window, though I really couldn’t describe him back then.”
“But the police didn’t believe that?” said Blum. “They still pursued your father as a suspect?”
“It’s why we had to move from here. Everyone in town thought he had done it, despite there being no evidence to support that.”
“And your daddy?” asked Tanner.
“He’s dead now.”
“And your ma?”
Pine didn’t answer right away. In some ways, the mystery of her mother had overshadowed even Mercy’s disappearance, at least to Pine. Blum looked at her curiously, but Pine didn’t seem to notice.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” replied Pine. She closed the window after searching her memory, going back to that night and trying to confirm that it was indeed Daniel Tor coming through the window. She arrived at what she had expected: no firm conclusion.
They went back outside, where she sat on the porch and stroked Roscoe’s head.
“He likes you,” said Tanner approvingly. “And Roscoe’s a good judge of character. Got to be where if he don’t like somebody I bring around, they don’t come back around. Yep, old Roscoe keeps me from making dumb decisions. Well, at least fewer than I used to.”
“I needed a Roscoe in my life a long time ago,” opined Blum.
She and Tanner exchanged a knowing look.
Pine rose and said, “Thanks for letting us look around, Cy.”
“You gonna be in town long?”
“As long as it takes.”
“Well, I might see you ’round then. Me and Roscoe eat at the little café on the main street most nights. They call it the Clink, after the prison, I guess. Good food and cheap beer.”
“We might see you there then,” said Blum.
Tanner took off his hat in a gesture of good-bye, fully revealing his thick wavy hair, and tacked on a broad smile.
They got back into the rental and headed out.
Pine said, “I always wondered what happened to the Marlboro Man. Now I know.”
“He’s a hottie,” said Blum, looking in the side mirror and seeing Tanner standing there. “The picture of ruggedly handsome. I bet he has a two-pack, which is like an eight-pack for a twenty-year-old.”
“If he really wants to be healthy, he should stop smoking.”
“That just adds to the bad-boy mystique.”
“Control yourself, Carol.”
“I am always in control, Agent Pine. It comes with being a mother of six. Once you keep your sanity with that, there’s nothing ever again that can overwhelm you.”
“Just checking.”
“So you don’t want to talk about your mother?”
Pine started to say something and then stopped. She seemed to recalibrate her thoughts and said, “I know what happened to my father. I don’t know what happened to my mother.”
“Do you mean you don’t know how she, what, died?”
“For all I know my mother is alive.”
“But you don’t know where she is?”
“No.”
“Have you tried to find her?”
“Many times. With no luck at all.”
“But you’re an FBI agent. How can that be?”
“Good question, Carol. Good question.”
Chapter 6
THEY HAD A RESERVATION at a bed-and-breakfast located right outside the small downtown area of Andersonville. It was a large, old home renovated to cater to guests and called the Cottage.
Pine was normally a light packer, a one-suitcase sort of girl. But for this trip, she had brought a second small suitcase. She set it on her bed and opened it. She looked down at the oddball assortment of items carefully packed inside.
This represented, along with the photo of her and her sister, the sum total of her possessions from her parents. There was a black bow tie of her father’s. A key chain with the bauxite mining company’s name and logo engraved on it. A dozen drink coasters that she and Mercy had used as makeshift checker pieces. A lavender hair ribbon of her mother’s. A ring and pair of earrings, both costume jewelry, but still precious to her. A small book of poems. A pocketknife of her father’s with his initials. A Wonder Woman comic book. A cracked teacup.
And…She lifted the small doll with the dented face from inside the suitcase and moved a strand of fake hair away from its bulging right eye. This was her doll, Skeeter from the Muppet Babies TV series.
Mercy had had a matching one, only hers was named Sally. Pine had wanted Mercy to name her doll Scooter, because Skeeter was his twin sister. Only Mercy wouldn’t hear of it because Scooter was “a boy.” Pine smiled at the memory.
She had almost thrown all this in the trash a long time ago. But something had stayed her hand, she wasn’t sure what. Pine slowly put them all