Creek stared at Fiji, her face inscrutable. This was the Creek Fiji knew best, not the girl who’d been panicked by a few cell phones. “So if he did that, you think he sent the guys to jump Manfred and Bobo that night?”
“Yes, that’s what I think.”
“Then he deserves whatever happens to him!” Creek said, with some ferocity.
Surprised by Creek’s vehemence—and because she was curious to see what the girl would say—Fiji told her, “So far, a building he owns has been burned down, and two of his men have disappeared.”
“You’re not saying you feel sorry for him?” Creek’s clear olive skin reddened along her cheekbones. “After all, he killed Aubrey!”
“I don’t feel any pity for him,” Fiji said. “I’m just saying, it’s not like he’s walking all over creation getting his own way.”
There was an awkward silence. “He sure messed up Aubrey’s funeral,” Creek muttered.
“Yes, he did. I feel sorry for her family.” Though she hadn’t liked Aubrey in life or in death, Fiji thought it was awful that the dignified farewell service her parents had planned had been disrupted by an egomaniac who loved himself more than he respected the feelings of others.
“He should not get away with any of this.” Creek was clear in her judgment.
“If he means to do evil to Bobo, believe me . . . he won’t get away with it. And if he killed Aubrey, the police will arrest him.”
“You think that Arthur Smith will arrest a rich man?”
“I do believe he will,” Fiji said, and was a little surprised to find she meant it. Arthur Smith might be wily and perhaps he was politically oriented. She didn’t know him well enough to have an opinion on that. But she did not think he was corrupt.
“And Price killed her.”
Again with the killing. Fiji suppressed a sigh. Creek was very hung up on that point, while to Fiji, Price’s biggest sin was the two attacks on Bobo. She was certain about Price’s guilt in those. “I’m just guessing,” she said a bit too sharply. “But that seems logical to me.”
Creek nodded, seeming reassured, and they rode the rest of the way back to Midnight in near silence. “I’m just worried about the darn pictures,” she said, when they got close to town.
Were the Lovells in the witness protection program or something? Fiji wondered. What was the deal with the Lovell family and pictures? With being noticed? But there was absolutely nothing she could do about the pictures that were surely all over the Internet now, and she was a bit tired of Creek’s company; plus, there was the Midnight habit of respecting secrets. So she made no response.
27
The next afternoon, Bobo retraced Fiji’s route to Buffalo Plain. He’d talked to Fiji that morning in her yard: she’d finally made a start at getting out all her Halloween decorations. She’d climbed down from a ladder to tell him about the funeral.
She’d looked preoccupied, and cold, wrapped up in the battered zip-up jacket she wore for yard work. He himself was wearing his old brown corduroy coat with the toggle fastenings, a relic from his college days. Fall had declared itself overnight. The sky was a brilliant blue with a cloud scattered here and there to emphasize how radiant the day was, but the chilling wind blew steadily from the west. It tossed the leaves through the air, forcing them to somersault before drifting to the ground.
Bobo stopped to fill up his tank and get a cup of coffee in Marthasville, and the grackles in the trees around the gas station were full of noisy conversation. One strutted on the ground by his truck and cast a bright eye up at him, as if wondering if he were a source of food.
“Not today, bird,” he said, and the grackle flew away to tell its comrades. Most people hated grackles, but Bobo had enjoyed them since he’d moved to Texas. They seemed to tell each other everything.
Bobo’s old Garmin got him to the cemetery with only a moment of uncertainty. He spotted the fresh grave right away; it was covered with withering flowers. To his dismay, he was not alone. There was another mourner. Since the cemetery was a dead end (Yeah, pretty ironic, huh?), there was no way for him to leave unobtrusively. He decided to accept whatever was going to happen. He got out of his truck. The small form beside the grave turned to face him, and he saw it was a woman. After a second, Bobo recognized her as Aubrey’s mother. Aubrey had kept a picture of her parents on her side of the bed.
Though Bobo dreaded this encounter, it was impossible to back down. He walked toward her, doing his best to look as nonthreatening as a big strange man in an isolated spot possibly could appear to a lone woman.
The breeze picked up Aubrey’s mother’s short hair and ruffled it, and made the flowers rustle on their forms.
“I don’t know you,” she said after a moment. “I’m Lucyfay Hamilton.”
“Mrs. Hamilton, I’m Bobo Winthrop. I didn’t kill your daughter.”
She stared at him wordlessly. She had Aubrey’s eyes, he thought, but she was smaller all over than her daughter. She was only ten or twelve years older than Bobo, and if she had not been so sunk in grief, she might have appealed to him on a personal level, a realization he found shocking and confusing.
“That’s what the sheriff in your county tells us,” she said. From her tone and demeanor, he had no idea if she believed in his innocence or not.
“I heard you all didn’t want me to come to the funeral, so I thought I’d come today to pay my respects,” he said. “I didn’t think anyone else would be here.”
“After that man ruined the funeral yesterday, I wanted a quiet time to spend with my daughter,” Lucyfay Hamilton said, turning back to the grave. “Did you hear about that?”
“Yes, a friend of mine was here. I heard. And I’ll leave you to your private time.” He turned to go back to his truck.
“You can stay,” she said. “I’ve said everything to her I had to say.”
Bobo had no idea how to respond to that. He shifted from foot to foot. “I really loved her,” he offered.
“That’s what she told me. ‘Mama, he loves me, and he treats me better than anybody ever has,’ she said.”
“You were in contact with her?” Bobo said. “I’m sorry . . . somehow I thought that she was out of touch with you all.”
“She was out of touch with her father and Macon,” Lucyfay Hamilton said. There was a ghost of a smile on her lips. “Never with me.”