Brother, what have I done now?
Kissed the man I truly love, she thought. And that unexpected thought was more stunning than the contact itself.
Then he was in the car. “I’ll call you when I get back. See you on Sunday.”
“Drive carefully,” she said. A phrase that had set her on edge when her parents would tell teenage Kathryn the same. As if, oh, right, I was going to drive off the road until you reminded me.
But as a woman who’d lost one husband to the highway, it was a sentence she could not stop herself from uttering occasionally. He closed the door, glanced at her again and lifted his left palm to the inside windshield and she pressed her right to the glass outside.
He put the car in gear and pulled out of the lot.
“IF THAT DON’T beat all,” Bishop Towne said, sipping his milk.
“Right,” Dance said to him and his daughter, on the front porch of his house. “Edwin was innocent. Didn’t kill a soul. Totally set up.”
“He’s still a shit.”
“Daddy.”
“He’s a little fucking shit and I wouldn’t mind if he went to jail for something. But it’s good to know he’s not going to be a problem anymore.” The grizzled musician squinted at Dance. “He’s
“I don’t think so. He’s mostly sad that Kayleigh didn’t send him those personal emails and letters, the ones Simesky made up.”
“We should sue those bastards,” Bishop said. “The Keyholders? The fuck are they about?”
“Daddy, really. Come on.” Kayleigh nodded toward the kitchen, where Suellyn and Mary-Gordon were helping Sheri bake something fragrant with vanilla. But the man’s raspy voice probably hadn’t carried inside.
Kayleigh said, “I’m not going to sue anybody, Daddy. We don’t need that kind of publicity.”
“Well, we’re going to get publicity whether we want it or not. I’ll talk to Sher about spinning it.” Then he patted his daughter on the shoulder. “Hey, lookit the good news, KT The bad guys’re dead and Edwin’s out of the picture. So, no more talk about canceling any concerts. Speaking of that, I’ve been working on the song order again and I think we’ve got to move ‘Leaving Home.’ Everybody wants it. Encore’d be best. And I’d get the kids’ choir to sing the last part in Spanish.”
Dance was aware that Kayleigh’s shoulders had risen in tension at these comments. Clearly she herself still wasn’t so sure about the concert. Just because the killers had been stopped and Edwin absolved didn’t mean she was in the mental state necessary to put on a show in the shadow of the recent crimes.
And then Dance noticed the young woman’s posture collapse subtly. Which meant surrender.
“Sure, Daddy. Sure.”
The tone of the evening had changed quickly but, oblivious to it, Bishop Towne rose like a buffalo climbing out of a stream he’d just forded and ambled inside. “Hey, M-G, whatcha baking?”
Kayleigh looked after him, grim-faced. Dance used the opportunity to fish into her purse and hand her the sealed envelope that contained Bobby’s in-the-event-of letter and a copy of the adoption papers. The singer weighed it in her hand. Dance said softly, “That turned up in the investigation. I’m the only one who knows. You handle it however you want.”
“What-?”
“You’ll see.”
The woman stared down at the slim envelope, clutching it as if it weighed ten pounds. Dance realized that she knew what it contained. “You have to understand. I just…”
Dance hugged her. “It’s not my business,” she whispered. “Now, I’m going to get back to the motel. I’ve got a report to dictate.”
Kayleigh slipped the envelope into her pocket, thanked Dance for all she’d done and went into the house.
Dance walked down to her SUV. She happened to glance back into the house and could see a bit of the kitchen, Suellyn and Sheri at the island, looking at a cookbook. Kayleigh scooted up onto a stool nearby, lifted Mary-Gordon to her lap. No kinesic analysis was necessary to tell from the girl’s amused squirming that the embrace was particularly strong.
Driving down the lengthy, dim driveway, Dance was thinking not of the Towne clan but of the potential train wreck her personal life might be headed for. She thought back to kissing O’Neil and felt a twisting in her belly- radiating a perfect balance of joy and alarm.
She scrolled through her iPod playlist on the SUV’s entertainment screen to find the song that had just come to mind, one of Kayleigh’s, not surprisingly. “Is It Love, Is It Less?” The lyrics rolled out through the Pathfinder’s resonant sound system.
THURSDAY
Chapter 61
“GRACIAS, SENORA DANCE.”
In the garage of Jose Villalobos, Dance clicked off the digital recorder and began to pack away the cables and the microphones. She’d spent the day not as a law enforcement agent but as a recording engineer and producer, and Los Trabajadores had just finished the last tune-a
Dance had been delighted at the bizarre, captivating journey of the music and had to force herself to keep from clapping time to the speedy, infectious tunes.
Now, just after 5:00 P.M., she shared Tecates with the band and then wandered back to the Pathfinder. Her phone hummed and she saw Madigan’s text, asking if she would come in and review the transcript of her report about the Peter Simesky-Myra Babbage case, which she’d dictated last night.
She debated a moment-she was exhausted-but decided to get it over with. Scrolling through her iPhone she saw a missed call too.
Jon Boling.
She debated again about the “San Diego Situation,” as she’d taken to calling it. And the first thing in her thoughts was the kiss with Michael O’Neil.
I can’t call Jon, her mind told her.
As her finger hit REDIAL.
A trill of numbers. Then… voicemail.
