department he was supposed to be running. “Did you call Roe to come pick up his mail?”

“I did. He said he’d stop by after lunch.”

Most of the mail that came through the office was official business that Buck would end up handling anyway, but he kept an ongoing stack of personal notices, magazines, brochures and the like addressed to Roe. The man had been in office for thirty years, and it was starting to look as though it would take at least that long to get his address changed on all those mailing lists.

Buck frowned a little as he glanced over the contents of the most recent letter. “You know anything about