Midnight Crossroad (Midnight, Texas #1) (26 page)

M
anfred (looking both ways) went back to his own place. He turned on the heat, a step he’d been putting off. It came on instantly, with that burned-air smell. But the gush of warmth was a relief. Manfred went into his bedroom and wrapped up in an old quilt of his grandmother’s before he went into the kitchen. He would not have thought he could be hungry, but apparently his stomach thought otherwise.

Though it seemed ludicrous, almost disgusting, he turned on his television. He couldn’t bear to think of what might be happening at Gas N Go. Creek and her father had to be going through another hell, as if they hadn’t suffered enough. And what would happen to Connor’s body?

While he ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Manfred tried hard not to think of the terrible night the two remaining Lovells were enduring.
Surely there must be some relief mixed in there,
he thought.
They’re free from the prison he put them in.
And then he remembered he was supposed to be watching television, and he made himself concentrate on a rerun of
The Big Bang Theory
. For the first time, he saw Sheldon’s narcissism as monstrous, rather than amusing.

He settled back on the couch and presently sank into a kind of nearly sleeping dream. In this fantasy, Creek came to his door, told him she couldn’t handle being with her father anymore, asked him to take her in and make her his . . . and said that she forgave him for standing by while her brother was executed. When he made himself get up and stumble to his bed, it was past midnight.

He found out the next day that at about that time, Creek and her father had loaded everything they had of value into the old truck and had taken off.

He discovered they’d fled when Sheriff Smith stopped by. Shawn Lovell had left the sheriff a letter. At some time during the night, Shawn had dropped the envelope, inscribed “Arthur Smith,” into the old mail slot in the front door of the Antique Gallery and Nail Salon. Chuy had given it to Smith an hour previously.

“Now I’m going to tell you what he said,” Smith told Manfred. Manfred could only sit in his work chair and try to look relaxed.

“In this letter, Shawn Lovell tells me that he just discovered his son killed Aubrey Hamilton Lowry. He tells me that Connor had a terrible back history of mental problems. He asks me not to blame them for leaving after Connor ran away.”

“What?” Manfred said, startled. Whatever he’d expected, that wasn’t it. “He ran away?” Manfred said weakly. “Wow, that’s unexpected.”

Smith raised his thick blond eyebrows. “He says he doesn’t want his daughter to be tainted by the fallout from the crime and that Connor’s confession shocked them as much as anyone else. Shawn enclosed a note from the boy. Connor says he’s sorry for everything he’s done. He says he’s leaving because he couldn’t stand being around people who cared for Aubrey.”

In Manfred’s opinion, this was a mighty fine letter for having been written from beyond the grave. “And do you believe Connor wrote that letter?” It was clear to Manfred that he was not putting an idea into Smith’s head that wasn’t already there.

“Handwriting experts are comparing it to the boy’s signature, but so much schoolwork is done on computers now.” Smith shrugged. “Since we’ve got a confession that fits all the known facts and I found the boy’s killed before . . . I called a detective in the force where they used to live, and he remembered the case very well.”

“Are you going to look for him? Or for them?” Manfred asked. He made sure his face was composed.

“The answer would have to be, yes, we are going to look for Connor real hard. He’ll always be a threat to others unless he has a lot of serious therapy, and probably even afterward. For Shawn and Creek Lovell? Realistically, they’re not going to be our priority. We’ve got actual bad guys to catch.”

The sheriff rose to take his leave. “I guess I won’t be coming back to Midnight as often,” he said. “I had never had to drive out here before Aubrey went missing.”

“I hope you won’t ever have to again.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t look too good.”

Manfred was certainly willing to believe that. “Yeah, I didn’t sleep well last night. Nightmares.”

“Every last person I’ve talked to here today has said the same damn thing,” Smith said. “You seem to be having some kind of epidemic.”

“Maybe because it’s the beginning of winter,” Manfred said absently, letting his gaze flicker over to the screen that waited for him. SandyStar521 was waiting to find out what her future held in store.

