The Widow’s Sheriff of Convenience (Preview)

Chapter One

A breeze picked up just as Olivia kneeled down to clear away the dead grass that had accumulated at the bottom of her father’s grave. 

In Loving Memory of Clyde Burke, 

1810—1872

“A kind and faithful friend, a beloved husband, and a devoted father.”

Gone but not forgotten.

Even though it had been three years since Father’s death, the engraving with her father’s name still looked as fresh to her as it had the day he’d died. In recent years, death had become more commonplace to Olivia, though that didn’t help ease the pain in the least. 

She brushed a lock of her strawberry blonde hair back into place under her bonnet and lay down half the daisies she’d picked on her way to the cemetery. The selection of wildflowers that grew beside the laneway was growing slimmer now that it was August, but Olivia happened to think that daisies were just as pretty as any poppy or black-eye-Susan.

Her knees ached as she stood once more, thanks to all the work she’d done the day before, cleaning out the schoolhouse. It was incredible how much dust could fill the place in just a matter of six weeks. Soon enough, another school year would start again, and Olivia’s time would be filled with coming up with quiz questions and trying to sort out a new and inventive way to make the children learn their multiplication tables. 

For now, however, while the summer sun still beat down, Olivia had a precious sliver of quiet, and she couldn’t think of a better way of spending it than with Father. 

“I’m afraid I’m short on gossip this week,” she whispered to his grave. “Everyone’s up in arms because the pastor’s new wife, Mrs. Anthony, ordered silk stockings. I won’t say anything else about it here, considering I’m in the churchyard, but it’s brought up a lot of questions about just how the pastor can afford such a luxury.”

She could almost see the mischievous glint in Father’s eye. For most of her life, Clyde Burke had been the sheriff in town. He’d been an altogether stoic and respectable man, dedicated to keeping the town of Brookings safe. For all his tough words and stern stares, however, Olivia happened to know he enjoyed town gossip as much as the church ladies did. 

“And they say they found gold up in the Black Hills, so we’ll be expecting more hopeful folks to be coming through town on their way up. I always wonder how many of them will find gold, die trying, or turn back with emptier pockets than they had been in the first place,” she said wistfully, feeling the grass tickle her wrist. “Anyway, I suppose I ought to let you rest in peace until next week. Bless your soul, and thank you for watching over me from above.”

As she got to her feet once more, Olivia swallowed back a lump in her throat, wondering just how peacefully someone who had been murdered could rest. The pain of it all had somewhat dulled over the three years since Father’s death, but every time she remembered the stricken look on the deputy’s face when he told her the bad news, Olivia thought her heart might break itself in two.

She hadn’t seen the murder, thankfully. But everyone had wanted to tell her the story over and over again of how her beloved father, Sheriff Burke, had died saving a child from the wayward bullet of a misguided bushwhacker. Whoever he’d meant to kill, it likely hadn’t been Sheriff Burke or the child, but she would never know for certain. The murderer had gotten away in the confusion of it all. 

Many folks in town had tried to comfort her, telling her that her father had died in the most honorable way possible. He’d simply been doing his duty, and there was no greater virtue than that. Olivia, however, had a hard time taking solace in that knowledge.

Selfishly, she thought it wasn’t fair that her father had to put his life on the line every day. The both of them had been stripped of a future together. He would never meet his grandchildren or get to interrogate her future husband. 

As she stood, Olivia grew crushingly embarrassed to see that she was no longer the only person in the churchyard cemetery. There, a mere ten feet away at his wife’s grave, was the man who had taken her father’s place as the Sheriff of Brookings. 

Ethan Hale. How long had he been standing there? Had he heard her gossiping with a dead man’s grave? If he had, he made no show of noticing, and Olivia wasn’t about to call any more attention to herself. Slowly and demurely, she turned, making her way to the other man she was obliged to visit—though she certainly wasn’t going to be talking out loud to this one. 

There, four graves to the right in a plot that was only six months old, lay the husband her father had never gotten the chance to meet. She hadn’t thought that there would be much danger in marrying the town’s bank manager. Jacob Matthews had spent most of his days working in an office away from the public, so even the threat of bank robbers hadn’t occurred to her. 

Sometimes, Olivia felt cursed to have lost two men to bullet wounds in less than four years, but as her friend Bonnie often reminded her, the frontier was littered with tragedies far worse than any she’d experienced.

