behind me.
“Sheriff? You ready?” she asked. “Your place is only ten minutes from town. You can follow me in your truck.”
“Sure,” I said, dragging my eyes away from Sid. “Let’s get going.” I turned back. “Nice to meet you.”
“I s’pose,” Sid said, back to glaring at me.
I followed Sally into the sunlight and down the sidewalk, heading toward the sheriff’s station. We stopped when a young woman dressed in a pink frilly mini skirt stepped out of the post office, several shops down from the general store. She turned our way and smiled widely as soon as she spotted Sally. I was not only struck by her youth and beauty but by her white hair with its pink pompadour poof expertly drawn up to the top of her head and tied with a sparkling magenta bow. The pink cloth choker she wore enhanced her delicate neck. She held up her chin and pranced toward us, looking me up and down as she stopped in front of us. She held a stack of mail and a folded newspaper.
“Hey there, Sally,” she said. “You must be the new sheriff. I’m Precious.” She stuck out her free hand and I took hers, smiling, noting how well-groomed her pink fingernails were. She’d painted them with some sort of sparkle polish that gleamed in the sunlight.
“It’s nice to meet you, Precious. I’m Rome Harmon,” I said.
Her eyes lit with excitement as I let go of her hand. “I thought it was Romeo.” She sighed. “I always wanted to meet a man named Romeo.”
“Well, it is but please, call me Rome or just sheriff. No one calls me Romeo but my mom and an occasional librarian.”
She grinned, leaning toward me, inhaling deeply. “Well, I think it’s so romantic. Prosper Woods has no romance at all.”
“Precious, you should get back,” Sally said. “There’s no one at the station.”
Precious glanced at Sally and stuck out her lower lip. I noticed her mouth was also painted a bright pink that complemented the peach undertones of her cheeks just perfectly. If I’d been younger and into women, I might have given the slender young woman more than a cursory glance. As it was, long-legged blondes didn’t do much for me when accompanied by a bustline as perfect as our dispatcher’s.
Precious gave me a long-fingered wave and a smile as Sally and I walked to our separate vehicles. I climbed into my truck to make the ten-minute drive to my cabin, feeling very satisfied with my new job so far. Hopefully, the rest of my day would pass in much the same way.
I followed Sally’s green Chevy Blazer out of town. As we drove down the two-lane highway, I glanced at the redwoods that were part of the sequoia forest on either side of the road. The trees were glorious. Most were typical redwoods but every so often one of the magnificent sequoias would appear like a reminder of primeval forests and dinosaurs. Sequoia trees were among the oldest living things on earth. They stood out from other redwoods because they were not only ten times the girth of the average tree, but taller than most skyscrapers. Some of these trees were three thousand years old. I was awed by their majesty and felt small and insignificant around them.
The cabin the Prosper Woods town council reserved for me was not what I’d expected at all. I’d figured they’d most likely tuck me away in the forest in a small one- or two-room cabin. A two-story home built solidly of logs with chinking in between the sturdy trees was more than I could have asked for. There was a paved drive lined with flower beds and set just far enough back from the main road to give the place privacy. As I stepped out of my truck and closed the door, I heard nothing but the whisper of the leaves in the trees and the babbling of a nearby brook. Birds trilled and the sun shined. I was amazed by the sense of home I felt as Sally unlocked the front door and handed me the key.
I stepped through the doorway and smiled. A huge, oval braided rug in shades of rust and brown covered most of the hardwood floor in the living room. A small kitchen table made of maple was surrounded by chairs with spoked backs. An orange glass bowl with silicone fruit sat in the middle of the table on a fat yellow doily that someone had painstakingly crocheted.