Midnight Crossroad (Midnight, Texas #1) (17 page)

“You deserve a whole can of tuna,” Fiji was telling Mr. Snuggly as she opened her front door. “Let’s get you one.”

“About damn time,” said Mr. Snuggly.

A
t six o’clock, Bobo picked up Fiji and they set out to the address Lisa Gray had given when she’d bought the drying rack. Bobo had already entered it into his GPS.

He didn’t feel much like talking on the way to Marthasville. He was bracing himself for an unpleasant confrontation. When he rang the doorbell of the dilapidated rental house, in the middle of a row of identical dilapidated rentals, the girl he remembered from the pawnshop answered the door.

He glanced over at Fiji, and she nodded. This was the girl whose wedding she’d witnessed. From the way her tight T-shirt fit, Bobo was as sure as shooting that Lisa was expecting a baby.

Lisa’s reaction to seeing them was a dead giveaway. She was scared; more than that, she clearly felt guilty when she looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a rush. “Mister, I’m really sorry.” She stepped back to let them in.

Feeling old and sad, Bobo stepped in after Fiji. It was no surprise that the rent house was small, or that it was in ill repair, or that Lisa and her new husband didn’t have much. It was a surprise that the living room was not only neat, but clean. The only sign of activity was a huge basket half full of laundry.

There was an ancient green Naugahyde couch in front of the big (and new) television, which was tuned to a game show. An old cushioned armchair was at one end of the newly polished coffee table. Lisa instantly switched off the TV and gestured to them to sit down on the couch.

The already-folded clothes from the basket were on the chipped coffee table, along with magazines, a romance novel, and a box of tissues.

Lisa sat in the flowered armchair. After her guests were settled, she muttered, “Okay, I did a bad thing. I don’t know how else to say it.”

Bobo felt his store of righteous anger seeping away. He said, more gently than he had intended, “Lisa, I know you remember Fiji from your wedding. And maybe you remember me; you put a spy camera in my shop without telling me. Fiji tells me your husband’s name is Cole. Did he know what you were doing?”

“No, sir. And he’s at work now. Today is my day off.”

“Then I’m glad we caught you at home,” Bobo said. He paused, tried to think of how to phrase what he wanted to say. “You seem like a nice young woman. I don’t know why you’d cooperate with a man who wanted to do something illegal.” It was illegal, wasn’t it, to tape someone’s activities in their own place of business, without their consent?

Lisa looked miserable. She pulled some T-shirts from the basket and began to fold them, as if she had to be busy.

“Here’s what happened,” she said, not looking at either of them, concentrating on the garments she was folding with speed and precision. “One of Cole’s daddy’s friends came by, said he’d heard Cole and I had gotten married in Midnight. He’d also heard we have a baby on the way.” She glanced up, as if to see their reaction. Fiji and Bobo both nodded. “So he said he figured we needed money, and I said, ‘Sure.’ Cole’s got a job at Western Auto, and I got a job at Dairy Queen, and we’re doing . . . okay.”

“Okay” must be the new “barely scraping by,”
Bobo thought.

Lisa put aside the stack of folded T-shirts and started on the underwear with no self-consciousness at all. “But we got a baby due in five months. Babies need a lot of stuff. Our folks are just barely paying their bills, and my sister’s still using all her baby clothes and furniture. So when he told me he’d give me two hundred dollars if I just put a little transmitter thing inside an old camera in your store, I said I would. He said he was trying to catch you selling drugs, that he owned the pawnshop.”

“You knew he was lying,” Fiji said sternly.

“Yes, ma’am, I did figure he . . .” And tears started to roll down her face. “I apologize, I really do. Please don’t send me to jail.”

Fiji looked startled.
She has a soft heart,
thought Bobo.
She never even thought about that.

“Lisa, I won’t send a pregnant woman to jail if I can help it,” Bobo said. “But I can’t say that I’m happy with you, either. You did a bad thing, the kind of thing that can get you hurt, or locked up, and you did it knowing you were wrong.” He shook his head, and Lisa’s tears accelerated.