As such, she tried not to put much stock in the strange similarities between Father and Jacob’s murders. After all, there were plenty of differences as well. Father’s murder had been witnessed by many, while her husband of less than two and a half years had been found dead in a placer mine, his killer long since gone. 

Once she reached her late husband’s grave, Olivia carefully placed the rest of her daisies by the tombstone. Even if Sheriff Hale hadn’t been standing nearby, Olivia wasn’t likely to have spoken out loud to her husband’s grave. She’d had very little to say to him in life, and even less to say to him in death. 

It wasn’t that it had been an unhappy match, exactly. She and Jacob had lived with each other quite peacefully. There were some days when they barely saw each other at all. Jacob would stay late at the bank, and on the days when he didn’t, Olivia somehow found herself preoccupied with the garden. 

In many ways, she’d considered herself lucky to have Jacob for a husband. She’d heard of other men insisting that their wives stop working after marriage, but Jacob had allowed her to keep her job at the schoolhouse, which was a source of true joy and fulfillment for her. 

Standing in front of his grave, Olivia was never quite sure how to feel. On this particular day, she found herself thinking far more about Sheriff Hale, the living and breathing man standing not far from her. She stole a glance, confirming that he was, in fact, still there. There was something terribly stately about how he looked while grieving, his back strong and jaw tightened with emotion. 

He was a handsome man. Hazel-eyed and tall. Everybody knew that, even Olivia, when he’d first come to Brookings with his wife, not long after Father’s death. His copper-colored hair glinted in the sun, dulled only by the few strands of grey that ran through it. Olivia happened to think that the grey made him look quite distinguished. 

A chipmunk ran right over the daisies that she’d placed on Jacob’s grave, and she flushed. Enough, Olivia. She was a widow, and the sheriff was a widower—and here they were, paying their respects to their dead spouses. There couldn’t be a worse time to be admiring his looks. 

Deciding that she had done her due diligence for the day, Olivia stood up once more. There was still much more work for her to finish at the schoolhouse. 

She considered offering a greeting to Sheriff Hale, but she thought better of it in the end. It would be best not to interrupt him in such a private moment. But as she spun to head for the churchyard gates, she yelped to see that Sheriff Hale was now right behind her, making his own way to the exit. 

“My apologies, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” he said straight away. Olivia could feel her cheeks flush with embarrassment. Why did I yelp like that? He hadn’t even touched her! That’s what she got for purposefully not keeping track of where he was. If she hadn’t been so scared of what he might think if he caught her staring at him, she would have noticed that he, too, was leaving the churchyard. 

“Oh, no, I should have been more, um, aware of my surroundings,” she mumbled back. 

“Have you been—are you doing well?” the sheriff asked. “It must be hard, after losing Jacob like that. If you ever need anything, don’t be afraid to ask.”

“That’s a very kind offer,” Olivia replied, wondering if he was only making it out of a sense of obligation. “I’m getting accustomed to life on my own now.”

“I know what you mean.” 

The response caught Olivia off-guard. Was the sheriff more comfortable on his own as well? Had his vision of what marriage was supposed to be also been shattered by the reality of it?

While his wife hadn’t been murdered, she had passed away from consumption the very same week that Olivia’s husband had been found dead. They’d both slowly been grieving the end of one dream and learning what it was to be alone. 

In some ways, however, Olivia felt less alone in her own company than she had with Jacob, but that was something she wouldn’t dare admit to almost anyone. She was well aware of how it looked from the outside. Thanks to Jacob’s good job at the bank and her own wages from working as a schoolteacher, she could live comfortably.

She’d inherited Jacob’s well-appointed two-bedroom house on the edge of town, and despite occasionally jumping from a bump in the night, in many ways, Olivia preferred to be on her own than be trapped in a loveless, if peaceful, marriage. 

Her dear friend Bonnie was the one person who would understand that. Surely, people like Sheriff Hale—normal people—felt grief after losing a spouse, not just numb like she did.

“Well, I hope you have a blessed day,” she said. 

“And to you as well. I mean, you too,” he replied, in a rare display of discombobulation that almost made her smile. 

He gestured for her to lead the way out of the churchyard. Once they were out on the street, they walked side by side for a minute before splitting off to their respective homes. It wasn’t until she was halfway home that Olivia remembered that she had meant to go back to the schoolhouse. 

