Midnight Crossroad

“She didn’t talk to her father because of her first husband?”

“And his really, really stupid death as a bank robber? And his scumbag buddies? Yes, that might have had something to do with it,” Lucyfay said dryly. “We raised her the best way we knew how. She had to work on the ranch. She went to church. She wore nice clothes. Did she tell you my husband runs his family ranch, sits on the board of the bank?”

“No, ma’am.” His bit his lip before he could say, She told me you were dead.

“And then she let his stupid friends talk her into ‘avenging his death’—yes, that’s the way they put it—by contacting you.” Clearly, she was not able to say “seducing you.” She turned away from him, to her car. “Well, she paid for her gullibility and her careless way with men. At least she had some happiness with you before she was murdered.”

“Who do you think killed her?” Bobo blurted.

“Price says you did. I’d assumed it was Price’s little militia, or Price himself. But I don’t believe that any longer. Price is an underhanded young man. He’s long on charisma and short on foresight. But I don’t think he’s capable of killing her and then putting on the show he did yesterday. Do you understand?”

Bobo nodded.

Lucyfay took a deep breath. “I think she insisted to the MOL that you were innocent of whatever they think you’ve done. I think she said she wouldn’t inform on you anymore. And I think one of Price’s goons killed her, though I don’t think Price knows that. Then he ruined her funeral, with his damn stupid flag ritual.”

Apparently she had had her say, because Lucyfay Hamilton got into her Lexus and drove off, leaving a dazed Bobo standing by the fresh grave. He felt so wobbly that he almost sank to his knees, before he was shamed by the melodrama of the gesture. He stiffened his backbone. What’s worse? he asked himself. To be accused of murdering the girl you loved or to be the cause of her getting murdered? His misery swept him away and swirled him around like the leaves in the wind.

Weirdly, strangely—wonderfully—he knew this was the moment he was touching the bottom, and he understood that from now on, however gradually, he would begin to heal.

When Bobo looked down at the flower-strewn mound, he no longer saw through it to the decayed body of the woman he’d loved. He saw the opaque layer of dirt, the sealed coffin. He saw good-bye.

Bobo shifted uneasily, as if a long-carried burden had shifted on his shoulders. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was not any less sad, but he felt free.

28

Fiji said, “I’ve come to confess, Rev.”

The old man stood before the bench where Fiji sat, his rusty black suit blending into the darkness of the church. It was late in the afternoon, but the chapel lights weren’t on. The room was cold. Emilio Sheehan did not reply, but then, he was a man of few words unless the preaching was on him.

“There’s a bad man who thinks Bobo killed Aubrey. Or maybe he’s just pretending to think that; maybe he really wants Bobo accused of killing her because he wants to find out where Bobo’s stashed a lot of guns.”

“Hmmm,” the Rev said. It was an experimental sound, as though he were clearing his throat before making a comment. She waited until it became clear he was not going to speak.

“So, I try to be a good person and a good witch, but I really want to do something awful to that guy,” Fiji said. “Is it worse to sit back and do nothing while people plot against the . . . a good friend? Or is it worse to do something evil to them before they can hurt that friend?”

The Rev did not have to think long about this. “We protect the people we love, and we love the people of this community,” he said, his expression stern and sure.

Fiji nodded to show that she accepted this as true.

“We must wait for the evil to come to us,” he said. “But when it does, we can defend ourselves against it.”

This was not the answer Fiji had been hoping for, and her face showed that.

“Otherwise,” the Rev explained, “we rob the evil one of the chance to think better, to redeem himself.”

“Human nature being what it is . . .” she said angrily, and then bit her lip to make herself be silent.

“Human nature,” said the Rev. “Well, it’s not good, that’s for sure. But we have to give it a chance. I gave Aubrey a chance.”

“What are you referring to?” Fiji said.

“She cared for Bobo.”

“Yes.”

“That was true. But for reasons best known only to her, she could not stop acting interested in every male she saw.”

Creek had said the same thing. “They told you this? That is, the men she, ah, made passes at?”

“They would not tell me such a thing. I witnessed it. And Aubrey laughed about it when I spoke to her.”

Fiji was astonished, and not a little disgusted. “You mean she flirted with, say, Chuy and Joe?”

He nodded.

“You?”

He nodded, a fraction of an inch dip of his chin.

“And Teacher . . . Shawn . . . Lemuel?”

Another nod.

Every adult male in Midnight. “I’m surprised Madonna or Olivia didn’t kill her,” she said in amazement, and then she froze. “Oh, golly.”

“You may have the wrong murderer, you see,” the Rev said. “Aubrey was daring the world to kill her.”

“So she . . . her behavior led to her own death?” Fiji was scrambling to absorb this.

“Just because she threw out the dare doesn’t mean someone should have picked it up,” he said. Then he turned away to kneel in prayer at his little altar.

Fiji realized it was time for her to leave.

29

When he saw all Fiji’s preparations for Halloween, Manfred looked around his own yard and found it wanting. He didn’t know when he’d stop feeling the compulsion to work, so the next afternoon he walked down to Gas N Go to ask Connor if he’d be interested in cleaning up the outside of his house.

On the occasions Manfred went to Gas N Go—which Manfred had very precisely calculated could only be every third day, to avoid raising Shawn’s hackles—Manfred had observed that while Creek was usually genuinely busy, Connor was not. Manfred didn’t know if Connor was incompetent, or if Shawn had no faith in his son’s ability, but either Connor was doing his homework or he was employed with some job a monkey could do.

Connor seemed profoundly bored. In Manfred’s not-too-distant experience, a bored teenager was a teenager who got into mischief. And Connor seemed reasonably intelligent and likable, on Manfred’s brief acquaintance. If there was no one in Midnight who was closer to Creek in age than Manfred himself, there was no one who even spoke the same language as the fourteen-year-old.