of everything I said during our last call. Now it seems that you have been made by the people from the casino and they will undoubtedly seek payback.”
“I’m prepared for that.”
“And if they go after Victoria? Or her son?”
“I said I was prepared for that.”
“Saying it and it actually being so is not the same thing.”
“Why is Wurtzburger down here? I’d assumed it was for the folks at the Rebel Yell and whatever it is they’re involved in that makes more money than gambling.”
“I don’t know and didn’t ask. I was only focused on the Agency’s side of the equation, meaning you. What are you going to do now?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, if I were you, I would achieve some clarity on that point. And do it sooner rather than later, Robie. That is my best, and last, advice to you on the subject.”
This time Blue Man was the one who clicked off, leaving Robie to stare down at his phone and wonder if he was making a colossal mistake. That was as close to showing anger as Blue Man was likely ever to come. And it had shaken Robie more than a dozen people screaming at him.
He contemplated his next move and then made up his mind.
He bought a six-pack of beer and headed to Billy Faulconer’s house.
* * *
“Damn, that tastes good.”
Billy had just finished chugging one of the beers and then crushed it against his forehead.
Or tried to. The big man didn’t have the strength to finish the job. He let the partially crumpled can fall to the floor.
Robie sat across from him sipping on his beer. He looked around the Airstream. It seemed that Angie had come and cleaned up quite a bit. The dirty dishes were gone, the floor and counters were free of litter, and the place smelled of bleach and air freshener.
Billy popped another can.
“Shouldn’t you go slow on that?” asked Robie. “It might mess up your meds.”
Billy looked at him in surprise. “Ain’t on no meds, less you count the oxygen.”
“Isn’t the pain bad?”
Billy held up the beer and smiled weakly. “That’s what this here is for.”
He took a long drink and then rested the can against his chest. “How’re things goin’ with you?”
“Okay. Did you hear the Clancys’ house burned down?”
“Little Bill done told me. Ain’t had a fire like that for years and years. Lotta house to burn. Pete okay?”
Robie shrugged. “I don’t know. Haven’t seen him. By the way, my father pled not guilty. And he has a lawyer now. Toni Moses.”
“Hear she’s real good. And damn expensive.”
“Well, when you’re fighting for your life, what’s money?” As soon as Robie said it, he regretted his choice of words.
“Guess you right ’bout that.” Billy sank back on the couch and his breathing got a little heavier. “Fightin’ for your life,” he said in a low voice. “Only I’m past fightin’, right? Hell, done is done.” He tried to laugh but it died in his throat.
“What’s the name of your doctor again?”
“Huh, oh, Doc Holloway.”
“Where’s his office?”
Billy stared at him. “Why, you sick?”
“Got a thing on my arm I want him to look at.”
“Oh yeah, he’s real good. He’s on Wright Street. Near the Gulf Coast Diner. You ’member that place? Dollar pitchers and all the shrimp you could eat.”
“I remember. How many times did we get thrown out of there for eating too much?”
“At least five times. But they kept lettin’ us back in.”
“Because we kept winning ball games. The assholes.”
Billy laughed so hard he started choking. Robie rose quickly and got him breathing properly and settled again.
“So you got a problem with your arm?” wheezed Billy.
Robie nodded. “Nothing major. Just getting old.”
“Sounds like a good deal, gettin’ old,” muttered Billy. Then he finished the second beer in one gulp.
* * *
Robie left Billy’s an hour later and headed to see Doc Holloway.
He was in his fifties, slightly built, with a crown of graying hair and a bushy mustache. His blue eyes were capped by a pair of wild eyebrows.
Holloway had not been in Cantrell when Robie lived here, but he knew Robie’s father, he told him.
Robie had him examine his arm. Holloway looked over the burn and scar tissue and said, “You’re going to need surgery on this.”
“Know a good one?”
“Not in Cantrell. You’ll need to go over to Biloxi. I can give you a referral. How’d you come by that anyway? That’s a right bad burn.”
“Got too close to a fire.”
Holloway gave him a condescending look. “Well, I figured something like that.”
“I’ve been to see Billy Faulconer. Pretty sad to see him like that.”
Holloway took off his glasses and cleaned them with a paper towel.
“Well, people’s choices do have an impact on their health.”
“So lung cancer then? From smoking?”
“I can’t talk to you about that. Patient privacy.”
“Right, only Billy told me it was lung cancer.”
“Well, if he did I can’t dispute it, but I also can’t talk about it.”
“I guess if he had come in earlier, gotten an X-ray, PET and bone scan, CT scan, and had a biopsy done, you might have caught it. But I suppose it showed up on all those tests confirmed as lung cancer?”
Holloway wrote something down on a piece of paper. “Here are the referrals for surgeons in Biloxi. For now keep it clean and don’t exert yourself. Looks like you partially tore some of the scar tissue already.”
Robie took the paper. “Right, thanks.”
He walked out thinking Holloway was either just following the rules in not discussing Billy’s case, or he hadn’t done the tests he was supposed to have done to confirm the man actually had terminal lung cancer.
Only Robie wasn’t sure what he could do about it.
He drove back to the Willows.
Victoria’s Volvo was there. She must have finished her visit at the jail. He walked inside and looked around. Priscilla came out from the kitchen rubbing her hands on a towel.
“You should keep the front door locked,” said Robie.
“Since when? Ain’t nobody in Cantrell lock their doors. ’Specially durin’ the day. What if you got company comin’?”
“Then they can knock and you can come and unlock the door.”
“I’ll have to ask Ms. Victoria ’bout that.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to her about it. Where is she?”
