Chapter Thirteen

I awoke—or at least, came back to myself—to the sound of loud voices coming from the living room.

“Absolutely not,” I heard Ashara say loudly

“I am a grown woman, missy, and I will do as I please,” Maw-Maw replied, with almost as much force.

“You’re an old woman, and you’re going to get yourself hurt. Or worse.”

“It don’t matter what you say, Ashara. I am not going to quit. Callie needs us, and so does that poor Rick McClatchey. We are going to solve this case.”

I pulled myself up out of the bed (I realized that I’d actually sunk partway through the mattress in my stupor) and headed toward the living room, ready to wade into the fray.

Ashara spun around to face me as soon as I entered the room.

“And you,” she said, pointing her finger at me accusingly, “you’re the one who dragged us all into this. It’s your fault, you know.”

I hung my head. “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

Maw-Maw clicked her tongue at me. “Now don’t you go taking the blame for something that isn’t your fault. Just because Ashara here is scared don’t mean that we’re gonna up and quit.”

“You took my grandmother to a prison,” Ashara said, still glaring at me.

“A jail, actually,” I said. “There is a difference.”

“Not to me, there’s not,” Ashara said.

“I told you we were going to do it.”

“Yeah. At work, where I can’t even answer you without everyone thinking I’m totally crazy.”

I tried to calm her. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think we’re going to need to go back. I don’t think Rick McClatchey knows anything useful.”

Ashara sighed and sank down onto the couch. She shook her head and spoke more quietly. “It just scares the hell out me knowing that that murderer is out there loose and knows who we are.”

“It scares me, too, Ashara,” I said. “Believe me, I don’t want either of you getting hurt. Any of you.” I looked around the room. “Where’s Stephen?”

Ashara stared at me blankly for a moment. “He hasn’t been here since he dropped you and Maw-Maw off yesterday afternoon.”

Yesterday? I’d been in my fugue state for twenty-four hours. Dammit. Another day lost. I was beginning to think that we needed to move quickly; if we didn’t, we might lose track of everyone. And the only way we were going to be able to tell the police what had really happened was if we had some sort of real evidence. Something tangible. Something that would leave them in no doubt that Howard had killed Molly and Jeffrey McClatchey was in on it.

Bags of money passed between two men wasn’t going to cut it. It simply wasn’t enough.

“Did you find out who the other safe deposit box belonged to?” I asked Ashara.

“Yes,” she said. “Someone named Mary Rowell.”

Rowell. I’d heard that name before.

“Did you say Mary Rowell?” Maw-Maw said, sitting up straighter in her recliner and staring at Ashara.

“Yes, ma’am,” Ashara said, looking confused. “Is that important?”

“Hmm,” said Maw-Maw. “Might be.”

“Where have I heard that name before?” I asked.

“When I told you about how Jimmy Rowell done got into a fight with them Howard boys and disappeared all them years ago.”

“Was Mary Rowell a relative of his?” I asked.

“All them Rowells are related,” Maw-Maw answered, waving her hand dismissively in the air.

“Yes, but do you know how Mary Rowell was related to Jimmy?”

“Well, I do believe that both his mother and his sister was named Mary.” She nodded her head definitively. “Yep. So there’s two Marys right there.”

“Did you get anything other than a name?” I asked Ashara.

“Yes. I found out who else was on the signature card: both Rick and Jeffrey McClatchey.”

“That’s weird,” I said.

Ashara nodded. “I also got an address for Mary Rowell, but it might be old. The box was paid for at least ten years in advance, but it didn’t look like anyone had been in to open it in years. And the McClatchey brothers were added to the signature card only about four years ago.”

“You want to drive by the address?” I asked. “It can’t hurt to see if there’s a name on the mailbox or something.”

Ashara sighed. “Okay. Fine.”

“I’m coming, too,” Maw-Maw announced, heaving herself up out of her chair.

“Of course you are.” Ashara sounded resigned.

“So how long ago did Jimmy Rowell disappear?” I asked Maw-Maw once we were in the car and headed through town.

“Well, I was just about twenty-one—it wasn’t long before I married your grand-daddy, Ashara—so that would have been . . . let me see. . ..” Her eyes flicked back and forth in her head as she figured it out. “Nineteen and forty-seven. All them boys come back from the war and Jimmy Rowell was just as pretty as he could be. But he didn’t last for more than a year before getting into it with those Howard boys, so it must have been in ’forty-seven that he disappeared.”

1947. I wondered if the U.S. government had been making thousand-dollar bills in 1947.

Something was starting to come together, but I still didn’t have all the pieces. I couldn’t put the ones that I did have together, couldn’t see the big picture, but I knew I was getting closer.

* * *

The house we were looking for was in one of the older neighborhoods in town—much shabbier than the one Maw-Maw lived in. Some of the houses looked like they were barely standing, held together with boards and string and tarpaper. But the address Ashara had led us to was in much better condition. It was tiny, but freshly painted. Azaleas bloomed in a tiny patch of ground in front of the porch, which, unlike the Howard’s, did not sag.

