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“And sometimes I’d see that man that has the antique shop visiting,” she said. “He was real sneaky about it, but I’m sneakier. I’ve got long-range binoculars.”
“I want to ask you about the morning before Reverend Oglesby went missing,” Jack said, getting things back on track before she told us more than we wanted to hear about Vaughn. “Did he make his usual run that morning?”
“Sure did. Like clockwork that boy was. And he wasn’t hard to look at either. If he hadn’t been seeing that nice antiques man, I would’ve made a play for him myself. Gay men make the best lovers, you know. They’re very in tune with the body.”
Jack nudged me under the table when I snickered.
“Did you see any cars go by that morning?” he asked.
“Oh, sure. Bucky Dew had the early shift at the gas station and he left a few minutes after five-thirty that morning. He lives in the yellow house on my left. There was an old hatchback that had broken down sometime the night before, and it was pulled off to the side of the road. Olive green and ugly as homemade sin. Someone stopped to get some things out of it before the tow truck came to cart it away.”
My eyebrows went up, and Jack sat forward. “Do you remember what the car looked like when it stopped next to the hatchback?”
“Sure, boy. I’m not senile. It was a white Cadillac. One man inside, but I didn’t know him. It just looked like they were transferring their belongings from one car to the other.”
“Was this around the same time Reverend Oglesby was making his run?”
“Now that you mention it,” she said, pursing her lips in thought. “Daniel jogged by and the white car left, and I stopped watching because I saw Joanie Neddler next door sneaking back home, wearing the same clothes she’d left in the night before. Mr. Neddler’s been away on business all week, so I knew she’d been up to no good. Also, her dress was on backwards, which is never a good sign.”
“What time did the tow truck come?” I asked.
“Let’s see,” she said, closing her eyes as she thought back. “I’d already watched The Price is Right. Idiots, all of them, that morning. And I’d finished the crossword puzzle in the paper. So I’d say around ten o’clock. Maybe ten-thirty.”
“Did you recognize the tow truck?”
“Oh, sure. It said Murphy’s Auto Shop right across the side. It’s where I take my truck to be serviced. The owner’s an asshole, but he’s a damned good mechanic.”
***
Thirty minutes later we were back on the road and headed home to Bloody Mary.
“You know,” I said. “I want to be just like Miss Pilcher when I grow up.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re already there, babe. I knew she reminded me of someone. Though I don’t know what your current movie viewing habits are.”
“My tastes don’t lean to Sunday morning orgies, if that’s what you’re wondering. And unfortunately, religious guilt stays with you no matter how far you stray from the church, so I can’t see it happening any time in our future either.”
“Damn,” Jack said. “I was hoping.”
“Where are we headed now?”
Jack turned off the Towne Square, and he made a slow pass-by of Murphy’s Auto Shop. The building was locked up tight, but that wasn’t saying much. Every business in Bloody Mary was locked up tight on Sunday.
“Something was going on there,” Jack said, idling in front of the shop. “Something that doesn’t have anything to do with what we originally thought was a hate crime. It’s a distraction, and it’s working. They’re trying to make me split my attention, when what I need to be doing is digging into that auto shop. We’ve got two cars abandoned by the side of the road, and George goes to collect both of them. The first time, there’s the white Cadillac that’s somehow connected. The second time, George ends up with a bullet in his brain. Add in the tattoo on George’s arm and Reverend Oglesby’s sexual orientation, and we have two crimes that are too coincidental to be anything other than connected. Let’s go pay another visit to Doc Randall.”
Jack had just put the car in gear when his phone rang. He put it in park again and answered, “Sheriff Lawson.”
I let Jack’s conversation drone on in the background. There was something important I was missing. Something that nudged the edges of my memory, but I couldn’t quite get a grasp on it. I looked at the auto shop again and tried to replay the scene from the time I’d arrived. I needed to look at the picture I’d found inside George. Maybe that would shake something loose.
“That was Agent Carver,” Jack said once he hung up. “He’s halfway here. I’m supposed to meet him in an hour and bring him up to speed. I’ll make sure to take him with me when I go pay a visit to the mayor. Maybe he won’t threaten to fire me in front of a fed.”
“It doesn’t bother you?” I asked. “Having to turn over everything to him?”
“Not really,” he said. “Ben’s a good guy. He’ll let me take the lead on Oglesby and George, but I know he’s about to have a mess on his hands and a shitload of paperwork. And it’s going to be a nightmare trying to make charges stick. He’ll shut them down for a little while, but they’ll resurface again.”
“The law sucks.”
“Yeah, sometimes it does. But we’ll keep plugging away at it, and maybe someday it’ll make a difference.”
