Chapter Thirty

Okay, I’ve done what I hope will be a helpful thing and created headings to make it easier for readers to access the content you’re interested in. Check out the new Dead Ringer heading to catch up on previous chapters. New subscribers can scroll to the very beginning and click through. Happy July! Hope y’all are staying cool wherever you are! (Read Chapter 29 here.)

CHAPTER THIRTY

Will accepted my apology with a gruff, “Jesus Christ, I’m fine, let it go,” and then we slid right back into what had felt so easy right from the beginning.

“Let’s get together this week,” I said, “but you pick where this time.” I decided to tread lightly but honestly around his issues with alcohol.

“Yeah, whatever,” he said. I heard a deep inhale as he sucked on a Kool, and then a long release of smoke. “I’ll get back to you.”

“You do that,” I said. “I’m glad to know you’re still going to be a royal pain in my ass.”

“Go to hell,” he said, and then, “Maybe day after tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

“I’m glad you called, Blainey,” he said. Before I could respond, he ended the call.

I hadn’t known Will for very long, but I had the impression he wasn’t glad about much. From the few things he’d told me, I knew life had dealt him some pretty hard blows, and I was deeply moved by what seemed a gesture of vulnerability from a man my counselor would have described as “well-defended.” I was really looking forward to seeing him again. I missed having friends.

My life back in Pennsylvania, married and pastoring a church, seemed light years away. After Nate and I split, most of our friends had picked him. I understood. It happens. Coming back to Brady had been surreal in so many ungrounding ways. I’d had to buy a map of the city where I’d grown up and relearn my way around. At the same time, being back in the town where I’d been part of a family, where I’d been rooted, where I’d once belonged, felt like the grace of a much-needed blessing for my battered heart. It had centered me in a way I hadn’t known I needed.

Which is why it pained me so much that I assumed Delma was judging me from afar. After our epic breakfast outing at the Copper Kettle last Saturday, I could tell she had something she wanted to talk about. She’d asked me to call, and I hadn’t. Frankie’s comment — “Delma thinks you’ve gone off the deep end” — stung badly, mostly because she had voiced my own innermost worries about the work I’d taken on, what it was doing to me. Or to be more truthful, what I was gladly allowing it to do to me. Working with Mark had unearthed an aspect of my personality that both stunned me and of which I was a little too proud. In one breath, I could chastise myself for how I could so easily lie to good people and also smugly pat myself on the back for what I’d gotten away with.

Which felt like a trajectory that wasn’t going to end well, and that ending might be coming tomorrow. I imagined myself sitting across from Fred in his office, his stunned expression giving way to anger. I’d lied. To him and to a whole lot of people, lies of both omission and commission. Well, it was past time to come clean. It would probably be a good idea to get in touch with Big Eddie and see if I could come back and pick up some shifts at McGill’s while I figured out what to do next, after Fred booted me out on my ass. Of course I’d stay on with Mark, but the work at Omega Investigations was nothing like a living wage, and I couldn’t chance hollowing out my savings any further.

The sudden jangling of the telephone made me jump about two feet and snapped me back into the present moment. I picked up the receiver on the second ring. It was the CNA, Cathy Stearnes. I caught myself just before I made the seamless shift into anxious, frazzled MaryLou Stephens with her poor dying Memaw. Enough with the lies.

I pleaded with Cathy not to hang up and told her the truth — that Rachel was a friend of mine and I’d been trying to help her find her daughter, that someone had killed Rachel and that she, Cathy Stearnes, could have valuable information and helpful insights that might help get justice for Rachel.

“You might be the one person who can help find whoever did this,” I pleaded.

She said nothing for what felt like a very long time; only her slow, measured breathing was audible and somewhere in the background the call of a bird, as if she stood near an open window.

At last she spoke, and in her voice was more steel than I would have anticipated. “Miss Blair is it? I wish to say first of all that I do not appreciate being manipulated. You may view me as just some naive young woman, but I’m certainly old enough to know what it means for a person to conduct oneself honorably, and you have not done so. Nevertheless, I will agree to meet and talk with you, not because I want to help you but because it is something I can do for sweet Miss Rachel.” Here, her voice caught on a suppressed sob.

I waited.

She continued. “I have time tomorrow morning at six-thirty and can give you fifteen minutes,” she said. “I have a new patient meeting at seven.”

“Thank you,” I said and added, “You are very kind to do this.”

She snorted at my lame attempt to smooth things over. “I like the doughnut place on Elm,” she said. “Heavenly’s. It’s on the far corner.”

“I know it,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning. And thank you, really.”

“You’re buying,” she said and hung up.