“Nice-looking place,” I commented to Ashara.

“Mmm,” she murmured in agreement.

“Think we should stop in and say hello?” Maw-Maw asked.

Ashara kept driving, right past the house. “No. I don’t,” she said. “I think we ought to go home and consider what all this might mean. What do you think, Callie?”

I ignored her, too busy staring out the back window to answer her.

“Ashara?” I said nervously.

“Yeah?”

“See that white SUV behind us?”

She looked in the rear-view mirror. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Is it Howard?”

Maw-Maw craned her neck around and for once didn’t even bother to correct her granddaughter’s language.

“I think it might be,” I said. “How did he get it running again so fast?”

“Oh,” said Maw-Maw. “He’s a mechanic.”

I looked at her, my eyebrows beetling. “How do you know that?”

“He told me. The same time he told me his name. That day you made us take you out there.”

I shook my head in amazement.

“Is he really following us?” Ashara asked. “I mean, maybe he’s just out for a drive or something.”

“Past the old Rowell place. I’m sure,” I said.

The SUV slowed behind us as it passed the Rowell house, but didn’t stop. Instead, he picked up speed and caught up with us.

Ashara drove quickly through the back streets, heading toward Main Street. “Maybe he’ll leave us alone once we get downtown,” she said hopefully.

The SUV tailed us for a few minutes more, and then abruptly turned off onto another side street.

“Oh, thank God,” said Ashara. “He’s gone.”

“Thank you, Jesus,” Maw-Maw added in a fervent tone.

I was just about to add my own prayer to whatever celestial being might take interest in a stranded ghost chick, when suddenly the SUV cut out of a side street right in front of us, slamming to a stop.

Ashara hit the brakes so hard she practically stood upon them and, at the same time, twisted the wheel to avoid hitting the SUV.

She missed it; instead, her front tires bumped over the curb and hit the lawn of the house on the corner.

I’ve got to hand it to her: that girl is one tough driver.

If I’d been behind the wheel, we would have stopped right there, and there’s no telling what Howard would have done to us.

Not Ashara, though. As soon as she felt the tires hit grass, she spun the wheel back around and hit the gas as hard as she’d hit the brakes. The back tires squealed, and the front tires threw up a shower of grass and dirt, but the car moved, twisting past the SUV and screaming down the residential street.

I saw Howard’s face, ugly and red with anger, as we drove past him.

I flipped him the bird.

Okay. So it was crude. But he couldn’t see me anyway, so what did it matter?

“Now,” I said to Ashara. “Now we go to the police.”

“And say what?”

“Report what just happened. That you and your elderly grandmother were out for an evening drive and a crazy man tried to run you off the road.”

“What if the police tell him who I am?” she asked.

“He already knows,” I reminded her. “And I think it’s time we start working on getting him on the police radar. So to speak.”

Ashara nodded and took a deep breath. “Okay.”

The balding officer who took Ashara’s report at the local police station seemed more than a little bored with and skeptical of Ashara’s story, but at least he filled out a report, taking down Howard’s license plate and a description of the SUV.

“So what happens next?” Ashara asked.

The cop shrugged. “No one was hurt, so there’s not much we can do.”

“He tried to run me off the road,” she said indignantly.

“And we’ll send an officer out to speak to him about it.

But unless you can come up with a witness—” he paused, glancing at Maw-Maw, “another witness,” he corrected himself, “then all we can do is issue him a warning.”

Ashara sighed. “Fine. Thanks for all your help.”

“Try not to sound so sarcastic,” I hissed at her. “You want these guys to take you seriously.”

She spun on her heel and marched out of the police station, leaving Maw-Maw to hobble out after her.

“It just makes me so damned mad,” she fumed as she got Maw-Maw settled into the car. “I guarantee, if it had been a black man running a white woman off the road, that cop would have been a whole lot more helpful.”

I nodded. “You’re probably right. But right now we have to accept every little bit of official help we can get.”

“That shouldn’t mean that I have to swallow my pride and go beg some policeman to help me.”

“And you didn’t. All you did was file a report. So let’s leave it at that for now.”

Ashara got into the driver’s side and slammed the door.

“Fine,” she snarled, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “But as soon as we’ve got enough on that murdering motherfucker to lock him away forever, we’re going straight back into that station and I’m going to shove it in that asshole’s face.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Ashara,” Maw-Maw said reprovingly.

“I’m sorry, Maw-Maw,” Ashara said. “It just makes me so angry to get treated like that.”

“I know it does, honey. But he’ll get his. Don’t you worry.” She folded her hands over her stomach complacently.

Ashara huffed out a breath and shook her head.

“Let’s just go back home,” she said.

“Not your place,” I reminded her.

