Buster snorted and gave him half a grin back to show he hadn’t taken any. “Not drinkin’, I’ll tell you that. Don’t think I’ve ever seen her order so much as a glass of wine or that weasel whiz they call lite beer. Naw, truth is, she likes ol’ Pedro’s cooking.” He jerked a nod in the general direction of the kitchen. “I guess Queenie told her before she left he was the best cook in town, and the poor thing never had the sense to learn better.” He guffawed a little at his own joke; everybody knew The Last Stand did have the best food in town, in spite of its seedy looks and rowdy reputation.

“Anyhow, she stops in most nights on her way home from the shop and picks up something to take home for her dinner. Told me she hates to cook.” He shrugged. “You just missed her, in fact. She left here just a couple minutes before you walked in.”

“This lady got a last name?” Roan asked casually as he slid off the stool. “An address?”

“She’s renting Queenie’s place over on Custer. Don’t know her last name.” Buster threw another quick glance at his regular customers, then draped a dishtowel over one massive shoulder and lumbered down the two steps and around the end of the bar. He followed Roan out to the saloon’s big double-doored entry, which was well-lit by the dozen or so neon beer signs crowded in amongst the Plains Indian paintings and artifacts on its knotty pine walls. The worn wood floor was crowded, too, with a couple of coat and hat racks, an assortment of gumball, candy and toy vending machines, and racks offering a variety of free advertising publications.

“Look, Sheriff,” the saloon keeper said, nodding at the dove-colored Stetson Roan had just taken from the rack, “I know what you’re thinkin’, but if that gal had anything to do with shootin’ Jase, I’ll eat that hat a’yours. Right here and now.”

Roan threw him a mild glance as he settled the hat on his head. “You know I’ve got to ask.” He tilted his hat brim toward the door of the saloon, through which he could hear the thumping accompaniment to an old Dwight Yoakum classic somebody had just programmed into the antique jukebox. “Chances are looking good you people in here are the last to see Jason alive. And you did say he was hitting on this woman pretty hard.”

“I never said she might not’ve had cause to kill him,” Buster muttered, looking uncomfortable again. “Just that I can’t believe she would.” Recognizing there was more the man wanted to say and wise enough not to push him, Roan waited him out. Finally the saloon keeper blurted it out in a muttered undertone. “Look-the fact is, I know something did happen between those two last night-Jase and Mary. He followed her out to the parking lot-you know, after she brushed him off? He had a smile on his face and a bad look in his eye-she’d given him the brush in front of a whole barroom full of regulars, and Jase wasn’t happy about it, you could see that. I thought about going out to make sure she got to her car okay. Only I got busy right then-somebody got to pushing and shoving at the bar, a glass got broke…you know how it is.” He dabbed his face with the bar towel on his shoulder and scowled at the Plains Indian dream-catcher hanging on the wall next to a neon Coors sign.

“Anyway, a few minutes later-maybe five or ten, like I said, I was busy-Jase comes back in. He’s dabbing at his lip-I could see it was bleeding-and I mean he was ticked. Couple of the guys started raggin’ him-well, hell, it was pretty obvious what’d happened. Jase was riled up, pushing chairs around, cussin’ and generally making an ass of himself. Then he knocked back what was left of his drink-he’d already had plenty, I was ready to cut him off anyways-and he slammed down some money for his tab, and out he went.” He paused…let out a breath. “Never did come back. That’s the last any of us saw him, I guess.”

“Except for the one that shot him,” Roan said, and got an angry look in return.

“Like I said, I can’t believe-”

“Like I said, I have to follow it up. You know that.” Roan laid a calming hand on the big man’s shoulder. “I appreciate you telling me about this.” Buster muttered something unintelligible but was obviously unhappy, and Roan clapped him good-naturedly on the back. “Hey, come on, you know I’m gonna be fair. If this lady’s as innocent as you say she is, she’s got nothing to worry about. But I am going to need to talk to her. Tonight.” The easy smile on his lips tightened into grimmer lines. “Be seein’ you, Buster. You take it easy, now.”

The sheriff touched the brim of his Stetson and plunged through the door and into the twilight.

“You can stare at me all you like, but that’s all you’re getting,” Mary said firmly to the beast watching her avidly from his perch atop the kitchen counter. “The rest is mine. You’re getting too fat anyway.”

