SHE WASN’T BACK in an hour.
She had talked about a lot of things before she had gone flying out the door. But I hadn’t learned nearly enough. She had obviously confided in Callie about Paradise. What else had she confided to her? She had spoken of secrets but not told me what they were. She had indicated Tony might not be entirely in charge of his own operation, but hadn’t indicated why. Or who was.
She was frightened and frantic. A friend of hers had been killed, probably because of her. Someone had tracked her to Paradise. There was the concept in fiction of the unreliable narrator, I knew from my college English classes. How reliable was Lisa Morneau narrating her version of these events? Trying to pin her down had been like trying to hold water in my hands.
I sat a long time at the kitchen table, finally allowing myself a glass of whiskey, staring at my phone, waiting for it to ring. It did not.
Past one in the morning by now.
I kept replaying the scene behind the house, then in the kitchen, wondering how I could have done things differently. What, put my gun on her? Tie her up?
But now I wished I had. Anything was better than having her and then losing her.
Maybe Natalie had been right all along. Maybe I was a dumb honky bitch after all.
I had been tonight.
I called Spike.
“I had her and lost her,” I said.
“Lisa,” he said.
“She was waiting for me outside,” I said. “I got her inside. Then she ran.”
“Shit,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, that was my sentiment, exactly. Then told him I was all the way back to the beginning, brilliant sleuth that I was. I didn’t know where Lisa Morneau was, or if she was ever coming back.