AT FIRST I THOUGHT THE CONVERSATION WAS GOING on inside my head, a dream of some kind with vivid audio. It had been nearly midnight when Red urged me off the sofa and into the bedroom, and my head felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. I forced myself fully awake to find Red swinging his feet onto the floor, the phone against his ear. A glance at the clock made me jerk upright. Calls at 3:27 A.M. always mean trouble.
I laid a hand on his shoulder, and he turned. “Who is it?” I whispered.
He waved me off, his face grave and still droopy with sleep. “I understand,” he said into the handset. “Of course.”
“Is it Daddy?” I persisted.
“I’ll tell her. Yes. I appreciate you letting us know. Right . . . Okay . . . Thanks.”
I listened to his staccato responses, which told me absolutely nothing about who might be on the other end of the line, and constrained myself from screaming in frustration. It had to be my father. I threw back the duvet and started for the bathroom when Red’s voice halted me.
“It wasn’t Lavinia. The Judge is fine. Or at least I assume he is.”
I almost collapsed with relief, my knees suddenly feeling wobbly. I turned and sat down heavily on the bed. “Thank God! Then who the hell was it at three-damn-thirty in the morning? Jesus, I about had a coronary myself!”
Red set the phone back in its cradle. “Come here,” he said, sliding back under the covers and pulling me down beside him.
“Just tell me,” I said, the trembling working its way from my legs to my shoulders.
Red hugged me tighter. “Joline Eastman was in an accident last night. On her way home from Jacksonboro, probably.”
I jerked away from his embrace. “What? Where? How is she?”
He answered my last question first. “Not good. She ran off the road and hit a tree on 17 right by where the construction is going on. A trucker came across the accident shortly after it happened.”
“But she’s going to make it?”
He sighed. “They’re not sure. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt and got thrown around. She has head and internal injuries.” He squeezed me more tightly. “But I guess she’s hanging on. Barely.”
I felt tears leaking from my eyes and let them fall. So much misery for such a young woman. Why did some people just seem to attract bad things to themselves? I wondered.
Red pulled me closer and let me cry, stroking my back and dropping soft, reassuring kisses on my hair. In a couple of minutes, I snuffled away the last of the tears and sat up straight. I ripped tissues from the box on the nightstand and blew my nose loudly.
“Okay. So who called?”
“Malik Graves at the substation. Joline was just into Beaufort County when she crashed, so the sheriff’s office got the call.”
“Malik is back to work?” The tall, lanky deputy had been injured during our investigation of Sanctuary Hill, his leg broken in several places.
“Desk duty. He was on dispatch tonight.”
“I need caffeine.”
I tossed off the bedclothes and belted my old chenille robe around me. I didn’t wait to see if Red followed as I padded to the kitchen. I didn’t have the patience to wait for the kettle to boil, so I dropped a tea bag into a mug of water and slid it into the microwave. I stood at the counter, mesmerized by the turning carousel, and forced myself to think.
Was it an accident? The nagging question had been the first to occur to me when Red had given me the news. Joline was afraid of her husband. He hadn’t been at home when I called. What if he’d figured out where his wife had fled? Had I told him about Patience Brawley on Sunday, or had he figured it out from eavesdropping on Joline’s earlier conversation with me? So much had happened since then that it felt as if a month had passed rather than just a couple of days.
The microwave dinged, and I jumped. I’d set the timer wrong, and the tea was boiling. I dumped some of it in the sink and added tap water. I bypassed the sweetener and dumped two spoons of sugar into the cup. I turned to find Red in a pair of sweatpants standing behind me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “you want some?”
“I’ll make coffee.”
I stepped aside to make room for him at the counter and carried my mug to the glass-topped table in the alcove. I burned my tongue on the first sip and cursed.
“Take it easy.” Red poured water into the coffeemaker and joined me.
“Something about this whole thing doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“Lots of things don’t make sense. I can’t make heads or tails out of this poor woman. I think she’s been lying—a lot—but I’m not sure about which parts.”
I blew across the rim of the cup and sipped more slowly. “Okay. First things first. Why did Malik call you? How does the sheriff’s office know we have any connection to an accident victim on the other end of the county?”
Red glanced over his shoulder at the slowly dripping coffee. When he turned back, he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Goddamn it, Red! Did you tell someone up there why you were looking at the old arrest records when you were checking out Maeline and Tessa? One of the most important things we have to offer our clients is confidentiality, and Joline was especially paranoid about it. I thought you understood that!”
He was waving his hand in front of my face before I even finished. “Hold on! I didn’t tell anyone anything except that I needed a favor. I’m not an idiot, for God’s sake.”
“Then how—?”
“I’m trying to tell you if you’ll just shut up for a second.”
With a hiss, the coffeemaker finished its work, and Red stood and crossed to the counter. I seethed at his bare back, at the muscles in his shoulders that bunched in anger. I ordered myself to calm down, but it took some doing. If Red had compromised the agency on his first day on the job, I’d . . . I couldn’t think what I’d do aside from wringing his neck, which seemed like a terrific idea at the moment.
With his head in the refrigerator, searching for milk, he said, “Where’s your cell phone?”
“Why?”
“Just answer the question.”
I bit back a profanity. “In my bag.”
“Get it.”
“Red, you are seriously pissing me off. What the hell’s going on?”
He dumped the milk into his cup, slopping more on the counter than made it into the coffee. “Just get your phone, Bay. Please?” he added through gritted teeth.
I stomped down the steps and grabbed up my bag, sitting right where I’d left it in the foyer the night before. I flipped the phone open to find a blank gray screen. “It needs to be charged,” I said, trying to remember the last time I’d hooked it up.
“Plug it in,” he said.
I carried the phone to the built-in desk and jammed the connector into place. “Now will you tell me what this is all about?”
“Sit down and chill out, and I will.” When we were once again seated across from each other, he took a deep breath. “Malik was calling you—and me, too, I guess. To give us a heads-up. The deputy who was first on the scene secured everything after the ambulance took Joline away. He bagged her cell phone and took it back to the station. As a matter of routine, they checked to see if it might have had any bearing on the accident. The last call she made, right about the time the crash must have happened—”
“Was to me,” I whispered, and Red nodded.