Читать книгу Miss Lizzy's Legacy - Peggy Moreland, Peggy Moreland - Страница 8

Judd stood in the narrow alleyway, one shoulder propped against the rough brick wall and a hand stuffed deep in the pocket of his jeans. A ribbon of smoke curled lazily upward from the cigarette dangling from his lips. Baby lay at his feet, his head resting between his front paws. Judd’s gaze was pitched high on the brick wall opposite him to a square of newer brick he could just make out in the dim light.

At one time a catwalk had crossed from the building opposite his into the second story of the building his bar was housed in. At some point in time, someone had seen fit to remove the catwalk and had bricked up the openings in both buildings.

But the memory of its purpose remained.

Sighing, Judd pulled the cigarette from his mouth and flicked it away. He hunkered down beside Baby and dropped a hand to scratch absently at the dog’s head. As was his habit, the animal rolled to his back, exposing his belly. Chuckling, Judd scratched him there, as well. “You big lug,” he said in gentle reproach. He sighed again as he lifted his gaze back to the wall.

If the woman had asked about anything or anyone else, he would have given her what information he could and sent her on her way without a second thought. But the lady had made a mistake. A big one. Mary Elizabeth Sawyer—the woman she claimed was her great-grandfather’s mother—had never had any children. At least none who had lived.

All of which led Judd to wonder who Callie Benson really was, and what she wanted. The options were limited, for what would bring anyone to Guthrie, Oklahoma? The town was small, businesses few. Guthrie’s only draws were the Lazy E Rodeo Arena and the bed-and-breakfast inns that served the tourists who came to enjoy a bit of history.

She sure as hell wasn’t a cowboy. A tourist, then? He shook his head at the thought. Granted she had a car full of cameras, but they weren’t the standard equipment a tourist would carry. More like a professional photographer’s gear. To his way of thinking, that only left one purpose for her visit. She’d come to dig up more dirt on Judd Barker. As if enough dirt hadn’t been heaped on his name already.

He heaved another sigh. “So what are we going to do, Baby? Call her hand?”

In response, the dog whined low in his throat. The sound vibrated through Judd’s fingertips and drew a rueful smile. Baby was his oldest friend, and at times in his life, his only friend.

Baby’s ears perked, and he sat up and growled. Judd placed a restraining hand on the dog’s head to quiet him, and listened. He heard the faint click of footsteps on the brick sidewalk on the street beyond and took a step back to fade deeper into the alley’s shadows. Moments later he watched as Callie passed by the alley’s opening, her head bent against the wind, her shoulders hunched against the cold.

She didn’t look like a reporter, at least not the sleazy variety who’d hounded him in the past. She looked like money, old money, the kind who dressed as they pleased and thumbed their noses at fashion. The leather jacket she wore was soft and supple with age. She wore it with a disregard for its value that only the privileged could pull off. Her jeans were even older than her jacket and threadbare in places that made a man look twice.

And her car. Jesus. The sticker price on it alone was higher than that on most of the houses in Guthrie.

As he watched her disappear from sight, the rounded cheeks of her butt playing a game of “now you see me, now you don’t” beneath the hem of her jacket, he curled his fingers in Baby’s fur. That he was attracted to her didn’t surprise him. Last time he checked, he wasn’t blind or dead—yet. And Callie Benson was a beautiful woman. Hers was a God-given beauty, nothing fake or implanted or modified about her. And, with his experience, Judd should know.

He had a reputation as a lady’s man, and he couldn’t deny the tag. The guys in the band and in his road crew used to have an ongoing bet to see how long it took Judd to get laid once he hit a new town. To him it wasn’t a competition, only the simple pleasure of a pretty woman and—if she was willing—good sex. He knew no other kind.

Yep, in the past a woman out on the prowl, looking for a good time, would’ve found it with Judd Barker.

But not anymore. He’d learned to curb his appetite for the taste and feel of a pretty woman.

“Liar,” he muttered under his breath. He slapped a hand against his leg and headed for the rear door that led to his bar with Baby padding along at his heels.

* * *

Callie burst through the door of the hotel, her arms wrapped tight around her. Frank turned and looked up at her over the top of his glasses. “Cold out?”

“Freezing!”

He chuckled and gave his chair a push, spinning around to face her. “It’s the wind. Cuts right through a person.”

“That’s for sure.” She shivered and dropped her arms to shake them in an attempt to get her blood flowing warm again.

