Yeah, sure. "Buyer" is a rare fish in Sunrise County. Anyone who wants to live here is already here. The back roads were lined with abandoned places slowly falling into their cellar holes. Like Grannie Rowley's.
Kate grimaced. Depression was just another chunk of the PMS whipsaw. "Hey, Jeffy-Boy! Need anything up there?"
He drove another roofing nail home before looking up, tap-bang, two skilled blows. "If you're climbing anyway, bring up some more shingles."
Last spring, he wouldn't have answered. Now he'd replaced that sullen silence with the easy give-and-take of "crew." The boy's blood kin, about as close as I've got with Jackie gone. Second cousin, on Dad's side.
Closest except for Mom. Damn sure I don't want her to get that land. Maybe it's time to make out a new will.
She hoisted a couple of bundles of Frost Whites to her good shoulder and grabbed a rung of the ladder. Her hip wouldn't let her spend hours in the crouch and shuffle of shingling a six-in-twelve roof, but she could still haul twice the load that scrawny kid could carry . . . .
She took the second rung with her bad leg and woke a fire in her hip. It backed off when her weight shifted to the third, but another step fanned it into blazing pain. She froze halfway up, one hand on the ladder right at the eave and the other steadying the shingles, her eyes scrunched shut and tears leaking hot around the lids. Damndamndamn . . .
Weight lifted from her shoulder, magic cooling the fire, and she opened her eyes to a blurry, concerned face. Jeff grabbed the second bundle of shingles, bending too far out over the eave, and thumped it up on the roof. Good thing she was tall enough, shoulder brought the load to where he could reach it.
"Miz Rowley . . ."
"Shut the fuck up and get back to work. I'll be okay."
She gritted her teeth and climbed again, up and off the ladder onto the roof, too pig-headed to back down, and slumped into the gable valley where she could brace her good leg against the second slope and the foolish gutter that froze a foot deep of ice every winter. Stretching her other leg out flat across the plywood helped to ease the pain. Kate mopped her sleeve across her forehead and cheeks, sweat mostly. Big girls don't cry.
What the hell? She'd hauled three, four loads up the ladder this morning, same weight, setting Jeff up before she headed off to court. Woke a mild ache in the wound, nothing more. Nothing like this.
But Jeff had lifted the shingles for her. This time she'd bent over to grab the load, different angle, different strain.
"Miz Rowley, you kill yourself, I won't have a job. Probably end up back on the streets. Hustling for dime bags." Then Jeff grinned at her, just kidding. Maybe.
But he didn't grab his hammer and get back to pounding nails. He crouched there tense as if he expected to have to catch her before she fell. As if he cared enough to risk his own neck for her. And wouldn't that be a scene — she outweighed him by about a hundred-fifty pounds. Kate wondered how bad she really looked.
Bad enough, that was sure. It'd probably be fifteen minutes before she could find the strength to climb off the roof again. Damn sure she wasn't going to chase down kids from an underage beer party out at Stanford's Quarry. The town was getting shortchanged on the cop account.
Speaking of the cop job . . . "Jeffy-Boy, you know Grant Cage?"
Jeff's face closed down. "Older. Saw him around, never hung out with him."
Delicate dance, they had a verbal contract — he'd stay clean, she wouldn't ask cop questions. But this could be labeled "gossip" rather than "interrogation."
"Any idea why he'd end up dead in the Morgans' back yard?" Two murder cases, same town, same month, that used up Sunrise County's whole quota for the year. Coffee shops and bars buzzed with the rumors. Gossip.
He stopped and thought, rather than just shutting her out. Another step forward. Then he shook his head. "The guys I know say he'd been gone since July, August. He hung around for a bit after all the noise at Pratts', then vanished. Used to run with that crowd."
That crowd had included Jackie.
"Miz Rowley . . ."
"Yo?" Kate scanned his face. Judging by what she saw, he wasn't happy with whatever he was thinking.
"Miz Rowley, one of the guys said something. I ran into him last night, down at the game room, not looking for him, I'm still out of all that. But we got talking, waiting our turns on the machines."
Video parlor, the heart of what passed for teen nightlife in beautiful downtown Stonefort. Hit legal age, the action moved on to Larry's Bar on the other side of the pizza shop. "And?"
"Guy's still doing drugs. Even before the drugs, he wasn't bright enough to pour piss out of a boot if you wrote instructions on the sole."
Jeff really didn't want to tell this story. Kate felt a chill down her back.
"This guy thought he'd seen Jackie. Just a glance, driving through town. Big white SUV, windows tinted black but she had the driver's side rolled down. Guy's a liar, scrambled eggs for brains. Was stoned so far he barely could remember to breathe. I want you to know that before you hear it somewhere else."
So that was why Jeff had been so quiet this morning. She'd thought he'd skipped the second cup of coffee. No, he'd been chewing on the news, wondering what he should say. If he should say.
Kate stood up, numb to the fire rekindled in her hip, and swung onto the ladder. She paused. "If it looks like rain, I'll try to get back to help you with
