“And you don’t consider that fraud?”
The partway preacher shrugged. “I expect it is, but in the grand scheme of things if making a body feel official in the eyes of the Lord is a sin, I don’t mind answering for it when my time comes.”
Tonya, one of four waitresses working the eatery, approached the table with a pot of coffee and another cup. “Morning, Gus. Having the special?”
“I am.” Gus, the partway preacher, waited anxiously as she placed the empty cup on the table and filled it with the black liquid. He took a peek at her sagging chest and noticed her name tag was on upside down. “You’re all wonked up there, girl.”
She finished pouring the coffee and stood straight up. “What the hell you talking about, son?”
“Your name tag’s turned on its head.”
She bellowed out a smoker’s cough as she peered down at her chest. “Well, ain’t that some shit. That’s a laugh and a half right there. No wonder everyone’s been staring at my left tit all goddamn morning.” She turned to the kitchen. “Y’all coulda told me my name tag was on upside down!” She turned back to the table. “What about you, mister? You want something to eat?”
“Toast.”
“Toast?” she asked. “That it? Pep makes some damn good flapjacks. It’s in the name for a reason. He ain’t known for his toast. Otherwise we would have called it Pep’s Roadside Toast. Wouldn’t have near the number of customers we got if we did, so you gotta respect a man’s art.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Spivey asked.
“I’m trying to tell you the toast here ain’t no good. Get the flapjacks.”
“What do you mean the toast ain’t no good? It’s bread, toasted. How difficult can that be?”
Sensing his irritation, Tonya held up her hands in a show of surrender. “I was just trying to steer you in the right direction. If it’s toast you want, it’s toast you’ll be getting. You won’t be happy about it, but it ain’t none of my business.” She walked away, leaving the pot of coffee on the table, and adjusted her name tag.
Gus dumped sugar into his coffee and asked, “So, what brings you our way, Mr. Jack Spivey?”
“Traveling through.”
“Well, I gotta say, I didn’t ever expect to meet up with you in person. Thought you and me wouldn’t never talk but by phone.”
“Face-to-face isn’t my normal habit in these situations, but when I looked at the map and saw I’d be driving through Titus Grove, I figured it wouldn’t hurt. You bring the receipts?”
“About that—”
“What do you mean ‘about that’?” Spivey’s nostrils flared like a bull preparing to charge. “If you’re saying you didn’t bring the receipts, I’m going to have to find an officiant for your fucking funeral.”
“No, sir, that ain’t what I’m saying, altogether.” Gus reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a couple dozen handwritten receipts held together with a paper clip. “I got all but one.” He handed the receipts to Spivey. “Her signature’s on every last one of them. And, every dime of the money is accounted for, ’cept my five percent. I didn’t put no invoice together on that ’cause I figured you wanted it off the books.”
Spivey flipped through a few of the receipts. “Why is there one missing?”
“Because I ain’t been able to locate her for going on two weeks. She ain’t returned a one of my calls, and her trailer has stood vacant for a good while now. I’ve gone there myself three or four times.”
“What about friends and family?”
“What about ’em?”
Spivey sighed deeply to cool his frustration. “You haven’t contacted her friends? Her family?”
Gus snickered. “You ain’t serious, right?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t you know nothing about this woman you’ve been sending money to all this time?”
“I know what I know.”
“Then you know she’s a Pike.”
“What’s a Pike?”
Without warning, Tonya showed up at their table with an armload of plates. “A Pike is bad news, mister. That’s what a Pike is.” She placed all but one of the plates in front of Gus. “Just speaking that goddamn name exposes me to being cursed by the devil.” She held out a plate of burnt toast and showed it to Spivey. “Told you. Pep can’t do up toast to save his life. He’s got a mental defect in the area of toasted bread.”
“He burnt the shit out of it,” Spivey said.
“You want them flapjacks now?”
Spivey shook his head. “Leave it.”
“You’re gonna eat this toast?”