“I’ll let you get back to work,” said Smith, taking the hint. He moved, a little stiffly, toward the door. He seemed to be feeling the onset of winter himself. “You got a visitor.” Smiling, the sheriff nodded toward the front window. Mr. Snuggly was looking in, precariously balanced on the narrow sill.

“Let’s see,” said Manfred. “Maybe he wants to talk to you.”

The sheriff looked at him oddly, and Manfred realized there hadn’t been any touch of levity in his own tone. When Smith opened the door, Mr. Snuggly leaped down from the sill and arranged himself in front of the sheriff: looking up with his great golden eyes, tail wrapped neatly around his paws.

“What do you need, cat?” Smith asked, smiling.

Manfred held his breath. But his hope was dashed when Mr. Snuggly did not answer Smith out loud. That would have been pretty amusing, and Manfred needed to see something amusing.

Instead of speaking, Mr. Snuggly turned to start back to Fiji’s house. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Smith was following, and when Smith did not, the cat stopped to look back. Manfred didn’t know if the invitation included him, so he waited until Mr. Snuggly gave a tiny jerk of his head, a gesture that seemed to include him as well as the sheriff.

As they walked up to Fiji’s front porch, Manfred was sorry to see that the formerly abundant flowers were all but gone. Instead, there were pumpkins set out on either side of the door, carved into grotesque faces with considerable skill. Fiji had put out a sign reading, P
UMPKIN CARVING WORKSHOPS! $25 INCLUDING PUMPKIN AND CARVING KNIFE!

She was working off her unhappiness.

When they entered the shop, Fiji had moved the two armchairs and the wicker table into the back of the house somewhere. She’d set up four card tables with folding chairs, covered the tables with orange plastic table coverings, and put cloth aprons and the pumpkin carving knives at four spots on each table. Since the glass case had been broken and not replaced, there was just enough room.

“I’ve got fifteen minutes before my class comes,” she said. “Else I’d ask you to sit and have a cup of tea or some soda.”

“That’s all right, I need to get back to Davy,” Smith said. “Ms. Fiji, I’ve got a few things to tell you.” He explained the content of the letters to her, much as he’d done for Manfred.

“Manfred, I’m sorry,” was the first thing she said.

Manfred shrugged. “They had to do it.”

“Why sorry for Manfred?” Smith asked.

“He was a friend of Shawn’s,” she said, without missing a beat.

“We both liked to fish,” Manfred said off the top of his head.

“Really?” Clearly, Smith did not think it likely from Manfred’s appearance that he’d ever been in a boat, much less put a worm on a hook.

“Sure, me and my grandmother went fishing all the time,” Manfred said truthfully. “She loved to be out on the water. Said it helped her clear her head. Of course, we ate the fish, too. Didn’t have a lot of money. What do you do for fun, Sheriff?” he asked, from sheer curiosity.

“As a kid, I liked to fish, too,” he said. “After I got into law enforcement, time for that got scarce. But I got interested in cold cases, and I belonged to a club that met once a month to talk about famous cases from the past. That was kind of relaxing. Now I work jigsaw puzzles.” He paused for a moment and returned to being the guarded, serious sheriff. “Ms. Fiji, is there anything you want to say to me about the Egglestons?”

Fiji opened her eyes wide. “I can’t think of a thing I want to say about them. Why?”

“I’m still curious about them all catching cold simultaneously. And they mentioned your name.”

“Mentioned me? That’s strange. I don’t think I’ve ever met the older Mr. Eggleston or his wife. I did see Price riding his motorcycle at poor Aubrey’s funeral. At least, I guess that was him.”

“All right. Sheer curiosity, I guess. Were you out that night? The night it rained so much?”

“Only an idiot would voluntarily go out in weather like that.”

He looked at her, taking her measure. He didn’t seem totally satisfied with the conclusions he drew. “Eggleston and his buddies did make quite a scene at the funeral,” Smith said. “I understand he went to Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton yesterday and made an apology. Said it was just a tribute gone wrong.”

“Hmm. Well, he did the right thing.”

“I’ll be on my way. I’m glad I got a chance to talk to you, Fiji.”

“Same here, Sheriff.”

