Relentless

what I can offer you is a Coke or orange juice.”
    Instead of being offended, Milo seemed to delight in his new name, and he asked for juice.
    Walbert said, “Roberta Carillo, she’s the real-estate lady has the listing, said I could stay here a month or two, nobody’s lookin’ to buy anyway. It’s not I want to live here. But maybe living here, something about the case will click, or I’ll find something in the house I overlooked before. Tom, Jeanette, Melanie—they were dear to me, like family. A cop gets a thick hide, but this case cuts deep.”
    Walbert had been eating breakfast before we arrived. As he talked, he stood by the sink with his plate, wiping up the last of an egg yolk with a half-slice of toast.
    “From the start, I didn’t buy the tableau. It wasn’t a crime scene the way they happen, it was a staged tableau. The evidence was three murders, not two plus a suicide, but I only had the case five days before out of nowhere they retired me against my will.”
    “Who’s they?”
    “The county board of supervisors. Half of them are weasels, you can expect anything from them. But the others are fair folks, and I was surprised they made the action unanimous.”
    “Somebody wanted you off the case,” Penny said.
    “Has to be, somebody paid large to get that unanimous vote or put a big scare into some nice people. Reading the faces of the board members, I’d say it was both. They looked wide-eyed, white around the gills, like they were afraid, but also kinda smug, like they’d been scared into letting something really good be done for them.”
    “Who’s sheriff now?” Penny asked.
    “They raised Ned Judd from deputy to sheriff till next election. Ned’s not a bad man, just not sharp enough to cut butter. He accepted the murder-suicide scenario. Now he avoids me out of shame, though he doesn’t know it’s shame, he thinks he’s embarrassed for me.”
    As Walbert put his empty plate in the sink, I said, “You really think living here might bring some inspiration about the case?”
    “Maybe. Truth told, I’m doing it largely to irritate and unnerve the county supervisors. If they think I turned up something, one or two will come squirming around to find out what, and they’ll spill something useful, whether they realize they have or not.”
    The doorbell rang, and Penny asked, “Are you expecting someone?”
    Frowning, Walbert said, “Nobody visits except Roberta, the real-estate lady, but she’s not a morning kind of girl.”
    Penny and I exchanged a glance as Walbert replied.
    I said, “Sheriff, the people who killed the Landulfs tried to kill us.”
    Halfway to the hall door, he stopped and gave me a look that would have scared the crap out of me if I’d been lying to him.
    “It’s true,” Penny said. “They can’t know we’re right here. But maybe they have a way of knowing we’ve been in Smokeville.”
    The bell rang again.
    Indicating a door between the kitchen and the dining room, he said to me, “Go that way into the living room, where you can hear me at the front door. Maybe you’ll recognize a voice. Whoever it is, I’ll let him jaw, but I won’t let him in.”
    Milo stood near a window, beyond which lay the back porch. Penny drew him away from it, close to her.
    As Walbert went into the hallway, I hurried through the dining room, into the living room. I stood to one side of the archway that led to the hall just aft of the foyer.
    I heard Walbert open the door. “Good morning, fellas. What can I do for you?”
    “Mr. Walbert,” a man said, “we represent the Landulf estate, and we never gave Ms. Carillo approval to let you live here rent free.”
    “You have business cards?”
    “My name is Booth, this is Mr. Oswald. We took the listing away from Ms. Carillo this morning.”
    “Are you attorneys? Usually you folks have cards.”
    “We want you to vacate the premises immediately,” Booth said.
    “If the issue is rent, I’m happy to pay.”
    “Too late for that,” said Oswald. “You’ve got to go now.”
    “If you gentlemen will just wait on the porch, I’ll call Roberta and confirm she’s lost the listing.”
    One of the men spoke, but I couldn’t make out what he said, and then I heard movement in the foyer. The front door closed.
    Truman Walbert’s silence alerted me to the danger better than anything he could have said. Silence from a man to whom talk came easily.
    I drew the pistol from my shoulder holster, and in the quick of action,