There was one knock on the front door before Scotty pushed it open and walked in. He looked down at Driscoll. “What happened?”
“He was trying to escape,” Bill said. “When you get him back to the jail, put him in shackles, too. What about our mayor?”
“That’s what I came to tell you. I know where he’s at.”
* * *
“What I think? We ought to go into town and check on her.”
“We heard you the first dozen times you said that.”
Corrine gave Irv a malevolent squint. “Well, apparently you ain’t listening, old man. Miss Laurel said if she didn’t come tomorrow, which was yesterday, she’d come the next day, which is today.”
“Day ain’t over, is it?”
Ernie looked up at the sun. “Noon or better. But she has a point, Irv.”
“Aw, you’re just horny. You’d agree with anything she said,” Irv grumbled, shooting a glower toward Corrine.
“You said yourself you was scared Miss Laurel would come to grief,” she said. “Didn’t he say that, Ernie?”
Ernie tugged on his long earlobe. “Seems I do recollect—”
“I remember sayin’ it,” Irv snapped. “And I still hold to it. But you,” he said to Corrine, “agreed that we should lay low till we got the all clear. Laurel wouldn’t want us to show ourselves till it was safe. We’ve got no idea what all went on last night. I doubt much did on account of that storm. But still…”
Corrine stood and dusted off her seat. “Well, you can sit here till you become a fossil like in them rocks over yonder. I’m going.” She marched off toward Irv’s truck, which they’d camouflaged with cedar boughs.
“How are you going to get there?” he called after her. “You can’t drive.”
She started pulling the cedar branches off the truck and slinging them aside. “I can drive good enough. Ernie’s been teaching me.”
Irv turned an accusatory look on his friend. Ernie guiltily raised his bony shoulders. “In my spare time.”
“Hell’s bells.” Irv started after Corrine. “I’ll drive us.” Over his shoulder, he said to Ernie, “You stay and guard the place. Don’t do no cooking till we get back and keep those firearms within your reach.”
“Y’all be careful.”
* * *
Bill instructed Scotty to return Driscoll to the jail, leave a man there to guard him, then to bring a carload of deputies to Lefty’s.
He also ordered Scotty not to leave town without obtaining an arrest warrant for Mayor Bernard Croft. Looking dubious, Scotty asked how the sheriff planned on arranging that. “I’m calling the judge now.”
Scotty left with Driscoll, who had regained consciousness. His shouted protests over being treated inhumanely were ignored.
Bill placed a call. Thatcher overheard him threatening a judge to expose both his bribe-taking and the mistress he kept in Stephenville if he didn’t have the warrant ready by the time Scotty got to the courthouse to pick it up.
After completing the call, Bill went upstairs to check on Mrs. Amos. He didn’t stay long. “She’s better. Sleeping,” he told Thatcher as they left the house.
Less than five minutes after Scotty’s announcement that Bernie Croft had been seen heading for Lefty’s, the sheriff and Thatcher were speeding toward it, having no idea if their quarry was still there.
Croft’s notable town car, with Hennessy behind the wheel, had been spotted taking the turnoff to Lefty’s by a deputy who’d come off guard duty at the Johnsons’ property and was on his way back into town.
Bill took the turnoff now but didn’t go far off the highway before stopping. As he checked his pistol to make sure it was loaded, he said, “I’m waiting for that warrant.”
“I’ll reconnoiter.” Having checked his own Colt, Thatcher clicked the cylinder back into place and opened the passenger door. “Just in case I don’t come back, that poisoned bottle of bourbon is in your kitchen cabinet behind a box of oatmeal.”
“Only you would think of that right now.”