He left, putting on his hat the moment he stepped outside. After the door shut behind him, Manfred said, “Give the guy a break, Fiji. You could have called him Arthur.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not in the mood to make stuff easy today. You want to help me carry in the pumpkins?”

“Sure.” He needed to stretch. Too much time at the computer desk.

“I really am sorry about Creek,” she said, when they’d finished. They both sighed when they heard a car pull into Fiji’s driveway. “They’re already starting to come.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about Creek, too. But I guess this way is better for her. Where is Connor?”

“Where the two guys who came to beat up Bobo are, I guess,” she said, which was no answer at all.

“And that is?” He was impatient.

“If I can figure it out, you can,” she said, and then her first class member came in the door.

The following week, after everything had seemed to fall back to normal and the papers had stopped putting Connor’s school picture on the front page every day (due to his confession, the district attorney charged him as an adult), Manfred got a phone call. It was a number he didn’t recognize, but he got a lot of those, and he answered it without any expectation.

“Do you know who this is?” the voice said.

“Yes,” he answered, just as guardedly. It was Creek.

“We’re okay,” she said. “We’re north of where we were. It’s a lot colder! Hard to get used to.”

“Are you really okay?” He didn’t know what else to ask.

“As much as we can be. Dad got a job. Me, too. The same kind of work I did for Madonna.”

She was waiting tables.

“They treating you right?”

“Yeah, it’s okay. I miss you.”

“Same here.”

“I’ll try to call again sometime.”

“I want to hear from you.”

“I’m glad to hear your voice. I really am. Okay. Bye.”

“Bye.”

And then her voice was gone, and he believed he would never talk to her again. He thought again of the way her hair swung around her face, the smooth olive skin of her cheeks. He did not know if he should share this call with his neighbors or not. Somehow, he thought not. It seemed too personal and private.

Connecting Creek’s call with loss, he suddenly found himself punching in his mother’s number.

She was glad to hear his voice.

K
ids didn’t trick-or-treat in Midnight. It was too remote, too spooky. But there was kind of a local tradition in Davy to take the less anxious kids to the Witch’s House. This had begun in Mildred Loeffler’s time, and Fiji had happily continued the celebration. She and other inhabitants of Midnight worked on her house and yard for two days, to the disgust of Mr. Snuggly, who thought Fiji’s time would have been better spent brushing him and stroking his fur and feeding him good things.

Fiji had pressed some of her neighbors into further service this Halloween. Joe and Chuy were wearing silver jumpsuits and huge white wings, and they stood on either side of the steps up to the porch, like patient gleaming angels. They were both wearing long blond wigs, which looked far more natural on Joe than it did on Chuy.

They took turns saying “Enter” to each child, in a deep, forbidding voice. If they’d been dressed like devils instead of angels, it would have been a rare child who had the nerve to claim his or her candy.

All of Fiji’s bushes were draped with fake spiderwebs. She’d positioned huge spiders on each one. Fiji had said a few spells over them, and the eyes of the arachnids gleamed and sparkled and moved in a thoroughly disconcerting way. There was also a huge kettle smoking over a smoldering fire, all of which Fiji had under careful (and magical) control. Parents always thought it was done with batteries, but children somehow knew better.

Prodded by his mom and dad, who’d thought his question was really cute, one boy asked Fiji (dressed in a Morticia dress and a pointed hat) if she weren’t “afraid bad kids would come egg your house someday.” Fiji leaned down to look in his eyes, and he found he was more intent on those eyes than on her cleavage. “I don’t think anyone will ever do that to me,” she said gently. “Do you?”

After a moment of paralyzing fear, he said, “I sure won’t.”

She straightened, with a slight smile, and his parents were proud of him. But for the rest of his life, he dated that as the moment he realized the world would not always think he was as adorable as his parents did.

Manfred had been called into service, too. He made a great devil, somewhat to his own surprise. He was dressed in black jeans and a black silk turtleneck. He’d grown his goatee out and colored it black for the night, he wore heavy eye makeup, and he had a black hoodie drawn up around his face. He would have looked even more striking, but he refused to wear the stretchy outfit Fiji had suggested when they’d gone to the costume store. “I’d look like Gollum,” he said, “but in black.”

