This must be other couple that Celeste was talking about at the grocery store.
“She had to go way down the line, you get me, ’cause then there was Annie and Jay, and after that Wendy and Dwayne. And she ended with Dale, who does all right, but he’s no Bobby, Jay or Dwayne. To be honest, I think the only one she didn’t put the screws to, and that pun was intended, or tried to and got shot down, was your Cade when he was with Grace.”
Okay, maybe the high school kids weren’t very well informed, because that was a much longer pattern.
Kimmy patted my hand.
I didn’t take my eyes off her.
“He’s a good one, that one. Be a waste of her time. Cade Bohannan is a one-woman man, like his daddy was, and his and so on.”
I was beginning not to regret this gossip sesh.
She wagged a finger at me. “So you best let it be known that’s your property, gurl.”
“I don’t mean to cause offense, but humans can’t be property, Kimmy.”
“I was younger, prettier and less weird, I’d stamp that boy all over.”
I couldn’t stop my giggle.
She turned her head slightly, keeping her gaze on me, and slowly nodded.
Even though I didn’t offer my one-cent piece, in for a penny…
“Do you have an idea of who might have hurt Alice?”
Kimmy sat back, sipped her drink, and considered this somberly.
Her straw left her lip, and she told some point in the air above us. “Well, there’s that old whackjob, Paddy Tremayne. But I reckon everyone thought of him first, except Leland, who probably had a brain freeze for the first seventy-two hours she was missing, thinkin’ only about how he’d stop himself from shittin’ his pants.”
She looked to me.
And declared, “He failed at that. Figuratively.”
I sucked in my lips.
She sucked back more of her drink.
And concluded, “But other than that, I can’t say. Been thinkin’ on it. But nothin’s comin’ to me.”
“That’s a shame,” I murmured.
“If I get any bright ideas, I’ll look for you or one of your boys.”
One of your boys.
This time, I couldn’t stop my smile.
She studied me.
Then she said, “You know, didn’t think there was a woman alive who was good enough for that man. Guess I was wrong. Wasn’t thinkin’ big enough. Still, you do him wrong, you best leave MP behind. Because not a soul in this town will be okay with that, I don’t care how great that book is you wrote. And I’ll tell you somethin’ for nothin’, I don’t know what went down with them, but the minute she left, you better believe Grace Bohannan knew that too. And I’d bet you a thousand dollars, that’s why that woman never came back.”
She glanced toward the counter, saw Celeste still was waiting for her drink, and out of earshot, which was a little too late, but thankfully Celeste wasn’t close, then she came back to me.
“Come on by to the shop. I don’t give discounts to rich people, but I’ll give you an early look at the Thanksgiving stuff.”
She slapped my knee so hard, it didn’t hurt badly, but it hurt.
She then got up and walked away.
Twenty-Six
Just Starting Out
I finally got my return text.
At 11:47 at night.
It read, You up?
Yes, I replied.
On my way over.
You will note that wasn’t a question of whether I wanted company at nearly ten to midnight.
I wasn’t in a good mood, and not because it took so long for Bohannan to reply to my text.
It was because I felt obliged to pull the curtain on my wall of windows, which normally gave an incredible view of a tranquil, mist-shrouded, moonlight-gilded lake, which was one of the reasons why I bought this place.
It also meant that I didn’t see Bohannan coming up.
But I heard his knock.
I headed to the security panel and disarmed it before I went to the door, pulled back the curtains and let him in.
He gazed approvingly at the curtains.
I shut the door.
“Beer or an Aromacobana brownie?” I offered.
“Just ate,” he replied.
“At nearly midnight?” Those three words were filled with wifely disapproval that wasn’t mine to have because he was a grown man, he could eat when he wanted, but also, I wasn’t his wife.
He made no reply, but he was watching me closely.
In other words, this time with his quiet, he read my mood and was proceeding with caution.
I moved to the couch. “Do you want to sit?”
I felt him behind me.
I also was in a titch less of a bad mood when I sat down, turning his way and lifting my bent leg to the seat, and he sat close, so his thigh was against my shin, and then he one-upped that by curling his long fingers around the back of my knee.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Why you up?” he asked.
“Because I consumed a massive latte at around three o’clock, and I really can’t have caffeine after, maybe, ten, or it keeps me up late at night.”
“Right,” he muttered.
“I answered yours…” I prompted.
He didn’t cushion it.
“Hawk is sending a guy. His name is Billy. He’s gonna be living at the rental property up your lane. Hawk will also be monitoring the feeds from your cameras again, twenty-four, seven.”
Now it was me with no reply.
“Jess and Jace, they caught a trail. They followed it,” he said.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“We got sensors, even a few cameras. They send alerts to our phones, me and the boys. We have a lot of them. We move them around from time to time. But it isn’t like every inch of the woods is lousy with them.”
“Okay,” I repeated.
“Though, it’s just the woods we keep track of. I own the land. No one owns the lake.”
“Right.”
“Trail they tracked says whoever it was, they knew to avoid the wood. They came lakeside. On foot. Practically in the water. But not in the water, like they wanted the trail found. And not through the woods.”
Suddenly, I felt very cold.
“Beyond your boathouse, maybe six, ten feet, that trail disappears. Just stops.”
I started trembling.
Because I’d heard that before.
When they followed the trail of who took Alice.
It led into the woods.
And then it just stopped.
Bohannan pulled my knee fully up on his thigh, which scooted me across the seat closer to him.
“Hawk checked that footage again and again. But did you see the guy walk back the way he came?”
I shook my head.
“He did not retrace his steps?”
I kept shaking my head.
“You see a boat at all?”
Again, I shook my head.
“Did you keep watching?”
I nodded, but said, “It wasn’t like I watched for hours. I texted you and talked to you and then started checking windows. But except for the texting, and until after we spoke, I didn’t take my eyes from the windows.”
Bohannan nodded.
Once.
“There are blind spots to Hawk’s coverage, but on one feed or another, he’d see that guy. He didn’t see the guy. Even if he came around the front of your house. And when I say retrace his steps, what I mean is, to make no trail, he’d have to be walking backwards, placing his feet exactly where his feet were on the way in and retracing his steps. And I figure anyone would notice that.”