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plenty of debts, but these are held by banks and certainly wouldn’t be worth killing him over. And while not everybody in town necessarily loved him, I haven’t been able to come up with anyone with serious enough issues to want to do him harm. Believe me, I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of a single possibility.”
    “What about these hands you had working for you? Weren’t any of them around that night? Didn’t any of them see anything?”
    “No. They’d all gone to town. Bobby had given them the day off.”
    “Convenient,” Matt said. “That strike anybody as odd?”
    Elena shrugged. “Not really. Afterward I kind of wondered if he suspected this blowout between us was coming and didn’t want anyone around to overhear. It had been building for some time,” she admitted.
    “Is it possible one of the hands killed him? Maybe they were worried about getting paid?”
    “They were all in town at the bar. They have alibis.”
    Her voice was thick with frustration. He could understand why. The situation certainly didn’t look good. But listening to her, he didn’t have a doubt in the world that she was telling the truth. She was no murderer. Whatever else might have changed about her over the years, that hadn’t. Which meant she needed help. She might not have sent the article to him—he definitely believed her about that, too—but the result was the same.
    Before he could say anything, the sound of an engine reached them, drawing their attention toward the front of the house. Someone was coming up the driveway.
    Matt glanced back at her. “Expecting company?”
    Her heavy frown answered before she did. “No,” she said, rising from her chair.
    He pushed away from the door frame, ready to follow. “Any idea who it could be?”
    “Not really,” she said, moving past him. “But if there’s one thing I’ve learned by now, it’s bound to be trouble.”

Chapter Three
    She’d been right, Elena reflected grimly as she watched the two men climb out of the police vehicle they’d parked in front of the house. It was trouble.
    Sheriff Walt Bremer climbed out first, heaving himself from behind the driver’s seat with a great deal of effort. In his mid-fifties, he was a big man in every way, increasingly around his midsection. He’d always been pleasant enough to Elena and she’d never had any issues with him before. But once he’d zeroed in on her as his prime suspect, he’d turned on her so thoroughly it was hard to believe he’d ever had a kind word for her in the past.
    A second, equally familiar man emerged from the passenger seat. Travis Gerard—Cassie’s husband, Bobby’s best friend since they were boys, and a local deputy. He was thirty, like Bobby had been, a long, lean figure with close-cropped hair and dark eyes. Like Cassie, he was someone she’d socialized with numerous times over the years due to his friendship with Bobby. But their relationship had started out cool and only grown cooler at the same time her marriage had, understandably enough. As Bobby’s best friend, she knew he’d been treated to plenty of Bobby’s complaining about her over the years, how she wasn’t supporting him, how she was too concerned about money. Once he’d actually pulled her aside and tried to play marriage counselor, by telling her she had a responsibility to be there for Bobby. She hadn’t been in the mood to explain Bobby’s latest bright idea, and hadn’t really thought it was any of his business, so her lack of cooperation had likely only lowered his opinion of her. He’d been cold enough toward her when it seemed like she wasn’t getting along with Bobby. Unsurprisingly, now that it seemed that she’d killed him, Travis was hellbent on making her pay.
    As they approached, she saw that the men’s interest wasn’t in her, but in the man standing at her side, and she knew immediately why they’d come. Her interaction with Matt in town, and the fact that she’d driven off with