Christmas came and went in a flash. The county workers did a sterling job in keeping the main roads clear of the snow that started falling on Christmas Eve and didn’t give up until the 27th.
The snowploughs had kept the interstate just about passable but thankfully most folk who had to travel had taken heed of the weather warnings and had completed their journeys well before the storm hit us.

The blizzard dropped almost a foot of the white stuff yet by New Year's Eve, it had almost all melted. I had to wonder if this was a sign of the changing climate. In my memory, if we got more than a light dusting of snow before Christmas, that was it until the March ‘Melt’ when many small creeks and rivers would flood with the meltwater. In recent years the weather seemed to be either full on or full off with nothing in between.

Because things were quiet and I’d given the rest of the team as much time to be with their families as possible, I had time alone in the Office to think about the future, my future and that of Kelly and Ma.

Come the election the next November, I will have been Sheriff of Custer County for ten years. Every two years, I stood for re-election and since I’d come into the post I’d been returned unopposed.

Kelly saw that my mind was pre-occupied and gave me space. That was why I loved her so much. She was very much like me in that we mulled over things in our minds and when the time was right, we’d talk them over with the people around us.

The first decision I had to make about standing for re-election. The episode with Walt and the Feds had caused me to question my desire to be Sheriff. While we were left alone and able to do our own thing, it wasn't so bad but when the people from out of state or region got involved things inevitably went wrong. I wondered if I was getting too cosy in my little domain?

What made things easy in one respect was that Sue-Ellen would be a more than capable replacement for me. She’d proved that beyond doubt and I’d told her many times that she’d make a great Sheriff but I wondered if she was starting to think that I was never going to retire.

The subject of retiring from my post and what to do after was uppermost in my mind. There was no way that I could settle down and raise a few horses. I’d been in law enforcement almost all my adult life. The same went for Kelly.

Kelly was uppermost in my thoughts. Ma wasn’t far behind.

Despite us having a new AC system installed this past spring, the summer heat at home had been depressing and all the indications were that it was going to get worse. Winters were seeming to be warmer and despite record snowfalls in the last decade, it mostly didn't last very long. The months of snow that I'd experienced as a child were long gone.

It seemed that when we got rain these days, it would come down like you were standing under the most powerful of all power showers for hour after hour. Then nothing for weeks. This was playing havoc with crops. The local Farmers had all built extensive rainwater collection ponds in the past few years. The old ‘little and often’ picture was long gone.

My dreaming about now and the future was interrupted by the Radio.

"Sheriff, do you copy?"

The call was coming from Kelly.

She was out with a gang of State Employees who were repairing a bridge after a Parcel Delivery Truck had struck it just before the Holidays. The was a lot of black ice in the area at the time, so we didn't make a big song and dance about it.

I’d decided on a break from the almost endless paperwork and was parked up close to the truck stop on the Interstate. The road was open but very quiet. It was the calm before the storm. In less than a day hundreds of thousands if not millions of families would be heading home after the holidays.

“Kelly. I copy. What’s up?”

“A Blue Corvette with Ohio plates was clocked by my speed trap at ninety-eight.”

The workers had set up a work zone with a 40mph speed limit to protect the workers. To enforce it, she'd set up a radar-controlled speed trap.

“It is coming in your direction.”

"Thanks, Kelly. I'll be on the watch out. Sheriff Out!"

The Corvette was heading west and would soon be out of the state and my jurisdiction. I could not outrun it in my SUV so I put in a call to the state Troopers in the adjoining state.

“Hello. This is Sheriff Matt Beecher from Custer County. Can I speak to Trooper Martin?”

My call was put through.

“Hiya Frank. Long time no see eh?”

“They are all well thanks.”

“This isn’t a social call. We have a work crew on the Interstate about six miles from the state line. The speed trap clocked a Blue Corvette with Ohio plates doing 98 in a 40 work zone. I won’t be able to catch it in my SUV so I wondered…?”

“You do? That’s great.”

I’d been looking out of the SUV window and down onto the Interstate all the time I’d been on the call.

