The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,103

the way to the counter inside. “I’ll get it myself. You’re such a dick sometimes, Rauser.”

He flashed his grin up at me. “Bring me one too, okay? Lots of ice.”

31

White Trash met me at the door, brushed up against my legs, looked up at me squinty-eyed, and began herding me toward the kitchen. In her fantasies, I fully believed, White Trash was a border collie, obsessively tending her herd, keeping everything in a tight little circle. Her meager belongings—catnip mice and a catnip pillow, a ball—she leaves neatly under the table when she’s done playing, and when she had occasion to encounter a helium balloon in the house on my birthday, she spent days pulling it by the string each time it drifted away and carefully stashing it back under the table. I indulge her. It’s easier this way. She’s very focused. There would be no rest until she had what she wanted.

I dutifully removed a slice of deli turkey from a bag in the fridge, tore it into little pieces for her, then leaned against the counter with a can of Reddi-wip and tilted it into my mouth. That couldn’t have been more than a serving, I thought, reading the can for serving size. Two tablespoons. Hmmm. I did it a few more times. White Trash showed some interest in what I was eating, so I squirted a little on her plate. She tried it, liked it, stretched, and left me there in the kitchen, used and alone.

It was Thursday morning, five days since Jacob Dobbs died, and I was back in my office by eight after sleeping hard and entirely without dreams. I checked my voice-mail messages. Tyrone from Tyrone’s Quikbail: “Hey, baby. An absconder done absconded on me. Need you to haul his butt in. No big thing. A kid about twenty. Failed to appear on a DUI.”

Diane left a message. “Hey, you, witness subpoenas are ready on my desk. Seven of them. Cha-ching. You’re buying dinner next time.”

My mother called and extracted a promise out of me for dinner Saturday night. Saturday nights was homemade potpie, sliced tomatoes, mustard greens, and banana cheesecake. The only variations in this menu were seasonal, when we might have spinach or kale instead of mustard greens.

Before we hung up, she said, “I know this is none of my business.”

Uh-oh. When Mother began a sentence that way, no telling what was coming next.

“Dan made some mistakes, Keye, but that’s just the way men are. I spent some time with him after you left for your trip and we had a lovely talk. He loves you.”

“I’m bringing Rauser with me,” I said, astonishing myself. Ha, take that. She wouldn’t push the Dan thing with Rauser there at Saturday dinner. She was unsure of our relationship. Hell, everyone was unsure of our relationship. Rauser had acted as protection against my mother’s matchmaking many times.

I returned Tyrone’s call and arranged to swing by to pick up the paperwork. It was a small job, not a lot of money, but it was important to be available to Tyrone now and then or he’d write me off, and I never knew when I might need the work. The law firms paid well, especially Guzman, Smith, Aldridge & Haze, but it was a competitive business and I could hear my daddy saying something about all the eggs in one basket. I still had a king-size mortgage to think about every month. I try not to burn bridges, no matter how small.

My mind drifted back to my trip to Jekyll. I thought about the water and the pure salt air and my heart lurched a little. I wanted that, wanted to walk the beach, adopt a dog, buy an old truck, maybe even introduce White Trash to sand crabs. How could I make a living down there? How could I leave Diane and Neil and Rauser? I let that movie play in my head for a few moments. Then I thought about Mrs. Chambers living there in that beautiful spot, about her pain all these years. I thought about mine. It changes and dulls a little, but you never live without it once someone you love has been murdered.

Tyrone’s Quikbail is in the 300 block of Mitchell Street, only a couple of blocks from the capitol, city hall, and the courthouses, on the fifth floor of a steadily declining yellow stucco building. There were at least a dozen more bail bond companies within the surrounding blocks. My personal