“I did,” she said, with the air of one facing a firing squad. “The Devil tempted me, and I gave in.” She grabbed up a clean T-shirt and blotted her face with it.

“What’s the name of this man who came by here, Cole’s daddy’s friend?” Bobo said. And there wasn’t any sympathy in his voice at all. He knew giving her sympathy would just make the girl weep again.

“I shouldn’t tell you,” she said.

“You owe Bobo that, at the very least,” Fiji said. “Also, you can keep your mouth shut about our visit. You kept your mouth shut about what you put in the pawnshop, after all.”

Lisa looked as though she were at the end of her tether. She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “It was Mr. Eggleston, him that owns the real estate agency and the lawn service company,” Lisa said. She used another tissue to blow her nose.

Bobo said, “We’ll leave now, but I’m counting on you to keep this to yourself. It’s for your own good. You don’t want to get drawn into this any deeper.”

“I will,” Lisa said. “I ain’t gonna say a word to Mr. Eggleston.” She rose, and they rose with her. “Like I said, I never want to get mixed up in anything like this again.” Her nose reddened as if she were about to cry again.

Bobo gave Lisa a steady look. He’d come loaded for bear, but all he could summon up now was pity. From the dilapidated rental house to the visible pregnancy to the low-paying jobs, it seemed that life had stacked the chips against Lisa Gray Denton. At the same time . . .

“You really don’t want to be involved in this, Lisa,” he said, and the girl looked at him with wide eyes. For a moment they gave each other a very direct look. Lisa turned to go to the door. She opened it for them, standing aside to let them pass. As they left, she wiped her cheeks again with her sleeve.

“I’m glad I came with you,” Bobo said, as he backed out of the graveled area in front of the little house.

“Why?” Fiji asked, surprised and a bit indignant. “I could have done this by myself. She came clean right away, she was hardly threatening . . . she’s just a baby expecting a baby.”

“Feej, she was
lying
,” he said. “I don’t know if it was her being poor or her being pregnant or her crying that threw you off, but nothing she told us was the truth.”

Fiji felt like someone had let the air out of her tires. “Seriously?”

He paid more attention to the road ahead than it probably needed. “Yeah, seriously.”

“Why are you so sure?” She tried to keep the incredulity out of her voice.

“I don’t always know when women are lying,” he said painfully. “Like Aubrey. But this girl was just like my sister when she was trying to put one over on my mom and dad. She played the ‘pitiful’ card, she left out a lot of information, and any newlywed would surely have told this ‘Mr. Eggleston picked on me’ story to her husband.”

“Unless her husband worked for Mr. Eggleston,” Fiji said defensively.

“Could be,” Bobo said, shrugging.

“But you believe she planted the bug because . . .”

“Because she’s as right-wing as he is? Because he gave her a lot of money and she didn’t think she’d get caught? Because her husband belongs to Eggleston’s group? Take your pick.” Bobo almost shrugged again. “Any or all.”

Fiji looked straight ahead. “I’m just mad at myself now for being so gullible. I thought she was so young and remorseful,” she said.

“I’m sure she is. But she’s other stuff, too.”

Fiji was silent for a while. When they were well east of Marthasville, she said, “I don’t know you as well as I thought I did, Bobo.”

He found himself smiling. “Maybe that’s a good thing,” he said. “Have you heard any more about the fire that took out Eggleston’s alleged hunting lodge?”

“Are we going to stop there? I know where it is. It’ll be coming up here on the right; the iron sign over the gate says ‘MOL.’”

She’d surprised him again. “How do you know that?” he asked.

“Well . . . Olivia and Manfred and I spent a night over at the Cartoon Saloon,” she said. “We needed some background.”

Bobo gave her a long look.

She said hastily, “Yesterday, a customer of mine from Marthasville e-mailed me to see if her order had come in. She’d been working overtime on an arson investigation and hadn’t had time to come to the store. I asked her how the investigation was going, because I knew whose place had burned, I heard it on the news. She told me it was Price Eggleston’s ‘hunting lodge.’ She put that in quotes. Anyway, she said they’d found evidence that two people had set the fire.” She looked at Bobo expectantly.

