After another moment, he pulled back, studying me. “Is this too soon?”

  “I’m…” I tried to figure out how to explain without sounding like a loon. “I’m really out of practice. And I’m nervous. But I like this. I do.”

  He broke into a grin, brushing my hair from my forehead. “That’s one of the nicest testimonials I’ve ever had. Does that mean you haven’t done anything since…?”

  I nodded quickly. It was a little embarrassing to admit, but it was the truth, much as I might like it not to be.

  “Well, damn,” he said slowly. “I guess I’ll leave this up to you then. You set the pace. If you feel like I’m rushing you, tell me. I’ll stop.”

  That was such a nice thing to say I almost burst into tears again. This had been one of the teariest days I’d spent since Uncle Mike had nudged me into getting to work.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “No. Thank you. For trusting me with your story. I won’t let you down, Rox. I promise.”

  I reached up to touch his cheek, and then I leaned forward and kissed him. I hadn’t thought about it or planned it—if I had, it probably wouldn’t have worked. But because I’d just gone ahead and done it, I didn’t feel frightened or nervous. Just warm all over and a little restless. Like I wanted to grab hold of him and push against the picnic table a little harder.

  My heart was pounding, but it wasn’t fear this time. Maybe I’d moved forward a few steps, after all.

  Herman whimpered beside me, pushing his cold nose against my arm, and I pulled back again.

  Nate reached out and stroked Herman’s head. “Jealous, boy?”

  Herman gave me a slightly reproachful look, and I decided it was time to go. I had dinner to cook after all. “I need to get him home. Thanks for the beer. And the conversation. I feel a lot better.”

  “Any time.” He paused. “I mean that, Rox. Any time you want to talk or hang out or…anything. Give me a call.”

  “I will.” I leaned over quickly and kissed his cheek. Then I headed to the truck with Herman trotting along at my side.

  All in all it had been one great attitude adjustment.

  Chapter 11

  I’d been dreading telling Uncle Mike about Brett and Evelyn, but it turned out I didn’t have to. He had a big order to finish, and he was off helping Donnie and Carmen and their crew pack up the strawberries they’d picked earlier. He stepped in for a few minutes to grab some supper, but I told myself we really didn’t have time to talk since he had so much to do.

  That was my story, and I was sticking to it.

  After supper, I spent a couple of hours digging through the vintage cookbooks I’d picked up at garage sales and second hand stores. I’m always looking for old jam recipes that I can try or revise to fit a contemporary market. Around nine thirty, I got Herman into the utility room where he sleeps—since there’s no way a woman my size can share a bed with a dog his size—made sure he had enough food and water, and stumbled off to bed myself. I was worn out. Some nights you just tell yourself you’ll get a better start tomorrow.

  The next day was Sunday, usually a quiet day around the farm unless there’s something that absolutely has to be picked. I decided to try an experimental batch of jam with some early rhubarb. Because I knew it would be too tart for much of anything, I planned to combine it with some strawberries and a lot of sugar. I had just finished chopping when the phone rang.

  I checked the code and saw it was Susa, which made me groan. I really wasn’t up to another round of arguments over how to get Brett Holmes to be less of a jerk.

  “Hey,” I said quickly, “what’s up? I’m knee-deep in rhubarb at the moment.”

  “So you’re home?” Susa’s voice sounded strange, excited but also upset.

  “I’m home. Do you want to come out?”

  I could almost hear her shake her head. “No. But there’s something going on here you need to know about.”

  “Going on where? Are you in Shavano?”

  “I’m on Second Street at Dirty Pete’s. Something’s happening across the street at High Country. There are cop cars all around, and I think the place is closed. Don’t they usually do brunch on Sunday?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  “Well, they’re definitely closed now. And there are definitely at least two cop cars outside.”

  I sighed. “Maybe there was a robbery. It’s a high-end restaurant.” Although robbing a restaurant seemed a little weird. There were too many people around and not necessarily a lot of cash.

