The old man.
The murderer.
Everett’s hand spasmed, and the frame dropped to the floor with a hard crack. Mouth agape, he looked toward Josephine one more time, just a split second of shared fear, and then Everett broke into a mad dash, scooting around an ottoman, a stack of books, a little silver dog sculpture, racing for the kitchen and the door she held open to the cement steps outdoors.
The door smacked shut behind them, sending them sprinting across the lawn toward the welcome shelter of those skinny green trees.
But that wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t far enough. “Go, go,” he urged as they kept flying past the brown house and out across the field.
Josephine pointed left, and they veered over to follow the closest fence line instead of running at an angle across the field, and Everett was immediately thankful for her quick thinking. Staying close to the fence would keep them out of view of whoever might be looking out.
They were far beyond the sightline of Alex Bennick’s house by the time they dragged to a painful, panting walk at a barrier of wire fence.
“Did he see us?” she wheezed.
“I didn’t even . . . look back.” He paused to lean over and pull air into the fire of his lungs. “Did you?”
She craned her neck to look as far past the brown house and the trees as she could, but the Bennick house was no longer visible. “I don’t see anyone.”
After taking a few minutes to recover, they scooted through the wire and began to trudge along the last of the plowed field toward the cow pasture and the little group of trees beyond it.
“Was it him?” she finally asked. “The old guy?”
Everett had no idea. Or actually he had a few ideas, and they were all awful. “I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”
“Well, thank God for that.”
Josephine drew the towel from her backpack again and looped it around the barbed wire before turning her narrowed eyes on him. “That wasn’t safe, Everett.”
Nodding, he slipped past the threat of tearing metal and grabbed the towel to pull it tight for Josephine. But he didn’t meet her gaze. It hadn’t been safe, and now he felt awful to have risked it, especially with her along.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered as they walked with the fence line toward the little stand of trees.
“Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know.” There was something wrong with him, maybe. Regret rolled over him. But the answers felt so close, and if he could figure it out, he could do something really good.
“Maybe we should stick to online research. I mean, it’s not like we’re going to identify DNA if we find something, right?”
“Yeah.”
“No more stupid stuff, okay? I’m serious. Promise me.” His body flushed at that, because she didn’t seem mad; she just seemed worried. And no one ever worried about him except his mom. Shame settled over him with smothering heat.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I promise.”
She glanced back over her shoulder several times, but the house stayed hidden behind a slight rise. “What if he saw you?”
He wasn’t sure what to say to that. Because what if he had?
CHAPTER 13
Lily was entirely out of sorts, and she had been for the whole morning. She’d gotten only a few hours of sleep after last night’s drama, but once Everett had gone to school, she’d shooed away the black cat and dumped the torn-up cards into the rusted grill.
She needed to throw the whole damn thing out at some point. She wouldn’t dare set food onto the grill for fear of cooking up a new form of tetanus, but it had worked for the task of destroying evidence. She felt like the smoke still clung to her, marking her with guilt.
That was the reason she’d cried out in shock when Everett had shown up at lunchtime. She’d known about the half day of school at some point, but she’d entirely forgotten it by the time he’d raced into the office at noon, bursting through the door like a banshee. Thank God she’d finished with burning the cards early.
After Everett had lunch and set off for an adventure with Josephine, Lily had found two dead rats in traps behind one of the buildings, and one had been crawling with maggots. Still shuddering at having to clean up that squirming death, she’d locked up the office and taken a quick shower to regain her composure.
She felt better once she was back in her office chair, cleansed of both grill smoke and the rat incident. The third cup of coffee she’d brought to her desk helped too.
She got through messages and mail within five minutes, then moved on to her spreadsheet of overdue notices. For once there was good news. None of the renters would reach auction status this week. Most were one month behind, with a few two-month notices in there. She merged the file with her letter form and began printing them out. She would print out the labels too, but she always handwrote the envelopes for the two-month notices so they wouldn’t get overlooked as junk mail.