“We’ve got a few leads we’re following, but it’s early days yet in the investigation.”
“You shouldn’t have any leads. You’re supposed to be taking it easy.”
He glanced around his family room, where he had a feeling he would be spending entirely too much time for the immediate future.
“I couldn’t be taking it any more easy than I am right now, unless I were comatose.”
“Good. I’m sure that’s just what the doctor ordered.”
It was, but he also didn’t want to admit that to his bossy younger sister.
“What do you need? Gelato from Carmela’s? Barbara Serrano’s zuppa tuscano? I can have the Helping Hands hook you up with anything that would help you get through the next few days.”
More than anything, he wanted to be left alone. Knowing his sister, that was a wish that was doomed from the start.
“I don’t need anything. Thanks for worrying about me, but I’m fine, really. I’m managing okay on the crutches. At least I’ve only fallen once.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” Wyn said. He could almost hear the frown in her voice. “I would still feel better if you would let Andrea check in on you, at least these first few days home from the hospital. I know you’re a tough guy, but sometimes even tough guys need a little TLC.”
“I appreciate your concern, but it’s not necessary, really. I’ll be just fine.”
“You’d say that even if you had two broken legs, wouldn’t you?”
“Can’t say. How about we don’t break the other one to test your theory, though?”
Wynona snorted. “Sometimes you’re so much like Dad, it’s freaky.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he answered. He could only try to be half the man John Bailey was. His father had been the best person Marshall knew. He had taught all his sons—and his daughters, come to that—everything they needed to know about being good cops and, more important, how to be decent people.
For a raw, unguarded moment, his heart ached for his father, for lost possibilities, for all the questions he could never ask John now about how to go forward with the rest of his life.
“It is a compliment, mostly. As bad as things were those last few years, the happiest I saw him was that day you won the election last year.”
He wasn’t sure if his father had even understood that Marshall had decided to run for sheriff after John’s good friend announced his retirement. He liked to think so, but his father hadn’t spoken a word since surviving a gunshot wound to the brain on the job.
“I’ll say this for you, though—you’re every bit as stubborn as our darling father. Seriously, what’s the harm in having Andie stop in a few times a day?”
He pictured Andrea with her auburn hair, her big green eyes, that air of fragile loveliness about her that called to a man’s deepest protective impulses. The same impulses that had never brought him anything but trouble.
“It was kind of her to bring dinner tonight, but I barely know the woman, Wynnie. She has enough on her plate with those kids of hers to have to worry about checking up on me.”
“She assured me she doesn’t mind.”
“What else is she going to say to you?” he pointed out. “You took a bullet for her.”
“Not really. It only grazed me.”
“Still. The woman obviously feels a great sense of obligation to you. It doesn’t seem fair to emotionally blackmail her into helping out your brother.”
“Oh, stop it. You think I don’t know what you’re trying to do, turning this around to make it seem like I did something wrong by asking her to help me out, since I can’t be there?”
“Not wrong. Just not necessary.”
“I get that you want to go into hermit mode and keep everyone away while you hunker down and lick your wounds. Cade would do the same thing.”
“What’s wrong with that?” he muttered.
She sighed. “Face it, my brother, you need help. You’ve got a badly broken leg that requires serious pain medication. You live alone and you can’t get around well or go to the store or shovel your own driveway. Since you were inconsiderate enough to get hurt when none of the members of your family can step up to help, having Andie stop by a few times a day is the next best thing, short of hiring a CNA to be with you around the clock.”
He didn’t answer, simply because he couldn’t come up with any words to counter her argument. He wanted to think it was the pain medication making his head feel like somebody had stuffed it full of steel wool, but he had a feeling it might have been more than that.
Maybe, just maybe, there was a slim chance his sister was right on this one.
“If the situation had been reversed,” she pressed, “you would have insisted on finding one of your friends to check on me.”
“Right. And who knows?” he said drily. “You might have ended up engaged to one of them.”
Laughter rippled through the phone. “Life is crazy, isn’t it?”
The last twenty-four hours had been the craziest he had endured in a long time.
“I know you don’t want Andie there, but it’s only for a few days and it would make me feel better, until I can finish things up here and come back to keep an eye on you. I’ll try to speak to my thesis adviser tomorrow and see if I can sneak away early.”
“Don’t do that.” He knew how important Wynona considered this dream of taking her life in a new direction. He wouldn’t be able to stomach the guilt if she had trouble with her graduate studies because of him.
“So will you let Andie come back?”
He sighed. Apparently he was no more immune to emotional blackmail than his lovely neighbor. “Fine. She can come back.”
“Thanks. Seriously. That’s a huge relief to me. Cade says he’ll stop in when he can, but you know how crazy things are this time of year.”
The sheriff’s department was the same. He had a million things to do before the end of the year—and that wasn’t counting the investigation into the missing evidence.
Damn Bill Newbold anyway. How was Marsh supposed to endure three weeks of enforced medical leave?
As an elected position, the sheriff of Lake Haven County technically reported to the voting public. The county commission couldn’t legally stop him from reporting to work—but the county commission oversaw all county departments and had budgetary control over his department. Newbold was pissed enough right now that Marsh wouldn’t put it past the man to do all he could to block the badly needed deputy pay increase Marsh had been wrangling for since his election.
For the sake of his department, he could roll over for a few weeks, do as much work as possible from home.
“I’ve got to run,” Wynona said. “Pete apparently needs to go out. Are you sure you’re all right alone tonight?”
“Perfectly.”
“I’ll have to take your word on that. Be nice to Andie, okay? You know things haven’t been easy for her.”
Yeah, he knew. His gut twisted. Detective Robert Warren had sat in the county jail for months after his plea deal and had been transferred to the state penitentiary only a few weeks earlier. Marsh had purposely kept his interactions with the man to a minimum and had made sure Warren had no cause to claim his treatment at the Lake Haven County Jail was anything less