“I’ll pick at it. Leave it.”
“You got something against flapjacks?”
“You got something against a tip? Because you’re talking yourself out of one.”
She dropped the plate in front of him. “All you’ve ordered is coffee and burnt toast. I expect I can live without that fifteen percent.” As she walked away she mumbled, “I ain’t never known somebody so against flapjacks.”
Gus chuckled. “Tonya ain’t one to be trifled with, Mr. Spivey.”
“The same’s been said about me.”
Another chuckle. “I can believe that.”
“Tell me more about this Pike business.”
“I’d just as soon not.”
Spivey stared at the partway preacher.
“Eyeball me all you want. Won’t change my stance on discussing the Pikes. Folks find themselves in a bad way if they spend too much of a conversation in a public place on that bunch.” He pointed his fork filled with flapjacks to the crowd at the back of the restaurant. “Can’t never tell who’s into the Pikes for a bad wager and whatnot. Might get their debt whittled down for information about who talked on them. Might be a good sum knocked off if one of the talkers was a stranger who eats Pep’s burnt toast.” He shoved the flapjacks into his mouth. “That might not concern you, Mr. Spivey, but I gotta live here. You don’t. You hired me to deliver money to Luna Conway not yap about her family. I can’t help it if you don’t know nothing about the woman you’re paying off.”
Spivey’s stare grew colder. “I’m not paying her off. I’m doing my job.”
Gus stopped mid-chew when he caught a glimpse of Spivey’s unfriendly glare. “My mistake.”
Spivey stood and threw a twenty-dollar bill onto the table. “Get up.”
“Get up? I got three plates to go.”
“You’re taking me to Luna’s place.”
“She ain’t there. I done told you. Swung by her trailer this morning hoping I could deliver your last payment—”
“I said you’re taking me to her place. If I have to say it again, you’ll be sipping your next breakfast through a straw.”
“Well, can I at least get a to-go bag? Tonya,” he yelled, “can you bag this up for me?”
Spivey yanked him out of the booth by his arm.
“I’m coming,” Gus said before scooping up a handful of hash browns and shoving them into his mouth.
Tonya walked to the door and shook her head in derision as Spivey dragged Gus to a silver Honda Accord. “Good Lord, Pep,” she shouted, “your toast done turnt a customer violent.”
Chapter 3
“What do you mean ATF?” Sheriff Otis Royal peered cockeyed at his niece. He sat at his desk squeezing a tennis ball as per doctor’s orders. The through-and-through he had taken to his shoulder the year before had missed all the major arteries, but it had damaged bone, muscle, and nerves, and he’d had a hell of a time getting a good grip on anything ever since they patched him up.
Dani noted that micro-flashes of pain presented themselves as tics in her uncle’s face as he squeezed the tennis ball. “Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The ID belongs to a Special Agent Patricia McElhenney.”
Laura Farrow, the department’s newest employee, entered the doorway to the office. “Morning, Deputy Savage.”
“Hey, Laura. Sarah giv
e you any trouble last night?”
“She did, and I thank the Lord for every bit she give me. Her other mommas will set her straight. Don’t you worry. I left the house early in the A.M., and the attitude adjustment therapy was already well underway. I expect she’s elbow deep in dishwater as we speak, scrubbing away on Connie’s spaghetti-stained dishes from the church supper.”
Otis said, “I thought you was bringing me some of that good coffee of yours, Laura.”
“I am, Otis. Keep your pants on,” Laura said with a wink.
Sheriff Royal shifted his gaze to Dani, hoping to find evidence she hadn’t seen Laura’s flirtatious gesture, but he quickly discovered she had seen it, and her mouth was in the process of dropping open in disbelief.
“I just come to see if Dani wanted a cup,” Laura said.
Dani hesitated before answering, “You know it, Miss Laura. Half a cup. Black. Please.”
After Laura cleared the doorway and headed to the break room, Otis decided he needed to do damage control before he faced his niece’s interrogation. “Something’s wrong with that woman’s eye.”
