I’d gone to sleep last night. Just as well, I thought cynically, that the crime scene was as isolated as it was. Otherwise, it’d quickly become a local tourist attraction.
“Possum’s a good dog,” I said.
“Yeah, he sure is,” Ed said. “There was also some talk about a climb down into ravine—a climb that the gal I was talking with said no one else she could think of would have attempted solo and in the dark. Suppose it just wouldn’t do, though, to call the handler heroic.”
“No,” I said, though I smiled at the compliment, “it wouldn’t.”
“Coming from a Tyler, I’m not surprised. You folks have always been real quiet about all the good you do. And the risks you all take doing it.”
Except for the risks, which I supposed might have been thrown in to describe my day job or search work, Ed might have been talking about all of the volunteering Aunt Lucy and Gran did in our town. Or he might have been talking about something else altogether. Something like the Underground.
Despite the precautions our family took to keep the organization secret, I suspected that there were people in town—especially old-timers like Ed—who had caught on. Who knew that not all the guests at the Cherokee Rose were paying customers and noticed the disproportionate number of scared and battered women who stayed with us for just a night or two. And who had figured out that the occasional bruises that Gran or Aunt Lucy or I couldn’t hide weren’t, as we always claimed, the result of clumsiness or bad luck.
Before I could muster a denial or come up with a response that contradicted or deliberately misinterpreted him, Ed shifted to a new subject.
“Heard you also found some old bones buried up near Camp Cadiz. You figure it’s Chad’s momma?”
Though it was unusual for Chad to jump to that conclusion, that was usually the first question asked when any body was discovered within a hundred-mile radius of Maryville. Chad’s father hadn’t remembered exactly where he’d left his wife’s body. In the forest somewhere, he’d said. But he did remember that he’d made her kneel and beg God aloud for forgiveness that he’d assured her wouldn’t be forthcoming. Then he’d put a bullet in her head.
“Don’t know yet,” I said. “Is that what folks think?”
He shrugged.
“You of all people should know…folks hereabouts like to talk. Not much else to do, I suppose. Doesn’t really matter if they’ve got anything to say.”
I couldn’t argue with that. If gossip were illegal, most of Maryville would be jailed as chronic offenders.
“What do you say?” I asked.
“I say, it’d be good if that boy could bury his momma proper after all these years. And Lord knows, those bones might just be her.”
Then he picked up the tongs that shared the tray with the doughnuts, lifted a white paper sack from the stack next to the tray, and tucked a chocolate-iced doughnut into it. Handed it to me.
“For later,” he said. “So, do you think this weather’ll be breaking soon?”
End of discussion, I thought with a stifled sigh. I knew from experience that Ed couldn’t be bullied into saying one more word than he wanted to and, unlike so many others in town, wouldn’t talk about what he didn’t know about. So I didn’t bother pushing him. Maybe tomorrow or the day after, when I had a little more information and Maryville gossip had cranked up another notch or two, Ed would have more to say. But until then…
We talked about the weather for a bit, then moved on to speculate about the price that local farmers would be getting for a bushel of corn this season, then got down to our usual argument. He thought that my doughnut and coffee should be on the house. I told him, as I often did, that I wouldn’t come by anymore if I couldn’t pay.
“I’d sure miss your coffee,” I added. Then I patted my waist, which was made considerably thicker by my bulletproof vest. “But I could probably do without the doughnuts.”
I won as I sometimes did, handed Ed a couple of dollars and got back change. As I left the store with coffee mug and doughnut bag in hand, it occurred to me that not only had I managed to pay for my purchases, but I’d actually just had a conversation with Ed where he didn’t have the last word.
I congratulated myself too soon.
The door hadn’t quite swung shut behind me when I heard his