Bobo wasn’t sure what he was supposed to conclude. “I wonder how the arson investigator figured that out? That the fire was set by two people?”

“Footprints, I think. Though how you could say, ‘These are the footprints of the arsonists,’ I don’t know. But they found a cell phone, some other stuff, that belonged to Curtis Logan and Seth Mecklinberg, the two guys from Lubbock who went missing. Allegedly.”

“You’re telling me that Olivia and Lemuel . . .”

She nodded. “It’s like having evil superhero friends, huh?”

He shook his head helplessly. “I can’t even figure out how I feel about that,” he said. “I didn’t want to be beaten up. I didn’t kill them. But on the other hand . . .”

“I understand,” Fiji said. “Hey, there’s the gate.” Today it stood open. In the daylight, it was easy to see the crudely paved driveway running over a hill. They followed it. Down in a gentle dip stood an old ranch house, surrounded by yet another fence, a suspiciously high palisade fence.

“That’s pretty unusual,” Bobo said. “You just see wire fences around ranch houses, to keep the livestock out of the yard.”

But the fence wasn’t an obstacle, since this gate, too, was open. It was also scorched and sagging from its post.

Bobo said, “I’m going in.” Fiji nodded.

It was especially rocky out here, and sparse vegetation told Bobo that there was almost no topsoil. The house had been an average-size ranch-style house with a stone chimney and foundation, and the lower part of the walls had been stone. Those were still standing. The wood in between had been consumed, and the roof was mostly gone, too.

There was a mute violence about the burned house.

A certain awareness of what had happened here crept over Bobo.

“There was a fingerprint on a gasoline can,” Fiji said. “Curtis Logan’s fingerprint. And a receipt from a gas station, turned out to be Seth Mecklinberg’s debit card was the one used.”

“She told you all that? She must be one indiscreet arson investigator.”

Fiji said, “She’s lonely, and I acted interested. Also, it wasn’t an act.”

“Wonder what would have happened if there’d been people in there,” Bobo said. “Would they have gone through with it?”

They didn’t talk much all the way back to Midnight.

M
anfred was busy with the woes of an eighty-year-old man from Arizona when his cell phone buzzed. He ignored it, of course, but after he’d told the man he’d find companionship at a church (fairly safe advice), he checked the listing. He whooped out loud. Then he sat for a moment, composing himself, before he hit “Call.”

“Manfred,” Creek said, sounding almost shy. “Thanks for calling me back. I got your phone number from Fiji.”

“Not at all,” he said, and then winced.
That made no sense!
he thought. “What can I do for you, Creek?”

“I was hoping you needed to go to Davy today? I need a ride to the Kut N Kurl salon.”

“You don’t have your driver’s license yet?”

“Dad has to take Connor to a doctor’s appointment. I usually do that, but the doctor will want to talk to Dad. So he’ll need the truck.”

“I’ll be glad to take you,” Manfred said. “Do you have an appointment?”

“At three. Is that at all . . . ?”

“I’ll stop by the service station to pick you up at two thirty.”

“Thanks, M . . . Manfred.” She’d been about to call him Mr. Bernardo. He had a lot of remedial work to do.

At two twenty-seven, Manfred pulled in at Gas N Go. There were no customers at the moment. Inside, Shawn was shelving motor oil. Creek was sitting on a stool behind the register, and she grinned when he came in. Shawn gave Manfred a grim look.

“Hey, Shawn,” Manfred said, doing his best to sound casual and responsible. “I had to go to Davy this afternoon, anyway, so it’s no trouble for me to give Creek a ride.”

“All right,” Shawn said heavily. He straightened up and looked at Manfred without much enthusiasm. “Teacher Reed’s coming over to take care of this place. I’m leaving as soon as Connor gets home on the bus. His doctor is over in Marthasville. Be sure and have Creek home by six. She needs to watch Connor.”

“She’ll be back by then for sure,” Manfred said. How much watching could Connor need? The boy was fourteen. “You ready, Creek?”

