The Lipless Gods
Page 41
Chapter 39
When the burner phone rang Sipe was thinking about showering. He could smell his odor. His bare skin seemed to glow, the grease from settled sweat conducive to the early morning light. He sat up from the bed and picked the phone off the bedside table, rotated on his rear and put his bare feet on the bedroom floor.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“Sipe? It’s me,” said Tiffany.
“Yeah.”
“Are you with Connie?”
“No.”
“I think he’s here. Out here, I mean. I’m at the track. I can see the railcars from here.”
Sipe stood up from the bed. The pine board floor cool on the soles of his feet.
“I think she’s there with him. Millie.”
“Millie?”
“I can’t. I mean, I’m pretty far away, but it’s the top and the, the pants. They look right, what she had on yesterday.”
Sipe had slept in a room on the second floor of the Collar place. He walked across the room. Over at the window, he looked down the roof overhang at the front of the house, the parking spots. Late last night, Connie back, they’d moved the Lexus from the Zippy Mart, parked it in front of the Collar’s, beside Henry’s mother’s car. The black sedan was gone.
“Fuck,” said Sipe.
“You should know something. The police-“
Sipe hung up. Putting on pants, socks, shoes, he thought about the time he was losing by not having dressed very first thing, by not getting up when the loaner alarm clock had first gone off. A round clock, cow themed. He never fell back asleep. Never. He had.