Midnight Crossroad (Page 74)

Fiji leaned against Chuy’s free side, and he put his arm around her. “It’s the price I’m going to pay to keep the sheriff from coming to my door, asking how I came to freeze three people in position for an undetermined amount of time. I got away. They won’t do it again. Mamie and Bart weren’t a part of my abduction, though they would have covered for their son . . . but I get that. Price is the dangerous one, at least to me, and I’m pretty sure he won’t be back. Especially now that I know he didn’t kill Aubrey.”

“But will he start up his group again?” Manfred said.

Bobo shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s beyond me. I think we’ve done all we can. We can’t stop extremists from spreading their propaganda. We can’t kill everyone who attacks us, as much as we might want to.” His eyes slewed to Lemuel and Olivia. “And, as Fiji says . . . we know he didn’t kill Aubrey.”

“And none of us figured that out, either,” Joe said, his voice very sad. “I should have seen it.”

There was a long, hushed moment, as they all looked back, trying to think of some signal Connor had given, some wave he’d sent off, that they should have been able to receive and decode.

“Well, I’m a witch,” said Fiji briskly. “And I didn’t pick up a damn thing. Great-Aunt Mildred would be ashamed of me. My guess is that Connor never thought of what he did as wrong, so he gave off no guilt. I’m giving myself a pass on that one. And now I’m going home to put away the food and fall into bed.” She did not look at anyone as she left, and Bobo knew he had fences to mend.

Olivia and Lemuel resumed their seats in the pawnshop waiting for whatever business would come. Olivia usually retired about one in the morning, leaving Lemuel to have some alone time. “Tonight it might be later,” she murmured to Manfred. “Lem will want to talk about the books, I suppose.”

Joe and Chuy left after murmuring, “Good night,” to everyone. Once they were outside, Joe slung his arm around Chuy, and the two walked home together in perfect harmony. They saw the Rev walking to his own home across the street, and they inclined their heads to him.

Once Bobo was up in his apartment, he looked out his front window, standing at the old console he’d rescued from the back of the pawnshop. He’d sanded it down and refinished it before installing some shelves inside for the books he’d planned on reading when he’d moved to such a very quiet place. Instead, he’d begun downloading what he wanted to read onto an e-reader or ordering special favorites from a bookstore in Houston. And that had worked out fine, because the space in the console was perfect for the books he’d removed from the secret closet. They were an unappealing lot. He was sure that if Lem was interested in them, they were not wholesome novels.

For the first time, as Bobo squatted to open the door and look inside, he wondered if he hadn’t exchanged one secret for another. But the musty old books were so worn you couldn’t even read the titles on the spines, and he had no desire whatsoever to open one of them. He shut the door and stood, looking out the window once again. As he watched, Fiji’s yard lights went off and then the lights in her big front room. After a moment, the only light showing was shining softly onto the ground at the right rear of the house, Fiji’s bedroom. All the lights at the Wedding Chapel and Pet Cemetery were off. The Rev had gone home to bed in the little house no one had ever entered.

If he leaned into the window and looked right, he could just see the glow from the trailer where the Reed family would be doing whatever they did at night. Putting the baby to bed? Watching television? Bobo could not see what was happening at the Antique Gallery and Nail Salon, but he figured after standing all evening in their wings and silver jumpsuits, Chuy and Joe were crawling into bed. (They were in bed, but they were indulging in some fooling around.)

Manfred’s front light was still on, and Bobo wondered if his tenant had gone back to work. The boy—the young man—did seem oddly compelled to work until he dropped. He had told Bobo that there was some reason that was pushing him, some drive that he didn’t understand.

“But I will,” Manfred had said. “Someday, I’ll know what it was all about.”

Bobo hoped that someday, he’d understand what it was all about, too.

Till then, he was staying right where he was, in Midnight.