Twisted

problems any worse than they already are.”
    “Officer,” Loretta said, sounding completely calm, “we’ve been doing some business dealings here and that’s all. Everything’s on the up-and-up. We got contracts and papers and everything. Mrs. DuMont sold me the company for ten dollars ’cause it’s in debt and she thought me and my brother here could turn it around. Me knowing the company as good as I do since I worked for her husband for so many years. Her own lawyer did the deal. We’re going to pay her a settlement as a former employee.”
    “Yeah, whatever,” Ogden said absently; his attention was on a young, crew-cut deputy entering the office. “It matches,” he told the sheriff.
    Ogden nodded toward Loretta and Ralston. “Cuff ’em both.”
    “You bet, Beau.”
    “Cuff us! We haven’t done anything!”
    Ogden sat on the chair beside Sandra May. He said solemnly, “We found it. Wasn’t in the woods, though. Was under Loretta’s back porch.”
    Sandra May shook her head sadly. Snagged a Kleenex and wiped her eyes.
    “Found what?” Ralston snapped.
    “May as well ’fess up, both of you. We know the whole story.”
    “What story?” Loretta barked at Sandra May.
    She took a deep breath. Finally she struggled to answer, “I knew something wasn’t right. I figured out you two were trying to cheat me—”
    “And her a poor widow,” Ogden muttered. “Shameful.”
    “So I called Beau before I got to work this morning. Told him what I suspected.”
    “Sheriff,” Loretta continued patiently, “you’re making a big mistake. She voluntarily transferred the stock to me. There was no fraud, there was no—”
    The sheriff held up an impatient hand. “Loretta, you’re being arrested for what you did to Jim, not for fraud or some such.”
    “Did to Jim?” Ralston looked at his sister, who shook her head and asked, “What’s going on here?”
    “You’re under arrest for the murder of Jim DuMont.”
    “I didn’t murder anybody!” Ralston spat out.
    “No, but she did.” Ogden nodded at Loretta. “Andthat makes you an accomplice and probably guilty of conspiracy too.”
    “No!” Loretta screamed. “I didn’t.”
    “A fella owns a cabin on Lake Billings come forward a couple weeks ago and says he saw a woman with Mr. DuMont on that fishing trip of his back around Halloween. He couldn’t see too clear but he said it looked like she was holding this club or branch. This fella didn’t think nothing of it and left town for a spell. Soon’s he comes back—last month—he hears about Jim dying and gives me a call. I checked with the coroner and he said that Mr. DuMont might not’ve hit his head when he fell. Maybe he was hit by somebody and shoved in the water. So I reopened the case as a murder investigation. We’ve been checking witnesses and forensics for the past month and decided it definitely looks like murder but we can’t find the weapon. Then Mrs. DuMont calls me this morning about you two and this scam and everything. Seemed like a good motive to murder somebody. I got the magistrate to issue a search warrant. That’s what we found under your porch, Loretta: the billy club Mr. DuMont used to kill fish with. It had his blood and hairs on it. Oh, and I found the gloves you worn when you hit him. Ladies’ gloves. Right stylish too.”
    “No! I didn’t do it! I swear.”
    “Read ’em their rights, Mike. Do a good job of it too. Don’t want no loopholes. And get ’em outa here.”
    Ralston shouted, “I didn’t do it!”
    As the deputy did as instructed and, one by one, led them out, Sheriff Ogden said to Sandra May,“Funny how they all say that. Broken record. ‘Didn’t do it, didn’t do it.’ Now I’m truly sorry about all this, Sandra May. Tough enough being newly widowed but to have to go through all this nonsense too.”
    “That’s okay, Beau,” Sandra May said, demurely wiping her eyes with a Kleenex.
    “We’ll be wanting to take a statement but there’s no hurry on that.”
    “Anytime you say, Sheriff,” she said firmly. “I want those people to go away for a long, long time.”
    “We’ll make sure that happens. Good day to you now.”
    When the sheriff had left, Sandra May stood by herself for a long moment, looking at the photo of her husband taken a few years earlier. He was holding up a large bass he’d caught—probably in Billings Lake. Then she walked into the outer office, opened the mini refrigerator and poured herself a glass