by Gen Griffin
“I try to always look for the good. Nothing positive ever comes from focusing on the bad,” Katie said. The waitress returned with Addy’s credit card and a receipt for him to sign. He signed it without looking at it.
“You aren’t smiling right now,” Addison told her. “You aren’t smiling and its fucking killing me. I want to rip Ian’s head off his scrawny little neck right now. I’d strangle him to death if I got my hands on his sorry ass.”
“Addy-.”
“No, Katie. Listen to me. I don’t want to kill Ian because he ran off with April Lynne and the pair of them are clearly thieving bastards. I want to kill him because he broke your heart. I want to kill him because he took your happy smile and turned it into tears and I don’t know how to bring it back.” He stood up to leave and she stood up with him.
“Addison...” Katie was at a total loss for words. She had no idea what to say to him as they walked through the restaurant and out into the parking lot. When the reached the truck she stopped him by putting her hand on his arm. He turned to her with a questioning look on his face. She stepped into his chest and then wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could. He pulled her into a hug without hesitation.
“Thank you,” she whispered to him.
“I’m trying,” he said as he stared down at her. “I swear to God, I'm trying.”
Katie cuddled against the soft leather of his jacket without speaking. Maybe she could keep him if she just held onto this moment and never let go.
Chapter 44
“Do you like this shirt?” Katie held up a somewhat floppy t-shirt with a low, almost plunging neckline and sequins across the mid-section. She was standing in front of the clearance rack and thumbing through the section for size small.
“No. Do you?” Addison was standing a few feet behind her. He picked up a long-sleeved light blue t-shirt with magnolia flowers on the back. “I like this one.”
“That's adorable, but I'm absolutely certain it'll cost more than $3.99. The red one costs $3.99.” She shook it at him.
“The red one is ugly. That's why it's on the clearance rack.” Addison reached over, plucked it out of her hands and put it back on the rack. He pressed the light blue one into her hands. “Buy the pretty one.”
“I can't afford the pretty one.” Katie flipped the price tag over so she could see it. “It's $30.”
Addison put his hands on her shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze. “I don't recall saying that you would be paying for it.”
She paused mid-way through returning the blue shirt to its rack. “I don't expect you to buy my clothing.”
“I don't expect you to wear my sister's clothing for the next two weeks until you get paid. I hate to be the one to point this out to you, but Gracie's stuff doesn't actually fit you. It just covers enough of your body to keep you from being arrested for indecent exposure.”
Katie made a face. She knew he was right but that didn't mean she was going to let him buy her anything. “You shouldn't be wasting your money on me.”
“You're not a waste of money.” Addison plucked the blue shirt from her hands and tossed it into the cart that she'd picked up at the front of the store. “When was the last time you let someone take care of you?”
She had to think about that one for a minute. “No one wants to take care of me,” she said after a long pause. “No one has tried in years. I'm the one who takes care of them.”
He gave her a startled look and then frowned. “Well, that's fixing to change.” He reached for the same rack he'd pulled the blue t-shirt off of. “You like any of these others?”
“They're all cute, but I don't need-.”
“You wear t-shirts to work,” he reminded her.
“Well, yes.”
“You would wear them.”
“I would,” she admitted. The shirts were cute. She loved southern style t-shirts.
“You want all long-sleeved or do you want a mix of the long-sleeved with the regular sleeves?” He was plucking various shirts from the rack and holding them up so that Katie could see the designs and phrases that were printed on the backs.
“I don't know. I guess a mix.” Katie played with the end of one of the sleeves. “Five of these will cost $150. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Stop worrying about money.” Addison tossed two more shirts into the buggy. “You like the red or the yellow?”
“I like the orange one.” Katie watched him swap out the red for the orange. “You don't have to do this.”
“I want to.” He put a few more shirts in the buggy and then began wandering away from the shirt section. “You need jeans, right?”
“Yes..”
“Then come on.” Addison gestured for Katie to follow him. After a slight hesitation, she did.
Three hours and more money then Katie wanted to think about, she and Hannah Mae both had brand new wardrobes. The backseat of Addison's truck looked like Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve. Katie was surprised to realize that she was in a much better mood now that she'd been fed and owned more than one pair of underwear.
On the downside, Addison now knew what every pair of underwear she owned looked like because he had helped her pick them out.
Katie tugged the sleeves of her new coat down over the tops of her hands. The feel of the fake fur that trimmed the sleeves was nice against her cool skin. It was cold and the temperature continued to drop with every passing hour. The news even said there was a possibility of snow flurries. Snow flurries were unheard of in Possum Creek.
Addison's phone rang for the fourth or fifth time in as many minutes as they loaded the last of the shopping bags into the truck. Addison pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen and hit ignore. It was the fourth or fifth time he'd done that as well. The phone was silent for a moment and then began ringing yet again.
“Who keeps calling you?” Katie had sworn to herself she wouldn't ask but the repeated calls were driving her batty.