“Yeah, I’m ready,” she said, sliding off the stool and walking around the counter. “Thanks for giving me a ride, Mr. Bernardo. Dad, see you later.”

“Okay, Creek,” Shawn said grudgingly. “You got enough money?”

“Yes, sir.”

Shawn couldn’t think of any other reason to delay Creek’s departure, so Manfred held the door open for the girl and she flew out of the store.

Creek didn’t wait for him to open the car door for her but scrambled inside as if she feared her father would stop her from going to Davy at the last minute. Manfred buckled up as quickly as he could, and looked both ways about ten times before he pulled out onto the Davy highway. If Shawn was watching—pretty much a sure thing—Manfred wanted to be sure he saw how responsibly Manfred would drive with Creek in the car.

“Relief!” said Creek.

“Relief?”

“Getting out of Midnight for a little while. Well, actually, getting away from my dad for a little while.”

“You’re at the age when most kids separate from their parents,” he agreed.

“Okay, I won’t call you ‘Mr. Bernardo’ again, and you don’t call me ‘kid.’”

“Deal. What I was going to say is, sorry you didn’t get to leave for college like you were supposed to. Joe and Chuy told me about that.”

She shrugged. Her dark hair swung forward to obscure her expression. “Yeah, I hope I can still get the scholarship. I was all set to go.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged again. “It’s a long, boring story. Some paperwork didn’t make it on time. Is it true you’re a telephone psychic?”

Manfred started to shrug and tell her that was a long, boring story, but he thought he’d come off as too sarcastic. “My grandmother was a psychic, too,” he said. “My mom . . . the talent skipped her. She became the polar opposite. She’s become so down to earth and normal that it hurts to talk to her.”

“So where does she live?”

“In Tennessee,” he said. “I grew up in Tennessee. I lived with my grandmother a lot of the time.”

“I haven’t seen my grandmother . . .” Creek began, and then she trailed off. “I don’t ever see my grandparents.”

Manfred was not a mind-reader, at least not consistently or casually, but he’d been trained to be observant. Creek had not planned on ending the sentence that way. She’d almost said something completely different, something that would have revealed a lot about Lovell family life. Manfred was wise enough not to push, though. “Where’s this hair place you’re going to?” he asked. Visibly relieved at the change in the conversation, Creek gave him directions. Kut N Kurl was in an add-on structure attached to a house in a humble part of Davy.
Not that Davy has many grand parts,
Manfred thought. Until he pulled up in front of the house, their conversation was steady but impersonal. It was a start, he figured.

“How long do you think you’ll be?” Manfred asked as Creek opened the car door.

“Usually takes an hour,” she said. “Minnie might be running late. There are magazines to read, so don’t worry if your own errands run longer. I’ll be watching out the window.”

Manfred could tell from the smile on Creek’s face that getting her hair cut was a treat. That seemed a little sad. Maybe Creek just enjoyed the rare afternoon being in the society of other women? Maybe just getting out of Midnight and the ever-present grind of the convenience store was the real delight? “Okay,” he said. “Message received. I’ll be back in an hour or a little more. You’ve got my cell phone number, I know.”

“Yeah,” she said, embarrassed. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” he said promptly, and in the interests of being as thorough as he could be, he walked her to the door marked K
UT
N K
URL
. As she pushed it open, a waft of the beauty parlor smell drifted out to Manfred and evoked memories he hadn’t realized he possessed: taking his grandmother to her hair salon as she got older; smelling the salon incense of perm solution, hair dye, and wax; hearing the
snick
of scissors and the running water, the plastic crinkle of the protective capes . . . Suddenly, he had a mental image of Xylda so vivid that it almost brought tears to his eyes: this whole rush of past experiences, brought back by that one inhalation.

He knew he said something to Creek before he turned to walk back to the car, but he couldn’t recall what it was a minute later.

He had to sit in the car for a while before he left to run his errands. He pulled out his list of errands from his pocket and pretended to be studying it until he was calm and composed again. He had to smile a little; Xylda would have enjoyed knowing she was the center of so much of his life.

Maybe she did know it. That was not a bad feeling.

