Midnight Crossroad (Midnight, Texas #1) (18 page)

M
anfred had had a civilized idea while he shopped in Davy, one he was sure his grandmother and his mother would approve. Late the next morning, he walked down to the Antique Gallery and Nail Salon with a bottle of wine. Chuy was in the salon part of the store. He was painting a design on some acrylic nails, which were on the fingertips of Olivia Charity, back from wherever she’d been on her trip.

After Manfred greeted both of them, he asked Olivia, “Can I look?”

“Of course,” she said, and he bent over to see the design. Her fingernail pattern was dark blue and light blue chevrons.

“Really pretty,” he said. And it was, but he realized he didn’t know Olivia very well at all. He would never, in a million years, have believed this was her choice.

“Joe, Manfred is here!” Chuy called, and Joe emerged from behind a chest of drawers.

“Hey, man,” Joe said. “How you doing?”

Manfred presented the wine to Joe, since Chuy was occupied. “Thanks for a great evening,” he said. “Even if we did get in a fight afterward, the food gave us the strength to withstand the attack.”

“Thanks, and have a seat,” Joe invited. “I was just taking the old drawer pulls off the drawers and looking at the restoration hardware I could get to replace them. Nothing that can’t be put off. I’d rather talk than work, any day.”

Manfred hadn’t planned on staying, but he found he welcomed the prospect of talking to other people in a different room. He sat down in the extra plastic rolling chair on the client side of the manicure table. Joe pulled up a folding chair that had been positioned looking out the window.

“That was quite a shock, to hear that you guys had been jumped,” Chuy said, taking Olivia’s left hand in his own. “I’m sorry we didn’t hear you yell. Creek tells me she came to your defense. That Creek, she’s a firecracker, huh?”

“We were glad to see her coming,” Manfred admitted. “She can swing a bat, no doubt of that. I’m no street fighter. No big surprise there.” He looked down at his thin body. “Maybe I need some bulk,” he concluded.

“Nah, just toning,” Joe said. “Or Bobo could teach you some karate.” The conversation drifted to Jackie Chan and went sideways to Chow Yun Fat, while tangentially brushing on the injuries action stars incurred, and from that to doping exposés. Olivia threw in a comment from time to time.

Of all the citizens of Midnight, Olivia seemed the largest question mark. Even if he imagined that she had met and fallen in love or lust with Lemuel and moved here to be with him (and that was by no means a certainty), how could she resign herself to such solitude and isolation? Olivia was so clearly a citizen of a bigger world. Maybe that was why she traveled so often.

As Manfred walked home, he thought,
Every time I take a step forward in knowing these people, I end up with more questions
. How about Joe and Chuy? Granted, gay couples in a state like Texas wouldn’t have too easy a time of it. But Manfred knew that in any large city—and Texas had a few of those—there were equally large gay communities. Why hadn’t Joe and Chuy settled in one of those? Really, how many people were going to come to a hole in the road like Midnight to buy antiques? Or to get their nails done?

Once these questions had occurred to him, he thought the oddest thing of all was that he’d never set them side by side before.

Fiji had texted him this morning. “Tell Bobo about the vision,” was all she’d said. He’d glimpsed her setting off with Bobo the day before, so she could have told Bobo all about what he’d seen; but Manfred knew it was his responsibility, as reluctant as he was to relay an emotional message.

He’d been wrong not to do it before.

There was no point in putting it off. He turned in at the pawnshop, went up the steps, opened the big door. Bobo emerged from the gloom of the back of the shop, like the Cheshire cat; first Manfred could see his smile, then the rest of him.

After they’d exchanged greetings, Manfred said, “I have something to tell you. When I went to Fiji’s class the other night . . .” And he relayed what he had seen in the vision, though he didn’t dwell on the grisly details of Aubrey’s appearance. “So that’s what she said, short and complete. She wanted you to know she really loved you,” he concluded.

Bobo looked as if he’d been hit between the eyes. “You’re not making this up?” he asked, and you could tell he was praying that Manfred was not.

“I would never lie to you about a vision,” Manfred said. He liked and respected Bobo too much.

“Thank you,” Bobo said, with considerable dignity. “Excuse me. I have to . . . I have to go do something.” And he vanished. Manfred scooted out of the pawnshop as fast as he could, to leave Bobo alone to grieve. And maybe to recover a little.

