eating.”
He popped the broccoli in his mouth and chewed. “What I meant,” he said when he’d swallowed, “is that I’m black.”
I opened my mouth to say that he’s as much white as he’s black, maybe more, and he added, “Or as near as makes no difference.”
Maybe so. At any rate, I didn’t debate it, because I knew what he was getting at. “And most of the women you’ve slept with—at least the ones I know about—have been white. Or Hispanic, in Carmen’s case.”
Yvonne, Elspeth, me, Carmen, me again… And I knew there had to be others, even if I couldn’t put names or faces to them. The ones I knew about were one redhead, two blondes, and Carmen. The pinup girl he’d had on the wall of his bedroom in the trailer in the Bog growing up, she had been white, too. A platinum blonde with china blue eyes and lacy white lingerie.
“If somebody tried to make a profile of me,” he said, “based on the women I’ve taken to bed, they’d prob’ly conclude that I’m white, too.”
“And they’d be half right.”
He shrugged.
“So what are you saying? That it could be Frankie after all?”
“’Course it could,” Rafe said, sounding irritated. “He married a white girl, didn’t he? Don’t that tell you what his type is?”
I guess it did, now that he mentioned it. “So we throw the profile out?”
“Not necessarily. I’m just saying that sometimes the profile’s wrong. Or sometimes people interpret things wrong. A lot of people don’t think outside the box.”
He forked up another piece of broccoli.
“I guess that’s true,” I said slowly. “And speaking of thinking outside the box…”
“Yeah?”
“Grimaldi and I went to see Art Mullinax. He lives on the old Daffodil Hill Farm, up on the north side of Columbia. You should have seen it, Rafe. It was gorgeous. This big, white Victorian house, and flowers and flowering trees everywhere…”
His lips curved. “We got a big, white house and flowers and flowering trees, too, darlin’.”
I guess we did. Even if it wasn’t, technically, our house.
“He say anything helpful?” Rafe wanted to know, and I dragged my mind from architecture and landscaping back to the case—or cases—at hand.
“Mullinax said he hadn’t heard from Jurgensson for years, and he wasn’t sure whether Jurgensson had been in Tupelo or Tucson or Toledo or somewhere else the last time he wrote. He didn’t hang onto any of the letters or cards, of course.”
“No reason why he’d keep’em,” Rafe said.
“That’s what I thought. But Grimaldi was acting a little weird when we drove away, so I asked what was wrong. And she told me she was trying to figure out which part of the property she’d have to dig up to find Jurgensson’s remains.”
Both Rafe’s eyebrows elevated this time. “She got a reason for thinking that?”
“Nothing beyond an evil mind,” I said. “Or a lot of experience. And that might be enough. I didn’t hear Mullinax say anything suspicious. But she might have heard something I didn’t. And even if she didn’t notice anything specifically…”
Rafe nodded. “It makes sense. If anybody did away with him, it’d be the guy who claimed to have heard from him.”
“There’s no reason to think he’s not alive and well somewhere, though. Is there?”
“Not other than that his social security number ain’t been used in thirty years,” Rafe said.
Well, yes. There was that.
“Well, it’s a big property. And Grimaldi said she wouldn’t get permission to dig any of it up unless she had more evidence than she has currently. So she went back to the police station to read the file again.”
“She musta taken it home,” Rafe said, “’cause she was gone when I got there.”
“It’s not even her case. Or for that matter a case at all. You’d think she’d have enough to keep her busy between the serial killer and your stalker, and she wouldn’t need to invent more murders.”
“Speaking of my stalker,” Rafe said, and forked up another piece of chicken. “Vasim’s cleaned up the video. He’s spending second shift trying to match the license plate to a car.”
Great.
“Problem is, it’s Saturday night, and things can get a little rowdy. So he might not have time. But if we get lucky, by tomorrow we could have a name and address to go with the car.”
“That would be great,” I said enthusiastically. “It’s probably nothing to worry about.” Or at least I kept telling myself that, repeatedly. “It’s probably just some woman with a crush on you. But I’d feel better if we can