“Did you find Judd?”

She stopped flapping long enough to frown. “Yeah, I found him, all right.” She crossed to the front desk and propped her elbows on its top, puckering her lips into a pout. “What is it with that man? Does he eat nails for breakfast, or what?”

“Judd?” Frank chuckled and reared back in his chair, lacing his hands behind his head. “Nah, he just doesn’t take to strangers.” He leaned forward to scrape some papers from his desk. “Had a call or two while you were out.” He stretched to pass the messages to Callie.

“Thanks, Frank.” Frowning, she stuffed the papers into her pocket without looking at them. The burden of them made her shoulders sag, but she forced a smile. “Well, I guess I’ll call it a night. See you in the morning.”

“Sure thing. We start serving breakfast at eight.”

Once in the privacy of her room, Callie shrugged out of her jacket, then held it by its sleeve while she dug in the pocket for the messages Frank had given her. She tossed the jacket to the bed as she opened the first.

Call Stephen—214-555-5622.

She sank down on the bed and unfolded the second message.

Call Stephen. Urgent—214-555-5622.

She fell back, groaning, her hand moving to shove her hair from her eyes. In the note she’d left him, she had asked for space, time. Obviously, Stephen wasn’t going to honor either request.

A knock at the door had her jackknifing to a sitting position. Frowning, she scooted off the bed and crossed to the door. Standing on tiptoe, she peered through the peephole. All she could see was unrelieved black, which in itself was enough to identify her visitor. The outline of a Stetson pulled low on the man’s forehead only served to confirm who stood outside.

Grimacing, she flung open the door. “A little late for a social call, don’t you think?”

He planted a hand on either side of the frame and leaned toward her, his gaze boring deep into hers. “Who are you?”

A frown puckered between her brows at his threatening look, and she took a cautious step back. “Callie Benson.”

“So you said.” He stepped inside, blocking any chance of her slamming the door in his face. “But what I want to know is what you are. Why you’re here.”

Unconsciously, she lifted a hand to her throat, wondering if Frank would hear if she screamed loud enough. “I told you, to find information on my great-grandfather’s mother.”

His hand arced out, fanning the air narrow inches from her nose. “Cut the bull. Mary Elizabeth Sawyer never had any children.”

Callie fell back a step. “I beg your pardon?”

“She never had children. None that lived, anyway.”

“She most certainly did!” She whirled to grab her purse. “I have the papers right here to prove it.” She dug in the depths of her feed-bag style purse, pulled out yellowed documents and thrust them under his nose. “See for yourself. William Leighton Sawyer, born June 14, 1890, Oklahoma Territory. Son of Mary Elizabeth Sawyer.”

Judd looked at the paper, then shoved her hand aside. “There’s a tombstone out in Summit View Cemetery that carries the same information.”

Callie’s mouth dropped open, then clamped shut with an indignant click of teeth. “I’ll have you know my great-grandfather is William Leighton Sawyer, and he might be old, but he’s very much alive.”

“You’re a reporter, aren’t you?”

“A reporter!” she repeated, her voice rising in anger and frustration. “No, I’m not a reporter. I’m a—” She threw up her hands, unable to believe she was even having this conversation. “I don’t owe you any explanations. Now get out of my room, or I’ll call Frank and have you thrown out.”

When he didn’t move, she reached for the phone. He caught her arm at the wrist and pulled it to his thigh, dragging her to stand nose-to-nose with him. “You came to find me, didn’t you?”

Callie’s chest swelled in anger. “What are you? Some kind of egomaniac? I don’t know you, and furthermore, don’t care to know you. Now, if you don’t mind,” she said through clenched teeth as she tried to wrench free of him. “Get your hands off me.”

Instead of releasing her, he tightened his fingers on her wrist, making her wince. “Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve never heard of Judd Barker.”

She lifted her gaze to his and glared right back at the cold, hate-filled eyes pinned on her. “No, I’ve never heard of—” She stiffened as the name clicked a hidden memory, one of headlines with the name in bold, dark type. Judd Barker—Country Western’s Favorite Son Gone Bad.

She wasn’t a fan of country music, but like every other person who’d ever stood in a grocery checkout line, she’d read the headlines on the tabloids racked there. She would have dismissed them for the sensationalistic trash they were, except she’d also seen the cover of “People Weekly” magazine and read the story within. Judd Barker Charged With Rape Of Fan.