“It has just passed me. I’m at the last intersection before the state line. It was doing around the hundred mark. The driver is sure in a hurry.”

“No Frank. You guys can take all the credit. This one is on me. Think of it as a late Christmas Present.”

“Give my love to Donna and the kids.”

“Cheers Frank. Bye.”

I’d handed the problem over to our neighbours over the State Line. They could take the credit for the stop. He had a patrol about 10 miles up the road. They were doing much the same thing as Kelly, supervising a road repair crew. If the Corvette went past them at speed they had the resources to stop it long before it reached Denver. They often returned the favour to us. That’s what country policing is all about. None of this need to know parochialism rubbish that the Feds seem to delight in.

I’d miss that when I retired.

I stopped dead. Had I just decided to retire?

I sat back and thought again.

It sure looked like I had made the decision and it didn’t feel bad. Not bad at all.

The more I thought about it, the more comfortable I was with the decision. All I had to do now was tell everyone.

That night in bed, I said to Kelly.

“I’m not going to stand for re-election.”

She giggled.

“I knew straight away when I got back from work that you’d sorted out whatever it was that had been bothering you since the new year. Your body language was different.”

“Yet you didn’t press me to say something?”

She gave me a very welcome kiss.
“I knew that you’d tell me when the time was right. With Ma around it isn’t easy so I guessed that it would be about now and it seems that I was right.”

“You were. Aren’t you bothered about my decision?”

“Why should I be? Sue-Ellen is the right person to take over. The rest of the team know that she’s your preferred replacement and they don’t have an issue with that. They don’t have any of those ‘I ain’t working for no woman’ hangups. I saw plenty of them when we got our first female Precinct Captain. About 30% of the detectives put in for a transfer on the first day. They'd all worked for her as their Lieutenant without problem but there was no way that they were going to accept her as their Captain. The Chief of Police came down and read everyone the riot act. They could resign but no one was transferring out of the Precinct. Three old guys put in for retirement but the rest had to suck their pride and accept the situation. They weren't missed as they were mostly deadweight and marking time to maximise their pensions."

Then she said,
“It was working for Captain Markowitz that persuaded me it was time to come out of the Closet.”

“For that and despite what happened before you came here, I’m glad that you did.”

Kelly gave me another kiss.
“You are so nice to me.”

“I have to be nice to you what with your left hand where it is at the moment!”

We both laughed.

“Ok, so you are not standing for re-election. What’s next for us?”

“I was thinking of moving somewhere a bit cooler. Last Summer was the worst ever for heat.”

“At least it isn’t humid like New York. That place is just sticky.”

“That’s not as bad as Miami,” I joked.
“One time I got off a plane there and had to walk across the tarmac to the terminal. It was only fifty yards but by the time I got inside my shirt was wet through.”

“So somewhere cooler but not so humid then?”

“Possibly. But it is early days yet. Not a word to Ma though.”

Kelly laughed.
"She knows you have come to a decision. She told me while you are out with the horses. My guess is, that she'll be expecting you to tell her whatever it is before the end of the week."

I sighed. Ma was always able to read me. If what Kelly said was true then I had better get my ‘exit stage left’ speech ready sooner rather than later…

I managed to evade Ma for three days. She came back from her weekly Bingo at the ‘Old Folks Home’ in a good mood.

“I won twenty bucks on the last full house of the day so don’t you think it is time to give me your bad news to balance it out?”

I’d only taken one bite of the meal that Kelly had prepared when I got the ultimatum from Ma.

I was about to say something when Ma put up her hand.
“Don’t even try to fob me off with some rubbish. I can read you like a book and I’ve always been able to do that as you well know.”

I looked at Kelly who seemed to be enjoying my discomfort.

“Ma, I’m thinking of not running for Sheriff in November and before you ask, Kelly knows.”

Ma laughed.

“Is that all?”

That hurt.

“No Ma, it isn’t all. I’ve been thinking about moving somewhere a bit cooler. Last summer was awful even with the new Air that we installed. You felt it as well. If we go then we want you to come with us.”

“But this place? My friends?”