  “Maybe you need to come to town.” Susa still sounded edgy. “It might involve Brett. Maybe Harry can find out.”

  I glanced at the pile of chopped rhubarb. I could put it in a plastic bag and save it for later. But once I started the whole jam-making process I couldn’t stop until I was done. If I was going anywhere, it had to be now. “Okay, I’ll meet you at Dirty Pete’s. Give me a half hour or so.”

  I pulled into the parking lot twenty minutes later. Dirty Pete’s didn’t do anything as high class as brunch. But they had great coffee, and they had Harry, who was second to none when it came to Bloody Marys and intelligence gathering.

  Not this time, though. “I don’t know what’s going on,” Harry said darkly. “That new chief, Fowler, can keep a tight lid on things when he wants to.”

  “But if it was a robbery, you guys might need to worry, too,” I pointed out.

  “Don’t know. But even if it is, we don’t need to worry.” He gave me a dry grin. “We don’t draw the same crowd as High Country.”

  I turned to stare out the front window of Dirty Pete’s. A crowd had gathered outside High Country, although it was hard to say why since there was nothing much to see. Two police cars were still parked outside the front door.

  Maybe the cops were inside having coffee. Or a beer. But I didn’t think so.

  “That’s not good,” Harry said suddenly.

  I started to ask him what he meant, but then I saw for myself. An ambulance was circling the block to come in at the back of the restaurant. “Somebody’s hurt?”

  Susa leaned forward. “I think it’s more serious than that. If somebody was hurt, they would have sent for the ambulance right away. If they waited this long, that means something a lot worse. And they’re not running the siren.”

  We shifted to the side windows and watched as two ambulance attendants pulled a gurney out, getting the wheels set up before they rolled it toward the door of the building. They didn’t seem to be hurrying. I was inclined to agree with Susa—it didn’t look like they had an urgent care case inside.

  Caroline, the waitress, stepped beside me. “You think somebody’s dead?” It was what we were all thinking, but nobody had wanted to say it out loud.

  Harry shrugged and went to his bar, where he started stacking glasses with a lot more vigor than usual.

  Susa turned to me, biting her lip. “Who do you suppose it is?”

  There was no way I was going to speculate about who might be in dire straits inside High Country. Especially since I had a personal interest in one such person, Brett Holmes. I shook my head. “Don’t know. Can’t know.”

  Don’t want to know. And I really didn’t.

  Susa returned her concentration to the street.

  I wondered if there was any future in walking over to High Country and joining the crowd outside, but I figured not. In that moment, I felt superstitious. As long as I didn’t know what had happened, it had nothing to do with me. And yes, I knew that was a crazy attitude.

  Finally, the ambulance attendants opened the back of the ambulance. I couldn’t see who or what was on the gurney at the side, but I had a feeling it wasn’t anybody lively.

  “Shit,” Susa whispered.

  I think until that moment, we’d all been able to pretend that whatever had happened at High Country wasn’t that bad. But once that ominous gurney had rolled up next to the ambulance, there was no more pretending.

  This was bad. Maybe very bad.

  “When did you see Brett last?” Susa asked suddenly.

  I thought about it. He hadn’t been at the market the day before. “Not for a few days. Maybe not since last Saturday. How about you?”

  She blew out a breath. “I saw him at the Merchants Association meeting on Monday, I think. He was bitching about something.” She bit her lip as if she suddenly didn’t want to say anything negative about Brett Holmes.

  Brett Holmes. Whom we’d been damning to hell only yesterday. Now we were both worrying that something really bad might actually have happened.

  “Somebody’s coming out,” Harry said, and we turned our attention to the front entrance of High Country. The door swung open, and a group of men in uniform filed out. Most of them were city cops, but I thought I saw a couple of state police uniforms, too.

  Chief Fowler was at the rear of the group, talking to a couple of his men. Suddenly one of them gestured toward Dirty Pete’s, and Fowler turned his gaze in our direction. There was no way he could actually see us. The front window had tinted glass to keep the sunlight in check. But as he stared at the restaurant, I had the uncomfortable feeling he knew exactly who was there and what we were thinking.

