Midnight Crossroad

Bobo gave Lisa a steady look. He’d come loaded for bear, but all he could summon up now was pity. From the dilapidated rental house to the visible pregnancy to the low-paying jobs, it seemed that life had stacked the chips against Lisa Gray Denton. At the same time . . .

“You really don’t want to be involved in this, Lisa,” he said, and the girl looked at him with wide eyes. For a moment they gave each other a very direct look. Lisa turned to go to the door. She opened it for them, standing aside to let them pass. As they left, she wiped her cheeks again with her sleeve.

“I’m glad I came with you,” Bobo said, as he backed out of the graveled area in front of the little house.

“Why?” Fiji asked, surprised and a bit indignant. “I could have done this by myself. She came clean right away, she was hardly threatening . . . she’s just a baby expecting a baby.”

“Feej, she was lying,” he said. “I don’t know if it was her being poor or her being pregnant or her crying that threw you off, but nothing she told us was the truth.”

Fiji felt like someone had let the air out of her tires. “Seriously?”

He paid more attention to the road ahead than it probably needed. “Yeah, seriously.”

“Why are you so sure?” She tried to keep the incredulity out of her voice.

“I don’t always know when women are lying,” he said painfully. “Like Aubrey. But this girl was just like my sister when she was trying to put one over on my mom and dad. She played the ‘pitiful’ card, she left out a lot of information, and any newlywed would surely have told this ‘Mr. Eggleston picked on me’ story to her husband.”

“Unless her husband worked for Mr. Eggleston,” Fiji said defensively.

“Could be,” Bobo said, shrugging.

“But you believe she planted the bug because . . .”

“Because she’s as right-wing as he is? Because he gave her a lot of money and she didn’t think she’d get caught? Because her husband belongs to Eggleston’s group? Take your pick.” Bobo almost shrugged again. “Any or all.”

Fiji looked straight ahead. “I’m just mad at myself now for being so gullible. I thought she was so young and remorseful,” she said.

“I’m sure she is. But she’s other stuff, too.”

Fiji was silent for a while. When they were well east of Marthasville, she said, “I don’t know you as well as I thought I did, Bobo.”

He found himself smiling. “Maybe that’s a good thing,” he said. “Have you heard any more about the fire that took out Eggleston’s alleged hunting lodge?”

“Are we going to stop there? I know where it is. It’ll be coming up here on the right; the iron sign over the gate says ‘MOL.’”

She’d surprised him again. “How do you know that?” he asked.

“Well . . . Olivia and Manfred and I spent a night over at the Cartoon Saloon,” she said. “We needed some background.”

Bobo gave her a long look.

She said hastily, “Yesterday, a customer of mine from Marthasville e-mailed me to see if her order had come in. She’d been working overtime on an arson investigation and hadn’t had time to come to the store. I asked her how the investigation was going, because I knew whose place had burned, I heard it on the news. She told me it was Price Eggleston’s ‘hunting lodge.’ She put that in quotes. Anyway, she said they’d found evidence that two people had set the fire.” She looked at Bobo expectantly.

Bobo wasn’t sure what he was supposed to conclude. “I wonder how the arson investigator figured that out? That the fire was set by two people?”

“Footprints, I think. Though how you could say, ‘These are the footprints of the arsonists,’ I don’t know. But they found a cell phone, some other stuff, that belonged to Curtis Logan and Seth Mecklinberg, the two guys from Lubbock who went missing. Allegedly.”

“You’re telling me that Olivia and Lemuel . . .”

She nodded. “It’s like having evil superhero friends, huh?”

He shook his head helplessly. “I can’t even figure out how I feel about that,” he said. “I didn’t want to be beaten up. I didn’t kill them. But on the other hand . . .”

“I understand,” Fiji said. “Hey, there’s the gate.” Today it stood open. In the daylight, it was easy to see the crudely paved driveway running over a hill. They followed it. Down in a gentle dip stood an old ranch house, surrounded by yet another fence, a suspiciously high palisade fence.

“That’s pretty unusual,” Bobo said. “You just see wire fences around ranch houses, to keep the livestock out of the yard.”

But the fence wasn’t an obstacle, since this gate, too, was open. It was also scorched and sagging from its post.

Bobo said, “I’m going in.” Fiji nodded.

It was especially rocky out here, and sparse vegetation told Bobo that there was almost no topsoil. The house had been an average-size ranch-style house with a stone chimney and foundation, and the lower part of the walls had been stone. Those were still standing. The wood in between had been consumed, and the roof was mostly gone, too.

There was a mute violence about the burned house.

A certain awareness of what had happened here crept over Bobo.

“There was a fingerprint on a gasoline can,” Fiji said. “Curtis Logan’s fingerprint. And a receipt from a gas station, turned out to be Seth Mecklinberg’s debit card was the one used.”

“She told you all that? She must be one indiscreet arson investigator.”

Fiji said, “She’s lonely, and I acted interested. Also, it wasn’t an act.”

“Wonder what would have happened if there’d been people in there,” Bobo said. “Would they have gone through with it?”

They didn’t talk much all the way back to Midnight.

25

Manfred was busy with the woes of an eighty-year-old man from Arizona when his cell phone buzzed. He ignored it, of course, but after he’d told the man he’d find companionship at a church (fairly safe advice), he checked the listing. He whooped out loud. Then he sat for a moment, composing himself, before he hit “Call.”

“Manfred,” Creek said, sounding almost shy. “Thanks for calling me back. I got your phone number from Fiji.”

“Not at all,” he said, and then winced. That made no sense! he thought. “What can I do for you, Creek?”