Fortunately my awkwardness was short-lived. Lily finally caught up with us, panting heavily in the warm afternoon. As Gayle and I crossed the barnyard, she thanked him for taking the time to come with us.

“I appreciate you telling me what you remembered,” she said.

“Not at all,” he murmured.

I’d taken out my keys and stood with them next to his pickup, trying to put my finger on what was different.

Then I realized that Denn’s Volvo wasn’t the only thing gone.

“Wasn’t there a rifle on that rack before?” I asked, gesturing toward the pickup’s rear window.

He stared me straight in the eye. “No.”

I stared right back. “I think there was.”

He was back behind his plate glass wall.

“Maybe you do need a divorce lawyer,” I said gravely. I glanced at the Pot Shot sign over the shop door and his eyes followed. “Unless that was an advertisement?”

He stayed behind the glass wall, but an ironic smile flickered through. “We don’t need business that badly.”

Gayle’s eyes were big as saucers as we drove away. “You think Mr. McCloy shot at us?”

I shrugged. “Michael Vickery thinks so. And I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but that dog didn’t bark.”

12 all my friends are gonna be strangers

Dwight Bryant was waiting for me in his official Colleton County sheriff’s department cruiser when I drove into my parking spot beside the office next morning.

“Come ride and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” he said. “We need to have a little talk.”

“There’s a whole pot of coffee waiting inside. I’ll buy you a cup,” I said, trying to think what I’d done now. “How long’s this little talk going to take?”

“Depends. Half-hour?”

“Okay. Just let me tell Sherry.”

I went on into the office, dumped my briefcase on my desk, told Sherry I was going to take a quick ride with Dwight Bryant (“What’ve you done now?” she asked), and carried two foam cups of black coffee out to the cruiser.

Dwight’s a few years older than me, and from the time he was a kid, he’s hung out with my brothers so much that he tries to boss me around just like them. Has just about as much luck, too, but none of them quit trying.

Bunch of slow learners.

Dwight’s also an ex-basketball player who’s muscled out over the years and he filled up his whole side of the patrol car. With his sandy hair and craggy face, I had to admit he looked pretty sharp in his summer tans. The head of a detective unit usually wears regular clothes, but that doesn’t stop Dwight from putting on his uniform at least once a month to cruise around the county checking things out. Probably a carryover from his years in the military. He was with Army Intelligence in D.C. when his marriage to Jonna went bust and he came on back home.

As soon as I was properly buckled in, we rolled out of Dobbs heading west. Dwight turned down his radio till the calls and codes were barely audible, and breathed in the coffee’s fragrant aroma.

“Y’all have the best coffee of any law firm in the county.”

“Thank Julia Lee for that. She picks it up at some fancy store in Cameron Village.”

“This tastes like it’s got something else in it.”

“Hazelnuts,” I said sweetly. “And I just can’t tell you how glad I am to make time in my schedule to have this fascinating discussion about coffee. You might want to come by for our vanilla creme blend sometime. Next week, Julia’s promised to get us a chocolate almond that-”

“Okay, okay,” he laughed. “What’s this about somebody taking a potshot at you yesterday?”

“How’d you hear about that so quick?”

“I’m a police officer. I’m supposed to hear things quickly, remember?”

“Well, this time you heard wrong. I wasn’t the target. If it wasn’t hunters, then it was probably meant to scare Michael Vickery. He and Denn McCloy seem to be having problems.”

“You’re positive you weren’t the target? Now that you’re poking into Janie Whitehead’s death, it might be that someone’s trying to scare you.”

“That would be a stupid thing to do.” I sipped my coffee. “Hey, you’re not worried about me, are you?”

“Janie’s killer could be somebody you know,” he said sternly, “somebody who’s nervous that you might poke too close.”

“It’d be dumb to say that’s silly,” I conceded. “But honestly, Dwight, doesn’t a migrant worker passing through make the most sense? Or that Janie took pity on someone hitchhiking in the rain and for some reason, what was supposed to be a lift turned violent? Obviously he didn’t mean to kill her since he didn’t take her money or molest her.”

(Dwight was stationed in Germany when Janie was murdered, and I wasn’t sure if knew about the red slicker.)

“First he whacked her on the head and then two days later shot her? That’s not your average migrant behavior, Deb’rah. I’ve been to enough Saturday night brawls-hell, you’ve seen enough of the players in Monday morning court to know the difference.”

“Okay, okay. But even if the killer was somebody local, the SBI’s already worked it twice. If they couldn’t find any loose strings to pull on back then, there’s no reason to think I could come up with anything new. Mainly I’m just going through the motions because Jed thinks it’ll keep Gayle from bringing in some stranger.”

Dwight turned north at the next crossroads, which would head us back toward Dobbs. He finished off his coffee and set the cup in a holder between us. “Just think about this a minute: if the killer’s someone Janie knew, it might make him more nervous to have you out poking around than if it was a stranger.”

I heard concern in his voice. “Hey, you really are worried about me, aren’t you?”

“Not me.” As the road teed into North Twelfth Street, he gave me a mocking smile. “You’re not my little baby girl to worry about.”

“Oh, shit!”

I might have known though. Stupid of me to think I could take a stroll through woods less than a mile from my home-place as the crow flies (or a blabbermouth walks) and not have Daddy know. “Look, would you please make it clear to him that it really was Denn McCloy out there banging away at Michael?”

“If you say so.”

He turned up the radio to catch a code directed at someone patrolling a few miles south. Nothing urgent. We rode in silence till he coasted to a stop in front of my office door.

“How serious do you think Sheriff Poole and I ought to take what happened?” he asked as I reached for the door handle.

I shrugged. “ ’Bout like you’d take any domestic disturbance. Michael’s not one to talk about his feelings and Denn’s only too willing to talk about his. I’ve heard Michael goes over to Durham more than he used to, though. Without Denn.”

“Yeah. If they were straight, you’d say it’s the seven-year-itch.”

“You might,” I jibed, opening the door. “Everybody else these days calls it male menopause.”

“Just the same,” he said through the lowered window, “I think I’ll ride out there and have a little talk with McCloy. And listen, Deb’rah-if they’re going to keep shooting at each other, would you please try to stay out from between ’em? You get hurt and your daddy’s not going to be very happy with us.”

He drove away, leaving me to wonder if “us” was Bo Poole’s whole sheriff’s department or just Dwight and the boys.

The only time I ever saw Daddy take a switch to the little twins was when I was twelve and they brought me home with a broken arm. It didn’t matter that I’d pestered them to death to let me swing out over the creek on their rope swing. I remember being furious that he whipped them and then even more furious with them because they acted like they deserved it. Even at twelve I knew that such protection somehow diminished me.

Mother was usually my ally, but that time she made me wear dresses till the cast was off.

Tracy Johnson was calling one of my cases just as I slid into court.