Midnight Crossroad

“I do have an herbal remedy that would make you feel better,” she said tentatively. “It’s nothing crazy. I mean, it’s all natural.”

So was pig shit, but Manfred refrained from saying that. “I’ll give it a try,” he said bravely. “I’ve never been in a real fight before, and it didn’t agree with me.”

“Not a good part of a balanced lifestyle,” she said, a hint of laughter in her voice, and after a few minutes she was carrying a mug across the road, its contents steaming.

“Drink all of this,” she said. “And if it works for you, I don’t mind making you some more.”

Manfred supposed you would call it tea, because it was made from steeped vegetation. The hot drink didn’t taste good, but it wasn’t disgusting, either. Since he didn’t want to offend Fiji and she was standing right in his living room with her eyes on him, he sipped until it was gone. He handed Fiji the mug. Instead of thanking her and making it clear he needed to get right back to work (his original plan), he found himself sitting on the couch in the former dining room with Fiji, telling her all about the evening before. She listened with wide eyes.

“So they said they lived in the free state of Stronghold and they actually mentioned the Men of Liberty,” she said when he was finished. “And that their two buddies had come here and never returned to this fabulous free state, which I suspect is nowhere but in their little minds?”

“That sums it up,” Manfred agreed. Fiji’s face did not adapt to “grim” and “serious” very well, but that was how she looked. “Do you know anything about the two vanishing friends?” he asked.

“No, I do not,” she said very firmly. “I never saw them and I don’t know where they are now.” Manfred thought she was being at least partially truthful. “But I think it’s very suspicious that they say they belong to the same organization of wackos that Aubrey’s deceased husband belonged to.”

Another knock caught them both by surprise. Manfred glanced out the peephole before he opened the door. Arthur Smith had been able to hear him walk across the creaking wooden floor, so Manfred figured he had to let him in. “Sheriff,” he said, “What can we do for you today? My neighbor is here, so maybe you can kill two birds with one stone.”

“Ms. Cavanaugh,” the sheriff said, ducking his head and removing his hat. “You doing okay today?”

“Yes, fine, thank you,” Fiji said. “I brought Manfred one of my herbal remedies for soreness. Manfred, are you feeling better?”

“I am,” he said, trying not to sound surprised. He shifted his shoulders experimentally and bent to touch his toes. Yes, he was actually almost pain-free.

“The two men who attacked Mr. Bernardo and Mr. Winthrop have gotten a public defender,” Arthur Smith said. “And on the advice of their counsel, they’re not talking to me anymore. They’ve abandoned their Men of Liberty spiel, since I think the lawyer told them it made them sound crazier and more dangerous than just saying they jumped some guys in the alley because they thought they were being jumped themselves.”

“What were they doing in the alley behind the gas station, anyway? I’m sure you asked them that.”

“They don’t seem to feel they have to explain their presence,” Arthur Smith said dryly. “That’s what the lawyer told them to say.”

“So . . . are they going to get out of jail?” Fiji looked as though Smith had told her the truth about Santa Claus.

“They may,” Smith admitted. He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. He’d settled on a straight-backed chair opposite the couch, and he turned his hat in his hands as he sat there. “Of the two, only one of them has any kind of arrest record, Zane Green, and that was one incident, a bar fight. The guy he beat up didn’t press charges.”

“A bar close to here?” Manfred asked.

“Yeah, the Cartoon Saloon.”

Manfred started to ask where that was, but Fiji shot him a narrow-eyed look that said, Don’t draw attention to this by asking about it.

Instead, he said, “So the whole incident’s over for now is what you’re telling us. And you’re not getting anywhere on Aubrey Hamilton’s death?”

“I wouldn’t say that. The coroner confirmed the body is that of Aubrey Hamilton Lowry, and her parents are claiming the body for burial when we release it.”

Fiji looked startled, as if the concept of Aubrey’s parents taking charge was a surprise to her. “Of course there’s no reason why her parents wouldn’t grieve, though Aubrey was . . .” she murmured, and then stopped abruptly. In a more public voice, Fiji said, “I hope they’ll keep Bobo in the loop about the funeral plans. That would mean a lot to him.”

The sheriff, who had gotten up to leave, looked at Fiji as if she’d grown another head or begun talking in Urdu. “That’s hardly likely,” Smith said. “They think he killed her.”

Manfred, who had turned to Fiji, saw all the color drain from her face and then flood back. He thought she might faint, and he was glad she hadn’t stood up.

“He loved her,” Fiji faltered. “They can’t think that.”

Arthur Smith looked at her with a lot more interest. “Think about it, Ms. Cavanaugh. She comes here to live with him, she vanishes, her body turns up in a riverbed close by. He didn’t report her missing right away. We might think his reasons are understandable, but the Hamiltons don’t. He admits he didn’t search for her. She’s the widow of a white supremacist. You know those men Mr. Bernardo’s attackers claim are missing? They’re white supremacists, too. Though Green and Spratt call themselves ‘patriots,’ it’s clear they’re in the same boat politically.”

“But he thought she’d gone all on her own,” Fiji said stubbornly. “Why would he look for someone who’d kicked him to the curb?”

“On the other hand, who else had reason to want her dead?” His eyes were intent on her face.

“Given the company she kept . . . the, ah, associates of her husband . . .” But she couldn’t say anything else without revealing information she wanted to keep quiet—more importantly, information that Bobo wanted to keep quiet. She found herself on her feet, feeling a little wobbly but practically bursting with things she wished she could say.