'Yeah,' I said. 'But if it's your father behind all this, you said yourself you've got immunity.'
'And what if it isn't my father?' Tim said. 'Guys, I'm sorry you got beat up. I'm sorry you got run off the road and nearly killed, but you came out all right. The guys involved confessed. Maybe they'll get scared and pin my father to it in time. But why do you want to meddle anymore?'
'You're about the only one here who has really befriended us,' I said. 'Maude and her boys a little. Cantuck in his own fashion. But you know these people. You might can tell us something can help. I feel there's an equation we haven't added up. I think we look at the factors just right, we ought to be able to get a total. Know what I'm saying?'
'No,' Tim said.
'Florida comes here because she thinks Soothe was murdered,' I said. 'She wants to prove the Chief and the town are a bunch of bigots. She wants to buy this stuff the Yankee wanted to buy from Soothe and got killed over. Stuff that might or might not exist. She asks around. Talks to you. Gets a place to stay out at your mother's, then disappears. Her car disappears. Her belongings disappear.'
'That's what makes me think she may have just driven off,' Tim said.
'I don't think so,' I said. 'Doesn't fit who she was. People can sometimes do crazy things, but by now we'd have heard from her. Something's happened to her.'
'You can't be certain,' Tim said.
'I've thought every angle. It looked to me at first that Can-tuck might have something to do with her missing, but in light of the way things have gone, that doesn't fit as well as it first did. Reynolds is possible. He and your father could have been in cahoots. They could have hung Soothe. Perhaps Florida somehow found out, so they got rid of her. That sound far-fetched?'
'I guess not,' Tim said. 'I wouldn't put anything past my old man. Not after the way he's treated my mother and me. I tell you, him with all that money, and me with nothing. And owing him to boot. It gets my goat. And I hate to mention it, boys, but you owe me for some tires.'
'Oh, yeah,' Leonard said. 'You take a check?'
'I don't like to.'
'Can you wait then?'
'I'll take the check.'
Leonard wrote it out. Tim took it and put it in his wallet. 'There now,' he said. 'That's all taken care of. You were saying . . . what was it?'
'He was about to say, then we show up,' Leonard said, 'not only are we a nigger and a nigger lover, but we're treading on dangerous ground. Same ground Florida was on.'
'So,' Tim said. 'What can I do?'
'What we want,' I said, 'is for you to let us talk to your mother. You know, set it up with her. Maybe there's something she knows that didn't seem important at the time, but is now. Perhaps Florida left her clothes in the trailer and your mother took them.”
'She's not a thief,' Tim said.
'He didn't say that,' Leonard said. 'What he wants is any bit of evidence we can find. If your mother has the clothes, then that could point to Florida being abducted, killed. Might be something in her clothes that'll give us a lead. If we could find her car. Just something to start with. Anything.'
'Hell,' I said. 'We don't know what we want, Tim. We just want it. Understand?'
'Here's what I'll do,' Tim said. 'I'll ask her she knows anything. I'll call out there. I want to talk her into leaving anyway, all this water risin', but that's all I'll do. My mother is not a well woman, and I don't want you two giving her grief. Got me?'
'Fair enough,' I said.
Tim went in the back and we sat by the stove and waited. Five minutes later he returned.
'She won't leave,' he said, 'and she doesn't know anything. She said Florida was there, then she wasn't, and she never saw her again. And she didn't leave any clothes.'
We bought some gas and soft drinks from Tim. I even bought one of the pig's feet. We went out and sat in the truck. The rain rattled on the roof and flooded over the windshield so thick it was like we were underwater.
'What now?' I said.
'This hasn't worked out quite like I thought,' Leonard said. 'I figure I pissed Raul off for nothing. It's too wet to do a goddamn thing. No place to stay. We've got less ideas than we did before we came the first time. And that check I wrote Tim is hot, I don't get some money to cover it. Boy, he is one tight sonofabitch.'
'You're right,' I said. 'On all accounts.'
'I missed out on an anniversary dinner and Raul's ass for this, and I tell you, I ain't happy.'
'Maybe you could find someone to beat up.'
'Yeah. Things could get better. What would cheer me up real good is getting to hit that Reynolds fucker.'
'He'll hit back. I guarantee it.'
'That is a drawback. Want to eat this sack lunch?'
'I been thinking about it ever since we left your house.'
We got the sack lunch and ate it. I tried to eat the pig's foot too. It smelled rank and it was like eating a piece of soggy, vinegar-soaked rubber. I rolled down the window and spat a few times, then wrapped the pig's foot up in a paper sack, double-bagged it with another.