 • • • 

Two people from Midnight decided to attend the funeral: Fiji and Creek.

“I must be some kind of masochist,” Fiji said to Mr. Snuggly as she got dressed for the service. The cat, who didn’t often engage in conversation, looked at her as if he agreed completely. “First I make sure Manfred tells Bobo that Aubrey really loooooved him. Now I feel like I have to go to the damn funeral. To be his eyes and ears. You know what, Snug? I could almost not go and pretend I had. All funerals are alike, right? Aubrey’s funeral won’t be different from any other.” At least Creek was going with her. She’d have someone to talk to on the drive.

The service was being held in a town an hour’s drive past Marthasville, in a largish place called Buffalo Plain. When Fiji pulled up to Gas N Go, Creek came out wearing a black short-sleeved dress and carrying a white cardigan. Creek’s only jewelry was a large silver and turquoise cross. The simplicity suited her.

Everyone has a style but me,
Fiji thought glumly. When she pulled on things she liked, Fiji was pleased with how she looked, but today she’d felt obliged to give her clothes quite a bit of thought. Black would be hypocritical, but she hadn’t wanted to offend Aubrey’s (presumably grieving) family by wearing something inappropriate, either. Dark brown pants and good shoes with medium heels had been her compromise, with a long-sleeved green sweater and the good gold chain and earrings she wore when she was dressed up. She’d worked on her hopeless hair a bit, but she caught Creek looking at her head in a startled way. Fiji felt like sighing. There were those to whom style came naturally, and those who didn’t have a clue.

Fiji was sadly aware she was one of the latter.

She and Creek got along well enough on the drive. At first, they talked about Halloween and the upcoming decorating party. Fiji would be preparing her house for the holiday, and anyone who wanted could come over to help. This was the third year in a row Fiji had held an open house on October 31. And no matter when the schools or city fathers decreed children should go trick-or-treating, Fiji celebrated on the calendar day. After they’d discussed the plans for this year, an awkward silence fell. At least, Fiji thought it felt awkward.

“I’m glad you wanted to ride with me,” Fiji said, too abruptly. “I guess I didn’t realize that you and Aubrey were close.” That was as close as she could come to saying,
Why the hell are you volunteering to go to this funeral?

“Aubrey didn’t have much to do after she moved in with Bobo,” Creek said. “She cut back on her shifts at the restaurant so she could spend more time with him in the evening, when he was off work. So she’d come over to Gas N Go, buy some Corn Nuts, hang around. She’d talk to me and Connor.”

“I didn’t realize that. I’m sorry.” For the first time, Fiji realized that Creek was lonely for female companionship, and Fiji knew instantly that she should have thought about that and done a little dropping by herself.

“She tried to be nice,” Creek said.

That was damning with faint praise, if Fiji had ever heard it. She said cautiously, “But . . . ?”

“Well . . . she bragged about Bobo.” Creek shrugged. “Like
all
the women in Midnight had been after him, but
she
was the one who’d gotten him—you know?”

Two spots of color began to burn in Fiji’s cheeks. “Right. As if we were all panting after him,” Fiji said, in a slightly choked voice.

“Yeah. Come on! He’s a little old for me,” Creek said with the sublime pride of youth. “He’s got to be in his thirties, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So
that
was silly. Madonna is married to Teacher. Olivia, well, she and Lemuel . . .” She did look over at Fiji then, and Fiji nodded.

“And you, well, you and Bobo are like best friends, right?”

“Yeah. We’re buddies.” Fiji was proud of how evenly her words came out.

“It bothered me that she couldn’t help but flirt with every guy she saw. But she was nuts about Bobo.”

“I believe that, too,” Fiji said. “But she had some other reasons for going after him like she did.”

Creek looked surprised. “I’m sure she did. Living in Midnight isn’t every girl’s dream. I mean, I understand that she was put into position to meet him and . . . and seduce him. But I know the love came later. She was basically a good person.”

Fiji said, “She was a right-wing nut.”

Creek said, “You think she couldn’t love Bobo because of her politics?”

