hurried to her side and whispered something in her ear. She stopped talking and blinked at Jim.
I said, “Gram won’t be saying anything else without an attorney present.” I might have been a law school dropout, but I knew when it was time for someone to quit talking. “I’m sure you understand.” I looked at Jim and Cliff as they looked at Gram.
They nodded as if they understood far too well.
CHAPTER 4
I’d ridden a stomach-roiling wave all evening. The horrible discovery of Everett’s body, the shocking reappearance of Cliff, and now the frightening accusation from Everett’s wife that Gram was a killer—all unexpected, all shocking, all quite horrible. By the time the cuckoo clock on the wall cuckoo’d that it was two in the morning, I wanted to punch Jim, smack Cliff, scold Gram for dating a married man, and rip the small wooden bird out of the clock.
“Why does a jail have a cuckoo clock?” I asked Jim, who was sitting behind his desk, across from me.
Jim looked at the fowl and shrugged. “Dunno, never noticed it really.”
“You never noticed it?” I said. But I remembered that though Jim was a friend, he was also the top lawman in town. Since Gram was sleeping in one of the two smallholding cells, it would be best not to antagonize him by questioning his powers of observation.
The jail was a mix of the old and the new. It was the official law enforcement office of Broken Rope and not meant to be a tour stop, but inevitably a few visitors would open the door and at least peer in. They’d see a couple small but clean holding cells in the back of the deep space, a few old desks topped off with modern computers—large flat-screen monitors and all—in front of the cells, polished wood railings, the obligatory stacks of paperwork, and a front wall decorated with old handcuffs. Somewhere along the way, someone started hanging the cuffs on the wall and the tradition continued. The wall gave the impression of both a law office and a kinky brothel. Truthfully, while I was well aware of the wall of handcuffs, I’d never noticed the cuckoo clock either, but then I hadn’t spent a lot of time in the jail.
When he wasn’t too busy, Jim was good-natured enough to wave in some of the tourists and give them a quick history of handcuffs and how important the ratchet mechanism had been for bigger-wristed lawbreakers.
To avoid confusion, we called the fake law office the Sheriff’s Office. It was across the street and was manned by Jake Swanson, a law officer wannabe who’d not been able to pass the physical examination because of something with his feet. Jake was also my best friend. He was available to be the town’s fake sheriff because he’d made a fortune in the stock market. He was officially richer than any higher power one could think of. He was short and thin, and as a poet he had become a tourist attraction in his own rights.
“Not many places could boast they have a poetry-recitin’sheriff,” he often said. He had a way with words that defied his short stature and after spending any time around him, people mostly recalled his deep baritone voice and his handsome face. They usually forgot he was height-challenged the moment he opened his mouth.
Tonight Jim’s good and patient nature was wearing on me. Gram and I had come with him directly from the school. We’d been trying to contact Verna Oldenmeyer, so Gram could be questioned with her attorney present. Verna and her husband were somewhere in the Ozarks, camping and fishing, and their cell phone coverage was spotty. My last conversation with her had been wrought with missing words and a funny buzzing in the background, but I thought I’d managed to convey a plea to come back to town as quickly as possible. I thought she said she’d be there in about an hour, but two had passed and still no Verna.
Jim seemed unconcerned and went about paperwork as we waited. He’d left Cliff at the school to attend to Mrs. Morningside, further