J. Jance: Trial By Fire

Ali could tell from the disapproving frown on Leland’s forehead that her butler most certainly minded. In Leland Brooks’s world, well-mannered guests never dropped by uninvited; it simply wasn’t done. Sheriff Maxwell, however, had apparently failed to get that particular memo. Ali knew that since the sheriff lived miles away in Prescott, the county seat, he couldn’t exactly claim that he was simply in the neighborhood and decided to drop in. No, he had come to see Ali on purpose, and he hadn’t called in advance because he was worried she might try to dodge him.

“No,” Ali said at once, clearing her laptop out of the way. “Of course not. Please have a seat. Would you care for coffee?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Maxwell said. “A cup of coffee would be greatly appreciated.” With that he eased his lanky frame into one of the empty patio chairs and then set his hat carefully, with the crown down, on the seat of another.

Ali nodded in Leland’s direction. With only the smallest disapproving shake of his head, the butler picked up Ali’s empty mug and bustled off to fetch coffee while Ali turned to her visitor.

“To what do I owe this honor?” she asked.

Sheriff Maxwell looked both thoughtful and uncomfortable at the same time. “It’s to whom,” he said finally, with the kind of carefully chosen grammar that would have done Mr. Gabrielson proud. “Not to what. And the real answer to your question would be your friend Detective Holman. I suppose he’s told you that my department has been through a bit of a rough patch recently.”

It was true that Dave Holman had mentioned the sheriff’s department’s difficulties, but so had everyone else. The story had been the talk of the town, from the Sedona post office to the lunch counter at the Sugarloaf Cafe, a neighborhood diner run by Ali’s parents, Bob and Edie Larson.

According to local gossip, a longtime evidence clerk named Sally Harrison had come under suspicion of hijacking some of the drugs that had been left in her charge. When the alleged thefts finally became known, her boyfriend, Devon Ryan, a deputy who not only happened to be the department’s media information officer but was also still married to someone else at the time, had decked an overly inquisitive reporter from the Flagstaff daily newspaper, the Coconino Courier. Oscar Reyes, the reporter in question, had turned up at a press conference with plenty of questions about the alleged thefts, but also with pointed questions about the couple’s illicit affair. The press conference altercation had gone from verbal to physical. Now both the evidence clerk and the media relations officer were off work on administrative leave while the reporter, more outraged than physically hurt, was supposedly in the process of filing suit against Devon Ryan as well as the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department.

“So I’ve heard,” was all Ali said.

Maxwell nodded. “I’m afraid that reporter from Flagstaff isn’t the only one with a black eye over this. The county attorney is hinting around about making a settlement with him. If that happens, the voters will have my balls.” Suddenly aware of his slip, he said, “Oops, please excuse my blunt language. The truth is, both Harrison and Ryan were working for the department long before I was elected to office, but that’s not going to count in my favor. As far as people in the county are concerned, riding herd on my employees is my responsibility. They’ll say I wasn’t supervising them properly.”

Ali knew that was true as well. It was exactly what people around town were already saying, including Ali’s mother, Edie Larson; but that bit of gossip didn’t explain why Sheriff Maxwell was here on Ali’s patio, staring off across the valley at some of Sedona’s most spectacular red rocks.

Before anything more could be said, Leland Brooks marched onto the flagstone patio carrying a fully laden tray. Ali noticed at once that Leland was taking a butler’s revenge on their impromptu guest: rather than the casual everyday dishes, he had loaded the tray with a pair of tiny, carefully ironed napkins and Ali’s good Limoges Bélème-pattern china. Ali knew at once that the oversized fingers on Sheriff Maxwell’s meaty paws would barely fit inside the handles of those delicately shaped cups.

Without a word, Leland unloaded the tray, depositing napkins, bread plates, and silverware along with a platter of freshly baked cookies onto the patio table’s glass top. Then, after serving the coffee, he returned to the house.

Maxwell watched him go with a bemused expression on his face. “Didn’t he used to work for Arabella Ashcroft, and for her mother?” Maxwell asked as he stirred a pair of sugar cubes into his coffee.

“He works for me now,” Ali replied civilly, but she wasn’t about to reveal any more than that about her domestic arrangements. Besides, Leland Brooks wasn’t the only one who was more than a little put out by Sheriff Maxwell’s taking the liberty of dropping by her place uninvited, especially when she was impatient to get back to work on her speech. If the man’s visit had a point, he had yet to set about making it, and Ali thought it was high time he did.

“Why exactly are you here?” she asked.

Maxwell shifted in his chair. He reached for his Stetson as if considering holding it in front of him as a shield. Then, sighing heavily, he left the hat where it was.

“My two miscreants-Sally Harrison and Devon Ryan-are off on administrative leave right now. They’ll stay that way as long as the charges against them are being investigated. That leaves my department shorthanded, but I can’t hire permanent replacements until the situation has been resolved. If it goes the way I think it will, they’ll both get their walking papers.”

Listening to him, Ali still wondered what any of this had to do with her.

“I’ve got someone on my staff who can take up the slack in the evidence room,” Maxwell continued, “but the media relations problem is a white horse of a different color. Ryan made quite a mess of it, and our recent history with the press is such that no one inside the department is willing to step up to the plate.”

Ali was beginning to get the picture, and she was astonished. “Are you asking me to take on the media relations job?”

Maxwell nodded and then took a sip of his coffee. Hanging on to the tiny cup with one pinky finger poking out in the air made him look as silly as Leland Brooks had intended. Finally he gave up and engulfed the tiny cup in one massive hand.

“On a temporary basis,” Maxwell added, after carefully returning the cup to its matching saucer. “Of course, we can’t pay you nearly what you earned when you were a television news anchor out in California, but you used to be a reporter, Ali. You know how those people think. You know what they want, and you’ll know how to handle them.”

“I’m not a cop,” Ali said. “Never have been.”

Maxwell gave her the smallest grin. “There have been several times the last couple of years when you could have fooled me.”

It was true. Since returning to her hometown, Ali Reynolds had found herself in one scrape after another, sometimes dealing with some very bad people. The previous winter she and her mother had helped bring down a serial killer, but that had all come about through her being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“I’m forty-seven years old,” she said. “I haven’t been thinking of starting a new career. Besides, back in the day I did a couple of stories on the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Police Academy. It struck me as being pretty intense. I don’t think I could hack it.”

“No one is asking you to go through police academy training,” Maxwell said. “This would be on a temporary basis only, until we can officially give Ryan the boot and appoint someone else to the position permanently. Please believe me when I say this. I certainly wouldn’t expect you to go around mixing it up with any bad guys, although I know you’ve done that on your own account on occasion. I also understand that you have a concealed-weapon permit and that you’re fairly handy with both your Glock and your Taser. ‘Armed and dangerous’ is the way Dave Holman put it.”