“It’s fine,” Amy said. “It really is.”
She was about to walk back to the window by the kitchen when she noticed the large brown lunch bag on the counter. She hadn’t seen it before.
“Here’s the bread I had Jimmy drop off for you,” she said.
“The what?”
“The loaf of bread. Wheat bread. I was making myself a loaf so I decided to make an extra one for you. I asked Jimmy to drop it off here.”
“Oh.”
“You remember seeing Jimmy yesterday?”
“No.”
“Or seeing this on your doorstep?”
“Huh-uh. But you sound like it’s a big deal or something.”
“I’m just curious about what time Jimmy dropped it off.”
“Why?”
“Because if it was last night, maybe he saw you get home — or saw something, anyway.”
Richie nodded. “He doesn’t usually leave things for me. He waits till I’m home so he has an excuse to come in. He likes to look at my football pictures and then listen to me tell him about my glory days.” Richie sounded sad, sentimental. “Somebody’s got to listen to me brag.”
“I’m going to drive up the hill and see if he’s home. It’s worth a chance, anyway.”
Richie got up and padded over to the sink — his naked feet slap slap slapping the floor — and stuck his head under the faucet and let cold clear well water pour down his head and face. When he was done, he toweled his head off and then went over to the refrigerator.
When he got the door opened and put his hand inside, Amy, ever the watchful sister, said, “I wouldn’t start drinking with Sam around.”
He offered her a weary smile. “Diet Pepsi.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You’re trying to protect me, Amy.” His voice was sad again. “The way you’ve been trying to protect me ever since Mom and Dad died.”
“I’ve probably overprotected you.”
He came over and kissed her tenderly on the cheek. His face was dry but still cold from the water.
He glanced out the window. “He’s coming back.”
“He’ll want to talk to you.”
“Yeah.”
“Just don’t lose your temper. And don’t lie. That’s the worst thing you can do. If you don’t know the answer to a question, just say you don’t know.”
“You know what I want to know?”
“What?”
“Where Darcy went after she left Riley’s.”
“Yes. That’s what I want to know, too. And that’s what I’m going to find out.”
“You? No offense, but do you know how to investigate a case?”
She tapped him on the head and gave him a sisterly smile. “Remember when I worked for the DA’s office in Des Moines for three years? Remember what my title was?”
He smiled. He looked as if there might actually be a tiny bit of genuine pleasure in that smile. “Say, that’s right. I forgot. You were an investigator.”
“Right.”
“God, I’d really appreciate the help, Amy.”
A knock. Sam.
She went to the door.
“Thanks for letting me talk to him, Sam.”
“No problem.”
She looked back at her brother. “Remember what I told you.”
He nodded. He was putting on a white short-sleeved shirt. He looked a lot better than he had fifteen minutes ago.
Amy said, “I’ll talk to you later, Sam.”
2
Susan Kelly pulled her truck into the alley next to the Fitzsimmons Hardware loading dock and then went inside. There hadn’t been a parking space on the street. Jimmy was with her. He worked on the farm a couple of afternoons a week. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She was in a hurry. Jimmy always poked along in stores and slowed her down.
Susan loved hardware stores, associated them with her father. He’d always taken her to town in his truck. She liked the smell of sawn lumber, the orderly rows of hammers and pliers and screwdrivers and a hundred other items arranged along the wall. She liked the talk, too, the men who stood around the cash register and talked with the owner. She’d never felt welcome in barbershops — strictly a male province — but this was the next best thing... listening to men talk politics and baseball and town gossip.
There were two men talking to Mike Fitzsimmons now. One of them was smoking a pipe. She loved the scent of the burning tobacco.
She took out her list and started filling her shopping cart. She bought Fiberglas insulation, a caulking gun, a doorknob, and a rake. She did most of the fix-up work around the farm.
She pushed her cart to the front. She had several other stops to make before going back home. She was worried about the new colt. It wasn’t taking well to its food and seemed mysteriously sluggish. She invested a lot of love in her animals. She didn’t want to get back to the farm and find that the colt had died. She felt guilty about coming into town at all... but there were some supplies she just had to get.
She was several feet from the register in the front of the store when a white-haired man named Morris Dodd came through the entrance door and walked right up to the register and said, in a breathless way that interrupted the conversation, “You hear about the dead girl?”
Now, no matter what the men had been discussing — in this case, the chances of the Hawkeye football team going to the Rose Bowl this year — nothing, repeat nothing was more riveting than the subject of dead girls. One could only hope that this dead girl was also naked when they found her. There probably wasn’t a single subject in the entire world as interesting as a dead girl who was naked.
“What dead girl?” Fitzsimmons said.
“That snotty new one. That Darcy Fuller.”
“She’s dead?”
“Yeah. And guess where they found her.”
“Where?”
“Up behind Richie McGuire’s little cottage.”
Fitzsimmons whistled. “Well, sounds like that son of a bitch finally went and did it.”
“He sure did,” said one of the other men.
“That temper of his and all his drinking,” Fitzsimmons said. Then, “They find Richie yet?”
Dodd nodded. “He was down in his cottage. Sleepin’ off a drunk.”
Not until this moment did the men notice that Susan Kelly was in the store. They all knew her history with Richie. How she’d screwed up her life for him. And how Steve Arnette was still sniffing after her even though he had a wife and child. This was a small town.
“Sounds like your old friend’s got himself in a little trouble.” Fitzsimmons said.
“Richie wouldn’t kill anybody,” she said. She couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice. So few facts... and they’d already convicted him and sent him to prison.
“He’s got a pretty bad temper,” Fitzsimmons said. “You’ve got to admit that.”
She put her items on the counter.
Fitzsimmons started ringing them up. He could obviously see that she was mad.
“I guess we are kind of jumping to conclusions,” he said, a note of apology in his voice.
But at the moment, Susan was having no part of any apology.
She just continued to silently glare at the men.
3
One of the fundamentalist ladies in town had started some rumors about Jimmy a few years back.
The woman had it on good authority — who this authority was, she never did say — that Jimmy was both a Satanist and a pedophile.
She did her best to get all of Crystal Falls riled up about this. Fortunately, most of the people were too smart to get caught up in such lynch-law justice. They knew Jimmy, and knew what had happened to make his mind work so slowly, and they continued to welcome him as a regular part of daily life.