have the leather vest, tattooed arms and multiple ear piercings.
“No one followed me.” I sounded defensive and hated that I did. I’d been constantly checking my rearview and side mirrors. Besides, for some unexplainable reason, I didn’t want this man thinking I learned to wave good-bye only yesterday.
“I’m commenting on what I observed,” Murray said with a smile.
He was probably right, too. I remembered Jeff’s words: If a follower knows where his target is headed, tailing someone is pretty easy. Kravitz did have me followed.
“White Ford Focus,” Murray went on. “Driver wore sunglasses and a cap. Hard to tell gender.” His demeanor was in no way condescending. He wasn’t showing off, just offering information. I decided I should be grateful, not defensive.
I smiled. “Thanks for telling me.”
He grinned. He grabbed a filthy rag and wiped his hands. “Let’s go into the office, see what this is about.”
I followed him, saying, “Rhoda’s who I need to talk to.”
He opened a door smudged with oily fingerprints, allowed me to enter the store first and said, “After thirty years together, Rhoda’s business is my business. But if you’d rather wait on her, have a seat.”
A row of connected molded chairs sat against one wall. Two shiny motorcycles took up most of the floor space-those and a stack of tires.
“Maybe both of you can help me,” I said.
He went behind the counter, picked up a container of waterless hand cleaner and squeezed some into his palm. “I’m an agreeable person and am more than happy to answer your questions. Rhoda is a horse of a different color. You might test your luck with me first.”
“Okay. I’m working a cold case. A woman was murdered in 1997 and her body was identified only this week. Her name was Christine O’Meara and-”
“Christy was murdered? That’s terrible.”
“You knew her?” I said.
“She came into the icehouse we owned every day for years. Rhoda had a soft spot for a few of her regulars like Christy. But one day the woman stopped coming in. I think Rhoda told me Christy’s friends quit the place, too.”
“Friends?”
“Rhoda will have to help you with the friends. I only knew Christy because she made herself known when I would come into the icehouse after work. She always had a greeting, was always so… present, so loud and lively. Rhoda said she felt guilty for supplying Christy with Old Number Seven all those years. She decided that when the woman disappeared, a bottle of Jack was probably all she took with her.”
Always so present? Her friends quit the place? Who was this guy? “I have to ask. What planet are you from?”
He laughed. “Academia. I took the next outbound rocket as soon as I figured out there was life on earth.” Then his smile faded. “You’ve brought sad news.”
I walked over to the counter, the strong scent of the hand cleaner tickling my nose. “Mind if I make sure we’re talking about the same person?” I pulled out a photo of Christine O’Meara.
“Yes. That’s her,” he said.
“She was found murdered, left in a field off Highway 290. I guess neither of you recognized her from the photo in the paper back then.”
“Her picture was in the newspaper? I never saw it. I was too busy writing papers to read anything, and Rhoda sticks to cycle magazines. If we’d seen the picture we would have made sure she was identified. I suppose with all the time that’s passed, the police will have a hard time finding out who killed her.”
“Yes. But I’m hoping-” The roar of an approaching motorcycle startled me, and I turned to look out the window. A shiny blue-and-chrome machine came to a skidding halt. A large woman parked the bike and came into the showroom, shaking her white-blond hair after freeing it from her helmet.
“Hi, there,” she said, nodding at me before addressing Larry. “Smooth ride. Nice job, baby. I’ll call the customer to pick her up.” She put her helmet on the counter and kissed her husband.
Rhoda’s raspy voice and the lines around her lips spoke of heavy tobacco use, and when she passed me to go behind the counter I smelled smoke clinging to her hair and clothes.
“Rhoda,” Larry said, “this young woman came to talk to you about Christy O’Meara. She’s a private detective.”
“Don’t tell me Christy’s asshole husband finally decided to hire someone to find her after all this time.”
“Her husband?” I said, surprised.
“Yeah. Lopez, I think his name was.”
“Xavier Lopez?”
“That’s the guy.”
“Um, no, he didn’t send me. I’m sorry to tell you that Christine O’Meara died in 1997.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Rhoda said.
“Sorry, no,” I answered.
“Did that jerk beat her to death?” Rhoda’s voice had risen, and anger hardened her weathered features.
