See Also Murder by Larry D. Sweazy

noticed that probably didn’t mean a thing, that was probably just my imagination playing tricks on me.
    â€œWell, my guess is they had some business to tend to at McClandon’s Funeral Home,” Guy said. “They’ll be along shortly. It’s got to be hard going through something like this. Hard to say where Hilo was. Seems a mite busy today, as you can imagine.”
    â€œI suppose so.”
    I realized I had mimicked Guy’s earlier response when he flashed a quick smile to break the tension and sadness in the air.
    Unconsciously, I glanced to his left hand, and realized it was minus a ring. I hesitated, but only briefly, before I asked how his wife, Ruth, was doing, if only to change the subject.
    Guy’s face tightened, and he looked away from me, out toward the barn, freshly painted red so it was easy to find in the winter. The profile of Guy’s face was hard as stone and my question about Ruth affected his professional expression like a cloud crossing in front of the sun.
    â€œRuth’s back with her family,” he said.
    â€œOh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
    â€œNo,” he said. “I don’t suppose you would.”
    Ruth Reinhardt was Guy’s second wife. His first divorce caused the normal whispers, his second, if it came to that, would be downright scandalous. North Dakota women stayed true to their husbands through good and bad. I was no exception. But I was also not one to judge another marriage . . . or another man’s pain, no matter how hard he was to live with.
    Rumor had it that Guy had a hateful relationship with whiskey that had followed him from his university days to the present. But to me, it was just a rumor. I had never seen him drunk, nor had I ever smelled whiskey on his breath. I doubted Hilo would put up with behavior unbecoming an officer of the law no matter who he was, so I’d always put little credence in those rumors.
    I knew little of Ruth, a short brunette with two children from a previous marriage, just enough to know that she came from a family with more than a fair share of drinkers, fighters, and secrets. Trouble and angst seem to be a magnet for some people. Maybe it was that that broke them apart. Either way, Guy Reinhardt’s misfortune was none of my business.
    There was just something about him that I couldn’t shake, and finally, I realized what it was once the breeze kicked up again. The air was filled with his odor, with the sweetness of his masculinity. It totally overtook any evidence of the previous rain.
    Guy’s skin glistened, tanned from the sun, from hanging his arm out of the window of the police car. It was the smell of life, of a walking, healthy man that I was responding to like a giddy schoolgirl. It made no difference that he might be just as disabled on the inside as Hank was on the outside, Guy Reinhardt was an attractive man.
    I blushed at the sudden realization that I was betraying my husband by responding to another man whose only intent was his duty and nothing more.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” Guy said.
    I pushed the pies toward him. “Make sure Peter and Jaeger get these.”
    Guy almost dropped one of the pies. By the time he regained his balance, I was in the Studebaker sliding the key into the ignition.
    The truck’s engine roared to life and I backed up as quick as I could, spun the tires, and kicked up a dust storm that rained pellets of gravel thirty feet behind me. I could barely see Guy shaking his head in dismay as I pulled out onto the lane and sped toward home.

CHAPTER 11
    I had never been so glad to pull onto my own land in my entire life.
    The midafternoon light was bright, intense as the sun beat down from the sky like a spotlight directed at the rooftop of our simple wind-beaten house. It needed a fresh coat of paint, but like the maintenance on the truck, I hadn’t had the heart to ask Peter and Jaeger for any more of their time.