“I don’t know how much you heard when the sheriff was telling us that she had a whole backstory she hadn’t told Bobo? Creek, the only possible reason she could have for not telling Bobo the truth about her background when she decided she loved him is that she still planned on doing whatever it was they set her up in Midnight to do. And to me that’s just nasty.”

“I can’t believe that. I know she loved him.” Creek’s jaw was set in a firm line.

“Okay, I’ll concede the love. But if it had been true love, honest love, she would have told him her whole story.”

“If you think she was so devious, how come you’re going to the funeral?” Creek was on the verge of being angry.

Fair question,
Fiji thought.
How to answer it?

“I’m a proxy for Bobo,” she said. “The family doesn’t want him there.”

This, too, was news to Creek. “Why not?” she asked, clearly indignant.

“They know he didn’t have any part in her death, but they’re still resentful,” Fiji said. “I’m going so if he wants to know anything about it, I can tell him. He didn’t ask me to do this,” she added, in the spirit of absolute honesty.

“I understand,” Creek said. She’d calmed down. “I think that’s pretty nice of you.”

They rode a few minutes in silence. Then Creek said, “What do you think about Manfred?”

Fiji was tempted to say,
Why do you ask?
But that would just be mean. “I don’t know him very well, but so far, so good. He seems to fit into Midnight, and he seems like an interesting guy. What do you think?”

“I think what he does is kind of weird,” Creek said, as if she wanted to be persuaded otherwise. “I can’t decide if he really believes he’s a psychic or if he’s a con man. I don’t know which would be worse.”

“I’m surprised that’s a problem for you, since you’re so fond of Lemuel.”

Creek was clearly taken aback. Fiji wondered what the girl had expected her to say.

“Well, Uncle Lemuel . . .” Creek began, and then faltered. “I do know what Uncle Lem is, but he’s never been anything but wonderful to me.”

“Then Manfred might be no different.” Fiji struggled to keep her tone neutral.

“I guess my dad is so cynical it’s rubbed off,” Creek said, her voice stiff and resentful.

“Just think about it,” Fiji said, sorry that they were not happier with each other, and wondering what else she could have said. Creek might be too young to take a direct conversation. Or maybe she herself was being a jerk. She felt that was all too possible. She said, “And there . . . that would be the turn to the left we have to make?”

Creek consulted the directions they’d printed off Fiji’s computer. “That should be the turn, and then in three point four miles we make a right on Alamo Street. Then our destination will be on the right in half a mile. Solomon True Baptist.”

Even the name of the church made Fiji feel gloomy when she eyed it on a large sign a few minutes later. The words were printed in Gothic lettering on a white background, and from the spotlight, it was illuminated when night fell. The overcast day depressed her even more.

Though they’d arrived thirty minutes early, there were already vehicles in the parking lot. They dawdled in the car for a few minutes, checking their phones and chatting very cautiously. But cars and trucks and vans began to fill the spaces on the graveled parking area, and Fiji and Creek sighed simultaneously and got out of the car to walk to the door. Solomon True Baptist was a low building made with yellow brick, sporting unnecessary white columns that were supposed to look as though they held up the porch roof. To make absolutely sure the building was identifiable, a short spire squatted on the roof. Some church member with time and talent had created beautiful flower beds around the building, though they were faded with the onset of fall.

Fiji stopped at a pew close to the rear of the church, and she and Creek moved in after taking a program from one of the ushers. The pianist was playing a selection of somber hymns. Listening to the dark tones of the music, Fiji was terrifyingly, abruptly shocked—all over again—by the fact that a human being, a person she’d known, was gone forever. She hadn’t liked Aubrey, and nothing she’d discovered about the woman after her death had changed that opinion, but purposeful eradication of another human being . . . that went against everything she’d been taught by Great-Aunt Mildred.

Great-Aunt Mildred had not believed in striking the first blow. She had believed in self-defense. Fiji found it impossible to believe that Aubrey had had a chance to save her own life.

Fiji glanced sideways at her young companion. Creek looked serious but not sad. Fiji thought,
She’s been to a few funerals before
.

As the doleful music continued, for want of anything better to do, Fiji examined the cover of the program. Centered on it was a photo of Aubrey, with a sort of halo effect around it, as if she’d been snapped against a sunset. In a font resembling script, the obituary read: