'What's Ski say?'
'He says to shoot twice,' Dodge lied. 'Pass it on to your buddy on the pier.'
Once inside the house and satisfied that its security hadn't been breached, he'd asked Caroline if she had any liquor. When she pointed him to a cabinet in the living room, he took out a bottle of bourbon and poured the shot for Berry, which she now sipped as advised.
'Thanks.'
'What about Sally Buckland?' Caroline asked.
Dodge sighed but knew she would persist until he gave her a full explanation. 'As I said, my one conversation with her didn't amount to anything. I called her--'
'Why were you calling her?'
'Because I thought maybe I could get more information out of her than Ski had. He's good, but his bedside manner needs some work.'
'And yours has been perfected.'
'Mother, please,' Berry said wearily. 'Let him tell us what he knows.' To Dodge she said, 'How did you obtain Sally's phone numbers?'
'I'll get to that. The point is, I called her cell phone several times. Got no answer but finally reached her on her landline. She was as evasive with me as she had been with Ski. The shooting here was none of her business, she hadn't seen any of the people involved since she left Delray Marketing, yada yada.'
Berry asked, 'Did she say I was lying when I called Oren a stalker?'
'Almost word for word what she'd told Ski.'
'Incomprehensible,' Berry murmured.
'I got the same runaround from the lady that Ski did. I decided to let her sleep on it, then tried calling her again this morning, hoping to catch her in a more cooperative mood. No answer on either number.'
'She would have recognized your number on caller ID,' Berry said. 'She didn't want to talk, so she didn't answer.'
'Figured that,' Dodge said. 'So I planned to drive down today for a face-to-face, see if I could get a better read, but you know what it's been like around here today.'
She didn't know about the photos he'd tricked the deputy into giving him, and, for the time being, he wasn't going to tell her. Apparently Ski was of the same mind, or he would have told her about them. Oren's telephone call had knocked her on her can. Caroline was looking none too steady herself. Ski had put him in charge of protecting them, and that included withholding information that wasn't absolutely necessary for them to know. Knowing about the photographs would only add to their fear.
Dodge picked up the topic where he'd left off. 'Yesterday Sally Buckland defended Oren Starks. Today he's using her cell phone.'
Berry pulled her lower lip through her teeth. 'That doesn't bode well, does it?'
'Not at all.'
'I'm worried about her.'
'You should be.'
'You think she's in danger?'
Dodge frowned. 'That wasn't what I was going to say.'
'You're thinking something,' Caroline said. 'What?'
'Starks and Sally Buckland could be in cahoots.'
'I refuse to accept that,' Berry said.
'Then give me something better.'
'I can't, Dodge. But I know with certainty that Sally loathed Oren. Maybe even feared him just as I came to.'
'Even antagonists can team up against a greater foe,' Dodge said.
'Me? I'm the foe?'
'Don't get your panties in a wad. I'm just bouncing around some ideas. Is it even remotely possible that they teamed up to get back at you for something?'
Berry took another sip of the bourbon. Dodge noticed that her hand was shaking as she raised the glass to her mouth.
The silence stretched out. Eventually Caroline said, 'I trust Ski to wring some answers out of Sally Buckland.'
'First thing he's going to ask her is about Amanda Lofland.'
Dodge deliberately dropped that statement like a lead weight and then watched closely for Berry's reaction to it. Her astonishment seemed genuine, even to his keen eye. 'Amanda and Sally? What's the connection?'
'You don't know?'
'I wasn't aware they knew each other.'
'Well, they do.'
'How do you know?'
'I pinched Amanda Lofland's phone yesterday.'
'You
He shrugged. 'Curiosity. I checked her contacts and call log.'
'And found Sally Buckland's number among them,' Caroline said.
'Yep. Calls going back and forth for several weeks--the lady must never wipe her log clean. Later I gave the phone back to Ski. If he's done his homework, and I think we can assume he has, he'll see those same calls and wonder what those two ladies, along with Oren Starks, have in common. Astute boy that he is, he'll come up with the same thing I did.' He looked at Berry. 'You.'
Berry didn't comment. Instead she lowered her head and stared into the contents of her glass.
Caroline said, 'But Ski hasn't specifically talked to you about Amanda Lofland?'
'No, but he called while I was in the car, following you here. His mind is following the same track as mine. He asked if I thought it was possible that Sally Buckland and Oren are working together, that maybe she scooped Starks off that Walmart parking lot.'
'What led him to think that?' Caroline asked.
'He'd already heard back from Houston PD. Officers dispatched to Buckland's house report there's no one there. Garage is empty. They've put out an APB on her car. Her cell phone goes straight to voice mail. Which isn't surprising. After calling Berry, Starks would know better than to leave it on.'
'Which brings me to another question,' Caroline said. 'Why did he use that phone to call Berry? Why call her at all?'
'Ski and I gnawed on that, too,' Dodge admitted. 'Doesn't make good sense. Starks would know we could track him that way, except that he picked a damn good location to call from. Guess where.' Before either could venture a guess, he told them. 'Minute Maid Park. He called just as the Astros game was ending. HPD was all over it, but nobody knows what Starks is driving.'
'Sally Buckland's car?' Caroline said.
'Best guess. But no one knows with absolute certainty that's what he's in. Even if he is, it took a while to get her license plate number into the pipeline, so he could have escaped before anyone was looking for that car. Adding to the confusion, there were thousands leaving the ball game. Traffic was snarled.' Grudgingly, Dodge added, 'Couldn't have been smarter of the son of a bitch.'
Berry said huskily, 'What you're telling us is that he's escaped again.'
'Yeah,' he said heavily. 'That's what I'm telling you. But I gotta add that signaling the authorities to his location seems like a stupid thing for a man on the run to do.'
'He's not stupid. Far from it. He used Sally's phone for a reason. He called me for
