We took a seat at the corner of the bar and ordered beers.
“You mind if we split some wings and fries?” she said. “I never got around to having lunch today, and the smell just, you know, hit me. I didn’t realize how hungry I was.”
I mentally reviewed what was in my wallet: a little cash, and I did have the one card of mine that still worked. I hoped whatever intel she had would be worth my eating cereal for lunch tomorrow.
“No problem,” I said. I called the bartender over and ordered the food.
She took a sip of her beer, set it down, and said, “Okay. So, you can cross Blount off your friends list right now. The boys have themselves a witness, and he’s it. He’s got a speedboat he keeps down at the marina, and he’s saying he went fishing that day and saw Jackson coming into the marina around ten at night, when he was heading out.”
That wasn’t great, but it didn’t seem like the bombshell Mazie was afraid of. It didn’t even place Jackson with Karl.
I said, “They’re going to need more than that.”
“Yeah.”
“Motive, for one thing.”
“Mm-hmm. Everybody knows Karl wasn’t the best father in town, but they also know he was pretty damn far from the worst.”
That rang true. And she would know. Even in high school, I remembered, she’d had a sixth sense about that kind of thing. Whose bruises really were accidental and whose weren’t. Which girl wore long sleeves because she was cutting, and sometimes even why she was doing it. I’d told her in our junior year she ought to be a detective.
The bartender set down our fries and wings. While she started in on them, I took a swig of beer. “I suppose that’s what’s got them so aggressive,” I said. “They feel like they got a little bite, and they’re itching to haul it all the way in.”
“Mm-hmm. Easier than throwing the whole net out and seeing if they catch anything.” She set what was left of a wing on her napkin. “One of the reasons I left is, there wasn’t a whole lot of investigating going on. They’d always rather bust the obvious suspect in under a week, instead of taking the time to look deep. And, I mean, it’s a small-town police force. This isn’t where the great investigative minds end up.”
I nodded. “I can’t say I met a whole lot of Sherlock Holmes types up in Charleston either.”
“Few and far between,” she agreed. She dabbed a fry in ketchup and added, “They had Karl’s brothers in again today.”
“Huh,” I said. “Wonder if they’re trying to exclude them. I doubt those two can say much about Jackson. I don’t get the impression he ever was close to that side of the family.”
“You sure seem interested,” she said gently. “Is it purely professional, or you worried about Mazie?”
“Oh, of course I’m worried about her.”
“So folks have been saying,” she said. “That, and more.”
I looked at her and said, “Sometimes I hate this damn town.”
“Aw, but you know how it works. People see you driving her around, dropping by her restaurant, they’re going to talk.” She smiled and said, “Don’t let it bother you none. If there’s still something there, there’s still something there.”
“Well, but what about you and that guy?” I said. “Can’t remember his name, but the one with the Dennis Rodman hair? Tall as Big Bird?” I was referring to her high-school boyfriend, who’d left town even before I did.
She laughed. “Okay, point taken.”
We’d always enjoyed teasing each other. To keep it fair, I turned it on myself: “There ain’t no truer guide to life than how you felt when you were seventeen, is there. Keep that flame alive! Hell, at that age I thought I might end up on the Supreme Court.”
She cracked up. I did too. The distance between how the future had looked then and how things looked now was so great that laughing was about all you could do.
She finished off another wing and said, “Speaking of teenagers, how’s yours?”
“Oh,” I said, checking my watch. It was almost seven-thirty. “He’s okay. I hate to run out on you, but I did tell him I’d be home for dinner tonight.” I called the bartender over for a doggie bag and reached for my wallet.
She reached for hers and pulled out a ten. “My half,” she explained. I must have looked puzzled, because she added, “You ain’t paying for me. You want the whole town to think we’re on a date?” We both laughed.
“That is the last damn thing either of us needs,” I said, laying my own ten on the bar.
“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “I can think of a few diseases and some crimes that might be lower on the list.”
“Why thank you,” I said, “for the compliment.”
We strolled out and went our separate ways.
When I got home, Noah was at the kitchen table just closing his laptop. Seeing him with it gave me a chill. The remains of a TV dinner sat nearby.
I headed for the kitchen. “What you up to?” I said, in what I meant to be a cheerful tone.
He glared at me. “Nothing.”
It had been a few months since he’d earned back the right to use his laptop, in public parts of the house only. I’d taken it from him after seeing some messages between him and a friend in Charleston. They’d both been high on stolen Vicodin.
I sat down across from him and reached for the laptop. He jerked it away and asked, “You going to keep on thinking the worst of me? Like, always?”
“Well, when you act like you got something to hide,” I said, “it makes it hard to think you don’t.” I