Embarrassed at herself, she turned around, surprised at how much Sheriff Hale’s mere presence had distracted her. It wasn’t the first time she’d noticed how handsome he was, but she knew better than to put too much stock in good looks. Jacob, too, had been a stately man in his own way, but that hadn’t made him the doting husband she’d imagined. 

As a young girl, Olivia had dreamed of a kind of love that she was no longer sure existed in real life. She pictured herself and her future husband spending afternoons enjoying picnics by the creek. She’d imagined reading poetry and Bible verses to each other, getting lost in one another’s eyes. Sometimes, she thought if they had been blessed with a child, maybe the love would have grown between herself and Jacob, but they’d never gotten the chance to find out. 

“Olivia!” 

She looked up sharply, shaken out of her thoughts, to see none other than Bonnie on her way home. “Hello! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”

“Took you long enough to see me. I must have called for you three times! What were you so lost in thought about?” 

Olivia laughed lightly, not sure where to start. “Oh, just…lost in thought, I suppose. Do you think the love we read about can happen to normal people?” 

Bonnie made a gentle tsking sound and fell into step with Olivia. “Of course, that’s what you were thinking about. You’re the one who’s been married. You tell me!”

“I don’t think my marriage is really the example to go off of,” Olivia said, giving her friend a sideways look. “We courted for two months if you can count him walking me to church every week as a courtship. The man wasn’t one for conversation. I couldn’t even tell you what his favorite color was. Sometimes, I think I barely even knew him.” It was an admission she could only make to a friend like Bonnie, who would never dream of judging her. 

“Do you ever miss him?” 

The question made Olivia choke up slightly, catching her off-guard. “Oh, why can’t we ever have a casual conversation? Why don’t you tell me how your day at work was or something like that?” She forced a laugh to loosen up the pit in her stomach. 

“You were the one who started all this with your daydreaming about true love!” 

They had a good chuckle together, and Olivia linked her arm around Bonnie’s. The hard truth was that she did miss Jacob from time to time. She missed his humming in the morning and the way he would always compliment her Sunday dress, even if she could tell he didn’t mean it. As quiet as he’d been, Jacob’s presence kept her company through the lonely winter nights. 

More specifically, however, she missed the promise of a life they could have had together. Through it all, she’d always held out hope that they would grow to truly love one another. He died a death she would never wish on her worst enemy, and with him died any innocence she’d had left. 

“So. How was your day at work?” Olivia asked, ready to talk about someone and something else. 

“Boring, for the most part. Except for when Deputy Seward came in for a bag of flour,” Bonnie replied, raising her eyebrows. 

“Thomas Seward stopped by the mill? Why didn’t he just go to the general store?” Olivia frowned, confused. Bonnie’s family ran the mill in town, where she had been packaging and labeling the flour since she was old enough to write the labels.

The Cameron family sold their flour at the general store, where most of the townsfolk bought it. Few went straight to the mill itself unless they were buying for a big event. 

“That’s what I thought, too! I might be making it up, but…I think he may have come in just to see me,” she said with a smile.

Olivia’s eyes widened. Thomas Seward, finally reciprocating? Bonnie was the kind of dreamer who always had fanciful feelings toward someone in town, though the same man never held her attention for long. Thomas Seward, Sheriff Ethan Hale’s trusted deputy, had always been the one exception for Bonnie, who had held a candle for him since they were all schoolchildren. 

“Wait. Do you mean he came to see you for purely social reasons? Or are you wanted for some kind of terrible crime, Bonnie Cameron?” Olivia teased. 

“I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous. I lost hope years ago that he would ever see me as anything other than the girl who’s always covered with a layer of flour dust, but…I can’t explain it. Something’s changed,” Bonnie whispered. 

“What’s that something?” Olivia asked, now genuinely curious. 

“I don’t know! Something…in the way he looks at me. He complimented my hands. Said they looked elegant like I ought to be a proficient pianist. I would have preferred it if he’d told me my eyes were pretty, but I’ll take what I can get.” 

Her excitement was palpable. Olivia was excited for her friend, of course, but she couldn’t deny the pang of jealousy she felt at the same time. In the two years of their marriage, Jacob had never looked at her any differently than he had any other woman, man, or child in all of Brookings. 