“Makinsley,” Addison said with obvious annoyance.
“Booty call?” Katie felt her good mood begin to fade.
“Most likely.” He sent the call to voicemail again.
The phone began ringing again almost immediately.
“Oh for the love of all things holy, answer it.” Katie wondered if she had the right to be bitchy. She got into the passenger's seat of the truck. Addison tossed his phone down on the center console.
“You answer it,” he told her. “Tell her to stop calling me.”
“You tell her to stop calling you,” Katie told him. “I'm not the one who slept with her.”
“I have told her to stop calling.”
“She didn't get the message.”
“Clearly not.” Addison was gritting his teeth as he picked up the phone and pressed the ignore button once again. “I'm not talking to her. She doesn't listen. It's a waste of time.
Katie crossed her arms over her chest. “I have never understood what you saw in her.”
“You and I both know the answer to that. Pretty sure we've had this conversation before. I'm not having it again.”
“She's easy,” Katie summed up the conversation in a nutshell.
“She's easy,” Addison confirmed. “At a point in my life when easy was... Ah hell, you can't be mad at me for sleeping with Makinsley. You were married to Ian. I was biding my time and waiting for you to get sick of him. Does it really matter who I did while I was waiting?”
“It does if she never stops calling.” His phone started ringing again. Katie picked it up. She was fully prepared to hit the ignore button again when she glanced at the screen.
“Answer it. Cuss her out,” Addison said. “Tell her what you really think of her.”
“I would but it's David.” Katie hit the answer button and passed the phone back to Addison.
Chapter 45
David had followed Ian and Joe halfway across the county. They had taken the long and impractical way to one of the local boat ramps, where he
had quickly realized they had a boat hidden in the overgrown grasses that surrounded an abandoned dock.
He had expected them to start unloading more of the same stolen items he'd seen at the house earlier tonight. He figured they didn't have much of a choice about dumping the stolen goods. If Sully said he was getting a warrant then Sully would get a warrant. Ian had to know his goose was cooked. David planned on helping cook it. He figured all he needed to do was watch the idiots unload their stolen goodies in a public place and then call Sully to come arrest them. He didn't even mind testifying against them.
A cold wind whipped through the trees as David sat quietly in the shadows at the edge of the boat landing. He watched calmly as they unloaded what was, unmistakably, a corpse.
Motherfucker.
David watched in numb surprise as Ian and Joe each grabbed an end of a floppy five and a half foot long bundle that was wrapped in a comforter. Hair appeared to be hanging out of one end as they awkwardly carried the bundle to the boat. Joe slipped when they reached the algae covered ramp. He slipped and the corpse fell into the water.
Joe screamed out several obscenities. He had to struggle to get the bundle picked back up and it partially unwrapped itself in the process. David was certain he could see a face, though he couldn't tell whose face or even if the body was male or female.
Fuck, he thought.
David slinked back even further into the shadows. He pulled his cell phone out and dialed Addison's number.
“Dude, we have a fucking problem.” David kept his voice a whisper.
“Um, I'm busy?” Addy sounded annoyed.
“Too busy to care that Ian's trying to hide a goddamned body?”
“You can't be fucking serious.”
“They just got a rolled up blanket of some kind out of the bed of the truck. It looks to be about 5 and a half feet long and it's taking both of them to carry it from the truck to the boat. Pretty sure that's going to be a goddamned body. Also, I saw a face.”
“Whose face?”
“No idea. I wasn't close enough to tell.”
“Where are you?”
“Lower Landing.”
“Stall them. I'll be there in 20 minutes. Katie and I went to dinner in Beauton but we're on our way home. We're about halfway back to Possum Creek.”
“Stall them?” David snorted. “Bastards shot me once today already.”
“You took their gun.”
“They were in Frank's house. I'm pretty fucking sure he has more than one gun.”
“They're locked in a safe.”
“You don't think Ian has the combination?”
Addison fell silent.
“Yeah. That's what I thought, Malone. You know, I don't really want to get shot tonight.”
“If they get a body into a boat in the bayou, we'll never find it.”
“I know,” David sounded resigned to his fate. “You better be flying in that truck. I'm fixing to go put a .357 round through an outboard motor.”
“I'm turning my sirens on now,” Addison promised.
David hung up. He knew with absolute certainty that Addison wouldn't get there in time.
Chapter 46
“Whose car is this?” Sully already knew the answer to his own question, but he was curious what Lowery would say.
“It belongs to a friend.” Lowery was slumped as far down in the driver's seat as he could go. The smell of stale body odor radiated from him. He'd produced a cracked driver's license from his own wallet and immaculate insurance and registration paperwork from the glove box.
“Your friend know that you're driving it?” Sully let his skepticism show.
“Yes.” Lowery had yet to look at Sully. He'd kept his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes pointed straight ahead ever since Sully had pulled him over for running three stop signs in a row. The small blue bubble light that Sully had clipped into his Jeep was flashing merrily in the darkness.