  After another moment, he started walking in our direction.

  “Hell,” I muttered. Was it too late for me to duck out the door and head to my truck without being seen? Of course it was. I had no idea why I was suddenly so nervous about his seeing me, but I really didn’t want to be there when he came inside.

  Susa looked like she was thinking something similar. “Harry, do you have a back door?”

  “Through the kitchen, but you’ll be too late. He’ll see you trying to leave if you go.”

  He was right. Fowler was already climbing the front steps at Dirty Pete’s. I took a breath and practiced looking innocent.

  Why do you have to look innocent? You are innocent.

  Clearly this whole thing had me spooked. Me and Susa and Harry all three.

  Fowler paused inside the doorway, studying the room with his usual cold stare. “You still serving lunch?”

  So he was just there for food. We could all relax. Of course, none of us did.

  “Sure,” Harry said. “Grab a table.” He handed the chief a menu, then sent Caroline over after he’d taken a seat.

  “We could ask him who died,” Susa murmured. “And how.”

  “That would be a very bad idea,” I murmured back. But I had to admit, I really wanted to know the answers to both those questions.

  And because I really wanted to ask the chief who died, and because I knew that would be a very bad idea, I decided it was time to go home. Let Susa listen to the gossip around town. I wanted to get down to making rhubarb jam.

  I got about halfway to the door before I heard “Ms. Constantine?”

  I stopped. I’d forgotten just how deep Fowler’s voice was. The entire restaurant seemed to go still. Susa stared at me. I turned to look at him. “Chief Fowler.”

  “Can I buy you a sandwich?” He gave me an almost smile that might have passed for one with a little more effort on his part.

  I hadn’t had lunch yet, and I was hungry. Plus I was curious about why he wanted to buy me lunch right then. I was fairly sure it wasn’t because he enjoyed my company. “Sure. Thanks.” I pulled out the chair opposite him at the table and sat.

  Susa took a seat at the bar while Harry returned to stacking. And watching us.

  I ordered a burger while Fowler went with a chicken sandwich. So far, so normal. He leaned back in his chair as Caroline disappeared in the kitchen with our orders. “Having a nice weekend?”

  “Tolerable. I need to get home and make some more jam.”

  “Jam. Right.” He stared out the front window, as if he was considering the details of my jam-making career. “I understand you had a disagreement with Brett Holmes at the market last weekend.”

  My heart promptly dropped to my toes. I hadn’t expected him to start the interrogation quite this soon or this publicly. “We argued, yes.”

  “What about?”

  “He wanted me to go out with him. I didn’t want to. He didn’t take it well.” I could be terse if I had to be.

  Fowler nodded, as if this confirmed something he already knew. “Was this the first time he’d asked you out?”

  I shook my head. “He’d asked before. I told him no then, too.”

  “I understand you and Mr. Holmes had a physical altercation.”

  I stiffened. That sounded a lot worse than it had been. “He grabbed me. A friend of mine pushed him away.”

  “I see. And was this friend there for the whole argument?”

  “No. He came up part way through.” If he wanted to know Nate’s name, he could ask me. I didn’t feel like volunteering anything right then.

  “And that’s all this fight was about? You not accepting Mr. Holmes’s invitation?”

  When you put it that way, it sounded stupid. “That’s what it was about. Yes.”

  Fowler sighed, staring out the window again. Then he turned to me. “Have you seen Mr. Holmes since last weekend?”

  I paused. I’d already been through this with Susa, but I really didn’t want to make a mistake with Fowler. “I don’t think so. We might have seen each other on the street, but even if we did, we didn’t speak. And I don’t remember seeing him.”

  Fowler looked as if he was going to ask me another question, but I beat him to the punch. “Has something happened to Brett?”

  Fowler’s eyebrows we up. “Why would you ask that?”

  Because I saw them wheel that gurney into High Country. “Brett works at High Country, and something has obviously happened there.”

