Sunday morning I take a cab to Armstrong, just outside of Durant, and stay there that night. Monday morning, I try to think what my next step should be. I need to contact my sister, but I don’t dare call her on the cell phone I sent her when I was living in Shady Grove. Now that they can trace my steps in Georgia and know the name I was using there, they have probably wiretapped that phone.
I can’t send her a new phone through her in-laws again. They’ll get suspicious.
Afraid to stay in one place too long, I call a cab. While I wait for it, I look in the Dumpster for a box. I find one with an Amazon logo, big enough to hold a toy for my niece. If I send a phone in that, anyone watching the house will think it’s something Hannah ordered herself from Amazon.
By now the cab is pulling up, so I tell the driver to take me to the nearest Walmart. He drives me a couple of miles away, where I find a stuffed animal that plays an annoying song. I find the sound box tucked inside a flap in the back. If I can cut that out, there’s room to hide the new phone there. Then I can close the Velcro flap back over it.
I buy that and two new burner phones and cards to activate them, along with packing tape and scissors. There’s a restaurant with a Wi-Fi signal nearby, so I walk over to have breakfast. While I’m waiting for my food, I put the toy on my lap, partially under the table, and cut the electronic guts out of the stuffed bunny. I stick the phone and charger into the pocket, close the Velcro flap, and examine my work. It looks perfect. I hope Hannah tries to turn it on and realizes that something’s not right. I pack the toy into the box, tape it up, and get it ready to send via FedEx.
“Here you go.” The waitress sets my plate on the table, but before I can thank her, she retreats and runs back across the dining room.
I stare after her, wondering if she’s recognized me. I’m just about to grab my stuff and leave, when the other waitress says, “Sue’ll be right back, hon. She’s got a little morning sickness.”
Relieved, I start to eat. Sue comes back in a few minutes with a coffeepot. “I’m sorry about that,” she says. “I wasn’t feeling well.”
“She told me,” I say, nodding toward the other server. “Morning sickness?”
“Yeah. I used to like my job, but now every plate kind of brings it on.”
“Maybe you could get someone else to deliver the food to the tables.”
She fills my cup. “That would be helpful, but nobody in the back is willing to do that. It’ll be okay when this first trimester is over, they tell me.”
She looks pretty young, so I ask, “Your first?”
“Yeah.” She doesn’t look that happy about it. Maybe she’s getting sick again.
I eat as she disappears again. When she comes back, I hear the other waitress telling her she’s leaving for a meeting at her kids’ school. Sue will be handling things alone. I feel bad for her.
A couple of people sit at one of the tables near me, and they ask her for more coffee, but she’s dashing to the bathroom again. “Just one second,” she says, and vanishes.
The diners look disgruntled, so I get up and find the coffeepot sitting on a burner near the kitchen. I fill their cups, and they thank me like I’m one of the restaurant employees. Sue comes back out as I’m putting the pot back on the burner.
“I got their coffee,” I say. “You all right?”
“I think so. Thank you. Really. Your food is on the house.”
“No, I couldn’t do that. I didn’t do anything but get them coffee. All I want is to be able to work on my computer for a little while. I’ll keep ordering things if I need to.”
“No, stay as long as you want,” she says. “We’re slow today, thank goodness.”
I go back to my table and spend the next couple of hours going through the files Brent sent me on a thumb drive the morning he died. I’ve been over them all before, and most of them are no longer mysteries. But there’s one that baffles me.
The file is called “Candace Price.” When I open it, it only says, “Dallas, TX.” There’s nothing else there. I can’t imagine why he would name a folder that and have nothing in it. Maybe he was working on it on the day of his murder. But who is she? What did he know about her?
I do a Google search of “Candace Price Dallas Texas,” and after I sort through the people searcher sites trying to make me give them my credit card, I count three Candace Prices. I click through each of them, but nothing about any of them is remarkable. I can’t tell which one Brent was interested in.
I almost give up, thinking he accidentally put a random file on the thumb drive, but Brent never did things randomly. He must have had a reason.
I try Googling “Candace Price Dallas Shreveport.” If Brent was linking a woman in Dallas to the events regarding my father’s murder, then this woman must have some connection.
Up comes only one of the Candace Prices. She’s a real estate agent in Dallas. I look through the rest of the search results and see a .pdf file of her résumé. She used to be a teacher in Shreveport, until five years ago.
Brent was on to something. I find her Facebook profile, which isn’t open to everyone, so I quickly create a fake profile, make it private so she can’t see how many “friends” I have, and send her a Friend Request. I refresh every few minutes as I eat, then suddenly, she accepts.
I’m always baffled by how easily people accept Facebook friend requests, especially when they’ve marked their pages private. For all she knows I could be a predator . . . or a fugitive . . .
I quickly go to her profile. She’s proud of her good looks and posts pictures several times a day, mostly selfies, so there could be a lot of material here. I scan through the images, one after another, until I’ve seen dozens, hundreds. I’m clicking them too fast, not sure I’m seeing whatever is there.
Then something stops me.
I spread my fingers on my track pad to enlarge the picture. There he is, posted four years ago, right there next to her at a baseball game, grinning into her selfie. Gordon Keegan.
I go back to more recent ones, clicking more slowly, studying every face in every picture. I find him in the background two more times. In one, they’re wearing leis and floral shirts, and the caption reads, “Chilling in Hawaii. Tough duty, but somebody’s gotta do it.”
And then I know what Brent would have told me. Candace Price from Dallas, Texas, is Gordon Keegan’s mistress.
Suddenly things snap into place. I know where I’ll go next. I pay my tab, then grab my duffel bag and call another cab. After I have it take me to FedEx, where I leave the package, I have the driver take me to the train station.
I get to the ticket window, my heart pounding with my decision. “I’d like the next train to Dallas, Texas,” I say.