“Do you have any weapons in the vehicle?”
“No.”
“Have you been drinking this evening?”
“No.”
“Is there anything in this car that I should know about?”
“No.”
“I'd like you to get out of the vehicle, please. I'm going to search it.”
“On what grounds?” Lowery finally looked at Sully. His eyes were bloodshot and one of them was staring off into the distance while the other looked straight ahead. It was one of the more severe lazy eyes that Sully had ever seen.
“You ran three stop signs in less than two minutes. Also, I can.” Sully gestured for Lowery to open the door of the car and get out.
“Suit yourself, Officer. Ain't nothing in this car.” Lowery climbed out of the car and walked around to the front of the vehicle. He put both of his hands on the hood and assumed the position without ever being told to do so.
“This guy has been arrested too many times,” Sully mused under his breath. He decided to slap a pair of cuffs on Lowery and then search the car. Better safe than sorry.
Chapter 47
“You're sure it was a body?” Addison leaned on the side of his truck and stared out across the dark, empty bayou.
“I'm sure,” David said for the third time. “It had a face. I just couldn't get close enough to tell if it was a guy or a girl.”
“Great. Just great.” Addison put his hands on his hips. “Why didn't you stop them?”
“I tried to. I was going to put a bullet through their outboard but I couldn't get a decent shot lined up. I'd rather not kill anyone tonight.” David bit the inside of his cheek and then shook his head. “I just couldn't get the shot, man. Not between this damn wind and the movement of the boat. Not to mention that the idiots kept slipping on the boat ramp and falling into the water. One minute I'd think I was about to have a shot, the next they'd be underwater again. With any luck, they'll die of hypothermia and won't be our problem anymore.”
Addison hesitated and then nodded. “We'll never find the body. Not if they take it way out into the swamp.”
“I know,” David acknowledged. “I feel like shit.”
“It's not your fault,” Katie spoke for the first time since she'd gotten out of the truck. It had been a long, quiet ride to the landing. Her good mood had gradually evaporated as Makinsley had continued to burn up Addison's phone. Her worries about Addison and his commitment issues were back in full force.
She looked over at him and thought I'm an idiot for trusting you.
“I could have stopped them,” David confessed unexpectedly. “I'm better in a fight than either one of them. If I had been willing to risk my own hide, we wouldn't have lost them. I could have slowed them down. Assuming, of course, that they didn't shoot me on sight.”
“You played it smart,” Addison cut David off before he could go on. “For once in your life, you didn't take the stupid risk. I'm proud of you.”
“We'll never find that body,” David repeated.
“Oh well. We lost the body. So fucking be it.” Addison jammed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He looked over at David. “Who do you reckon they killed?”
“I honestly have no idea.” David glanced at Katie. “The only person I can think of who Ian would have motive to kill would be you. No offense.”
Katie shuddered. Addison put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his side. “Don't talk like that,” he said to David.
“It's the truth,” David said. “Can you think of anyone else whose death would benefit Ian?”
Addison rubbed Katie's shoulder through the fabric of her coat. He looked thoughtful. “Maybe Kerry?”
“We couldn't get that lucky,” David said. He'd pulled a hoodie that read 'Callahan County Game Warden' out of the toolbox of Addison's truck and put it on. It covered the bandage that Katie had wrapped around his arm earlier in the day. His dark green eyes had a wariness to them as he stared out across the water. “I never even saw this one coming, y'all.”
“Me neither,” Katie admitted. “Not the dead body part, at least. The divorce was coming.”
David nodded. “Yeah. The divorce has been coming for quite a while now. That wasn't a surprise.”
“I'm not entirely shocked that he's become a burglar either,” Katie confessed. “He claimed he was making money cutting grass, but I was kind of skeptical.”
David made a snorting sound. “We all knew damn well that he wasn't bringing in any money by cutting grass. The grass died weeks ago when we had that early cold snap.”
“What should we do now?” Katie asked.
“I suppose we could go back to my place, get the boat and go try to chase them down on the water,” Addison suggested. “Not that I think we'd accomplish anything other than freezing our asses off. They're long gone and there are too many channels and sloughs out here. I'll never be able to track them in the dark.”
“You wouldn't be able to track them in broad daylight.” David tucked his hands into the front pocket of the hoodie. “Not without having some idea of where they were heading.”
“True.” Addison puffed on a cigarette that Katie hadn't even noticed him lighting. “Did you call Sully yet and give him the bad news?”
David nodded. “I gave him bad news. He gave me bad news. He pulled Lowery over in April Lynne's car and searched him. He didn't find a damn thing. Lowery and the car were both clean as whistles. He had to write Lowery a ticket for running a stop sign and cut him loose.”
“Tonight is clearly not our best night,” Addison mused.
“Is anyone else more than a little surprised that April Lynne is letting Lowery drive her car?” Katie asked. “It seems odd to me. I wouldn't even let Lowery borrow the Barbie Power Wheels Jeep I had as a kid.”