to Jurgensson, though. It looks old enough, and I imagine they must have wrapped him in something for the trip into the woods. But that’s just a guess.”
She grabbed the bottom edge of the car door and lifted.
We all leaned forward.
“Empty,” Grimaldi said. As if either Rafe or I needed it spelled out.
Art Mullinax must have had enough, or maybe he was curious. In either case, he had left the porch and was coming across the grass toward us. “Can I ask what you’re looking for? If I knew, maybe I’d be able to help.”
I glanced at Rafe. He glanced at Grimaldi.
She squared her shoulder. “I believe the bones the sheriff is currently removing from the woods—your woods!—belong to Kent Jurgensson, and I believe you killed him and put him there.”
Mullinax didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he opened his mouth. “Kent’s been gone almost thirty years. Even if I did have something to do with his disappearance—and I’m not saying I did—why are you looking for evidence in a car I bought three years ago? Or for that matter—” he looked over his shoulder, “in an RV my wife and I have owned for seven years? These vehicles both post-date Kent by a decade or two.”
“Where have you driven the RV, Mr. Mullinax?” Grimaldi wanted to know. “On I-65?”
Mullinax blinked. Hard to say if it was because of guilty conscience or just surprise. “Of course on I-65. It’s the closest interstate to us.” He didn’t add, ‘you twit,’ but it was clearly implied.
“Indiana?” Grimaldi asked. “Kentucky?”
“We mostly take it down to the Florida Keys. We have a piece of land there, where we plug in for a few weeks and enjoy the water. Although we’ve taken it out west once, to see the Grand Canyon. And up to New England two years ago, for the fall colors. We drove up through Virginia and New York, though. Not Kentucky and Ohio.” He looked from one to the other of us, and if he had any idea what we were getting at, he showed no sign of it. “What’s any of this got to do with Kent?”
“Nothing,” Grimaldi said. “We’re missing a federal agent.”
Mullinax blinked again. “Excuse me?”
“An FBI agent named Leslie Yung,” Rafe told him. “Pretty. Long, black hair. Went into the woods with the other two this morning. And vanished.”
“In my woods?” Mullinax chuckled. “They’re not that big. She couldn’t have gotten lost. Either she’d have wound up here, or she’d have found a road or a field.”
“She found the road,” Grimaldi said. “Someone picked her up.”
Mullinax shook his head. “Wasn’t me. I’ve been here all morning.”
“Can you prove that?”
He looked at me, since I was the one who had asked. “My word isn’t good enough?”
I opened my mouth to explain that under the circumstances, it really wasn’t. But before I could, he’d continued. “I had breakfast with my wife. Then Jacob stopped by to work on the RV. It was making a sort of grinding noise on the way home from Key West last week. Then you showed up with the sheriff…” He glanced at Rafe.
My husband nodded. “You were in Key West last week?”
“Came home Thursday afternoon,” Mullinax said, and moved on to the next thing. Or maybe in his mind it was the same thing. “I understand about Kent. There are bones in my woods, and there’s the connection to Noah, and you gotta ask questions. But why’d I want to make an FBI agent disappear? That’d be stupid. And wouldn’t do much to help my case anyway. The bones are still there, right?”
Probably not anymore, but I got what he was saying. And what’s more, if he’d been in Key West last week, he couldn’t have been in Nashville picking up Ramona Mitchell.
But just for form’s sake I asked, “Which way do you travel to and from Key West?”
“I-65 to Montgomery,” Mullinax said promptly, “331 to I-10, and I-10 across to I-75.”
I nodded. Much the same way Rafe and I had traveled on our honeymoon, as it happened.
You’ll notice Nashville wasn’t mentioned. That’s because it’s in the opposite direction, north of Columbia. But just to make sure… “You didn’t go by Nashville?”
He gave me a look like I’d lost my mind. “No. What kind of fool would do that?”
Rafe’s lips curved, and he put his free hand on my shoulder. “The body of a prostitute was dumped at the truck stop out by the interstate Wednesday night.”
Mullinax nodded. “Heard about that. Saw the