Bad Moon On The Rise (16 page)

“
I didn’t,” I admitted,
trying for cheerful.

“
That’s right, you
didn’t.” He bagged my purchases and handed them over. “That'll be a
dollar and sixty-eight cents total. Vienna’s are on special on
account of the expiration date on ‘em has passed."

I handed him a couple of bucks. "Would
it make a difference if I told you my friend was black?" I
asked.

“
Black?” He sounded
incredulous. “Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?
Imagine, an actual Negro in these hills.”

When he didn’t go on, I realized he
was being sarcastic. I’d sort of hoped we were at a high enough
altitude to render such an attitude unpopular, but the mountains
had changed on me, too.

“
You have a nice day,” he
added as I headed for the door.

“
You, too,” I said through
gritted teeth. God, but I hated being outsmarted. All I’d
accomplished was to give myself away. The whole mountain would know
I was looking for Tonya now. I was seriously off my
game.

I considered changing into a skirt
before afternoon tea, since the brochure on my nightstand touted a
ceremony so elaborate it implied Prince Charles himself might serve
it, but the waistband was too tight so I nixed it. I was hungry,
having missed my lunch, and planned to cram as many of those little
tea sandwiches in my craw as I could in the shortest possible time.
And why not? The other guests already thought I was a slut. I may
as well be thought of as a pig, too. 

Fortunately, the door between my room
and Bobby’s had been left unlocked and I was able to snag a Little
Debbie zebra cake from the suitcase he’d devoted to snacks from
home. It would hold me another fifteen minutes. I sat on the edge
of my bed and contemplated my next move. I could pack it in and
start off in another direction. I could try and shake Shep down for
info on Silver Top Detention Center. Or I could keep poking around,
talking to folks about the prison and, sooner or later, I’d run
into someone who worked there and might have known Tonya Blackburn.
There could be few other employers in Bartow County.

The only thing was, if you wanted to
find off-duty prison guards, the best place to look was a bar—and
the last time I’d walked into a bar, I had come mighty close to
compromising my investigation in the course of assuming a number of
highly compromising positions.

Plus my little escapade with Sheriff
Shep was still getting me into trouble—when I headed downstairs in
search of high tea, he was waiting for me. He was in full-blown
sheriff’s gear, too, his tailored tan slacks and matching shirt
fitting him like they had been sewed on to his body. Oh my god. I
wanted to rip his uniform into khaki shreds and claim him right
then and there. It would be a Happy Hour the Pampered Princess
would never forget.

Shep stood when he saw me coming and
took off his hat.

I started to kiss him, but he gave me
a look that froze me in my tracks. “Are you nuts?” he mumbled. “I
can’t be seen picking up tourists.”

“
I’m not a tourist,” I
mumbled back.

“
I know that now,” he
said. “We need to talk.”

“
Fine.” I turned my back
on our nosy audience, which was threatening to explode out through
the sitting room doorway and into the hall, where it would no doubt
take ten cranes and a squadron of roustabouts to get them all
upright again. “Do you want to handcuff me?” I asked
hopefully.

He grinned. “Certainly. But not here.
And not for the reasons you think.”

I was reassured he could joke. I was
reassured he still wanted me. I was ready to be a fool for love yet
again.

“
Miss Little,” he
announced loudly for the benefit of our audience. “I must speak
with you at once.” God, but he was a terrible actor—another point
in his favor. 

“
It wasn’t me, officer.
I’ve been here the whole time,” I said dramatically. ”Just ask
them.” I pointed at a dozen guilty faces. As the other lodge guests
attempted to duck back inside, they succeeded in merely jamming
themselves more firmly in the doorway, looking panicked.

“
Let’s talk outside,” Shep
suggested pleasantly.

He was smiling, but I could tell it
was costing him effort. My feelings of lust evaporated as my gut
told me something was wrong. Fortunately, my brain told me to do
something about it.

“
I’ll be right back,” I
said. “I need to get a sweater.”

I didn’t really want my sweater, but
it had pockets and what I really needed would fit into one of them.
I grabbed what I needed from my bedroom and raced back downstairs.
Shep was still grinning pleasantly when I rejoined him, but his
smile faded the moment we reached the front porch and were
alone.

“
Who are you really?” he
asked as we headed up a path toward the meadow behind the inn. “Why
are you here in my county?”

That old man in the country store had
ratted me out.

What to do now? I could tell Shep the
truth and—if he was part of whatever trouble Tonya Blackburn had
been in—tip my hand. Or I could lie to him again and he’d know it
soon enough and then he’d never, ever trust me again. I had a
feeling that he’d not give me another chance to come
clean.

I decided to do something very
uncharacteristic. Praying that Bill Butler had been right and Shep
Gaines really was a stand-up guy, I told him the truth. I told him
my real name, and what I did for a living, and all about Corndog
Sally, and Tonya’s death, and how Trey was missing and I wanted to
find him to bring him back to his family. I told him all I had to
go on was a postcard sent from a store in his county and some
witnesses who had seen men from Silver Top Detention Center put
Tonya into a car a little over half a year ago. The only thing I
left was out was that I’d discovered Tonya’s body—I was too ashamed
to admit I’d just left her there.

He let me talk and didn’t say a word,
but he didn’t try to talk me out of my belief that she’d been taken
back to Silver Top, off-the-record, either. In fact, he didn’t even
seem surprised.

“
You’re sure she was
here?” was all he said when I was done.

I nodded. We’d found a boulder with a
flat surface and were sitting side-by-side, staring into the
adjoining forest. The sun had dropped lower in the sky and the air
was cool. Winter was definitely coming.

“
I can’t figure it out
exactly,” I admitted. “All I know is that she served some time at
Silver Top. But that was a couple years ago. Her official records
don’t show a stay there since. In fact, she’s stayed out of jail
completely. Her old roommates tell me she was selling drugs and had
wads of cash on her, but her lifestyle was right on the edge of
poverty. It doesn’t make sense.”