He watched her eyes darken in fear and felt the kick of it in her pulse through his fingertips. Her reaction both sickened and angered him. “So you have heard of me.”

“Ye-yes,” she stammered.

“And you came to see for yourself what kind of man would rape a defenseless woman and maybe get a front-page story for your trouble? Well, take a good look, sweetheart. This may be the only chance you get.”

Her head wagged back and forth in mute denial before she found her voice. “No. No, I told you. I didn’t come here to find you. I came to trace my great-grandfather’s mother.”

He twisted her hand behind his waist, dragging her body flush against his. He fisted his other hand in her hair, yanking her head back, forcing her face up to his. “Liar.”

Unwanted tears budded in her eyes. Her neck ached with the strain of looking up at him, but she was no match for his strength. Refusing to show her fear, she met his gaze squarely. “I’m not lying. And if you do not remove your hands from me by the time I count to three, I’m going to scream bloody hell and have everyone in the hotel in this room.” She narrowed her eyes, levering a note of threat into her voice as she added, “With one charge of rape of against you, you might have a hard time explaining your presence in my room. One. Two. Thr—”

His face came down, his lips crushing against hers, absorbing the scream that built in her throat. Her heart slammed against her chest at the first shocking contact. He’s going to rape me, she thought incredulously as she instinctively strained against the hand that held her face to his. Or kill me, she thought on a shudder. And she didn’t know which would be worse.

With every ounce of strength within her, she fought him, twisting her wrist within fingers cinched like a steel band, shoving against a chest, iron-hard with padded muscle. Her attempts to escape were futile for his mouth continued to punish her for a wrong she couldn’t name.

Her wrist throbbed from the effort, her neck ached from the strain, yet she continued to struggle as his lips persisted in their bruising assault.

Then it changed. Everything. In the span of a heartbeat, his fingers loosened in her hair to cup her nape, his grip on her hand disappeared only to reappear, softer, gentler, at her waist. The lips on hers no longer punished, but teased; his tongue hot and wet, tracing the seam of her lips, skimming down her throat to savor the smooth skin there.

She found the sudden change from abductor to seducer as debilitating as his strength had been only moments ago. She knew that nothing held her to this man any longer, but she couldn’t—didn’t—pull away.

Instead, she curled her fingers into his shirt and clung. Against the flat of her palm, his heart beat. The back of her hand monitored her own heart’s thundered response. Passion, the kind she’d dreamed of but wasn’t sure existed, heated the blood coursing through her veins, turning her skin to fire, her sanity to a pile of ash.

He lifted a hand to nudge off his hat. It hit the floor, bounced against her leg then rocked slowly to a stop at her feet. Her fingers climbed up his chest to anchor on his shoulders. Her chest heaved with each intake of breath, her nipples hardening with each scrape of silk against cotton.

Her reaction to him both shocked and repulsed her. This man was a total stranger...a suspected rapist...and yet there was nothing strange about the way she felt in his arms. There was a familiarity in the way they responded to each other, an instantaneous spark of recognition that defied reason.

She dropped her head back on a low moan. “Don’t,” she whispered.

“Don’t, what?” he murmured, his breath heating the soft skin of her throat before he returned his lips to hers. He leveled his hands on her waist, then skimmed slowly upward over her ribs.

“Don’t—” She sucked in a ragged breath when his thumbs pushed against the swell of her breasts, sending rivers of sensation flooding through her. “You’ve got to stop,” she cried on a broken sob. “Or else I’ll— I’ll—”

His body went rigid against hers. “Or else you’ll what?” He took a step back, branding her with eyes dark with loathing. “Scream rape?” With his gaze still locked on hers, he bent and scooped his hat from the floor and fitted it over his head. He ran a finger along the brim to pull it low over his eyes.

“It’s not rape when a woman’s willing,” he said, then spun and walked to the door, his black duster swishing against the legs of his starched jeans. He stopped, one hand braced high on the door, then turned to look at her over his shoulder. “And you, sweetheart, were more than willing.”

* * *

Hours later Callie lay on her back, the sheet and blanket clutched to her chin, her eyes wide, staring at the ceiling overhead. Though the thermostat in the room registered a comfortable seventy-two degrees, shivers shook her body.

He’d been wrong. She hadn’t been willing. She’d been desperate, almost crazy with her need for him. If he hadn’t stopped when he did, she wasn’t at all sure she could have found the strength to end what he had started.