“Yeah,” Dani said. “Apparently it’s seen you with your pants off.”
“Now, don’t jump into that kind of nonsense…”
“What? I’m just saying it’s clear as vodka you two have a thing for each other…”
“We don’t have a thing for each other…”
“There’s nothing wrong with it, Uncle Otis. She’s a good woman. Moved down here to help out with Sarah…”
“So did a half dozen of those ladies…”
“But she’s the head-momma. That’s plain to see.”
“I’m asking you to not make anything of it. Technically, I could get called out for any relations I have with her. County Executive has been up our ass enough as it is lately.”
“She only answers the phones here part-time…”
“That don’t make her any less my employee.”
Sensing he was getting worked up, Dani decided to ease up. “All right, I’ll lay off your girlfriend.”
He pointed at her with the tennis ball in his hand. “That ain’t funny.”
She attempted to look appropriately shamed by his scolding, but she couldn’t hold back a chuckle.
Exasperated, the sheriff playfully tossed the ball at her and said, “Let’s get back to this ATF business, this Agent McElroy.”
“McElhenney.”
“Right. Tell me why in the hell a sloper like Parnell Carson would have Agent McHaney’s ID?”
“McElhenney, and I don’t know.”
He looked at her mockingly. “Ain’t you law enforcement?”
“I am.”
“And ain’t investigating part of the law enforcement process?”
“It is, and I’ve investigated.”
“In what way?”
“I put in a call to the ATF, but I ain’t had no luck finding this McElhenney. I keep getting passed off from department to department.”
Sheriff Royal flexed his hand and massaged his palm. “Here’s what I think happened. This Agent McHandy—”
“McElhenney.”
“Right. He–—”
“She.”
“Right, she stopped to fill up on gas at a truck stop somewheres around here, and she dropped her ID. Simple as that. Parnell come along and scooped it up off the ground. Probably had the idea to trade it for shine or whatever they put in them drug needles of theirs.”
She considered his theory. “Then why can’t I raise this Special Agent McElhenney on the phone?”
He shrugged. “She’s on vacation, or she’s on the job. Them special agents is always traveling about. The point is I wouldn’t go and make a found ID into a big unsolved crime. Don’t do your Dani thing.”
“My Dani thing?”
“That thing where you get bored with small town policing and go looking for trouble. Call them ATF folks and find out where they want us to send the ID and be done with it.”
“I don’t see how looking into this and that could do any harm,” Dani said.
“That’s your problem. You don’t ever see. Last time you did this and that, the station got shot up. My shoulder grew a hole and your aunt…” He stopped before he said out loud what he sometimes privately thought. His wife was dead because Dani had stuck her nose into a place it didn’t belong.
Laura returned with two piping hot cups of coffee in hand. “Hot coffee for hot cops.”
Dani, hurt by what her uncle didn’t say, stood and rushed out of his office, only to return to snatch her cup of coffee from Laura.
She walked hurriedly to her desk, sloshing the black bitter brew out of the cup and onto the linoleum floor the entire way. The ATF ID was sitting on a pile of papers where she’d left it. The mystery of it taunted her. Otis had essentially told Dani that she had killed his wife by following her curious nature last time a mystery had presented itself, a thought she wrestled with on many a sleepless night, and now she was looking at an ATF badge found in a place it had no business being found. She was dealing with the unanswered and that twisted her brain into knots. There was no way she could just let it drop. She’d follow her curious nature again despite what her uncle had said.
She picked up the leather holder and worked to free the laminated ID from its clutches. It was wedged in tight, so tight that Dani was beginning to think it was glued into the pocket. She grunted in frustration and then yanked at the ID with all her might, pulling it free along with a folded piece of paper that had been shoved behind it.
She looked down at her lap and stared at the torn edges of the piece of paper and felt a surge of adrenaline. It was as if she had discovered a hidden key to a treasure chest. She had no idea what secrets the paper would reveal, but she had a gut feeling it was important. Once she unfolded it there was no going back.