  “What was the name of your friend who pushed Mr. Holmes away?”

  No way was I going to involve Nate in this if I didn’t have to. “Has Brett been hurt?”

  Silence spread between us, but I had no intention of breaking it. Finally, Fowler sighed. “According to what I’ve been told, Nathan Robicheaux and Brett Holmes fought over you. Is that accurate?”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s not. Brett grabbed hold of my shoulders. He was shaking me. Nate pushed him away, and Brett staggered so he ended up on his knees. There was no fight over me. There was no fight, period.” And Nate hadn’t been the only one who’d come my way.

  One of Fowler’s eyebrows raised again, and his lips edged up. “Some people might see that differently.”

  “I can’t help what some people saw or didn’t see. That’s what happened.” I folded my arms across my chest, partly because I was afraid my hands might be shaking.

  “What did Mr. Holmes have to say after Mr. Robicheaux pushed him away?”

  “I honestly don’t remember. Probably something angry. He left right after that.”

  “And you didn’t have any contact with him after he left?”

  “No.” I couldn’t prove Brett had anything to do with the mud on my truck, and what had happened with Evelyn hadn’t been contact with Brett. I’d been planning to confront Brett at some point, but I hadn’t gotten around to it.

  Before Fowler could ask me anything more, Caroline arrived at our table with my burger and the chief’s chicken. I looked down at the glistening bun and realized I had absolutely no appetite. “Could you maybe box this up for me, Caroline? I need it to-go.”

  “Sure thing.” Caroline picked up my plate and headed for the kitchen.

  I turned to Fowler again. This time both his eyebrows were up. I didn’t care. “Do you have any other questions for me?”

  He shrugged. “Did you tell anyone else about Mr. Holmes’s efforts to get you to go out with him?”

  “I told my friend Susa.” I gestured toward where Susa was sitting at the bar, watching us with undisguised curiosity. “And several people at the market saw what happened, including Annabelle Dorsey, Bianca Jordan, and Harry Potter.”

  Fowler’s eyes widened. I figured he thought I was either making fun of him or possibly that I was a nutcase.

  “Harry’s the bartender over there. That’s his real name. And he’s probably heard every joke you could possibly make about it.”

  Fowler smiled again, a little more genuinely this time. “We’ll check out how other people remember the altercation between Mr. Holmes and Mr. Robicheaux, including Mr. Potter.”

  Caroline brought my take-out box, and I pushed to my feet. “Any other questions?”

  Fowler was pouring a pool of ketchup on his plate for his fries. “Where were you last night after ten?”

  It felt like my shoulders were clamped together, but I raised my chin. “I was at the farm. I went to bed early, around nine thirty.”

  Fowler dipped a fry into his ketchup. “Can anyone confirm that?”

  “I saw my uncle at dinner, but he was working most of the evening. And I live in my own cabin at the ranch.”

  Fowler nodded, as if he hadn’t expected anything different. “We’ll check with your uncle, see what he remembers. Thanks for your time.”

  “Thanks for lunch.” Because I had no intention of paying the bill myself. He’d asked me, after all.

  But as I walked to my truck, I glanced over at High Country again. By now there was crime scene tape in place across the front entrance and a single cop on duty near the door.

  Something bad had happened there. I was absolutely sure of that. Something bad that most likely involved Brett Holmes. And given the way Fowler had avoided any hint about what was going on, I had to assume that that bad thing had happened to Brett.

  And like it or not, I was going to be involved.

  Chapter 12

  I needed to get to the farm and talk to Uncle Mike, but I felt like I needed to talk to Nate first. From what Fowler had said, Nate had become a suspect in whatever had happened to Brett by virtue of his rescuing me. That, of course, made me feel like crap since Nate had just been there by chance and had been trying to help.

  I parked beside Robicheaux’s. There were still a few cars in the parking lot, maybe people who’d come for Sunday brunch. But it was almost two, and I figured the rush was probably over.