Chapter 2

Jarrod went to the sheriff's office before he went into the office in the morning, the "Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant" in hand. He didn't really expect to get answers on them today. He only wanted to bring them to the sheriff's attention in case they connected up with something he already knew about or something that was coming his way. But before he could even explain why he was there, Sheriff Harris looked at him and said, "Just the man I want to see."

"Me?" Jarrod asked. "I've got a mystery for you, too, but I'll hold it off. What do you need to see me about?"

"I have a prisoner I picked up last night, using bad money in a poker game at Harry's. She needs a lawyer."

"She?!" Jarrod gasped, astonished. "Harry had a woman in a card game?" And a nasty memory flew by.

"She's not your average woman," Sheriff Harris said.

"If she was using bad money, how is she going to pay me?" Jarrod asked.

"Just like a lawyer, asking about the fee before anything else," Sheriff Harris said. "She had good money on her, too. You want to meet her?"

Jarrod heaved a sigh. "It can't hurt, I guess. While I talk to her, why don't you take a look at these? It's your day for unusual problems."

Jarrod put the papers down on the sheriff's desk, and the sheriff let him into the cell block. Despite the nasty memory that had flown through his mind, Jarrod wasn't quite ready for the woman who was the sheriff's only guest.

"Mrs. Bernard," the sheriff said, "this is Jarrod Barkley. He's a lawyer. Why don't you two have a chat?"

The sheriff left and closed the cell block door behind him. Jarrod took his hat off, stared down at the woman sitting on the cot in the cell, and said, "How do you do, Mrs. Bernard?"

She shook her head. "Forget the formalities, Jarrod. I just need a lawyer."

Jarrod heaved a sigh. "Care to give me a reason I should represent you, Carol? And while we're at it, where does the 'Mrs. Bernard' come from?"

"I got married. I'm widowed," she said. Then she lost some of her smart-alec attitude and asked, "How's Nick?"

Jarrod was wondering how long it was going to take her to ask. "Nick is fine. I'm not sure he's too interested in seeing you, though."

The beautiful, raven-haired young woman let her gaze fall a bit. "I'm sure he's not. I suppose you'll tell him I'm here, though."

"I'll tell him," Jarrod said. "The question before us now, though, is do I represent you or not?"

She looked up at him. "I suppose I could talk you into it."

Jarrod's eyes went dark. "Carol, pull that out on me one more time and I will walk out the door for good and tell my entire family about what happened when you left Stockton the last time. I will not be blackmailed with what I did. Say one word about it, and I will drop your case, if I take it in the first place."

She believed him, or at least looked like she did. "Do you want to represent me?" she asked, and seemed sincere.

"Where did you get the bad money?" Jarrod asked.

"I sold something," she said. "I should have known the money was phony."

"Why?"

She smiled a little. "What I sold was phony too."

Jarrod hesitated just a moment before saying what he said next. "You didn't sell yourself, then."

She glared at him. "When Nick and I broke up, I moved to Reno. I eventually found a husband – a legitimate husband. We were married for six months before he fell off a ladder and was killed. I was faithful to him the whole time. I don't sell myself anymore."

"But you sold something else."

She hesitated. "Some fake documents."

Jarrod felt his neck crawl. "What fake documents?"

She shrugged. "Anybody with a brain would have known they were fake, but I sold some things to somebody who was hoping to sell them to a publisher."

"A publisher? What were they?"

"I sold him Robert E. Lee's memoirs."

Jarrod sighed. Now he understood everything. "And I'll bet you were peddling the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, too."

She looked a bit surprised and nodded.

"But you lost them," Jarrod said.

"You found them?"

"My brother Heath did, blowing all over the Stockton road. He retrieved some of them and the sheriff out there has them right now. How did you lose them?"

She sighed. "Stupidly. I was coming that way late yesterday afternoon, coming here. I stopped for a minute a bit south of where the turn off to your ranch is because I thought my saddlebags were coming loose. I tightened them but I did a poor job of it. When I got here, one of the bags was open. I had the Grant papers in there, and they were practically all gone. They blew right out and I never noticed. A few sheets were left. Your brother found the rest? I don't remember a brother named Heath."

"No reason you should. He found many of them, but don't plan on getting them back."

"They were a poor investment anyway. Lee's memoirs I could sell. Nobody would believe I really had Grant's."

"Well, it turns out you couldn't really sell Lee's either, didn't it?"

She chuckled a little. "So it turns out."

"Where did you get them in the first place?"

"I bought them off a little man in Merced about a month ago. He wrote them for fun. He had no idea I was going to try to resell them."

"Did you buy any others from him?"

"No."

"Why did you come back here?"

Carol sighed. "I could tell you it was for old time's sake, but the truth is Stockton was just on the road from Modesto to Sacramento. I had no intention of seeing Nick or any other Barkley when I stopped here. I just wanted a game of cards and a place to sleep."

"And where else are you wanted? What other kind of trouble have you been in?"

She eyed him, unhappily. "You're not gonna believe me if I tell you the truth."

"Try me."

"I'm not wanted anywhere. I haven't been pulling any other scams."

"How have you been earning money to live?"

"How do you think?" She was mad now.

He was just as determined. "I have to know these things before I can represent you, and I have to believe you're telling me the truth. You know how this works."

She softened. "I'm not wanted anywhere. I had some money from the sale of our place in Reno. I've been playing cards to keep the money coming. I haven't been clean as a whistle, but I haven't been hooking. A man here, a man there to take care of me. I met this little guy who wrote these memoirs and I bought them off him for a pittance. It didn't work out as well as I hoped."

Jarrod took a deep breath, trying to decide if he believed her or not, or if he was close enough to believing her that he could represent her. "Carol, did you know the money you were using in the card game was counterfeit?"

She began to laugh. "No, I didn't, and if I weren't in here, I'd laugh harder. Buying my fake Robert E. Lee memoirs with fake money. That's pretty priceless, don't you think?"

"If you could convince a jury you didn't know the money was counterfeit, you'd have a chance, but they're not gonna believe a word you say once you say you got it for selling Robert E. Lee's memoirs. It'll take the prosecutor all of ten seconds to prove that Robert E. Lee never wrote any memoirs. Who did you sell them to, anyway?"

"A man in Modesto."

"I'll need a name."

"I didn't get one. If you want him for passing me counterfeit money, you're out of luck. I don't know his name and I don't know where he lives. I just met him in a card game."

Jarrod heaved a big sigh. This was trouble, all the way around. He knew it and if he had a bit of sense, he'd walk out of here and tell her to get another lawyer. He almost did it, too, but then he thought about it. They had each other over a barrel about what happened the last time she was here. He had her, because if she told his family about it, he'd drop her case. She had him, because if he didn't take her case, she'd tell his family about it.

But then he looked at her again, a woman alone, in a jail cell and, if she was telling the truth, after losing her husband after only six months of marriage. Something told him she was telling the truth about her marriage, and he could feel for her about that. He decided maybe he could just dispose of this case fairly quickly without anybody telling anybody about what happened six years earlier.

She sighed. "Will you represent me, Jarrod?"