She looked toward her uncle’s office and considered his orders. She considered his unfinished remark about her aunt. She considered it all. She weighed her options. She could leave it be, or she could run down a clue like a cop’s supposed to. That’s what it boiled down to, in her mind. She was either a cop who did her job or a cop who just collected a paycheck.
Her mind made up, she reached down and unfolded the piece of paper before she could talk herself out of it. Studying the smudged handwriting, she slowly came to the conclusion it read: Luna Conway—followed by her phone number.
The paper had been torn from a college-ruled notebook. And whoever had written it had terrible handwriting, or it had been written in a hurry.
Dani’s eyes shifted from the piece of paper to Otis’s office a few times before she laid the paper down on her desk. She wouldn’t call Luna Conway. She just wouldn’t allow herself to go that far. It meant nothing. It was an unimportant find. She repeated that line of thinking to herself in her head over and over again. She even stood and walked away from her desk with every intention of going on patrol, but before she reached the exit to the station, the paper drew her back to her desk, where she stood and tried to force herself not to look at that sloppy handwriting.
“It’s nothing,” she whispered.
When she heard the claim come out of her mouth, she shrugged. “If it’s nothing, then it won’t hurt to call.”
She considered her own argument. It was sound. Not only would it not hurt to call, it would be foolish not to call. Who knew? Calling that number could very well lead to finding Special Agent McElhenney and returning her ID to her. It would be irresponsible not to call.
Dani snatched the receiver from its cradle and dialed the first nine numbers without hesitation. Before entering the final one, she looked at her uncle’s office door, quietly asked for his forgiveness, and then dialed three on the phone.
Chapter 4
The trailer was surprisingly neat. For a cracker with a rap sheet an inch thick, Luna Conway was as tidy as a stick-up-her-ass WASP with a mansion full of servants. The only thing out of place was a half-full (or half-empty,
depending on your perspective) carton of milk on the kitchen counter near the sink. It had gone sour enough to put off an eye-watering stench.
“Told ya,” Gus said, “she ain’t here. Ain’t been for a good while.”
“She left in a hurry, too.”
“How could you know a thing like that?”
Spivey squinted in disapproval at the fat partway preacher. He didn’t like to be questioned. Shallow wrinkles crept from the corners of his eyes to his temples as he contemplated ignoring Gus’s question. He decided to show off instead. “Bedroom closet’s full and everything has a place and is in its place. Dresser’s ordered and packed to the gills. Two pieces of luggage under the bed haven’t been touched.”
“Maybe she packed a third piece of luggage.”
“Not likely. By the looks of the place, Luna pinches the stink out of a penny. Two pieces of secondhand luggage are all she owns. She’s probably never traveled more than two hours from this town in her life.”
“Well, she sure as shit wasn’t hurtin’ for cash. You kept her green as a fresh-cut Christmas tree.”
“Not all of that was hers, but you have a point. Her share was enough to move her ass out of this shithole. For whatever reason”—Spivey walked to the fridge, took a passing interest in a note about a dog kennel, opened the freezer door, pulled out a gallon tub of ice cream, and tossed it to Gus—“Luna didn’t spend a dime of her cut.”
“You know that from the type of ice cream she buys?”
“Look inside.”
Gus struggled to peel the lid off. He battled with it for an embarrassing amount of time before finally dislodging it. Looking inside the carton, his mouth dropped open in amazement. He pulled out a large plastic baggy full of tightly rolled stacks of cash. “How in the living hell did you know that was in there?”
Spivey shrugged. “She lives like she’s not spending the money. She’s not the type to trust banks.” He picked up the carton of milk. “And it looks like she left here with some help. I put two and two together.”
“All that added up to money in a bucket of ice cream?”
“Backwoods vault. My granny used to keep her money in a carton of Mooresville Deluxe.”
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