61

Two days later, Ronnie and I checked into the Wildflower Motel on the west side of the county. We took possession of a spartan room with two double beds, an old box television with a button on the remote that said press for adult only content, a framed watercolor painting of the ocean at sunset, and a bathtub with a broken drain. The best part of the place—other than it being far enough off the beaten path to let us avoid being found—was the back window that looked out onto a meadow dappled with wildflowers and rolling hills, hence the name of the place. Ronnie and I both commented that the view alone was worth $18.99 a night.

Mindy and Chip were in the room right next door. It had been Chip I’d called first when Ronnie and I finally made it to my place and I’d had a chance to charge my phone.

“Where are you?” I’d asked him.

“I’m safe,” he said. “And I’ve talked to Mindy. In fact, she’s here with me.”

“You’re still interviewing her?”

“Not so much. She’s worried, though, because her mother overheard her talking to me and called her uncle.”

“Okay, that’s good. I’m glad you’re both all right.”

“What about you?”

I looked at Ronnie. I’d helped him out of the truck and onto the couch at my place. He was still in a lot of pain, but the bleeding was under control. He’d live as long as the wound didn’t get infected. Despite my best efforts, he would not hear of me taking him to the hospital. “Bad news,” he’d said. “That’s how Argent finds out where we are.”

I would have made him if I’d thought he was in real danger. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to get some antibiotics in him just in case.

“We’ve been better,” I said.

“Did you find what I needed?”

“Not yet. I’m still working on it.”

“Are you safe?”

“Far from it.”

“Come stay with us.”

Once he explained where they were and how he’d only seen a few people since being there, I agreed that Ronnie and I would stay there for a few days until I figured out what my next move was. Except I thought I might already know.

We’d been at the Wildflower less than two days when Chip asked me to come over to his room for a talk.

Mindy was around back with Ronnie, the two of them sitting in the grass, watching the sunset. We could see them through the back window of Chip’s room from where we sat across from each other at the small round table, the same round table that was in Ronnie’s and my room. He had his laptop out and told me he’d gotten in touch with Harriet that morning.

“Her story is quite compelling. I think I’ve got something here. The one thing I don’t have is something that connects Jeb Walsh to it all in a concrete way. Do you really think he was behind the death of that boy?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “But that happened a while back. There’s no way to know for sure.”

“I’d like to interview his son.”

“That’s going to be tough.”

He shrugged. “You found Harriet. After talking to her, I understand that was no easy task. This whole story is coming together, but there are still some missing pieces I need you to fill in.”

I knew he was right, but I didn’t have many options available to me to fix the problem. Well, maybe one, but the truth was, I’d been putting it off. Ronnie needed me, I told myself. But that wasn’t it. Mindy or Chip could have taken care of him fine. The real truth was I was still pretty depressed over Mary, and now Rufus.

When we’d gone inside the house at the top of the hill, after all the shooting, we’d found no sign of Rufus whatsoever. I searched the place for as long as I dared, looking for anything that might prove to me he’d been there. I didn’t find it.

But I did find something. Well, a couple of somethings. One was a mini recorder with a missing battery door. I rewound the tape and pressed play. I heard my voice and Claire’s as we talked that day in the bookstore. But how and why had the brothers known to follow me there?

I could think of only one reason. They’d been the ones who’d killed Joe.

The other something I found was sitting on the kitchen counter among a veritable mound of other dirty dishes.

It was a red cooler just like the one Daphne had filled up at my house.

*   *   *

Was it possible it was just the same kind of red cooler but not Daphne’s red cooler? Sure, anything was possible. In fact, it might even have been likely. But it got me to thinking about Daphne and Savanna and how the clues had been there all along.

First and foremost was timing. A few short days after Claire and I had been recorded in the bookstore, Daphne had shown up. Second was my own arrogance. It was actually quite astonishing. I’d been willing to accept that this woman had just come out of nowhere to fuck me. That I was just so damned attractive—at fifty-three, for God’s sake—that she literally couldn’t keep her hands off me.

And then there was the car. She drove a little Toyota Corolla. When Savanna had made her escape—with or without Rufus—she’d been driving a small car, roughly the size and shape of a Corolla.

The red cooler just snapped all of this into focus. The one thing I couldn’t get my head around was why. If I’d been a threat—and obviously I had been, since she’d felt the need to put her feral sons on me early—why not just have those same sons eliminate me? The only answer I could come up with was that sex was a luxury she believed she had, like a cat toying with a mouse before killing it. This seemed to fit with Harriet’s narrative of her sister.

So, that left me with one more thing to do, and that was wait. But I had to make sure I was waiting in the right place. I had to go home and hope she showed up, hope she was willing to play cat-and-mouse one more time. And this time, I had to make sure I was the cat instead of the mouse.

I walked to the back window and raised it. “Come on in,” I said. “I need to talk to both of you.”

Ronnie and Mindy turned as if embarrassed, as if I’d caught them in the middle of something they didn’t want me to see. I felt a flood of emotions as I realized they were falling for each other. On the one hand, I couldn’t help but think of Mary and how much I missed her, and that made me hate both Mindy and Ronnie just a little bit. On the other hand, I’d come to love Ronnie like a brother—imagine that—and my heart felt full seeing him so happy.

The world was made of mysteries, I decided, and sat down at the table to think about how I was going to solve one of them and come out on the other side unscathed.

Except I’d faced enough of the world’s mysteries in the past to know that wasn’t going to happen. This wasn’t a gentle world. It always left a mark.