Page 33 of You Can Leave Your Hat On

“That’s him,” Maisey whispered.

“Yeah. Mayor Asshole. He’s arrogant and crooked as the day is long. I wish I could?”

“That’s him,” Maisey whispered again.

Carly tipped her head and her brow furrowed. “Yeah?”

“He’s the one I saw. His voice… That’s the voice I heard while I was wearing the hat.”

“Him?” Carly almost shrieked, and Maisey threw up a finger to shush her. “Sorry. Him? He’s the one?” Maisey nodded. “Holy shit. How am I ever going to prove that?”

“He’s not the crispiest chip in the bag,” Cherilyn answered. “He’s arrogant enough that he’ll offer you the rope to hang him with if you’re patient.”

“I’m not that patient. If he threw a woman off a bridge, what else is he capable of?” Carly asked. “I’ll sic Aaron on him and see what we can find out.”

Something about that made Maisey shudder. She didn’t want Aaron anywhere near the murderer. “Please, Carly, can’t you let somebody else do it? Can’t one of the other deputies…”

“Aaron’s in line for a promotion to detective because he’s good at it. This might be the case that lets me go ahead and movehim up. Now don’t you worry. Your husband can take care of himself. He’s proven it dozens of times, and he’s got the smarts and know-how to get the job done. He’ll be fine, I promise.”

Maisey wasn’t convinced. Somehow, that turd in a mayor’s suit had managed to kill a woman and get away with it. And she didn’t want her husband to be his next victim.

“Finally got a court order for the phone data,” Aaron announced at dinner that evening after Maisey had told him what happened during lunch.

“And?”

“It has big gaps in it, so I think he has it turned off most of the time. But when it’s on, it’s out near the airport somewhere.”

“What’s out there?” Maisey asked. It wasn’t like their airport was much of anything, and being in a rural area, there wasn’t a lot around it either.

“I’m not sure. But it’s in the vicinity of the old cement plant, according to some of the guys.”

“I know where that is. It’s on the old road, the portion from before they made the four-lane.”

“If you say so. I don’t know where that is, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“It’s not.” Maisey spent a minute describing the area to Aaron. There were only a couple of houses in the general vicinity, and they’d been abandoned for years. “I have to believe if he’s hiding out, it would be in one of those houses.”

“Guess we’ll find out tomorrow. Oh, wait?I’ve got court tomorrow.”

“Court?”

“Yeah. A guy I arrested a while back has his trial tomorrow. Caught him red-handed trying to load an engine block on a flatbed trailer, and he claims he didn’t know it wasn’t his. I still can’t believe the court will hear the case, but he’s been screaming and yelling about his innocence since the very beginning.”

“People are fools,” Maisey mumbled, stirring her fork around in her mashed potatoes.

“I meet a lot of them in this job. I miss the FBI sometimes. At least the ones I dealt with when I was with the feds were typically pretty smart. These people… Bunch of idiots.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Same in my job. It’s like, ‘No, how could you ever think locking your eight-year-old in a dog crate and feeding her nothing but wet bread is okay?’ But some of them seem to be completely dumbfounded by the idea that kids aren’t pets. Makes me sick.” She placed her fork on her plate. Then she remembered something. “By the way, I could’ve sworn somebody was following me this afternoon.”

“Why?”

“Why were they following me?”

Aaron shook his head. “No. Why did you think someone was following you?”

“There was a car behind me in traffic. I mean, like three cars behind. But every time I turned, it turned.”

“Could’ve just been going to the same place. Where were you going?”

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