“Well, I won’t hold my breath for wedding bells, but that’s certainly a very interesting turn of events. You do have very elegant hands, you know,” Olivia reminded Bonnie. 

“We must have the most handsome sheriff’s department in all the Dakota Territory. I wonder if Sheriff Hale will consider remarrying any time soon,” Bonnie mused. 

“It’s only been six months since his wife died,” Olivia pointed out. “She passed just about when Jacob did. A morbid commonality that we share.”

“A lot can change in six months. Besides, everyone knows there was no love lost between the sheriff and his wife. She never had a kind word for anyone, let alone her husband.”

Olivia fell into a contemplative silence. Sheriff Hale seemed to be such a kind man. How could anyone, let alone his wife, treat him with such contempt?

 

Chapter Two

Ethan stared out the window from his desk, watching as the townsfolk wandered about, running errands and rushing from one place to the next. Pastor Anthony walked by, greeting those going in the other direction, followed closely by Mayor Samuel Whitmore. 

When he saw the widowed Olivia Matthews walk past, arm in arm with Bonnie Cameron, he sat up a little higher in his chair. She certainly was a beautiful woman. He wouldn’t have ever admitted it to anyone, but her auburn hair and dark green eyes had stood out to him as soon as he and his wife, Eve, had moved to town. 

Of course, Eve had noticed, too. He hadn’t known it at the time, but she had been the kind of woman who would hate any other woman she considered more beautiful than her. And she’d considered Olivia far more beautiful.

Her hatred of Olivia’s easy-going nature drove her to the brink of obsession. If anything, it had made Ethan think more about Olivia than perhaps he naturally would have, if only because he’d been doing everything he could to convince Eve that his eyes were for her alone. 

After moving to Brookings together from Kansas, he had thought that they would be bound together forever in ways that the words of their marriage vows could barely begin to express. He could not have been more wrong. 

Any affection they’d had for each other rusted with bitterness shortly after arriving in Brookings. It had always been a marriage of convenience, and he’d known her to be a sour woman, but he’d still been shocked to see the good in her replaced with a resentful and vitriolic version of her. It didn’t take him long to realize that the transformation wasn’t as shocking as it had appeared at first. If anything, Eve was more bitter by nature than she’d ever revealed before their marriage. And moving to Brookings had made the mask fall away completely. 

It wasn’t all her fault, of course, and Ethan spent many sleepless nights blaming himself for not giving her the life she deserved. Had they been able to have a child, surely she would have blossomed once more, but after five years of marriage, it was still just the two of them, and Ethan could not make himself be enough for her. And one day, she’d found someone else who was.

The door to the sheriff’s office swung open, and Ethan leaned back from the window to greet his good friend and deputy, Thomas, who was inexplicably carrying a large bag of flour. 

“You getting ready to do a lot of baking?” Ethan asked. Neither of the men was very proficient when it came to cooking, but that’s what the local saloon was for. Mrs. Sheridan always had a fresh meal for a reasonable price over at the Rusty Spur that was ten times better than anything either of them would be able to make for themselves. 

“It’s a long story. What are you staring out the window at?” Thomas parried back. 

“It’s a long story. You go first.”

Thomas laughed, his dark hair falling over his eyes. He let the bag of flour drop to the floor and wiped the white residue from his trousers. “Well, I was checking in on Charlie over at the blacksmith shop. He’s positive someone stole a good chunk of his coal, but I’m not so sure. I have a feeling his record-keeping is becoming less reliable at his age.”

“And how does the flour fit into it all?” Ethan wondered.

“It doesn’t really. I was about to walk home when I remembered that the Cameron Millhouse is just next door to Charlie’s blacksmith shop. I don’t know what came over me. I just got a kind of…compulsion, I suppose, to go…” Thomas admitted bashfully. He started arranging things on his desk to hide his reddening face, but the office itself was too small for anyone to go unseen for long. The one window at the front filled the place with light that filled almost every corner, illuminating his flushed cheeks. 

It didn’t take Ethan long to put the pieces together. “Thomas Seward. Have you gone sweet on the miller’s daughter?” he teased. 

Thomas’ nervous laughter said more than any words could have. “Listen, I…she was dancing up a storm after the last barn raising over at the Simpson’s, and I couldn’t look away. I don’t know how I’ve never noticed her before.” 

