“I’m taking my car, too,” he said, “if anybody wants to ride with me.”
“It’s no secret that the police uncovered another body today,” Faye continued, “so you won’t be surprised when I tell you that they are barring us from our worksite again. I can’t say that I blame them, given the circumstances, but this may mean that we have to put the project on hold. There’s just not much more we can do without access to the site. Our contact with the state of Tennessee is aware of the situation. He was already planning to be here tomorrow to monitor our work, so we’ll be able to talk face-to-face then about how, or even whether, we will go forward. But we’re not going to do that today. Today is a day to pay our respects to Frida.”
Faye was still trying to grab hold of the day’s events and change her world view to fit them. Only in this moment was she realizing that she had a bigger reason for closing down the project than mere scheduling and budgeting.
“Let me back up a bit and try again. I’m not at my best today and my thoughts are all jumbled up. It really doesn’t matter what the state’s representative says tomorrow. I’ve got to shut this thing down. I have no other choice.”
Jeremiah shifted on his feet, like a man who was trying hard not to argue with her.
“Yesterday,” she went on. “I based my decision to keep you here on the police department’s belief that the attack on Frida was personal. They believed that the killer was someone who knew her and wanted to hurt her, and I had no reason to doubt their judgment. Over the past day, evidence has surfaced that made me think otherwise. Our discovery of a hidden grave today convinces me that there has been a serial killer at work here in Memphis and the surrounding area for years. I cannot in good conscience keep you here. Frankly, I’m running for home myself, as soon as Jeremiah and I do what has to be done to shut this project down. I wish none of these things were true, but they are.”
Now Ayesha, Yvonna, and Stephanie were standing with their arms around each other, weeping.
“Look after each other. Try not to be alone until you’re all safe in your homes. Well, you can be alone in the shower, as long as your roommate is outside watching the door.”
She was relieved to hear that they were still able to laugh.
“We’ll gather after the funeral for a good-bye dinner, then we’ll talk about how we’re going to get you all home.”
Chapter Thirty-two
They’d found another of his women. He had never known her name, but he remembered the act of saying good-bye. It had been Christmastime, so nobody had blinked at a man buying a bouquet from a grocery store’s florist counter that was bloody with scarlet flowers, all of them tied with spruce green ribbons. He remembered how lovely the red chrysanthemums and white baby’s breath had looked as he placed them in her limp hands.
His neighborhood’s corner of Twitter was alive today with the discovery of her bones. Everyone on Faye Longchamp-Mantooth’s team had been sworn to secrecy, but at least one of them had lied. That person had told Sylvia and she had told the world.
That person had also told Sylvia that the archaeologist was closing down her project. This was good, since she seemed to be better at finding his women than the police were. However, the end of her project meant the end of the archeologist’s time in Memphis, and he didn’t intend to follow her to Florida just for the pleasure of silencing her. Today was the day. It had to be.
What flowers should he buy today? Perhaps he should go buy a bunch of white daisies. Their simplicity made him think of Faye Longchamp-Mantooth and her effortless grace. He would venture a guess that she loved daisies and would smile if a man presented her with a bunch of them. How much more would they suit her in death?
Chapter Thirty-three
Joe was suffering his very first bout of road rage. For Joe, road rage took the form of drumming his fingers on the steering wheel really hard.
Perhaps the highway construction in Birmingham was the reason they were running so late. Amande had thought that they could detour around it, but she had been wrong.
Certainly, the horrific accident on US-319 between Panacea and Tallahassee that had closed both northbound lanes had put a crimp in their plans before they’d gone fifty miles. And perhaps the GPS had complicated things by being overly optimistic with its pre-lunch arrival time. Joe was going with that theory, because there was no way he was going to point his finger at his sweet and well-meaning daughter and ask, “Why in the heck aren’t we in Memphis yet? Did you mess up somehow? Did you put the wrong address in the GPS?”
Joe didn’t know who or what was to blame, but he knew he was ready to get a good look at his wife and make sure she was okay. He picked up the phone to call her, but remembered that she might hear the road noise in the background and ask him where he was going. He didn’t want to warn her that he was on his way, and he wasn’t much of a liar. She’d have a harder time being mad at him for coming when she was looking him in the face.
The sight of yet another long stretch of orange cones ahead made him grip the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. The orange speed limit sign instructed him to slow down on pain of some fearsome fines, so he
