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I’m talking about Sheriff Martin.”
    “It’s getting to be that you can’t
turn around in here without bumping into a sheriff one place or another,” I
said with a smile.
    He turned to me and grinned for a
second.   “What can I say?   We’re just lucky that way, I guess.”
    After he was gone, I asked Jake,
“How’s Stephen handling his demotion?”
    “Nobody’s calling it that,
Suzanne.”
    I frowned for a moment before I
spoke.   “That’s funny; he was sheriff,
and now he’s not.   How else could you
describe it?”
    It was Jake’s turn to frown.   “Stephen Grant is a fine officer.   He may need a hand right now, but as soon as
he’s ready, I’m going to turn things back over to him.”
    “And whose job is it going to be
to determine that he’s ready?” I asked.
    My husband took a deep breath, let
it out slowly, and then said, “Suzanne, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think
you were trying to pick a fight with me.”
    I looked at him as I hastily shook
my head.   “I’m sorry.   I didn’t mean it to sound that way.   I’m just worried about him.”
    “Well, there’s no need to be.   He’s fine.”
    “If you say so, then that’s good
enough for me,” I said, and then I kissed my husband’s cheek.   “I really wasn’t trying to be mean.”
    “I know that.   It’s not in your nature.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” I
replied with a grin.
    Jake was about to answer when the
former sheriff hesitated at what had once been his door, knocked, and then
waited to be asked in.
    “Come on in, Phillip.   Did you have any luck?”
    “Oh, yes,” he said, and then he
said hello to me before he settled into one of the visitors’ chairs.   Phillip took out a notebook much like the one
Jake used, flipped through the pages until he got to the appropriate entry, and
then began to explain just what he’d uncovered so far.   As he spoke, Phillip reached into his
briefcase and pulled out a handful of copies.   “That was smart making copies of all of the letters, not just the
confession.”
    “You would have done it yourself
if I hadn’t suggested it,” Jake replied, though I wasn’t entirely sure that
would have been the case.
    Spreading them out on the
now-empty desktop, Phillip asked, “What did you do with the other things that
were in the time capsule?”
    Jake pointed to one corner.   “I put them all over there.   Thank goodness we have a mayor who used to be
a cop.   The Historical Society wanted to
put it all back in and rebury it so the clock tower could be replaced as soon
as possible, but George refused.”
    “George is a good man,” Phillip said.   After he had the letters spread out on the
wide oak top, he started consolidating them into small piles.   “These five letters were from people who
signed them at the time they were buried, so I didn’t bother checking on any of
them.   The other five are a little more
interesting.   Two of the folks who wrote
letters have since died, so I figured that we didn’t have anything to worry
about them, at least not immediately.   I
focused on the last three that were still alive.   If we end up eliminating the living suspects,
we can investigate the others later.”   As
Phillip spoke, he pulled the letters in question to the front and added the
others to the main stack.
    “So, did any of the final three
living letter writers know Benjamin personally?” I asked.
    “Hang on.   I’m getting to that.”
    I wished my stepfather would speed
up his presentation, but it was clear that he was enjoying his role as
investigator too much.
    “Sorry,” I said contritely.
    “Don’t apologize, Suzanne,” Jake
said.   “I was wondering the same thing.   Go on, Phillip.”
    “Understood.   Of the three folks remaining, I found
references in each of the letters that strongly suggested two of the identities
without having to question either person.   That left me with one letter, which was the