He sauntered into the living room and all but ignored his inept deputy fidgeting in the middle of the room. Hands clasped behind his back, the sheriff strolled around the perimeter, stopping here and there to kick at a bottle or brush his fingertips across the red paint.
“Message, eh?” Wilcox faced her. Rubbing his chin, he eyed her for a moment. “I don't know about that. Looks like the handiwork of teenagers to me.”
“That's what I told her, sir,” the deputy piped in, sending an I-told-you-so look Beth's way.
Wilcox rocked back and forth on his feet. “Good, Schnell.” He flashed her an ingratiating smile. “A bright light within our ranks, this one is, which is why I'm assigning him as the lead investigator on your case. If anyone can find the hooligans who did this, it'll be Schnell.”
The tips of the deputy's ears reddened and he straightened to his full height of about five feet, seven inches. “Thank you, sir. I'll make you proud.”
“And do you have much investigative experience, Deputy Schnell?”
“Everyone has to start somewhere.” He scowled.
“And are you going to start with the person snatching up everybody's land? The bully who pushed, prodded and harassed the families living between the county line and the Lakota Reservation?”
“Now, now, young lady, you've expressed your concerns to me before.” Wilcox's eyes hardened but the plastic smile remained. “There is nothing to that but rumors and innuendo. The calls and texts you’ve reported don’t say anything about an orchestrated plot to buy up land. As a law enforcement officer, I'm obligated to stick to the facts.”
Crossing her arms, she faced off against the sheriff. “And what facts are those?”
He nudged a burger wrapper with the tip of his brown shoe, shined to a high polish. “Why, that the person who did this likes greasy food and cheap beer. That doesn't sound like some high-flying, big-money developer, does it?”
The heat in Beth's flush of indignation would have made dry brush burst into flame, but she kept her mouth shut. She'd played this game with Wilcox several times already. It always turned out the same. He patronized her. She antagonized him. They both stalked off unsatisfied and steaming.
If the stakes had been any lower, Beth would have walked away from the frustration of dealing with an asshole like Wilcox. But the truth was she couldn't. Someone was strong-arming people to sell. Poor Sarah Jane Hunihan finally sold after panic attacks sent her to the emergency room over in Dry Creek. As the last holdout, Beth would be damned if she'd give up the house her grandfather had built with his bare hands for a fistful of cash.
Despite the wreckage around her, she could still see the home where she'd come to live as a newly orphaned eight-year-old girl. Now her grandparents had passed on, leaving her this house. It was the last link to her family, her history, her heritage.
There were no diamonds hanging from her family tree. No Bible handed down from generation to generation. When her grandparents had come here, they'd left Mexico with only what they’d carried in a little suitcase as they followed the crops north. They'd eked out an existence, scrimped and saved to make a better life for their son, José, and later for her. Now there would be no future Martinez generations. How could she sell when this house was all she had left for family?
“I take your silence to mean that you are finally seeing the light.” Wilcox swiped away an invisible piece of lint from his brown shirt.
“I wouldn't say that, sheriff.” Beth kept her voice low and steady. “So what do you recommend I do to discourage these vandals?” She made air quotes with her fingers.
The smile on Wilcox’s face transformed to a mere baring of his wide-spread teeth, and he slapped his brown hat onto his bald head. “My recommendation, Señorita Martinez?” He drew out her last name as he sneered. “Why, I'd recommend selling.”
Angry heat spiraled through her body. “I'm sure you would, sheriff, but I'll be damned before I take your advice. Now, since there's nothing you two are really going to do to find who's behind this, I guess I'll have to do it on my own.”
“So you're going to do his job?” Wilcox shook his head and twisted his lips into a cruel snarl. “See, Schnell, this is the problem with our immigration laws. These people come in and start taking jobs away from hard-working Americans.” He paused, rubbed a fleshy hand across his large belly before shrugging his shoulders. “But on the other hand, at least this one isn't lazy.”
“You piece of shit.” The words shot out of her mouth.
Any semblance of civility evaporated from Wilcox's face. His eyes narrowed and he stomped over until his breath fogged up her glasses. “Watch your mouth. You’re not under the Dry Creek County sheriff’s protection out here.”
Beth whipped off her narrow glasses and cleaned them on her black sweater. “I can take care of myself.”
He settled his hat back on his head. “You'd better hope so, señorita. You'd better hope so.”
“Is that a warning?”
The big man strolled toward the front door, his deputy trailing behind like a puppy. “Nope. I already told you, I deal in facts.”
The men hustled out of the house without looking back. Schnell slid easily into his cruiser. Wilcox's car dipped low when he settled his bulk behind the wheel. A second later, dust filled the air as their vehicles spit out gravel and dirt on their way down the driveway and onto Highway 28.
Out of habit, Beth locked the front door. No amount of begging and pleading had convinced the alarm company to come any earlier than next Friday to install a security system. The broken windowpanes and mess inside proved the flimsy door-handle lock wouldn't keep anyone out, but she had to do something to combat her lack of control over her life, her own body and basically everything else in the world.
Head down, she trudged over to her green Mini Cooper, racking her brain for a reason why this was happening.
Why would someone be so desperate for her to sell? The house wasn't big. The land surrounding it wasn't particularly scenic or valuable and it was practically in the middle of nowhere, even by Nebraska standards. The Lakota Reservation was just up the road, but the only thing on this end was prairie. Tribal leaders announced last week that they were going to build the new casino on the eastern end of the reservation.