Even now, with regret stinging her eyes and throat, an ache still throbbed between her legs, crying out for a satisfaction she knew she shouldn’t want.

A sob rose in her throat, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth, holding it back. She’d always known there was more between a man and a woman than what she’d experienced. More than just a physical joining. There had to be a higher level, an almost spiritual experience that transformed a man and a woman when they touched. She’d never experienced that with Stephen, which explained her hesitancy in agreeing to set a date for their marriage.

But she had felt “that something different” with Judd Barker. God help her, but she’d felt it.

* * *

“Prudy, I want you to fax me everything you can find on Judd Barker.”

“The country-western singer?”

Callie juggled the phone between her ear and shoulder while she laced up her hiking boots. “Yes.”

“For heaven’s sake, why?”

She caught the phone in her hand, tightening her fingers on the receiver as she lurched to her feet. “Look, I don’t have time to explain right now. I’m on my way to the cemetery to see Papa’s grave.”

“Papa’s! He’s not dead! You’re supposed to be looking for his mother’s grave. Callie, what is going on? Are you all right?”

Callie closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her forehead, not sure that she’d ever be all right again. Not after last night. But she wouldn’t trouble Prudy with that now. “Yes,” she replied. “I’m fine. I’m just in a hurry. I’ll call later and explain.”

She hung up before Prudy could demand an immediate explanation. Gathering up her jacket and purse, she headed out the door. She avoided the elevator and took the stairs, shrugging on her jacket as she went, hoping to escape the hotel without seeing anyone. She slipped out the side door and shoved sunglasses onto her nose. Thankfully, the wind was gone, the air crisp and clear, the sun almost blinding it was so bright.

She crossed quickly to her car, unlocked the door and tossed in her purse. Leaning over, she pushed the button to lower the top, then moved to the back of the car to snap the boot in place. A streak of black flashed past her, nearly making her jump out of her skin. She turned to find Baby perched in the back seat.

Glowering at the dog, she marched to the open door. “Out!” she ordered, her index finger pointing in the direction she expected him to take. The black Lab simply looked at her, his tongue lolling, his tail swishing across the leather seat. She planted a knee in the bucket seat, stretched to close a hand around the dog’s collar and tugged. Baby braced himself and tugged just as effectively in the opposite direction. After a good two minutes of tug-of-war with the stubborn beast, Callie gave up.

“Fine,” she muttered under her breath. “You can ride along, but you better watch your manners,” she warned. “And no drooling on the seats,” she added as she twisted around and dropped down behind the steering wheel.

Gunning the engine, she peeled away from the curb, sending leaves spinning in whirlwinds behind her rear tires. After giving her sunglasses an impatient shove back on her nose, she dug into her purse for the directions Frank had given her earlier that morning for Summit View Cemetery.

Once she reached the cemetery, she’d prove Judd Barker to be the lying snake that he was, she promised herself as she braked for a red light. Her fingers drummed on the steering wheel in impatience. She’d walk the entire cemetery if necessary, look at every headstone and marker, and when she didn’t locate one with William Leighton Sawyer’s name on it, then she’d find Judd Barker and—

She glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror. And what? she asked herself. Have him tarred and feathered and run out of town? The image drew a smug smile.

It isn’t rape when a woman’s willing. And you, sweetheart, were more than willing. A shiver chased down her spine at the memory and her frown disappeared.

She despised him for his cockiness. She despised him more because he’d been right.

A horn blared behind her and a man’s voice yelled, “Hey! What shade of green do you want?”

Scowling at the man in the rearview mirror, she shifted into first gear, pressed the accelerator to the floorboard, then tossed back her head and laughed when she saw the look of surprise on his face when she left him in a cloud of dust.

Frank’s directions proved easy to follow, and within minutes she drove between the limestone pillars and black wrought-iron gates marking the cemetery’s entrance. The cemetery was laid out just as Frank had described. A tree-lined drive led to a center island where the United States flag and that of Oklahoma waved and snapped in the wind. The island served as the hub while narrow paved lanes fed off of it like spokes, dividing the cemetery into neat sections.

Callie parked beneath an elm tree and sagged back in her seat as she looked around, overwhelmed by the number of markers scattered across the hill. “Come on, Baby,” she muttered in resignation as she climbed from her car. “We might as well get started.”

