Suspicion. Ginny Aiken

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      No doubt about it. He was a clumsy oaf when it came to women.

      Hal pulled into the driveway of the sturdy old home he’d bought last year. It was a comfortable place, with large rooms, beautiful wood floors and leaded windows, but it was also a lonely place. That’s why he’d rescued a greyhound. Pepper was the best idea he’d ever had.

      Maybe she was the only girl for him.

      In college, he’d envied the guys with the smooth lines, but he hadn’t been able to imitate them. The stuff they came up with had always felt so fake. Sure, he’d dated, but not often, regularly or for long. Plus, he’d never forgotten Steph Scott. Every girl he’d met had started out with that strike against her.

      After today, seeing Steph’s courage, her strength and her sweet gentleness, he was more certain than ever that all females he met always would.

      Hal loped up to his front porch. On the other side of the door, Pepper’s nails tapped out an urgent SOS. She’d been locked in far longer than usual today.

      As soon as he opened up, the sleek animal shot past him and straight to her favorite corner of the side yard, not ready to listen to his apology, not ready to forgive his slip. Then, when she trotted back inside, she graced Hal with a disdainful glare and shook herself within inches of his already soaked uniform pants’ legs. Hal knew many pet owners believed their animals had human traits. But when it came to Pepper he didn’t just believe it, he knew it.

      She was uncannily human.

      “All right, your royal highness.” He chuckled as he headed for the tall aluminum trash can where he stored Pepper’s kibble. “Forgive me, please! I am only a mere mortal and was detained by work.”

      Hal scooped out a healthy serving of the crunchy chunks.

      Pepper sniffed, unwilling to even lick his hand, her usual form of love-filled greeting. She burrowed into her meal as if Hal weren’t in the room.

      He walked out of the former larder he’d turned into a first-floor laundry room, and then called back, “What’re you going to do when I do land a date with Steph?”

      Crunch, crunch, crunch.

      Yeah, well. Maybe Pepper had it right, and he was dreaming. The way he’d acted at Steph’s hadn’t won him any awards. Suave, smooth and leading-man savvy, he wasn’t. But he was a decent, hardworking Christian and even more attracted to Steph now than he had been back in school, or more recently, from a distance.

      She’d blossomed into a lovely woman.

      In the large living room, Hal turned on his stereo to a Charlotte classic jazz station. As the sassy sound of Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo a la Turk” filled his home, Hal felt his energy return. He had paint to strip from molding upstairs, and Blue Rondo’s beat should work to kick-start him into gear.

      But before he made it to the stairs, his cell phone rang, and he had to turn down the sound. “Hello?”

      “It’s Maggie Lowe. Sorry to bother you in the evening, Hal, but the guys at the lab just called. They did lift some prints from the blood pressure cuff box. I figured since you’d responded twice to calls to the pharmacy, you’d be interested in what they found.”

      “Let me take a stab at it. You tell me how close I come. They found Steph’s prints, those of the skinny kid who fills her shelves, and nothing else.”

      “We weren’t surprised, either.” Maggie fell silent for a moment. “Don’t know what it means—or whether it means anything at all.”

      Hal sat in his wide leather armchair then propped his feet on the matching ottoman. “What’s really important here is whether the mugger is connected with the…I don’t know what to call Steph’s vandal. But that’s what I want to know.”

      “That is the question. And just so you know, we’re going to drive around the pharmacy a little more often until we get this figured out.”

      Good. “We’re sorta strapped for manpower—budgets, you know—but I’ll get my deputies to make a couple of runs by the pharmacy a time or two a day.”

      “We appreciate the help. Two of our officers got new jobs, one in Atlanta and the other in Phoenix, during the summer. We’re down to just Wayne and me, and we’re looking to hire a pair of experienced cops. Well, we do have the chief, but you know his limitations.”

      “Bruce is a good man.”

      “But with tough limitations.”

      Bruce Zacharias had been one of Charlotte’s best two decades ago, but these days his biggest battle was against worsening rheumatoid arthritis. He handled all of Loganton’s administrative work, directed Maggie and Wayne and was rumored to be about to announce his retirement.

      “We all have our limitations, Maggie. That’s why I wish Steph had cameras in and around that store. They would catch what all of us, out of necessity and because of other assignments, miss.”

      Hal stared at the stacked logs in his fireplace. His home always gave him a great deal of satisfaction, but tonight, nothing seemed to ease the knot in his right shoulder or the one in his gut. Maybe it was just hunger. He’d picked up his dinner from Granny Annie’s just as the woman was about to lock up.

      Maybe it was Steph’s situation.

      “I think we’ll get further on this one if we team up,” he told the police officer. “I’m sure you guys want this stopped, and I don’t want to see Steph Scott hurt again.”

      “10-4, Sheriff Benson, 10-4.”

      They hung up after brief good-nights, and then Hal went to ignite the pile of kindling he’d set out that morning before leaving for work. Soon, he had lively flames dancing in the fireplace, but instead of “Blue Rondo,” he’d put a moody Miles Davis CD into the player. The woodwork could wait another day.

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