Ethan smiled, pleased for his friend, who had never shown much interest in love or marriage before. He’d been starting to wonder if Thomas would never get married. “She’s a good one, that Bonnie. Play your cards right, and maybe she’ll let you court her.” 

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” Thomas confessed, sinking down in his chair across from Ethan’s desk and slumping his shoulders. 

Ethan remembered that phase of love all too well, when the soaring highs made way for the lows of crippling self-doubt. 

“Don’t look at me for advice. I wouldn’t say that mine was an example of the kind of marriage anyone would want,” he said, the words coming out more bitterly than he’d expected. In the beginning, Eve had made the world glow with a light he hadn’t thought possible, and yet now, it was hard to believe that kind of affection was genuine. 

“But it wasn’t always so hard between you two. Before Eve strayed, wasn’t there—?”

“Of course, of course,” Ethan interrupted, wishing Thomas hadn’t brought it up at all. Now, all he could think about was the kick to the gut it had been when he’d discovered a love letter addressed to Eve, written by another man. 

For a time, Eve had tried to convince Ethan that the affection was unrequited, but he knew better. She’d fallen for a traveling salesman, and if she hadn’t gotten so sick just after meeting him, maybe the two of them would have had a beautiful life together—a better one than Ethan could provide for her, at any rate. 

“Well…how did you do it? How did you ask to court her?” Thomas pressed, bringing Ethan back to the present. 

“I didn’t,” Ethan revealed truthfully. “She was one of the women who helped to nurse me back to health after the war. I moped any time she was around, and once I was better, her father pulled me aside after church service one Sunday and told me that if I kept making eyes at her and didn’t start courting her soon, he’d run me out of town.”

Thomas laughed. “I see…I suppose I could go that route, too. Just wait for her father to force me into it instead of asking for some kind of blessing.”

“Oh, you can do better than I did. If you’re sure about it, put on a tie, make sure it’s straight, get a good shave, and go on over and ask,” Ethan suggested. “Never had the courage for it myself, but you’re a better man than I am.”

“Your Medal of Honor says differently.” 

Ethan looked over to the box on his desk where the five-pointed star was kept. He kept it there to remind himself what men were capable of, not because he liked being reminded of how he got it. 

“Miss Olivia Matthews. She’s one of Bonnie’s friends, isn’t she?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly. 

“There’s no one closer. Those two get on like a house on fire. Always have. Why? You thinking of courting again yourself?” 

Ethan smiled, trying to shake the feeling that he’d been caught. “No, no.”

“It’s not that I think you shouldn’t, but I’d recommend treading lightly with that one. She’s been through more than her fair share of tragedy these past few years.” 

Ethan bristled. It almost sounded like an insinuation that he might not be the best man to provide a good life for Olivia after she’d suffered so much loss. 

But he couldn’t be upset with Thomas.

By all accounts, a widow like Olivia Matthews would be considered a very desirable wife. She had inherited a nice house thanks to her former husband, and everyone agreed she was a kind and thoughtful woman. Surely, someone would be angling to court her sooner or later. 

And besides, he hadn’t been able to make his first wife happy, so Thomas was probably right. What did he have to offer a woman like Olivia? Would they make each other happy, or would he drive the joy right out of her, like he had Eve?

Thomas sighed. “Can you imagine losing your father like that? Shot in the street by a confused bushwhacker. Not sure what he meant to do or who he was meant to kill. Chances are, the man was just passing through town and got spooked at the sight of a sheriff’s badge. Sheriff Burke wasn’t the kind of man to have enemies,” he explained. 

Ethan grunted. As far as he was concerned, it was almost impossible for a sheriff to avoid collecting enemies. It was part of the job. There would always be criminals who felt done wrong by looking for their own kind of revenge.

Still, apparently Sheriff Clyde Burke’s death had been very unexpected. He had passed away before Ethan and Eve had arrived in Brookings, so he didn’t know as much about the case as he ought, but it had been the talk of the town for months afterward.

Then Olivia’s husband had been murdered. At the time, Ethan had been similarly distracted by the death of his own wife, but even he felt the aftereffects of the banker’s death. It wasn’t as if murder was a common occurrence in the town. Now was as good a time as any to look more carefully into the cases that he hadn’t been able to supervise at the times they took place. “Dig out the file for me, if you don’t mind. And Jacob Matthew’s file as well, while you’re at it,” Ethan ordered. 

