He still had to go to work. It was an unfortunate consequence of being the sheriff of Branson County, Missouri. People expected you to do some sheriffing. Hank rolled out of bed and took a shower. By then, the kids were awake and asking for breakfast. They ate Cheerios and bananas at the kitchen table as the autumn sky slowly lightened. He poured his second cup of coffee into a travel mug and was out the door before the sun had fully risen over the Ozark hills.

He enjoyed this time of day. The quiet in between home with a three-year-old and a five-year-old, and work with its budgets and paper-pushing. That part of his job seemed endless. Staffing problems, office politics, chronic money shortfalls. He was not cut out to be an office manager. He needed crime.

Well, that wasn’t a good way to put it. What he needed was to be out in the field investigating things. And right now the only mystery he had was the question of who kept taking his specialty coffee pods out of the break room. Not exactly a case that was going to get him out of the building.

He pulled into the headquarters parking lot and stopped by the crime scene on the way to his office. Two more missing. He sipped the last of his home coffee on the way down the hallway and found Sheila already at her desk in the adjoining office. He pretended to straighten the “Chief Deputy S. Turley” nameplate on her door.

“That’s already perfectly level, thank you,” she said.

Of course it was. Unlike the “Sheriff Hank Worth” on his door. He grinned. “How are you this morning?”

She eyed him carefully, which wasn’t something she usually bothered with this early in the morning. “Sorry to have to ruin that smile. You haven’t checked your email this morning, have you?”

He sank into the chair in front of her desk. “What happened?”

“The county commission had a meeting last night. They yanked even more of our funding.”

He groaned and slumped back in his chair. “We can’t afford deputy salaries as it is.”

He looked at the staffing schedule on the wall and then back at her. He knew she was seeing a thirty-eight-year-old guy from California, who’d married a Branson girl and fallen into the top job here. And who had so far avoided making a very tough decision. (In his defense, there had been several murders lately. And an explosion, a manhunt, and a suspicious car crash. All that tended to keep a man busy.) Now it looked like there was no putting it off.

“Okay,” he finally said. “We don’t have a choice anymore. We’re going to have to do it.”

Sheila fought back a grin and patted at her hair.

“You smile, but it’s going to get ugly,” Hank said.

“Oh, I know. They’ll come after us in ways we haven’t even thought of.” She rose to her feet. “That’ll be the fun part.”

He watched her leave the room and swirled the last bit of coffee in his mug. If it had to be done, now did seem like the perfect time to do it. They’d just finished their last big investigation and nothing else was on the horizon. It was a good time to stir up some trouble.

Fatal Divisions by Claire Booth, Hank Worth Mystery #4
Genre: Police Procedure
Release: January 2021
Purchase Link

Hank Worth has always been committed to his job as Branson sheriff, so getting him to take a break is difficult. But to everyone’s surprise he agrees to take time off after a grueling case and visit a friend in Columbia, Missouri, leaving Chief Deputy Sheila Turley in charge. She quickly launches reforms that create an uproar, and things deteriorate even further when an elderly man is found brutally murdered in his home.

As Sheila struggles for control of the investigation and her insubordinate deputies, Hank is not relaxing as promised. His Aunt Fin is worried her husband is responsible for the disappearance of one of his employees, and Hank agrees to investigate.

The search for the missing woman leads to a tangle of deceit that Hank is determined to unravel . . . no matter the impact on his family.

About the Author
Claire Booth spent more than a decade as a daily newspaper reporter, much of it covering crimes so convoluted and strange they seemed more like fiction than reality. Eventually, she had enough of the real world and decided to write novels instead. Her Sheriff Hank Worth mystery series takes place in Branson, Missouri, where small-town Ozark politics and big-city country music tourism clash in, yes, strange and convoluted ways. For more about Claire, her books, and some of the true crimes she’s covered, please visit clairebooth.com.

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