wouldn’t do it behind a smelly dumpster. Nor would he make out with anyone but me.
But I couldn’t see them, and that was annoying.
Still, there wasn’t much question about what they were doing. He was showing her the crime scene, or more accurately, the dump site. The place where the body had been found. Most likely not the place where she’d been murdered. I didn’t they had any idea where that had happened.
A few minutes later, they came out and got back in the car. The Chevy swung around and came back toward us.
“Duck!” I told Charlotte, and tucked up into a ball in my seat. Next to me Charlotte did the same. We watched the Chevy cruise by through strands of hair, kind of like an ostrich believes that if it can’t see anyone, no one can see it, either.
The Chevy hit the road and turned back toward Columbia, and I shook my hair out of my face and nudged Charlotte. “They’re out of sight. Let’s go.”
She took her foot off the brake and rolled toward the exit. But a truck was coming in just as we were going out, and so we had to hang back until it had made its wide turn into the lot. I stared hard at it, wondering whether a truck like this was the last thing Ramona Mitchell had seen before she died, and whether there was a dead woman, or a bound and gagged woman, inside this one. Not that there was any reason to suspect this truck in particular; it was just there at a time when I was thinking about it.
And then it was past us, and the hybrid leapt out of the lot and onto the road, and took up the chase after the Chevy, which was nowhere in sight.
We’d driven maybe a minute when my phone rang. I pulled it out of my purse and looked at it. “It’s Rafe,” I told Charlotte, before I put it to my ear. “Hi.”
“Darlin’.”
It was all he said. The silence stretched out.
“What do you want?” I ventured. He didn’t sound upset, so there was that, at least.
“Don’t you think that oughta be my question?”
I sighed. “Where are you?”
“About twenty feet behind you.”
I glanced in the side mirror. Yes, there he was. Or there the Chevy was, at any rate. I could make out the pale oval of Leslie Yung’s face through the windshield.
“How did you get back there?” He’d been in front of us when we left the lot. Or so I’d assumed. “No, never mind. We were just looking out for you.”
“How d’you figure that?”
“There’s a new video out on social media. Of you and me kissing. Outside the police station earlier.”
That got a chuckle. “No kidding.”
“I’ll send it to you. Some of the comments are saying I shouldn’t be married to you.”
“Whoever says that is wrong,” Rafe said, while in the background I heard Leslie Yung’s voice mumble something. “What’s it gotta do with you and your sidekick following me around?”
“We figured, if someone else was following you around, we’d see them.”
“Ain’t nobody but you two following me around right now,” Rafe said, without pointing out that if we hadn’t noticed him circling around to end up behind us, we weren’t likely to notice anyone else, either.
“Are you sure?”
“I caught you, didn’t I?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer, just added, “Go home, darlin’. If this person turns out to be a problem, I’ll deal with it. But I don’t want you and Carrie mixed up in this business. Or Charlotte. Tell her to take you home.”
“She can hear you,” I said, while next to me, Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Where are you going?”
“I guess if I don’t tell you, you’re gonna tail me over there?”
Again, he didn’t wait for my response. “I’m taking Agent Yung to the sheriff’s office in Sweetwater. Feel free to follow us there if you don’t believe me.”
“Don’t mind if we do,” I said, since my car was in Sweetwater anyway. “You want to pull around, since right now you’re the one following us?”
“No,” Rafe said. “Just keep going until you hit Sweetwater. We’ll be right here.”
Fine. “Promise you’ll be careful?”
“Always.” He hung up before I could point out that he always said that, and never was.
“What do you want me to do?” Charlotte asked.
I sighed. “Drive to Sweetwater. There’s nothing else we can do.”
She nodded. “At least we know he’s keeping an eye out.”