“I know, I know.” She shook her head. “We need to wrap this up soon—I’ve got to get back into my house and get some more clothes.”

* * *

“Have you heard from Stephen?” I asked Ashara as we walked back into Maw-Maw’s.

She shook her head. “Not since last night. He was still here when I got home from work, but he didn’t stay long. I think that visit to Rick McClatchey really shook him up.”

“I think it was the first time he’d really thought about what it would mean for Rick to get convicted of this crime,” I agreed.

“You think maybe I should call him or something?” Ashara asked.

“It’s up to you, but I would if I could. He’s trying to help us and now we have new information that he doesn’t have.”

“I think you ought to call him. He’s nice. Especially for a white boy,” Maw-Maw opined.

Ashara rolled her eyes, pulled out her cell phone, and tapped away. When did they trade numbers? I wondered.

“Hey, Steve,” she said. “Ashara. We’ve found out some more stuff if you want to hear about it.” She waited in silence for a moment. I could hear Stephen talking but couldn’t make out the words.

“Yeah, well, the killer tried to run us over tonight,” she said. Again, I heard Stephen’s voice, this time pitched a little higher.

“No. We’re all okay,” Ashara said. “Okay,” she said after another short silence. “We’ll be here.” She flipped the phone closed. “He’s finishing up something at home, and then he’ll be over.”

When Ashara answered the door, Stephen stepped in and gave her a quick one-armed hug.

“You doing okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “You?”

“I’m not the one who just almost got run over by a crazed killer,” he said.

“Not yet,” I muttered.

“I’m hoping not ever,” he said with a sidelong glance at me.

“Hello, Miss Adelaide,” he said, leaning over and giving her a peck on the cheek. “I brought you these.” He brought his other arm out from behind his back and flourished a bouquet of colorful flowers at her.

“Oh, you sweet boy,” Maw-Maw said. And I swear she simpered at him. “Ashara, you go get the vase down from the cabinet over the refrigerator and put these in some water.” She held the flowers up to her nose and breathed in deeply.

“Mmm,” she said. “I always did love me the smell of flowers.”

“Kiss up,” I mouthed at Stephen behind Maw-Maw’s back.

“I heard that, Callie Taylor,” said Maw-Maw.

I blinked, surprised.

Ashara came back with the vase and, once the flowers were arranged to Maw-Maw’s satisfaction and placed on top of the television where she could see them from her armchair, we all took turns telling Stephen what had happened in his absence.

He let out a low whistle when we’d finished. “So now he knows that we’re on to him,” he said.

“Or at least that something’s up and it involves Ashara,” I said.

“That worries me.” Stephen’s eyebrows beetled and he frowned as he looked at Ashara.

“Not half as much as it worries me,” she said.

“I just don’t know what we can do about it right now,”

I said, my voice showing my frustration.

“Well,” said Stephen decisively, “I don’t think there is anything we can do right now. Have y’all eaten dinner yet?”

I blinked at the sudden change in topic.

“No, we haven’t,” said Maw-Maw.

“Well, then,” said Stephen, “let’s order a pizza and forget about all this for right now. We’ll come back to the problem later, after we’ve all had something to eat and some sleep.”

He looked up at me suddenly with a horrified look on his face.

“Oh. Callie. I didn’t mean . . .” he stopped, searching for a word.

I laughed. “Trying to apologize to the eating-challenged?”

He blushed.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll just sit here and enjoy the company.”

In the end, I enjoyed the smell of the pizza almost as much as the company. Maybe a little more. We were all subdued, worried about what was going to happen next, how we were going to keep everyone safe from Howard until we could pin Molly’s murder on him.

None of us came up with any sudden inspirations, though, and when the pizza was gone, Stephen got up to leave.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Ashara said.

“No,” Stephen and I said in unison.

“You’re the only one whose name Howard knows,” I reminded her. “If he even happened to drive by and saw you here, then he’d know how to get to your grandmother.”

Ashara groaned.

“She’s right,” Stephen said. He reached up and brushed a curl off her shoulder. “You’re safer inside. Stay here. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turned and let himself out of the house.

“What was that?” I asked Ashara as she bolted the door behind him.

“What was what?”

“That business with the hair.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. He’s just a nice guy.”

Maw-Maw and I looked at each other and snickered.

“You two are horrible,” Ashara said. “I’m going to bed now. You should too, Maw-Maw.”

“No, baby, I’m not tired yet,” Maw-Maw said. “I’m going stay up and watch me some TV. I don’t got no sweet thoughts of a pretty white boy to rock me to sleep.” She grinned evilly at Ashara.

Ashara rolled her eyes again. “Fine,” she said. She stalked down the hall and into the third bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

“Just a nice boy,” Maw-Maw snorted.

“Sure he is,” I said, heading toward the guest room I had claimed as my own.

I heard Maw-Maw cackling behind me as I drifted into that floating fugue state that I was beginning to think of as sleep.