“Ma,” said Kelly.
"Even I found the heat bad and I'm used to heat and humidity in New York. You said yourself over the holidays that the climate is far more unpredictable than it used to be. I've seen the old photos and I have to agree. Somewhere a bit cooler, more temperate would be my preference but where that is, I don't have a clue."

“I was thinking somewhere not far from the ocean,” I said adding to what Kelly was saying.

"I went by Greyhound to Florida once and it was awful. Hot, humid and full of old people and Canadians. Then there are the Hurricanes. I do not want to try to … Well I just don't want to experience one like I just don't want to leave here anytime soon," said Ma.

Ma stood up and went off to watch some TV. As far as she was concerned, the matter was closed for today at least.

Kelly and I did the dishes without saying much. We both knew that we’d have a hard time persuading Ma to leave her home, her friends and the only place she’d ever lived.

Kelly and I had decided not to tell the team about the possibility that I wasn't going to stand for re-election in November until Easter. However, as they say, the best-laid plans and all that stuff things got messed up with the arrival of a stranger in town.

I was with Kelly out on the Interstate supervising the recovery of a Semi that had run off the road and overturned. The heavy lifting crew from Denver had been called in when we realised that the total vehicle including load weighed close to ninety thousand pounds. None of the local recovery people could handle that sort of dead weight.

Luckily, the whole rig was off the paved highway but even so, we had to close one lane and put in a speed restriction, and a radar speed trap.

The trailer from the crashed rig had just been righted when the radio came to life.

“Sheriff, do you copy?”

Sue-Ellen was manning the office that day.

“I copy Sue-Ellen.”

"Sheriff, we or rather you have a visitor. A, Mr Rieck. He’s a lawyer from Frisco.”

"Does he say what he wants? We are going to be tied up here for another couple of hours. By the time we get back to town, it will be after three."

“He says that’s ok as long as there is somewhere, he can stay tonight and that he needs to speak to you and Kelly in private.”

“Can you get him a reservation at the Motel on the Interstate? As he’s a lawyer, can you try to get him one of the suites?”

“Wilco Sheriff.”

"Sue-Ellen, I have no idea what he wants from us. To the best of my knowledge, neither of us has ever been to Frisco."

“His business card says that he is a ‘Probate’ specialist.”

“I’m still none the wiser. We’ll get back to town as soon as we are free here. Sheriff out.”

I wandered over to Kelly who was monitoring the recovery of the tractor unit. I could see that it was very badly damaged. It could even be an insurance right-off from the damage to the chassis that had been caused by the rocks that had gotten in its way.

The driver had reported that the nearside front tire had blown out. The debris field and the skid marks on the road seemed to bear that out.

I didn’t tell Kelly about our visitor until we were on our way back to town.

“We have a visitor in town. He’s a probate lawyer from California. He wants to speak to both of us.”

I waited for Kelly to react.

"Don't go all silent on me, Matt Harker!"

I laughed.

“I was waiting for you to say something like ‘I don’t know anyone from California’.”
“I don’t so what about you?”

“Same here. I’m totally in the dark about why he’s come all this way to speak to us. Don’t they have phones or email in 'SillyCon' Valley?"

Kelly saw right through my feeble attempt at a joke and made a point of ignoring it.

“Whatever it is, it must be important. From my experience, city-based Lawyers don’t like travelling. There was one I often encountered back east who came from Queens who’d decided that he’d never set foot in New Jersey or on Staten Island in his life. He’d simply pass on any potential clients from outside the four boroughs of NYC.”

I smiled at Kelly before replying.
“Yeah. Lawyers are a breed apart. Sometimes and after a particularly bad encounter with the breed, I wonder if we should stop them from breeding just to preserve the gene pool of the human race.”

It was Kelly’s turn to laugh.
“Who’d make all the laws if there were no more Lawyers? With no laws, then we’d be out of a job!”

That put an end to that conversation but I could tell from the frown on Kelly’s face that she was thinking about what business could a Frisco probate lawyer want to discuss with even one of us let alone both of us.

[to be continued]