“I need a drink,” Tinkie said, even as she held up a hand. “I know I can’t. I’m just vocalizing my needs.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Soon!”
I wanted a drink, too, but I wasn’t going to rub her nose in it. “Let’s go down to the river and check in with the searchers.”
She nodded. “It’s better than sitting and moping.”
Before we could get to our feet, my cell phone rang. Cece was calling.
“The men are in some big warehouse on the outskirts of town,” she said. “We’ve tried every which way to sneak a peek inside, but the place is airtight. There’s a ten-foot chain-link fence with razor wire all around it, and there’s no way to get in. They have cameras everywhere. Something is going on in there, though. Lots of folks are inside.”
“What the heck.” I was puzzled. Coleman and his he-man contingent weren’t likely holed up in a warehouse drinking away the day. They could do that with us. “Come on back to the B and B. Darla has gone to get Kathleen’s cat.”
“That’s hard,” Cece said. “We’re on the way. Maybe we can cheer her up. What’s on the agenda for this evening?”
I relayed the question to Tinkie, who was a little miffed no one had actually read her itinerary. I didn’t point out that we didn’t have to because she’d lined everything up and all we had to do was get dressed and be there for her to order us about. No decisions to make—no pressure.
“Tonight Darla is supposed to help us come up with some costumes for mumming.”
I put the phone on speaker and relayed that to Cece, who responded with “Are you sure she’s up for that?”
“If she doesn’t feel up to it, we can head out for some shopping and put together our own costumes. The stores will be open later tonight. We can find something appropriate.”
Cece was laughing at us. “We’ll be home shortly. You be thinking of ways to make these men spill the beans about what they’re up to.”
“You ran them to ground, but you don’t have any idea what they’re doing?” I asked. “Did your driver, Dallas Sweeney, have any ideas what was going on?”
“I had a sense she knew something but wasn’t talking. We’re on our way.” The phone went dead.
I was overjoyed at the idea of mumming. My love of acting hadn’t died with the disappointment of my thwarted career. Dressing up and pretending was just as much fun as it had always been, but before we got to that, I held up the book of poetry Kathleen had written.
“Let’s go through some of this before Darla returns. Chances are this will only upset her if she sees us working on it.”
Tinkie nodded. “Good thinking.”
Tinkie and I took a seat on the sofa in front of a fire that was burning to embers. I made myself a glass of Jack on the rocks and opened the little journal we’d found at Kathleen’s house. We didn’t have long before Darla would be back with Gumbo.
We started at the back—the last things written. There were snippets of a scene or complete poems, mostly about loneliness. And some about love. Kathleen had found someone she seemed to care deeply about. Someone who returned that emotion. She wrote sonnets, a difficult form. She was pretty good in some instances. And the best poems, the ones that really worked, made me feel like I was violating her privacy.
There were also things written that I couldn’t make any sense of. Tinkie was as puzzled as I was. But it made perfect sense that Kathleen, in writing only for herself, had not felt the need to be linear or logical.
“Do you think she was depressed?” Tinkie asked.
“She was lonely for a bit, but that seemed to have passed.” I thought back to the time I’d spent with her. She’d seemed happy enough, and her friendship with Darla seemed like a linchpin in her life.
Tinkie tossed the journal at me. “If there’s anything declarative in there, I couldn’t find it. It’s mostly things about feelings and emotions, being on the outside looking in. Just fragments of things.”
Tinkie was right about that. Perhaps someone better trained in literary symbolism could find substance in the journal. That wasn’t going to be me or Tinkie. I’d been so hopeful when we pulled it off the shelf that we would have answers to some of our questions.
“What’s our next step?” Tinkie asked. Normally she was the person setting out the agenda.
“We can check out some wig shops in town. We can call Dallas for a ride and pick her brain. Or we can join the search for Kathleen.” Those were the options, as I saw them.
“What about talking with Clarissa about what really happened last night?”
That was, indeed, another way to go. “I’m in.”
“I’m just not buying that she’s paying fifteen grand to ‘protect the town cheaters.’”
“I’m having a lot of trouble buying that, too.”
“It might be best if we aren’t here when Darla brings the cat in,” Tinkie said. “She can have a good cry or whatever she needs without feeling she has to be the perfect host.”
21
I dialed Dallas Sweeney and booked a ride. “The Uber will be here in ten minutes.”
We left a note on the kitchen counter for Darla and asked her to tell Cece and Millie we’d be back as quickly as we could. Whether Darla was up to helping us prepare our costumes or not, we still had to find something festive to wear to the mumming. And I had a lot to learn about the ancient tradition.
Grinning widely, Dallas pulled up, and Tinkie and I hopped into her car.
“Where to?” she asked.
“Rook’s Nest.”
She glanced at us in the rearview mirror. “You want to stop for a Kevlar vest and some weapons?”
We