Home Depot, Walmart, and Dairy Queen were his three ports of call. An hour and fifteen minutes later, Manfred pulled up outside Kut N Kurl again. Before he could turn off his engine, Creek was at the passenger door. “I was watching out the window,” she said, climbing in.

“I brought you something,” Manfred said. “Here.” He handed her a cup with a spoon.

“What is it?”

“Butterfinger Blizzard,” he said. “I just guessed.”

“Oh,
boy
,” she said, and started in on the ice cream right away. “This is great!”

“You’ve had one before, right?”

“No, never. Connor’s on a very restricted diet.”

She didn’t explain why, and Manfred thought it would be pushy to ask. Manfred felt he might’ve undermined Shawn with the ice cream and that Shawn would not appreciate it. It felt strange to be on the parental consent side of things. “I hope I’m not in trouble,” he said.

“Not with me,” Creek assured him, and he felt better.

“I think it’s great that he wants Connor to eat healthy,” Manfred added quickly.

“He’s got some health issues,” she said, between bites of ice cream.

“Oh?” Manfred asked, “Allergies?” But when the pleasure on her face vanished, he realized he’d stepped over a boundary. “Sorry. Midnight people like to play things close to the chest.”

Her smile reappeared. He felt a rush of relief. “That’s one way to put it,” she said. “Yeah, my dad is pretty strict about us eating in restaurants, especially Connor. What about your dad? Was he hard on you?”

“I don’t know,” Manfred said. “I never met him. I don’t know who he was.”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry! Were you adopted?” She had flushed, which made her look even prettier, he thought.

“Nope. My mom was single, and she never told me anything about my dad.”

“I guess you asked her a lot,” Creek said, obviously feeling her way.

“Over and over, especially when I was little.”

“I’m really sorry,” she said. “I’m assuming you had to find ways to handle that. Were other kids mean about it?”

“I don’t think it would be as bad now, but then, in a sort of rural area, it was pretty tough.”

Creek obviously had a dozen things to say, but she seemed to be thinking twice about all of them. “Well, that sucks,” she said finally.

“Yeah, it kind of did,” he agreed, and they rode the rest of the way to Midnight in silence, working on their Blizzards. Manfred didn’t think the lack of conversation was uncomfortable; he characterized it as thoughtful. He pushed aside his own childhood mystery with the ease of long practice and instead focused on Creek’s. What kind of father keeps two kids chained to a convenience store in a little town that’s almost dead? And then has issues about them eating in restaurants? Manfred noted that was limited to out-of-town restaurants. The Lovells got takeout from Home Cookin regularly.

Manfred was beginning to wonder if there might be something sketchy about Creek’s not getting her scholarship, too. He couldn’t begin to imagine how he could tackle a line of questioning that would confirm or deny that suspicion, so he tucked the idea away for further examination.

He pulled into the convenience store parking lot before five o’clock. The old truck was back, parked over at their house next door, so Shawn and Connor had returned. Manfred debated going in to hand her over to her dad, then realized that would just be weird. She wasn’t eight years old, and this wasn’t a date. Plus, Shawn was probably watching.

“Thanks,” Creek said. “I appreciate the ride and the Blizzard.” She left the DQ cup in the cup holder, Manfred noticed.

“Glad to do it. Ask again,” he said, striving to sound casual. “And by the way, your hair looks great. You get about an inch cut off?”

Surprise flashed across her face. “Yeah,” she said. “I can’t believe you noticed.”

Not getting a lot of attention at home,
Manfred noted. “My grandmother always wanted my opinion on her hair,” he said. “That’s what she said, but she really wanted me to tell her she looked great and not a day older.”

Creek laughed. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t believe you when you tell me I look great?”

“I’m going to make a deal with you,” Manfred said. “I’ll do my best to always tell you the truth.” He had no idea why he’d said that, but he knew instantly it had been the right thing to tell her.

“That’s an interesting deal, Manfred Bernardo. Okay. I’ll do my best to do the same.” And Creek opened her door and walked swiftly into the store.

When the door swung shut, Manfred went home, but it took him an hour to settle back to work.