“You’re not that skinny,” she’d retorted, disappointed, but he’d kept his ground. She’d asked the Rev to play a part, but he had told her that he intended to spend Halloween in the chapel in prayer for the souls of the dead. He’d stuck to his guns, no matter how she begged. However, in compensation, Bobo had agreed to participate for the first time.

Bobo was the most handsome Perseus anyone had ever seen. He carried a remarkably lifelike Gorgon’s head, and he wore a sort of toga and sandals. In the hand not clutching the head, he carried a large shiny sword from the pawnshop.

“It ought to be curved,” Fiji had said. “And you ought to have
winged
sandals.”

“Well, no one’s pawned any winged sandals, or sandals of any kind,” he said.

Bobo was not much of an actor—he got upset when children found him genuinely frightening—but when he held out the loathsome snake-covered skull and proclaimed, “Behold the head of the evil Medusa,” it was a showstopper. The least sensitive children wanted to touch the “head,” which was disgustingly slimy and slithery. Every now and then, when Fiji had a free moment, one of the snakes seemed to writhe a bit.

When the second hour of Fiji’s open house was almost at an end, a mother from Davy said, “How on earth do you get it to look like the cat is talking?”

“Oh, did it look realistic?” Fiji had to struggle to keep a smile on her face.

“It was so cute! It said, ‘Get off my tail or I’ll smother you in your sleep.’”

“Just some batteries and a CD!” Fiji said. “And isn’t that just what a cat should say?”

They both laughed heartily. When the mother left, Fiji turned and glared at Mr. Snuggly, who yawned.

At nine o’clock, Fiji went out onto the porch. The house had emptied of outsiders, but in the yard a few families and some teenagers were still enjoying the Halloween decorations. She adopted a dramatic pose on the porch, Manfred pressed “Play” on a CD player, and a fanfare rang out. When she had everyone’s attention, Fiji proclaimed, “This ends the celebration of the season at the Witch’s House!” She made a few grand passes in the air with her hands. The spiders’ eyes dulled, the cobwebs stopped moving, and the two angels bowed and retreated into the house. Fiji herself took a deep bow, to a smattering of applause, and straightened to say, “Have a safe drive home, y’all, and I’ll see you next year!”

She wasn’t spoilsport enough to turn off all the lights in the front yard, but she did lock the front door and draw all the curtains to make sure visitors knew the show was over. Fiji kicked off her high-heeled boots and collapsed into her rocking chair with a groan of relief.

“Good job!” Manfred said. He pulled down his hoodie.

“Thanks, all of you,” she said. “Anyone who wants a beer, there are plenty in the refrigerator. And there are some trays back there, if you wouldn’t mind bringing them out. I’ll get up in a minute. My feet are killing me.”

Soon all the food was assembled on one card table, folding chairs were up and in use, and everyone had a beverage. Chuy and Joe were glad to get out of the silver jumpsuits and into their normal daywear.

Those wings had to be heavy,
thought Manfred, who’d been curious about their feathery appearance. He saw the jumpsuits, neatly folded in Fiji’s storeroom/guest bedroom, but the wings were nowhere in sight. Across the hall, Bobo retired to Fiji’s bedroom to pull off his tunic and sandals, and put on his jeans and flannel shirt and sneakers. The golden sparkly stuff Fiji had put in his hair was coming off everywhere. He stepped out to see Mr. Snuggly crouching before his dish in the kitchen, eating some chopped beef for his Halloween treat.

“Though,” Fiji said, raising her voice, “he doesn’t deserve it! After talking to that woman!”

“She stepped on my tail,” a muffled voice called back, and Bobo laughed.

