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Talulah checked her watch. “Itwon’tdo us any good to go there tonight if we don’t hurry. It’d be kind of weird to show up after dark, and it’ll be dark in an hour. We need to get going.”
Too disheartened to even finish her drink, Ellen left it, like she had her food, only halfway eaten and followed Talulah to the door.
Hendrix had been busy all afternoon. He was still trying to get caught up, and with Stuart being out of town, it wasn’t easy. He needed to pick up the supplies Ellen went to Missoula to get, but he wasn’t ready to go over there quite yet. Something Rocko had said earlier had bothered him all afternoon, and now that he finally had a break, he was hurrying out to the Haslem property to take a look at the area around the driveway while he still had enough sunlight.
As he approached the turnoff, he pulled to the side of the road and got out. He assumed Rocko would have been coming from town when he saw the truck, but that hadn’t been established, so he planned to check both directions, if necessary.
He walked ten, twenty, thirty, forty and then fifty feet from the Haslem drive and saw none of the skid marks he’d expected to find on the pavement. He didn’t see any areas on the shoulder that’d been disturbed, either. So...if Rocko had slammed on his brakes and narrowly avoided a collision, where was the telltale rubber that should’ve been left on the road? And, if there were no skid marks, where was the evidence that he’d been forced over onto the shoulder?
There was no proof of that, either.
Hendrix examined the other side of the drive just as carefully. No skid marks; no evidence of a motorcycle or any other kind of vehicle stopping on the shoulder.
Trying to figure out how this incident had taken place, he turned to look at his truck and immediately noticed the impressions his own tires had left on the soft dirt. There should’ve been some sign that Rocko had nearly been in an accident, even though it was a few days ago.
“What the hell,” he mumbled and drove down the driveway, wondering if he’d see anything on the property itself that might back up Rocko’s story—like evidence of a motorcycle turning around to head back after narrowly escaping a life-threatening collision.
He found no sign of that. But that didn’t mean anything. He and Ellen—and Jay, too—had been in and out of the property with various vehicles. There were all kinds of tire tracks but nothing particularly suspicious or unusual about any of them.
He was just climbing back into his truck when his phone went off. It was Stuart.
He punched the Talk button. “Hello?”
“What’s going on? I just heard from Lynn. She’s beside herself. Claims Ellen’s trying to say she sabotaged the Haslem well.”
“I don’t think it’s quite the way she’s making it sound,” he said, hoping against hope he was right. “But something’s up, and I’m trying to figure out what it is.”
“Hi, Hendrix!” Leo called from the background. “I’m almost home. I can’t wait to see you.”
“Tell Leo I’m excited he’ll be back.”
Stuart relayed the message, but Leo must’ve grabbed the phone, or Stuart let him take it for a minute, because his voice suddenly came through much more stridently. “I miss you, Hendrix.”
“I miss you, too, Leo.”
“Why’s Mom mad at Ellen, Hendrix? I like Ellen. I want to go back to her house. She has my chalk.”
There was no way to make Leo understand the complexity of the situation. “There’s been a little confusion around here since you left, bud, that’s all.”
“Confusion?”
“I’ve got some stuff I need to get done before the sun goes down. Can you put your dad back on the phone?”
“Okay. But...will you take me to get a donut tomorrow morning?”
Hendrix chuckled. “You’re going to have to talk to your mom about that. I don’t dare cross her right now, not even for you.”
He could hear Leo hitting Stuart up to let them go get a donut tomorrow as the phone changed hands.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Stuart asked when he came back on the line.
Hendrix gazed out toward the highway where he’d found nothing to indicate Rocko had nearly crashed, like he claimed. “I don’t think so. Not right now.”
“Will I see you at the house later tonight?”
“No. But I’ll probably see you tomorrow or sometime this weekend, if only for Sunday dinner.” If Lynn was still going to have it...
“Okay.”
