Fiji didn’t expect that she would hear a nearly simultaneous shout of “FIJI!” that would almost knock her over with its enthusiasm, or that people would pour out of the station wagon to hug her. After a long moment, she understood that she was safe and that she would have a chance to get warm and dry. She burst into unheroic tears.
When she was in the station wagon, crammed into the backseat with Manfred and the Rev, a little voice said, “See, I found you! And I got wet!”
34
So you left them standing in the rain?” Manfred asked, twenty-four hours later. He, the Rev, Bobo, and Lemuel—and Olivia, who’d returned that day—were in Fiji’s shop. They’d set up the folding chairs, and it was snug. She’d spent the day sweeping up the remains of the display cabinet and cleaning the floor, in between drinking bowls of hot soup (what she’d left on the stove had been salvageable) and taking hot showers.
“It had stopped by then. For all I know, they’re still there. I really don’t care.”
“And why should you?” Olivia said. She leaned forward to put her beer bottle on the wicker table. Fiji had made sausage balls and a dip for the carrot sticks. It had been comforting to cook, and also pleasant to be close to the warm stove.
It had taken her all night and day to feel that she was the right temperature inside and out.
Bobo had offered to close the pawnshop to come to sit with her, in case the Egglestons showed up, but she had told him she had to be by herself sometime. And she doubted Price Eggleston would show, not with the story she could tell the police.
“Which I didn’t tell them,” she had pointed out to Bobo. “As they can be sure by now, since the cops haven’t shown up on their doorstep. So they won’t come after me again.”
“After all,” said a little voice from the basket under the counter, “I am here to save you again.”
“Thanks, Mr. Snuggly,” Fiji said for perhaps the twentieth time. “How’d that chicken go down?”
“You should cook chicken for me every day,” the cat said. “Now I’m going to sleep.”
“Thank God,” Bobo whispered.
“I heard that!” said Mr. Snuggly. “You just watch it, I’ll sit on your face someday when you’re . . .” and the cat fell asleep.
“He really makes me glad that most cats can’t talk,” Bobo said, which pretty much expressed the feelings of everyone gathered in the room.
“He has his moments,” Fiji said. She cast a fond look in the direction of the cat’s basket.
“Ahhh . . . none of us knew Mr. Snuggly was speech-capable,” Olivia said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Well, he doesn’t talk very much. But once he gets going, he seems to want to get his two cents into every conversation.” Fiji shrugged apologetically.
“I heard that,” said the little voice sleepily, before trailing off into silence.
Fiji gave Olivia and Lemuel a very particular look. “Price Eggleston told me and his parents that he kidnapped me not only because he believes Bobo killed Aubrey, but also because two of the men they sent to beat Bobo up have vanished for good, and that Price Eggleston’s hunting lodge has burned down.”
Olivia looked away. Lemuel didn’t flinch. Bobo looked acutely uncomfortable.
“All right, don’t admit it,” Fiji said. She shrugged.
“But why you?” Olivia asked. “Why not one of the rest of us?”
“You remember Lisa Gray, Rev? The girl who got married over in your chapel not long ago?”
The Rev nodded.
“This Lisa told Price I was Bobo’s best friend,” Fiji told the group, “so he figured Bobo would cough up the mythical arms if I was grabbed.”
“How could he think I killed Aubrey?” Bobo said. “Price killed her, maybe because she wouldn’t betray me.”
“I don’t think so,” said the Rev.
“But if not Price, who? It’s not like we have a lot of killers running around Midnight,” Fiji said.
Another uncomfortable moment of silence had all eyes trying not to turn to Lemuel and Olivia.
“Not me,” Lemuel said, raising his white hands. “I didn’t touch Aubrey. Olivia didn’t, either. You can look at us accusingly till the cows come home. I would tell you how and why, if I had done anything untoward to Aubrey.”
“I would, too, just to stop Bobo from wondering,” Olivia said. She looked a bit sad. Fiji could not decide if Olivia was unhappy because all her friends in Midnight thought she was capable of murder or because the idea of losing Bobo’s friendship made her sad.
“But it must have been someone from Midnight,” Fiji said. “How could it not have been? Bobo was gone, but the rest of us would have noticed her going off with someone else, right?”
“She was in the pawnshop that day?” Manfred asked.
“I forgot you hadn’t even moved here then. You fit in really well,” Fiji said. “And that was intended as a compliment.”
“Yeah, I registered it as one,” Manfred told her. “So, Bobo was gone. It was over two months ago, so it was still summer, huh?”
“The weather was good,” the Rev said. “It was sunny and mild, and I had a funeral that day. The Lovells’ puppy.”
“Creek had a puppy? Sure, someone mentioned that. It got run over?”
“Hit-and-run,” the Rev said. His demeanor was always the same, but if Manfred had had to characterize the Rev’s face at that moment, he would have said the Rev looked . . . grieved.
“So the kids drove the body over, and we had the funeral,” the Rev went on after a moment. “Then they left. Creek said she was going for a walk. She was upset.”
“So Shawn was at work in the store. Creek was going for a walk, and Connor was going back to the store?” Bobo asked.
“I assume,” said the Rev.
“Madonna had taken the baby to his checkup in Davy,” said Fiji. “She reminded me of that at the picnic.”
“Where were you, Olivia?” There was nothing accusatory in Bobo’s voice, but Olivia looked away nonetheless.
“I slept in that day because I’d gotten in from Toronto late the night before,” she said. “I was up by about two, I guess. I caught a glimpse of Aubrey as she walked west from the pawnshop.”
“Wasn’t she supposed to keep the store while Bobo was gone?” Manfred asked.