Manfred reflected that all the inhabitants of Midnight had accepted the news that Mr. Snuggly could talk with remarkable equanimity. Even Bobo, who was the most unmagical person Manfred could imagine, had come to take the cat’s conversation for granted after a day or two of expressing wonder. And the death of Connor had become part of the life of the town. It was never mentioned. Only the Reeds had expressed shock and amazement at Connor’s confession and the vanishing act of Shawn Lovell. Teacher was working full-time at Gas N Go, according to written instructions left by Shawn, until he could sell the convenience store. And Teacher seemed very happy with that, though Madonna was predictably grumpy.

The town had closed over the Lovells’ sudden absence.

All in all, Manfred realized as he sipped a beer, he’d had an amazing time of it since he’d moved to Midnight. He felt more and more at home. As the beer took hold, Manfred found himself wondering if his selection of Midnight had been predestination? Fate? Chance? Manfred couldn’t decide and wasn’t sure he needed to. But he still regretted Creek’s abrupt departure. He withdrew into himself a little as he thought of her, letting the conversation of his new friends wash over him.

Bobo stood up, so quickly it startled everyone in the room. The silence that fell jolted Manfred out of his reverie.

“What’s up?” he asked, thinking he’d missed a cue.

“I have no idea,” Joe said. “Bobo?”

“I have something to show you all,” he said. “And I’m going to do it now while I still have the courage.”

“Where?” Fiji said. “If it’s far, I’m going to put on my sneakers.”

“Across the street. In the shop.”

“Okay, just wait a sec.” Fiji hauled herself up, wincing as she walked back to her room carrying the boots that had given her such grief. Very shortly she returned, still in her black costume but with battered Pumas on her feet. “I’m ready,” she said, and they all got up. Manfred didn’t know how the others felt, but he was kind of worried and kind of excited.

They trailed after Bobo as he crossed to Midnight Pawn. Instead of going up to the door to the stairs to his apartment, he went through the main door to the pawnshop. Olivia was sitting in Bobo’s favorite chair, and Lemuel was behind the counter reading a tattered book. They both looked very surprised that Midnight was coming to the shop.

“We’ve had no customers,” Lemuel said. “And it’s been a slow night in every respect.”

“Looks like you had a crowd over there,” Olivia said to Fiji. “Did everyone have a good time?”

“Yes,” Fiji said, but not as if she were paying attention to what she was saying. “Bobo says he has a surprise for us.”

“Really?” Olivia stared at Bobo. “I thought we’d kind of had our fill of surprises.”

He laughed. “You may like this one. I don’t know.”

He walked toward the back of the shop, pulling some keys out of his pocket as he went. When he got to the storage closet, he unlocked the padlock, then the dead bolt, and opened the door.

Manfred first noticed all the televisions on the shelves, maybe thirty—plus a small locked case full of guns and jewelry. And there was a shelf of power tools and appliances.

“That’s a lot of TVs,” he said. “But surely that’s not the surprise?”

“That’s not the surprise. Those are just the first things people think of pawning.” Bobo went down the narrow corridor between the shelves to arrive at a wall at the back. It would have been a good place to put some extra shelves, now that Aubrey’s boxes were gone.

“What are you doing?” Lemuel said.

To Manfred, the vampire sounded not only surprised, but unhappy.

“I found this,” Bobo said, looking over his shoulder at them. He was not-quite smiling. “It made me feel like the shop was the right investment.” He reached up high—he was the only one of them who could stretch that far—and lifted up the corner of an old heat register. It was in a dark corner, and it had looked for all the world like it screwed firmly into the wall. Bobo’s fingers, fully extended, pressed something inside the aperture, and there was an audible mechanical noise. Somewhere, parts had worked together.

Bobo pressed the wall, and it folded back.

“Jesus God,” said Chuy. Bobo reached in to pull a chain hanging from the ceiling, and a bare bulb lit up the closet, which measured about four feet by three feet.

It was full of guns, rifles, grenades, ammunition. Those were the things Manfred could recognize. There were things he couldn’t.

“You had them all along,” Olivia said, after a shocked silence.

“You had them all along,” Fiji echoed.

Olivia sounded admiring. Fiji sounded angry.

Manfred had to bite his lip to keep himself from saying the same damn thing.

“Well,” Joe said. He took Chuy’s hand. “I guess we didn’t know you as well as we thought we did.”