St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

waiting for the vice principal.
    Zach shifted on the hard chair and looked over at the receptionist, who also ran the sheriff’s communications center. The desk nameplate announced that she was Margaret Kingston.
    “Would things go a little faster if we told you we chartered a jet to get here?” Jill asked.
    Her voice was sharp. She was the designated bad guy for this duo. Zach hadn’t trusted her to hide her irritation with Purcell’s patriarchal Latter-day Saints approach to civil law.
    The receptionist held up a hand, asking for a moment, then continued toggling switches back and forth, checking records and relaying text messages to units in the field.
    “I told the sheriff that you were out here with a man,” the receptionist said finally, “and that you wanted to talk about your grandmother, who died a long time ago. Not exactly a life-or-death emergency.”
    With that the woman gave her attention back to situations thatwere more urgent than something that had happened before she was born.
    “All we really want is to go through some of the old jail records,” Jill said.
    “Still need the sheriff,” the receptionist said.
    “Why?” Zach asked.
    “That’s the way it’s done around here,” the receptionist said as she picked up a ringing telephone.
    Zach started to tell her what a waste of everyone’s time that was, remembered that he was the clean-shaved good guy, and shut up.
    The door to the inner office opened. Ned Purcell stuck out his head and gave them the kind of look a plumber gives an overflowing toilet. He jerked his head toward his office, then turned to the receptionist. “Hold my calls for a few minutes, honey.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Jill looked at the sheriff walking back into his office and then at the receptionist. “ Honey ? In the real world, that’s called demeaning at best, sexual harassment at worst. Unless, of course, you’re one of his very own honeys?”
    Kingston ignored her.
    So did the sheriff.
    “Ease up, darling,” Zach said calmly. “The sheriff didn’t mean anything disrespectful.”
    Jill bit off what she wanted to say and gave Zach an adoring look. “I’m sure you’re right, sugar-buns.”
    “Close the door behind you,” was all the sheriff said.
    He settled down in his high-backed leather chair, reached for a can of Diet Coke that sweated on the leather blotter, and took a drink.
    Zach looked at Jill. “Diet Coke? I thought you said the sheriff was an elder in the Church of the Latter-day Saints.”
    “They call Diet Coke ‘Mormon tea,’” she said. “It wasn’t aroundwhen Joseph Smith got the good word about coffee and tea being evil, so a lot of Mormons figure soda is okay.”
    Zach closed the door. “Learn something new every day.”
    “You want something from me, or are you just polishing a comedy act?” Purcell asked.
    Zach knew the sheriff would prefer to do business with another man, but he was real tempted to give Jill her head anyway, just for the sport of it. He’d known many men in Purcell’s generation who just hadn’t gotten the message that women were people. Men like the sheriff weren’t necessarily stupid or corrupt—they were just set in their ways. Like old concrete.
    “The last time Jill was here,” Zach said easily, “you told her that you had records from a time when her grandmother Justine Breck and Thomas Dunstan were brought in. Drunk and disorderly, I believe.”
    Purcell nodded, looking both official and bored—yet he watched Zach with the direct, hard eyes of a man used to summing up other men. He took another swig of Diet Coke.
    “Do you still have the record of the arrest?” Zach asked.
    “It turned out to be more than D & D,” Purcell said. “Justine had a .22 rifle. Said her lover was threatening her, so she shot him. He claims that she was the one doing the threatening. She was too drunk to aim good, thank the Lord. Sure did take the starch out of him, though. Bullet burns do that to a man.” He set down the soda. “Anything else? I’m busy.”
    “Were charges brought?” Zach asked.
    “Darn right they were,” Purcell said. “Can’t have a woman shooting a man right on the main street of Blessing.”
    “Might give the other women ideas,” Jill said sweetly.
    Zach quickly asked, “Was Justine Breck kept in the jail here?”
    “The old jail, actually,” the sheriff said. One-handed he crushed the soda can and tossed it into the wastebasket. “We used it for females after the new jail