Hunting Season by Nevada Barr

the sheriff stopped, neither wanting to be the first to try to breach the forbidding oak door that closed off the main house.
    "Where the hell's Ray Barnette?" Anna asked. "He took out of the funeral home like a bat out of hell." They'd neither followed nor passed Barnette on the way, merely assumed he'd gone to "Mama's" as he said he would.
    "Maybe he stopped for a cup of coffee," the sheriff said sourly. "We'll wait."
    Anna eyed the wicker chairs but decided against sitting. The cushions looked as if they might have become a habitat for any number of crawly things.
    Before a decision could be made on where to perch, the sound of shuffling steps and the turning of the door latch arrested their attention. Clintus shot Anna such a panic-stricken look she thought for a second he was going to bolt for his patrol car. She would have been right on his heels. By arriving before Raymond, they'd landed themselves in the midst of a potential social gaffe that even county and federal law-enforcement uniforms would not excuse.
    "We'll chitchat till Ray shows," the sheriff stage-whispered and stood shoulder to shoulder with Anna, both looking as guilty as villains from a melodrama.
    The door swung open. Clintus snatched off his Stetson. From out of the gloom of the high-ceilinged room an old woman materialized. Another midget: she was as tiny as Anna's maternal grandmother, no more than four foot ten. Her white hair was chopped off just below her ear lobes and held back on either side by pink plastic barrettes shaped like little butterflies. The childishness continued. The old lady wore a short, brightly patterned rayon dress Anna remembered seeing on the rack in the juniors department at Dillards.
    What killed the quirky charm of the birdlike blue eyes and youthful attire was the double-barreled shotgun she pointed purposefully at their middles.
    "Whoa," Anna breathed and, "easy now lady," as she raised her hands in the universal I-mean-you-no-harm gesture.
    "You git," the old woman shouted. "I'm tired of you sniffin' around prying into things, trying to steal my land. I see you here one more time you'll get a hide full of buckshot."
    The threat was directed, not at Anna, but at Sheriff Jones. Again, Anna wondered at Clintus's familiarity with the place.
    Without taking her eyes from Jones, the old woman said to Anna, "You get your boy outta here, now. I don't know what you're playin' at with these people but keep 'em away from me and mine."
    Anna hazarded a look at Clintus. He appeared as genuinely baffled as she was.
    "We'll be going now, ma'am," Anna said firmly. "You don't need that shotgun. Come on, Clintus." The two of them backed slowly toward the porch steps, the old woman following, nudging them along with short, sharp jabs of the shotgun barrel.
    The crunch of tires on gravel arrested what Anna was sure was a ludicrous tableau.
    "Mama, it's all right," Raymond called. He came up the steps behind Anna and the sheriff. "Mama's" aim never wavered and neither of them put their hands down.
    "It's okay, Mama," Ray said soothingly. "No need for fireworks." He took the shotgun from his mother's wrinkled grasp. He tried to do it gently but the bony fingers held on till he gave the weapon a vicious twist. Anna flinched but Mama's trigger finger let go before the gun went off.
    Disaster averted, Raymond put his arm around the tiny harridan in what looked to Anna like a parody of filial affection. "Mama, this is the sheriff," he said loudly. "Sheriff Clintus Jones."
    "Mama's eyesight isn't as good as it used to be," Raymond said with a smile that was meant to be ingratiating but, given the oversized front teeth, came off as mildly menacing.
    "Let's go on inside, Mama." He herded his aging mother into the shadows behind the oak door and pulled it firmly shut behind them, leaving the sheriff and Anna marooned on the porch.
    "Jeez Louise," Anna muttered as she shut herself in the sanctity of Clintus's patrol car. "Jeez Louise" was fairly