Day Shift - Charlaine Harris Page 0,68

that, he realized he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember Gary’s last name. He laughed out loud. The great psychic couldn’t remember his mom’s future name. Redding. That was it.

Having settled that, Manfred gave the subject no more thought. Instead, energized by his interest in the new guy, Rick (or Barry) Horowitz, he settled in to work for over an hour before knocking off to watch some television. He figured he’d made back what he’d had to pay Magdalena Orta Powell . . . but he’d thought of something else he needed from her. And he knew he couldn’t get it in a straightforward way.

He found the bill and cover letter he’d received from Powell’s office. He examined it carefully.

Then he started comparing fonts in his Word program.

—

“I sent a letter to Rachel’s house,” he told Olivia the next morning, after he’d been to the Davy post office. He knew he sounded smug, but he was feeling pretty optimistic. Ever since Fiji had laid the “confidence” spell on him, he’d had these moments of sheer . . . rightness. Like he couldn’t do the wrong thing and every idea he had was a good one. “It’ll be delivered tomorrow, and Lewis will have to sign for it.”

Should he be worrying about this? He didn’t know, and he only realized theoretically that he should care.

“Why?” she said blankly.

“I duplicated Magdalena’s letterhead. Her letter tells Lewis that the old folks are coming and they should be allowed access to search for possessions of theirs in the library.”

“Show me,” she said.

So he did, smiling all the while. “Pretty damn official, huh?”

Olivia looked at the “letter” very carefully. “You idiot,” she said, but she didn’t sound furious, which Manfred took as a compliment.

“Sounds good, doesn’t it?”

“When did you get the idea that lawyers talked like this?”

“What, you know a lot about lawyer talk?”

“I know more than you do, apparently.” She reread the letter. “However, this isn’t bad, and Lewis may swallow it. It gives us a kind of layer of credibility. Unless he calls Ms. Powell. Didn’t think of that, did you?”

Manfred felt that he should be crestfallen, but he wasn’t. “He won’t. He’ll be so angry he’ll be getting ready to repel the boarders. So he’ll get the letter tomorrow. And we should plan on going to the house the next day, or tomorrow afternoon, even. What do you think would suit the old folks best?”

Olivia said, “Say we leave here day after tomorrow at nine. We’ll have to stop at least once, because they’ll have to pee. We get to Dallas, take them to a Golden Corral or an Outback or something, and then go to Bonnet Park. We’ll get to the Goldthorpe house between one and two, give or take. And we’ll spend about an hour there. We should be able to have them back by dinner.”

Manfred had been confident she’d end up being glad about his taking the initiative. “Now we have to enlist Barry. We’ll have to take two cars. He can ride with one of us, and the other will drive the old people.”

“I’ll go talk to him,” she said.

“I’ll go over to Fiji’s,” Manfred said, to his own surprise. “I haven’t seen her today.”

As Olivia set off for the hotel, Manfred crossed Witch Light Road to see Midnight’s own witch.

As soon as he saw her, he felt completely sober.

20

Fiji was crying. It made something inside Manfred twist and cringe. For a second he stood, shocked, and then he said, “That Travis! Last night! Did he hurt you?”

Fiji looked as surprised as a weeping woman could. “No! Are you kidding? I would have killed him if he had.”

Manfred felt a relief so intense that he had to sit down in one of the wicker chairs. “Then what?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t have a good time,” she said. She was making a desperate attempt to stop crying, and it wasn’t doing her voice any favors. Her words kind of hiccupped out.

“Lots of dates are like that,” he said, having to suppress an impulse to laugh.

“How the hell would I know?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, Manfred,” she said disgustedly.

He was bewildered.

“Seriously,” he said. “I don’t see why you wouldn’t know that. Did you just date one guy all through high school or something?”

“I’m fat,” she said, as one stated the obvious.

“Not so,” Manfred said instantly. “You have a woman’s body, a butt and boobs.” He started to say, “And even if you were, you’re still pretty,” but he had enough