His silence told me that maybe it made
sense to him.

“
What is it?” I asked. He
looked so grim, I felt a wave of fear. I had walked into something
I did not understand.

“
I can’t tell you,” he
said. “I can’t tell anyone yet.”

“
Look,” I explained. “I
just told you the truth. Do you understand me? I squandered the
truth on you and I’ve got nothing else left. I need to find this
boy. His father is someone important to me. He’s in a wheelchair.
He’ll never have any other children. This kid is the only family
he’ll ever have.”

 “
You really pull out
the stops,” Shep said, avoiding my eyes.

“
I know it sounds like a
line, but it’s true. You can look it up. His name is Burly Nash.
Google him. I’m telling the truth.”

“
Google him?” Shep looked
away. “No thanks. I prefer to evaluate people the old-fashioned
way. In person.”

“
Then do you trust me?” I
asked. 

“
I do. And, just for the
record, I always knew you weren’t some downtrodden woman fleeing
from an ex-husband. But I wasn’t sure what you were and, let’s face
it, you weren’t the only one throwing back shots at the bar. I get
it now, though. It all makes sense.”

“
I had no idea you were
the sheriff when I went home with you,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to
use you.”

He would not meet my eyes.

“
What is it?” I
asked.

“
I need to use you,” he
said. “Because I don’t have any other way to play it.”

“
What do you mean?” I
reached for his hand. It was smooth and dry and hard and strong. It
was real and it calmed me.

He sighed and right there, in the
middle of the sigh, I felt him reach a decision. “Something is
wrong at Silver Top,” he told me. “Something inside. I think the
guards are running some sort of scam with the female prisoners, but
I’ve got two problems.”

“
What’s the first
problem?”

“
There’s not a person in
this county who isn’t related to at least one of those guards. And
I’m not sure enough about who is involved to take it further up the
food chain yet. If I take it to the wrong person, before I get real
evidence, I’m dead meat.”

“
What’s the second
problem?”

 “
I’m an elected
official, you know that, right?”

“
Sure,” I said. “All
sheriffs are.”

“
If I go public, and I’m
wrong, my career is over. But if I do nothing, and it continues,
what good am I as a sheriff? I need to find out more.”

“
More about
what?”

“
More about what they’re
doing in there. I don’t know if they’re trading sex for favors,
drugs or what. But something is wrong.”

“
What makes you say
that?”

“
I drive inmates up there
sometimes for processing,” he said. “If I’m down in Harnett or
Winston-Salem on business, they’ll ask me to transport prisoners up
on my way home. So I know more than a few of the faces.”

“
And what?” I asked. “You
see them again and again?”

He nodded. “I’ve seen a couple go by
again.”

“
Maybe they had to do
another stretch? Or violated parole?”

He shook his head. “I mean that I’ve
seen them go by in private cars driven by the guards. Private
guards don’t transport prisoners. And they’re damn sure not
supposed to date the prisoners, not before, not after, not during.
Plus I’ve had more than a few strange reactions from women
prisoners, even when I’m doing them a favor like giving them a ride
down the mountain once they’re released. You’d think they’d be
grateful that I was helping them get back to their families.
Instead, I get attitude and glares.”

“
That’s not a lot to go
on,” I pointed out.

“
I’ve had them ask me
questions that made me wonder what they meant. One woman asked me
last week if it was ‘worth it.’ I was taking her down to
Winston-Salem to catch the bus home after she’d done a year for
possession. You’d think she’d have been glad to be going home, but
she just sat there shooting me glares the whole way. Wouldn’t make
small talk or even look me in the eye. As I was letting her off,
she leaned in my window and said, ‘I just want to know one thing—do
you sleep at night? Can you live with yourself knowing you take
advantage of people who have no way to fight back?’ I tried to ask
her more, but she was in no mood to stay and talk.”

“
Okay,” I conceded. “That
does sound bad. But what makes you think drugs are involved? Female
prisoners and male guards equal sex every time.”

“
This county’s being
ripped apart by drugs, that’s what. You can’t tell at first, not by
walking around and meeting people for the first time. But if you
lived here even a month, you’d see the signs. You’d know the
mountain is changing and not for the better.”

“
But hasn’t this place
always been, well, a place for people who don’t fit in elsewhere?
People who don’t really think the law has anything to do with
them?”

 “
A little, but it’s
not the same thing. Lots of people in Bartow County used to run
moonshine in my daddy’s time. I’d ride along with him in his truck
and we would chase the same old families across the same old roads
again and again, never once coming close to catching them.” He
paused. “Probably because he wasn’t really trying. What else are
people supposed to do? We’ve got no industry and the real tourist
country is forty miles south. Most people around here have nothing
more than some tumble down house or a little farm clinging to a
rocky mountainside. These days, I think over half the families are
running drugs, and everything that goes along with them, up to and
including guns. And when I say drugs, I mean it all. We’ve got a
pipeline to the Mississippi and meth’s heading our way through it
in rivers. Pills, too. The feds tried to shut down the oxycodone
when the disability claims grew ridiculous and people were maiming
themselves just to get a steady prescription. But enough crooked
doctors set up shop here when they got run out of somewhere else to
keep the whole mess going. And the ones who can’t afford black
market oxycodone? Well, they’re switching to heroin, cheap black
tar from Mexico, so now we’ve got that to worry about, too,
especially in the schools. People know I haven’t got the resources
to shut the drug trade down and that the county is too poor and too
underpopulated for any state agency to give a crap about us. I’m on
my own here and it’s breaking my heart. I’ve got nothing to fight
these people with and I’m seeing things I never thought I’d
see.”