Cat's Claw (A Pecan Springs Mystery)

hours, but McQuaid and I were getting ready to call it a day.
    “Sheila looked absolutely stunning, didn’t she?” Ruby said, tossing a dustpan full of birdseed (a good substitute for rice) onto the grass.
    She did. Sheila Dawson is beautiful at any time, any place, no matter what she is wearing: jeans and sandals, a chic suit with pearls and heels, or her trim blue cop uniform with a duty belt loaded with guns and gadgets. (I’ve always said that you have to wonder at somebody who looks like a homecoming queen and thinks like the regional director of the FBI.) Since she and Blackie had decided on “ranch attire” for their wedding, the bride was dressed in a sheer, off-shoulder, ivory blouse, western denim skirt, and cowgirl boots, with a wreath of rosemary and white rosebuds on her shining blond hair and a bouquet of lavender and white roses in her hand. She might have put Blackie off while they got their respective careers sorted out, but anybody with eyes could tell that she believed that “yes” was the right thing to say at last, after several long years of “yes,” then “no,” then “maybe.” She was radiant.
    “You gotta admit that Blackie looked pretty good, too,” McQuaid said with a grin. “Especially for a guy who lost his job in a coin toss.” McQuaid had been the groom’s best man. He and Blackie had wornopen-collared white shirts, dark jackets, jeans, and cowboy boots. They looked like ranch hands who were cleaned up for Sunday church.
    “Well, yes,” I said. “But you have to remember that he lost a job and won a wife.”
    McQuaid is right, though. Throughout the ceremony, Blackie wore the stunned, disbelieving expression of a man who’d just learned that he’d won a ten-million-dollar Super Jackpot in the Texas lottery, instead of the regretful look of a man who had given up a job he enjoyed. He and Sheila had long agreed that two law enforcement careers in one family were a train wreck, so marriage hadn’t seemed in the cards. But when they decided (after several false starts) that they really wanted to get married, they couldn’t decide which one of them should quit.
    If I’d been guessing, I would have said that Sheila (known to her friends as Smart Cookie) would be the one to hand in her badge. She has worked like the devil to break the brass ceiling, but while she doesn’t talk much about what goes down in her cop shop, it’s an open secret around town that PSPD is not a congenial place for women. If she weren’t as stubborn and tough as she is—we sometimes call her Tough Cookie—she probably would have called it quits already. What’s more, the Blackwells count three generations of Adams County sheriffs in the family, and Blackie loved his job. He was good at it, too. The best sheriff that Adams County ever had, according to some.
    Either way, each of them had a lot to give up. They had reached a serious impasse: a Mexican standoff, as it were. They wanted to get married, but neither Blackie nor Sheila was ready to quit. So a few months ago, after another frustrating evening of weighing pros and cons, they gave up trying to make a logical choice and decided to toss for it. Heads he’d keep his job as sheriff and she’d give up hers as Pecan Springs’ police chief. Tails she’d keep her job and he wouldn’t run for a third term.
    The coin came up tails, and Blackie bowed out of the next election. But the toss is a close-held secret, known only to a few friends. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Blackie had simply decided that he’d been in the sheriff’s office long enough. He was leaving to join McQuaid at McQuaid and Blackwell. Now, a couple of months after the fact, he is a licensed private investigator. He seems to like the job.
    McQuaid cocked his head, regarding me, his lips pursed. “You look pretty great, too, China.” There was an admiring glint in his eyes.
    I had been the bride’s attendant. Sheila and I picked out a blouse exactly like hers, except it was a steel blue color that went with my denim skirt. I wore my red cowgirl boots and carried a bouquet of red roses, with lavender, mint, and rosemary. Justice of the Peace Maude Porterfield conducted the ceremony, and in the spirit of the occasion, wore a white cowboy hat, white pants and cowboy boots, and her best Dale Evans shirt. Judge Porterfield has been a JP in Pecan Springs for nearly fifty years and still leads a busy and colorful life, holding traffic court, issuing