It had always bothered him that he hadn’t been able to get to the bottom of whatever had happened to Jacob Matthews. He would dig the file out every month or so, scouring it for information he’d potentially missed the last time, chastising himself for not having been more present at the time of the investigation. 

Thomas pushed his chair out without saying a word, going to the filing cabinet in the corner. He didn’t have to say anything for Ethan to know what he was thinking. They’d had the same conversation countless times before. Thomas always tried to remind him that the Jacob Matthews case was all but unsolvable and that he shouldn’t blame himself for not having been a bigger part of the investigation, considering what he’d been going through at home. 

Still, something deep in his gut told Ethan that it could be cracked, if only he could follow the right clue. 

“Here it is,” Thomas said dryly, pulling out Jacob Matthews’ thin file and starting to read from it. “The body was found by the Greely Creek, out by the placer mine. It was discovered by the foreman, a Mr. William Mickey, who sent Andrew McVie to go get the sheriff. Deputy Sheriff Thomas Seward arrived at the scene and—”

“Can I see it?” Ethan interrupted, holding his hand out. Thomas passed over the file. “And Mr. Burke’s, too. I’ve never really thought about it before, but do you think the two murders could be connected?” 

He immediately regretted stating his half-baked theory out loud. Thomas groaned as he dropped both the files on Ethan’s desk. “No, I don’t, but at least that’s a fresh thought. Mr. Burke was gunned down in the street because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were countless witnesses who saw the murder take place, and—”

“And Mr. Matthews was found alone, shot in the heart at close range. I know. On the surface, they have nothing in common, except for…except for Olivia Matthews,” Ethan whispered under his breath. 

Thomas chuckled. “And here I was, thinking you fancied her. So, you think she murdered her father and husband? Well, if she did, she very nearly got away with it because I never would have suspected her,” he said sarcastically. 

Ethan rolled his eyes. “I’m not saying that she killed them. Still…it’s not common that someone has quite that much bad luck in such a short time. Are they coming for her next? Does Olivia have enemies we don’t know about? What if Mr. Matthews and Sheriff Burke were involved in some kind of illegal activity together?” 

“Are you asking if the former sheriff was siphoning off town funds with the help of the bank manager?” Thomas asked. The question was, again, sarcastic, but something about it sounded halfway plausible to Ethan. After all, he’d heard of cases like that before in other towns out West.

“Didn’t you say that the mayor didn’t take too kindly to Sheriff Burke?” Ethan asked, his thoughts beginning to cook, one after another. 

“He doesn’t seem to like any sheriff. Burke, or yourself. Honestly, I think he’s just jealous of the attention. You and Sheriff Burke both got to stroll through town like heroes, and Mayor Whitmore couldn’t even convince his citizens to name the town he founded after him,” Thomas replied, repeating an oft-told joke about the mayor. 

As a relative newcomer to Brookings, Ethan wasn’t as intimately familiar with the history of the town, but as it had been explained to him, Samuel Whitmore had been the first to discover the local silver run. He turned that silver run into a mine, started the settlement that soon became Brookings, and became the town’s first mayor. 

When it came time to name the town that he’d founded, however, folks had a different idea about who they wanted to honor. When the lode mine was first being developed not far from the placer mine where Olivia’s husband had been found, a dynamite accident caused a collapse that buried fourteen men. Ted Brookings, a young man from Virginia, almost singlehandedly cleared away the rubble and managed to save nine of the buried men. 

After the accident, there was no question left in the minds of the townsfolk. Ted Brookings was a man they could trust, and Samuel Whitmore was just the one who signed off on their weekly pay, which always seemed to be less than expected. Worse still for the mayor, the accident was largely blamed on him due to the pressure he’d placed on the miners to rush the opening. 

Mayor Whitmore, of course, never truly recovered from the blow to his ego. Ted Brookings died of typhoid not long after his act of heroism, and the mayor was mysteriously sick on the day of his funeral. Rumor had it he tried to improve his reputation by paying a kid two dollars to pretend to get stuck in a tree so he could “rescue” him. 

When that didn’t work, he gave up on winning over the heart of Brookings and instead worked to become the richest man in the area. He seemed to think that if he couldn’t earn the respect he thought he deserved, then he could at least buy it. 

