Greasy Bend by Kris Lackey

Author:Kris Lackey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2019-05-21T22:22:35+00:00

CHAPTER 20

Nichole Hewitt held a wadded tissue to her nose and motioned Maytubby to a chair at her dining table. Her eyes were scalded. “Look at this food from the church,” she said, moving her free hand over a dozen casserole dishes crowded on the table. “Five potato salads. The refrigerator is packed. Mom and I …” She shrugged. And the girls don’t like most of this. Onions, pimientos, mustard—some kid repellent in half the dishes. You have to take some for you and Jill.”

“How are the girls doing?”

“Natalie is three, you know. Things are different for her, I guess. Ella’s a year older, but she has never even had a pet die. She’s kind of lost right now.” She looked at the floor and bit her nail. “Oh, Bill, I’m afraid Ella won’t remember her father.” She sobbed into her hands, and Maytubby grasped her shoulder.

“I remember my mother,” he said. “I was four.”

She looked at him. “Really?”

“Yes,” he said. “In spite of my father, who never mentioned her. You will help your children remember Tommy.”

“Even that …” Her hands were shaking. “The idea of it …”

“After my dispatcher told me what happened, I drove some miles blind and deaf.”

“That’s where I still am, way up in the middle of the air. My own children seem far away, in some other dimension almost, even when they’re asleep next to me.”

“Can you sleep?”

“When I’m exhausted. I sleep and wake at wildly random times. Mom keeps the girls on the regular clock. I think they’re a little afraid of me right now.” She pointed to her eyes. “And it’s hard for me to read to them.”

“Grandma isn’t the same.”

She nodded. “As Tommy, either. He did the voices.”

“Nichole, I don’t know who did this yet. I’ve found a circle of men who are engaged in murky enterprises. They may be smugglers.”

“Jill told me about the uniforms.”

“I don’t know if these guys are behind the robbery. The FBI is looking in a different direction.”

“They talked to me a few hours ago.”

Maytubby laid a hand on the table and looked away. “Tillis and Sanchez.”

“They wanted to know if Tommy had told me about anything suspicious at the casino—any shady characters. Or if he was friends with anyone like that. Or if he had a gambling problem. They asked if Tommy was ever out late at night.”

“They have to ask those questions, but I don’t.”

“I was in no mood. I took that picture of the stickball tournament off the wall and showed it to them. I told them he practiced under the lights a lot. The young woman asked what he was doing.”

“Didn’t do her homework.”

“An electrician would case a building he wired—for a den of thieves. Doesn’t make a lick of sense.”

“No.” He looked over the covered dishes on the table. “Any of these have onion, mustard, and pimientos?”

“This.” She handed him a ruby plastic container with the name Tigner penned on a piece of masking tape.

They stared at the red cube as a fresh norther howled down the Hewitts’ chimney.

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