The animal, a huge and amazingly ugly orange tabby tomcat, blinked at her in slow motion and went right on staring. He’d come with the house, and allowing him to remain there, as well as providing him with food and other feline comforts, had been another of the conditions under which Queenie Schultz had consented to leave her home and business in Mary’s custody. So, she tolerated the creature, and since he had no name that she knew of and because he reminded her-with a bittersweet ache of longing for a place and time lost to her now-of Audrey Hepburn’s cat in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, that’s what she called him. Cat.

For his part, the animal seemed to have accepted the alien presence in his domain, although he did insist on staring at her with unnerving intensity, as if he expected her to turn back into Queenie at any moment, in a puff of magical smoke.

Mary picked up the last triangle of her smoked turkey club on whole wheat bread and was about to sink her teeth into it when Cat startled her by coming abruptly to life. He leaped down from the countertop to land with a heavy thud on the linoleum floor, then vanished into the nether regions of the house. An instant later, there came a knock on the front door.

Her heart leaped, then plummeted, a fair imitation of the maneuver Cat had just demonstrated. Who on earth? Her eyes went automatically to the oversized purse on the table that sat in the dimly lit living room just to the right of the front door. In all the months she’d lived in Hartsville, she’d never had anyone knock on her door before. And at this time of night?

But then a strange sort of calm settled over her. Because, of course, she knew.

She laid the uneaten sandwich carefully on its plate, picked up the pair of dark-rimmed glasses lying on the table and arranged them on her face. She touched the tender place on her jaw and skimmed her teeth across the swelling on her lower lip. Then she drew a deep breath, rose and walked to the door.

She paused to open the wide mouth of the purse and shift it slightly so as to put it within easier reach of her right hand, before taking a deep breath and calling out, “Who is it?”

“Sheriff Roan Harley, ma’am. I’d like to talk to you, if you wouldn’t mind.” The voice was deep and growly, pleasant and even soft in pitch, but there was no mistaking the iron authority in it.

Mary closed her eyes briefly, then reached once more for the purse, this time picking it up, then bending over to tuck it under the table. She unlocked the door and opened it a cautious crack, leaving the screen door latched. And a moment later was clutching it for support as she felt herself tumbling headlong into a memory she thought she’d put away and forgotten long ago.

I thought Diego DelRey was the most handsome man I’d ever seen. Tall, dark and exotic, he was standing in the middle of that vast hotel lobby in a shaft of sunlight from the leaded-glass skylight, smiling at me through the cascading waters from a Moorish fountain.

“Throw a penny in the fountain and make a wish,” he said in a voice softly accented and exotic, sensual and dangerous as a tiger’s purr. “Tell me what it is and I’ll make it come true.”

And I thought, as I smiled back at him, Oh, but I think you already have.

Why do I remember this now? This man is nothing at all like Diego DelRey. If he reminds me of anyone it’s the Marlboro Man.

Still clutching the latched screen door, she said politely, “May I please see your I.D.?”

The man standing on the front porch seemed surprised by the request, as if it wasn’t one he was accustomed to getting. While he fumbled to pull the folder containing his badge from his shirt pocket with one hand-the other was full of a big light-colored cowboy hat-Mary had time for more analytical thoughts.

He was tall. She was tall herself, but he was taller by half a head, with hard, sinewy flesh arranged sparingly but well over big bones. His hair, sculpted in classic cowboy fashion by the press of the hat brim, gleamed like tarnished gold in the overhead porch light. His features were strong-maybe too strong to be called handsome, with high cheekbones and a square-cut jaw-but his mouth looked as though it might smile easily and well. There were depressions in his cheeks that lacked the benign cuteness of dimples, but rather lent his face a rakish kind of charm that seemed somehow at odds with the somberness of his profession. And even though it was coming on night and his eyes were in shadow, they seemed to squint a little, as if from a lifetime spent gazing at sunshot horizons.

He stepped forward into the light and handed over his identification. She took her time studying it, then deliberately met his eyes for a long unflinching moment as she gave it back to him. His eyes, a cool glittery blue, returned her appraisal for a time that seemed just a little too long.

He won’t miss much, she thought. No, there’s no resemblance to Diego at all. But…maybe it’s that supreme and unshakable self-assurance that’s the same.