Les looked directly at Charley and Elmer. “The two of you didn’t take that shepherd, did you? Just to give me a reason to talk some more with this Mrs. Gossett?”
The stunned expressions on the faces of the two men were almost comical.
“What would give you that idea?” Elmer demanded.
Les just grunted. He wondered if XIX was part of the telephone number for a dating service.
Charley grinned a little. “Well, this isn’t like that. We don’t have anything to do with the shepherd being gone.”
Les felt a headache coming on. “Maybe it is the new people, then. I’ll have to go and talk to them.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. You can’t go over there and accuse the Gossetts of taking something,” Mrs. Hargrove protested with an indrawn breath. “They’re new here. We’re supposed to make newcomers feel welcome.”
“They’re not welcome if they’re going to break the law.”
“But it’s only a plastic shepherd,” Linda said as she looked up from the chair she was sitting in. “You said yourself, it’s not like it’s a kidnapping.”
“It’s only a small crime,” Charley added with a glance at Mrs. Hargrove. “The women’s group didn’t even pay real money for it. Just all those soup labels. Hardly counts as a crime, now that I think on it.”
That was easily the third time Charley had looked to Mrs. Hargrove for approval in the past ten minutes, and Les knew what that meant. Not only was the sheriff married and off to Maui, but it looked as if Charley was sweet on Mrs. Hargrove. What else would make a man stop speaking his mind until he made sure a particular woman held the same opinion? No, Charley had either turned in his independence or he owed Mrs. Hargrove more money than he could repay.
Les sighed. He didn’t know which would be worse. A debt beyond a man’s means or one-sided love. Both of them turned a man’s spine to mush. It had certainly done that to Charley. One look from Mrs. Hargrove and Charley would probably vote to send that plastic shepherd to the moon on taxpayer money. And Charley was a Republican who didn’t believe in spending a dime on anything. Nothing should change a man like that. It just wasn’t right. Besides, Mrs. Hargrove looked as if she didn’t even know Charley was twisting himself in knots trying to win her approval.
Elmer was the only one who looked as if he was holding on to his common sense.
That was another thing Sheriff Carl Wall had warned Les about. The people of Dry Creek couldn’t always be relied upon to see things in an objective manner. For one thing, many of them couldn’t bear to see anyone punished. That’s why it was so important that the law stood firm. It was for everyone’s protection.
“Today it’s a plastic shepherd. Tomorrow who knows what it will be,” Les said. “We have to stop crime where it starts.”
Elmer nodded. “That’s right. The law needs to have teeth to it. If the women’s group hadn’t collected all those soup labels, that Nativity set would have cost five hundred dollars. Who around here has five hundred dollars to throw away?”
There was a moment’s silence. Five hundred dollars went a long way in a place like Dry Creek.
“Well, at least take some doughnuts with you if you’re going to go over to that house this early in the morning,” Linda said as she stepped over to the counter and took the lid off the glass-domed tray that held the doughnuts.
“And be sure and invite the children to Sunday school,” Mrs. Hargrove added. She seemed resigned to the fact that someone needed to ask the hard questions. “I’ve been meaning to go over there with an invitation myself. It just always seems to be snowing every time I think of it, and you know how slippery the streets are when that happens.”
“This is a criminal investigation. I’m not going to invite anyone to Sunday school.”
Mrs. Hargrove looked at him. “It’s the best place for someone to be if they’ve been stealing. I noticed you weren’t in church yourself last Sunday.”
“One of my horses threw a shoe and I needed to fix it. You know I’m always there if I can be.” Les had come to faith when he was a boy and he lived his commitment. Quietly, of course, but he figured God knew how he felt about public displays of emotion. And even if he didn’t dance around and shout hallelujah from the rooftops, he was steady in his faith.
“We miss you in the choir.”
“I haven’t sung in the choir since I was sixteen.”
Mrs. Hargrove nodded. “You still have that voice, though. It’s deeper now, but it’s just as good. It’s a sin to waste a voice like that.”
Les had quit the choir when people started to pay too much attention to his singing.
“The Bible doesn’t say a man needs to be in the choir.” Or perform in any other public way, Les added to himself. “It’s okay to be a quiet man.”
“I know. And you’re a good man, Lester Wilkerson. Quiet or not.”
He winced. “Make that Les. Lester sounds like my father.”
The church had been a home for Les from the day he decided to accept a neighbor’s invitation to attend. It was the one place his parents never went, and Les felt he could be himself there.
“I don’t know why you never liked the name Lester,” Mrs. Hargrove continued. “It’s a good old-fashioned name. It’s not biblical, of course, but it’s been the name of many good men over the years.”
“I like Les better. Les Wilkerson.”
How did he tell someone like Mrs. Hargrove that he had loved his parents, but he had never respected them? He had never wanted to be his father’s son, so he saw no reason to take his first name as well as his last.
Les was a better name for a rancher than Lester, anyway, he thought. He’d changed his name shortly after he’d signed the deed for his place. He had been twenty years old, and that deed had marked his independence from his parents. The name Les helped him begin a new life.
Linda handed him a white bag filled with doughnuts. “I put in some extra jelly ones. Kids always like the jelly ones.”
“I wonder if that XIX on the note is the edition number on that bake set,” Charley said.
“Maybe it’s a clue,” Elmer offered. “Is there something that is ten, one and then ten?”
“An X sometimes stands for a kiss,” Linda said. “You know when people sign their letters XOXO—kisses and hugs.”
“I doubt anyone was thinking of kisses.” Les figured he didn’t have all morning to guess what the numbers meant. Not when he had people to question.
“You might ask the woman to come have dinner with you some night here,” Mrs. Hargrove said as Les started to walk to the door. “Just to be sociable. Sort of show her around town.”
“Nobody needs a map to get around this town. There’s only the one street.”
Ever since Charley and Mrs. Hargrove had managed to match up their two children, they had been itching to try their new matchmaking skills on someone else. Well, it wasn’t going to be him.
Les would find his own wife when he wanted one and he would do it when no one was watching. He might even have gotten around to asking the new woman out eventually if people had left him alone. She seemed quiet and he liked that. Her brown hair was a very ordinary color. No streaks of auburn. No beauty-parlor waves. It was just always plain and neatly combed when he saw her. She didn’t even wear those dangling earrings that always made him feel a woman was prone to changing her opinions from one minute to the next. All in all, he believed, she would