Baby bounded out of the back seat and trotted along beside her. They walked for over an hour, with Baby occasionally darting away to chase a squirrel up a tree or a rabbit into his burrow. With each passing marker, Callie’s original purpose for the trip was forgotten as emotion built, tightening her throat. Infants, young children, young wives. Each marker she read reflected the hard life of the early settlers of Guthrie and the tolls it took. One in particular caught her attention, and she stopped, studying the grave of a mother and infant buried together.

Sighing, she walked on to the next marker. The surname BODEAN topped the double-wide marker and below it the names Jedidiah to the left and Mary Elizabeth to the right.

Mary Elizabeth? She knelt in front of the marker and, using her thumbnail, scraped away the gold-brown moss which had attached itself to the etchings in the granite and noted the dates. The age according to the year of birth would be approximately right for her great-great-grandmother’s, but the stone read that the woman had died in 1938. That would have made her sixty-seven years of age when she’d passed away, and Papa’s mother had died in childbirth.

Certain that she was wasting her time, she took a pen and paper from her purse and jotted down the dates of the couple’s births and deaths in order to check them with the court records later.

With a little less than half the cemetery covered, she pushed to her feet. “Come on, Baby. Let’s go.” She strode off, but stopped and looked back when she heard Baby whimpering. The dog stood at the edge of the plot, clawing at the ground. Dead grass and dirt flew beneath his front paws.

“Baby! No!” Callie ran to clamp a hand around the dog’s collar and haul him back. “You mustn’t dig here.” Feeling responsible for the dog’s desecration of the grave site, Callie dropped to her knees to scrape the dirt back in place. She bit back an oath when her finger rammed something hard. Curious, she smoothed the dirt away and saw the edge of a flat granite stone. Using the palm of her hand she whisked away the dirt and dead grass covering it, then shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head.

William Leighton Sawyer

Infant Son of Mary Elizabeth Sawyer

June 14, 1890

She sat down hard on her heels and dragged her hands to her knees. “No,” she murmured, shaking her head in denial. “No, it can’t be.”

She dug her nails into the fabric at her knees, clinging to reason. William Leighton Sawyer hadn’t died at birth. He had lived a very full life, fathering two sons himself while parlaying the Boston Sawyers’ wealth to new highs in Texas oil.

He’d outlived both his sons and saw three of his grandchildren—one of which was Callie’s mother—start their own families, giving him four great-grandchildren. He had ruled the dynasty he’d created from the eighteenth floor of the office building he owned in downtown Dallas before he’d been forced into retirement at the age of ninety-eight by Callie’s father and a handful of greedy relatives who couldn’t wait for him to die so they could get their hands on his money.

They’d said he was crazy, although the legal papers they’d drawn against him read mentally incompetent. Callie had never considered him crazy. Eccentric, yes, but who wasn’t in their own way?

Throughout her life, she’d heard the stories about Papa. How his mother had run away from home, chasing after some smooth-talking stranger on his way to the Oklahoma Territory to seek his fortune. How the man had gotten her pregnant and abandoned her without marrying her once they’d arrived in the wild territory. And how she’d died giving birth to Papa.

Cousins from Boston who’d come to Texas to visit during the summers would whisper stories of how Papa was considered the renegade in the family, just like his mother. It was that streak of wildness that had carried him to Texas, they’d said, much to the dismay of the grandparents who’d taken him in and raised him as their own. Papa had thumbed his nose at them all and their high-society ways and proceeded to build a fortune that made the Boston Sawyers look like poor white trash in comparison.

Always strong and full of energy, but with the power of his businesses stripped from him, Papa’s health had quickly faded and his focus had shifted to his past. His mother had become his obsession. Her life in Oklahoma and his part in her death seemed to haunt him. He wanted to find where she’d been buried and ensure she’d received a proper burial. Although the rest of the family had pooh-poohed his request as just one more outrageous demand from a crazy old man, Callie had agreed to help him.

A tear streaked down her face followed quickly by another, then another, until her shoulders shook with sobs as she stared at the slab of granite. Guilt stabbed at her, for her reasons in agreeing to help Papa weren’t purely unselfish. Yes, she loved him and wanted to help him, but she’d also wanted to get out of Dallas, and Papa’s request for help had been the excuse she’d needed.

