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around the table and hugged me tight. My sister-in-law was shaking like a big, spreading tree in a storm.

Sampson and I were going South. We were going to bring back Scootchie.

Chapter 8

I HAD to tell Damon and Jannie about their “Auntie Scootch,” which is what the kids have always called her. My kids sensed something bad had happened. They knew it, just as they somehow know my most secret and vulnerable places. They had refused to go to sleep until I came and talked to them.

“Where’s Auntie Scootch at? What happened to her?” Damon demanded as soon as I entered the kids’ bedroom. He had heard enough to understand that Naomi was in some kind of terrible trouble.

I have a need always to tell the kids the truth, if it’s possible. I’m committed to truth-telling between us. But every once in a while, it is so hard to do,

“We haven’t heard from Aunt Naomi in a few days,” I began. “That’s why everybody is worried tonight, and why they came over to our house,” I said.

I went on. “Daddy’s on the case now. I’m going to do my best to find Aunt Naomi in the next couple of days. You know that your daddy usually solves problems. Am I right?”

Damon nodded to the truth in that, and seemed reassured by what I had told them, but mostly by my serious tone. He came into my arms and gave me a kiss, which he hasn’t been doing as much lately. Jannie gave me the softest kiss, too. I held them both in my arms. My sweet babies.

“Daddy’s on the case now,” Jannie whispered. That warmed my spirits some. As Billie Holiday put it, “God bless the child who’s got his own.”

By eleven the kids were sleeping peacefully, and the house was beginning to clear. My elderly aunts had already gone home to their quirky old-lady nests, and Sampson was getting ready to leave.

He usually lets himself in and out, but this time, Nana Mama walked Sampson to the door, which is a rarity. I went with them. Safety in numbers.

“Thank you for going down South with Alex tomorrow,” Nana said to Sampson in confidential tones. I wondered who she thought might be listening, trying to overhear her intimacies. “You see now, John Sampson, you can be civilized and somewhat useful when you want to be. Didn’t I always tell you that?” She pointed a curled, knobby finger at his massive chin. “Didn’t I?”

Sampson grinned down at her. He revels in his physical superiority even to a woman who is eighty. “I let Alex go by himself, I’d only have to come later, Nana. Rescue him and Naomi,” he said.

Nana and Sampson cackled like a pair of cartoon crows on an old familiar fencepost. It was good to hear them laugh. Then she somehow managed to wrap her arms around Sampson and me. She stood there—like some little old lady holding on to her two favorite redwood trees. I could feel her fragile body tremble. Nana Mama hadn’t hugged the two of us like that in twenty years. I knew that she loved Naomi as if she were her own child, and she was very afraid for her.

It can’t be Naomi. Nothing bad could happen to her, not to Naomi. The words kept drifting through my head. But something had happened to her, and now I would have to start thinking and acting like a policeman. Like a homicide detective. In the South.

“Have faith and pursue the unknown end.” Oliver Wendell Holmes said that. I have faith. I pursue the unknown. That’s my job description.

Chapter 9

SEVEN O’CLOCK in the evening was a busy time in late April on the stunningly beautiful campus of Duke University. The physical impressiveness of the students was visible everywhere at the self-proclaimed “Harvard of the South.” The magnolia trees, especially along Chapel Drive, were plentiful and in full bloom. The well-kept and striking orderliness of the grounds made it one of the most visually satisfying campuses in the United States.

Casanova found the fragrant air intoxicating as he strolled between tall graystone gates and onto the university’s West Campus. It was a few minutes past seven. He had come for one reason only—to hunt. The entire process was exhilarating and irresistible. Impossible to stop once he had begun. This was foreplay. Lovely in every way.

I’m like a killer shark, with a human brain, and even a heart, Casanova thought, as he walked. I am a predator without peer,