“Be careful, Ethan,” Thomas warned. “You’re only going to make life difficult for yourself if you go poking around the mayor’s business. He has already tried to shut down half the investigations we’ve started. I hate to think what he’d do if we looked into his affairs,” he added. “Especially if you don’t have any evidence. I don’t know about you, but I like being gainfully employed.”

“Listen, I don’t like rocking the boat any more than the next person, but it’s only natural to look into the enemies of a murdered man,” Ethan pointed out. 

“Mayor Whitmore might have hated Sheriff Burke, but he got along just fine with Jacob Matthews. He was the man’s godfather, for heaven’s sake. So, if you’re trying to tie the two murders together, I’d say that’s where your theory starts to fall apart.”

Ethan leaned back in his chair again, frustrated. “I’m not trying to tell you I have a theory yet. I just…I think there’s more we can do to get to the bottom of all this. Even one unsolved murder is one too many, and—”

“If you’re looking to keep busy, I’d say we’d be better off trying to find this man,” Thomas interrupted. He picked up a wanted poster from his desk, stood, and dropped it in front of Ethan, who looked down at the yellowed page. 

Outlaw bandit by the name of Jesse McGraw wanted in connection with the robbery of the Sioux Falls Domestic Bank. The crime was committed on April 4th, 1875. Please send a telegram to the Sioux Falls Sheriff’s Department with any information.

Above the text was a grainy print of a photograph featuring the face of a man no older than Ethan. His long, dark hair coiled into curls at the ends, and even in the bad reproduction, it was obvious that this was a man who could rely on his good looks to get him out of a tight spot. 

“Although it might be just as much of a wild goose chase as finding the gold I heard Mayor Whitmore’s man servants talking about in the saloon last night. Did you know that there’s rumors of a gold shipment that got waylaid here and buried somewhere around the creek?” Thomas asked. 

“I’m not interested in fictional gold, unless Whitmore is saying he buried it himself,” Ethan replied with a shake of his head. There were real murder cases to get to the bottom of, but the promise of hidden gold always managed to get more attention than the needs of the people. 

“I don’t know if he hid it himself, but I do know that they were saying it had something to do with the war. Gold fell into enemy hands, and then someone buried it, hoping to come back for it later,” Thomas revealed, wiggling his eyebrows. 

Ethan had had just about enough. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s leave the mystery gold for now and worry about the other cases we have on the go. We’re a two-man department. We can take on two jobs at once. Why don’t you keep yourself busy looking around for this Jesse McGraw, and I’ll see what I can dig up about—”

Just then, a knock at the door interrupted him, and in walked none other than Mayor Samuel Whitmore’s sniveling clerk, Robert Mack. 

“Good afternoon,” said Mack, standing smugly with his hands folded in front of him. 

“You know, most people wait for someone to answer the door before they just…walk in,” Thomas replied. For all his talk about not wanting to provoke the mayor’s ire, he seemed unable to resist sticking his chin up just a bit. 

“Nice to see you, Mack,” Ethan interjected before Thomas could do anything else to antagonize the man. He stood up to greet the clerk, reaching out a diplomatic hand for him to shake. 

Mack smiled thinly at the show of deference. “The mayor would like to summon you to his office.” 

“‘Summon’ him?” Thomas repeated in disbelief. 

Ethan flashed him a warning look before turning back to Mack. “Of course. I always have time to meet with the mayor. Do you know what he wanted to discuss?”

The clerk nodded sharply. “Outlaws are threatening to run rampant around this town, and Mayor Whitmore wants to be sure that you are doing everything in your power to get rid of them.” 

“Outlaws? Are you referring to Jesse McGraw?” Ethan asked, “I just saw a wanted poster for him from the Sioux Falls Sheriff’s Department, but I don’t believe there’s any evidence he’s been through Brookings at all.” He was always going to do his best to protect the citizens of Brookings, but one outlaw rumored to be in the area hardly counted as bandits running rampant. He’d learned long ago in his army days that fear-mongering never helped any situation. 

Mack sniffed. “I have not been briefed on the entirety of the situation, but if you would like to come with me, you can discuss the matter with the mayor himself.” 

Ethan nodded, bracing himself for what was sure to be a terribly condescending encounter. Either way, he wasn’t going to turn down the chance to get to know Mayor Whitmore better. Until he managed to solve the murders of Olivia Matthews’ father and husband, he wasn’t going to be able to look at her without feeling a pang of guilt, knowing he could have done more.