With the deadline quickly approaching for a signed commission sculpture she couldn’t seem to create, and Stephen’s and her mother’s constant pressure for her to set a wedding date, she’d needed to escape it all. In her mind, that put her in the same category as the rest of her family. Selfish, greedy and spineless. She’d thought she could locate the grave, take a picture for Papa and maybe find a few tidbits of information about his mother for him, then spend the rest of her vacation working out her own personal problems.

And now this.

Baby dropped down beside her, nuzzling his snout against her hand. Hardly aware of her movements, she shifted a hand to scratch his ears. He lifted his head and licked at the tears on her cheek, whimpering low in his throat.

“Oh, Baby.” Callie threw her arms around the dog’s neck and buried her face in his fur. “Now what am I going to do?”

“You can start by letting loose my dog.”

Callie opened her eyes to find a pair of scuffed boots planted not a foot from her knee. She raised her gaze, skimming it over jeans and a black duster until her eyes met the accusing ones of Judd Barker.

She immediately turned away, hiding her tears. Heat flooded her face as she remembered all too clearly the way she’d responded to him the night before. “I didn’t steal your dog,” she mumbled.

“Didn’t say you did,” Judd replied, although that was exactly the thought that had crossed his mind when Frank had told him he’d seen Callie drive away earlier that morning with Baby riding in the back seat of her car.

Callie dropped her hands from around Baby’s neck and swiped at her cheeks. “You insinuated as much. But the truth of the matter is, your dog jumped in the back of my car and wouldn’t get out. It was easier to just let him ride along.”

Judd hunkered down beside them, placing a hand on Baby’s head. “When he sets his mind on something, he’s hard to sway.”

Callie sniffed and gazed off in the distance, refusing to look at him.

Judd nodded in the direction of the stone. “I see you found what you were looking for.”

Without favoring him a glance, Callie replied sharply, “I don’t know that I have.”

“Seems clear enough to me. There’s the stone bearing the name William Leighton Sawyer, infant son of Mary Elizabeth Sawyer. And there—” he said with a nod toward the larger upright stone “—is the grave of Mary Elizabeth Bodean. What more proof do you need?”

She snapped her head around to glare at him. “I don’t know for a fact that Mary Elizabeth Sawyer and Mary Elizabeth Bodean were one and the same person.”

The streak of tears on her face took Judd by surprise, for he couldn’t imagine what the woman would have to cry about. The grave was more than a hundred years old, so she couldn’t have any affection for the infant buried there. Which led him to believe that more than likely she was crying because she’d been caught in her lies. Still, the tears moved him. He tucked his duster behind his hip and dug in his back pocket for a handkerchief. He held it out to Callie.

“It’s clean,” he assured her when she hesitated.

“Thanks,” she mumbled grudgingly as she accepted it. She mopped her eyes, then blew her nose.

“Why the tears?”

The question made fresh ones well in her eyes. Grimacing, she balled the handkerchief in her fist. “I’m just tired, is all. I didn’t sleep well last night.” As soon as the words were out, she regretted them, knowing that with his ego, Judd would naturally assume thoughts of him were what kept her awake. Biting her lower lip, she glanced away.

Judd hadn’t slept well, either, but he wouldn’t tell her that. He didn’t trust this woman any farther than he could throw her, but he couldn’t deny the fact that she had aroused a craving in him that he’d kept under harness for the better part of a year. Just his luck to be tempted by another lying wench.

Because he wasn’t willing to confess to his own lack of sleep or the reason for it, he thought it only fair to ease her embarrassment. “Always had trouble sleeping in a strange bed, myself.”

If she heard him, she didn’t acknowledge it, for she continued to ignore him, staring off in the distance. She looked so pitiful, kneeling there in the dirt, looking so forlorn and lost that Judd was tempted to comfort her. He quickly squelched the urge. He didn’t need this headache.

Sighing, he pushed against his knees to stand above her. “Sorry if Baby made a nuisance of himself.” He shuffled his feet, not sure what else to say, but feeling something more was needed. “If you want to verify that Mary Elizabeth Sawyer and Mary Elizabeth Bodean are one and the same, you can check the records over at the Logan County Courthouse.”

“I intend to.”

Her acidic tone made him wish he’d kept the helpful advice to himself. The woman had an attitude and seemed determined to take her hostilities out on him.

“Come on, Baby,” he said, slapping a hand to his thigh. “Let’s go home.” He turned away, vowing that they’d be churning ice cream in hell before he offered any more help to Callie Benson.