had a single conversation with Darlene’s partner. A neurosurgeon named Ava Hendricks. She’s convinced that someone wanted Darlene dead.”
Oakes had no reaction to the gender of Strayer’s partner. That pleased Bell. It was unexpected. In a choice between Rhonda Lovejoy and Jake Oakes as to who would be automatically accepting of people and who they were, she would have easily picked the kindhearted, salt-of-the-earth assistant prosecutor, and not the flashy, flirty, good-ole-boy deputy.
That’ll teach me, Bell thought.
“I can ask Leroy to take a look at the Audi,” Oakes said. Leroy Perkins ran a towing and salvage business as well as leasing the land to the counties for the vehicle storage site. He was also the best mechanic in the southern half of the state, Bell believed. Because of his expertise with anything that had an engine attached, he had performed some forensic work for her on previous occasions. And he had testified in several trials.
“Appreciate it.”
“Right away.” He started to reapply the black cap, squashing his ears in the process. “Can I give you a lift somewhere? I’m headed back out to the Blazer.”
“Thanks, but I’m just walking over to JP’s. Meeting somebody for lunch.”
He waited for her to identify her lunch date. She didn’t. He gave her a lazy smile and then a two-fingered salute, and he walked out ahead of her. His smile was easy enough to translate: Okay, fine—don’t tell me who you’re meeting. Doesn’t matter. I’ll know in about ten minutes, anyway. Word’ll get ’round. This is Acker’s Gap, remember?
* * *
“I got the job.” Carla had promised herself that she would be blasé about it when she told her mother, impassive, but she could not keep the pride out of her voice.
“Hey—that’s wonderful, sweetie. Oh, and I’m sorry I’m late. Had to take care of a few things before I could leave the office.”
“That’s okay.” Carla never expected her mother to be on time. Which was a good thing, because she never was. “Anyway,” Carla added, “I start tomorrow.”
The small diner was crowded and lusty with noise, but Carla appreciated that; the racket conferred a jury-rigged privacy on the booth that she had staked out an hour ago and defended against the glares of other people who were forced to settle for seats at the counter. Carla felt a little guilty about hogging a booth—the most desirable locations in the place—but then she remembered how loyal her mother had always been to JP’s, and how she just about single-handedly kept it in business during rough patches in the beginning, and the guilt disappeared. While she waited, she had gone over the paperwork that Sally McArdle had given her, the details of the oral history project.
Each time the door had opened and a customer came in, a punch of frigid air came in with her. One of those times, the new arrival was Bell. Seeing her mother’s face, seeing the light in her eyes when she spotted Carla and waved, Carla felt a brief needle of guilt. She considered telling her everything—such as the real reason she had fled her life in D.C. The thing she had done. The crime she had committed.
And what she was going through, from the unbearable headaches to the gut-churning panic to the constant anxiety.
No. She couldn’t tell her. Her mother would try to fix everything—including Carla—and Carla did not want that.
So instead she broke the news about the job, and about how she would be starting right away.
Bell tossed her coat on the far side of the bench seat and slid in. Carla had hung up her own coat on one of the wooden pegs over by the cash register, but Bell knew better than to risk it; by now those pegs were thoroughly overloaded and tilting dangerously downward. Any second now, the jumbled hump of parkas and hats and long scarves would end up on the wet floor.
“Tomorrow seems kind of soon, don’t you think?” Bell said. “I mean, you just got here.”
“It’s not like I need to ask directions. I grew up in Acker’s Gap, Mom.”
Before Bell could muster a counterargument, she had to say hello to Jackie LeFevre, who had stopped by the booth. Jackie had a plate of fried eggs in one hand and a bowl of white beans in the other. She was delivering the food to the next booth over. The owner of JP’s was a tall, rawboned woman with a sharp angular face and thick black hair kept under tight control by a