“In her room.”
He climbed the stairs and knocked on Victoria’s bedroom door.
“Who is it? Priscilla?”
“It’s Will.”
“Oh, come on in.”
He opened the door and stepped inside.
Victoria was lying on the bed, her shoes on the floor next to her. She sat up a bit on a pillow. Her face was puffy with sleep.
“I must have dozed off.”
Robie stood next to the bed.
“How did it go at the jail?”
She propped herself up more and rubbed at her face, then pushed loose strands of hair back into place. “I must look a mess.”
“You look fine. How was Dad?”
“Not too bad. He was mad at me for bringing Ty, but once Ty went over and hugged him all was right with the world.”
“Good.”
“He told me about Pete Clancy and those boys from the casino. My God, Will, you could’a been killed.” She reached out a shaky hand and gripped his arm.
“Which is why I came up to see you.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “You need to start taking some security precautions. For starters, locking the doors so no one can just walk right in.”
?
??You really think these folks will try something?”
“They saw me in town talking to you. They saw Ty.”
Victoria now sat up straight. “Oh, shit!”
“Yeah. It was bad luck, but we can’t do anything to change that now. It is what it is.”
“If they try to harm one hair on—”
Robie clutched her shoulder. “That won’t happen, Victoria.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Do you own a gun?”
“Everybody in Mississippi owns a gun.”
“Then I would start carrying it with you and keeping it handy around here. But don’t leave it around for Ty to stumble across.”
“As if I would, Will. I’m not stupid or careless.”
“I know. I’m just being overly cautious.”
She took several deep breaths. “I think I’ll go check on Ty.”
“I’m sorry for bringing this down on your head.”
“I’m sorry too, Will,” she said, and her tone was not friendly.
“I can move out of here,” he said, interpreting her unspoken thoughts.
“Well, it’s too late for that now. They saw you with us. They’ll put it all together. Hell, they probably already have. Are they also the source of these credible threats?”
“I don’t know, since I haven’t seen these credible threats. Davis hasn’t shared them with Toni Moses yet.”
She rose, slipped on her shoes, and headed out to check on Ty.
Robie went to his room and sat on the edge of the bed, lost in thought. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but as he looked around he realized that this had been Laura Barksdale’s bedroom.
He should have noted it before. Late at night he had shimmied up to the second-floor verandah and into her bedroom enough times.
Her bed had been set here as well, and with the way the room was configured, it was the most logical place. Her desk had been against the wall facing the front of the house. She’d been an A student, unlike Robie. But he figured his grades were good enough, considering he played sports year-round and had far from a perfect home life.
He rose and went to the window overlooking the front of the house. This had been the same window where he had seen her silhouette.
His mind went back to that night over twenty-two years ago. It had been the biggest shock he had ever received: that she had chosen to stay here instead of go with him. If he had ever bothered to psychoanalyze himself, he might have concluded that his problem getting close to people might stem from that.
But he had never bothered, and thus never concluded.
His phone buzzed. The number was one he didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Robie?”
“Yes, who is this?”
“Sara Chisum.”
He froze, but only for a moment. She was the last person he ever expected to be calling him, especially after what had happened with her younger sister earlier.
“Sara, what is it?”
“Uh, you said if I remembered anythin’ that I should give you a call.”
“And did you remember something?”
“Well, to tell the truth, I never forgot it.”
“What is it?”
“It has to do with Janet. Who she was meetin’ with the night she was killed.”
“Who?”
“I don’t want to tell you over the phone.”
“Why not?”
“Look, Mr. Robie, Emma told me what you did.”
“You mean what I paid her?”
“Right.”
Now Robie understood the call. Little sister got paid, now big sister wanted her cut. Damn, thought Robie, these Chisum girls were nothing if not enterprising.
“All right, where and when?”
“Where we saw each other before. Tonight. Around eleven.”
“Why so late?”
“Because I can’t get away until my parents are asleep. My dad’s been watchin’ me like a hawk.”
“Okay, how much?”
“Triple what you paid Emma.”
“And if what you remembered isn’t worth that?”
“Trust me, it will be.”
Chapter
36
ROBIE GOT THERE at ten, because he didn’t like other people picking the spots for meetings. He had left his car about a quarter mile away and approached on foot.
He was currently motionless behind a tree taking stock of the land in front of him. He didn’t like walking around out here late at night. Snakes were plentiful, and most of them were venomous. But even worse than that were the gators. The Pearl had its share of the deadly creatures. And though gators were mostly afraid of humans and avoided them whenever possible, sometimes the two species butted heads. And the gators won their fair share of those encounters.
The gator population had almost been wiped out in Mississippi by the 1970s. To replenish it the state had handed out baby gators at the state fair and asked folks to go drop them in the rivers. It had worked. Now there were nearly forty thousand of them in the state’s waters. They were territorial creatures, and they did most of their hunting at night.
Robie had almost lost a leg to one while swimming at dusk in the Pearl as a teenager.
The one thing he had never forgotten from the encounter was how big the suckers were. And fast.
He had both pistols with him, and he would use them, if necessary, on snakes, gators, or anything threatening him that moved on two legs.
He continued to look around, listening for both human footsteps and the rattles of snakes.
At two minutes past eleven he heard them.
Footsteps. Light, uncertain, hesitant.
Then Sara Chisum appeared in the same clearing where she had encountered Robie earlier. Near where Clancy had died. Probably where her sister had gone into the Pearl with a hole in her head.
She had on cutoff jean shorts, tennis shoes, and a long-sleeved shirt that hung past her waist.
“Mr. Robie?” she called out.