“I’m not sure what Christine told you, but Xavier Lopez died in 1983, and they were never married,” I said quietly.
“No way. She was pregnant with his baby the year we first met. Then right after she delivered, he stole the kid and took off. Christy didn’t have the money to find him and-”
“I promise you, Mrs. Murray, Xavier Lopez was in the military, and he died in the line of duty. The baby you’re talking about couldn’t have been his. He only fathered Christine’s first child, Emma.”
Rhoda looked at Larry. “Is she telling the truth?”
“I think she probably is, sweetie,” Larry replied.
How did soft-spoken academic Larry and tough-talking Rhoda ever hook up? Looking at them, seeing their obviously strong and loving bond, I felt a little guilty for questioning Kate’s attraction to Clinton Roark. When people follow their heart rather than do what’s expected, sometimes they hit the jackpot.
“Do you have time to talk to me, Mrs. Murray?”
“Rhoda. Everyone calls me Rhoda.” She still seemed bewildered by the news I’d delivered.
Larry said, “Rhoda, take Abby-you said Abby, right?”
I nodded.
“Take Abby to the office, pour both of you a shot of that bourbon your father sent us for our anniversary and then you two sit and talk.”
Rhoda looked at her husband, a straight-on gaze, since they were both the same size-six feet and about two fifty. “What people told me at the bar was private stuff. Shouldn’t I be quiet about all that?”
“Not if you were fed a pack of lies, sweetie,” Larry said.
I was liking Larry more by the minute.
“You’re saying I should talk to her?” Rhoda said.
“That’s what I’m saying,” he answered.
He kissed her briefly on the lips; then Rhoda said, “Okay, let’s do it,” and led me through a door behind the office.
The small room with its old yellow vinyl sofa and ancient oak desk was tidy, the tile floor newly buffed. But black fingerprints marred every surface the couple had touched, and the smell of smoke hung in the air. A piece of construction paper had been tacked on the wall over the desk and read,
I smiled thinking this had to be Rhoda’s sense of humor at work.
I passed on the bourbon but Rhoda didn’t. She took the desk chair and swiveled to face me on the sofa. After she’d fortified herself with several sips of her daddy’s bourbon, she said, “If Christy is dead, what’s that to you?”
I gave her the short version, how I was working for Emma to find Christine’s killer and how infant bones had been found under the house.
“You’re saying Christy killed her baby?” Rhoda said.
“Not exactly. It wasn’t
“Don’t this just beat the band? You listen to people pour their hearts out, think you know them and then wham! A slip of a woman comes around ten years later and whomps you upside the head with a whole new reality. Yeah, that’s what Larry would call this. A whole new reality.”
“A reality check,” I said, smiling to myself. “What else can you tell me about Christine? Did she have many friends?”
“She hung out with a guy named Jerry Joe Billings. Serious drinker, that one. I swear, there were times he left the icehouse and had to hold on to the grass to lean against the ground.”
“I met him. He doesn’t drink anymore,” I said.
“He’s a solid citizen now?” She laughed derisively. “Never knew why Christy stuck with him. Mean SOB. Maybe she liked him ’cause he laughed at her jokes and their mutual friend was Jack Daniel’s. Christy really made people laugh once she had a few whiskeys in her.”
“Who else did she hang around with?” I asked.
Rhoda swirled her drink and stared at the amber liquid. “Well, there was Bob-but I heard he died last year. She mostly sat with Jerry Joe and Loretta-when Loretta wasn’t working.”
“Loretta have a last name?”
“She was just Loretta-and I never let her do business in my place. Tried to tell her more than once I’d help her get rid of that asshole who pimped her. I can be a pretty convincing woman, and pimps are all cowards anyway.”
“Loretta was a prostitute?” I said.
“She hated what she was doing-or at least, that’s what she said. The drinks numbed her, and I didn’t feel all that guilty providing the anesthesia, even if I knew her ID was fake and she was under twenty-one.”
“I’d like to find Loretta. Christine may have fed you lies about the baby she was carrying, but I’m hoping she told someone the truth.”
But Rhoda was distracted. She lifted the sleeve of her Harley T-shirt and patted one of several nicotine patches she was wearing. “These are crap.” Then she
