I lean in and take a small bite from the side, getting half ice cream, half cone.
“I loved those as a kid,” I say.
“Me, too.” Boone looks at me again. “You have some ice cream on your face.”
I touch my lips, feeling for it. “Where? Here?”
“Other side,” he says with sigh. “Here, let me get it.”
Boone touches an index finger to the corner of my mouth and slowly runs it over the curve of my bottom lip.
“Got it,” he says.
At least, I think that’s what he says. My heart’s beating too fast and too loudly in my ears to know for sure. Even as everything gets fluttery, I know this was all a move on Boone’s part. A smooth one. But a move all the same. So much more calculated than Len’s shy honesty that day at the airport.
Can I get a kiss first?
I was willing to go there then. Not so much now. Not yet.
“Thanks,” I say, scooting to the side to put a few more inches between us. “And thank you for earlier today. For distracting Tom long enough to let me slip out of the house.”
“It was nothing.”
“And thank you for not telling Wilma about that. I imagine you wanted to. The two of you seem close.”
“We are, yeah.”
“Did you work together?”
“We did, but I knew Wilma long before that,” Boone says. “We went to school together, both high school and the police academy. She’s helped me out a lot over the years. She was one of the people who convinced me to quit drinking. She made me realize I was hurting others and not just myself. And now that I’m sober, she still keeps an eye out for me. She’s the one who introduced me to the Mitchells. She knew they needed work done on their house and that I needed a place to crash for a few months. So you can blame her for saddling you with me as a neighbor.”
He pops the last nub of ice cream cone into his mouth before glancing at my popsicle, which is too much of a melted mess to resume eating.
“You done with that?” he says.
“I guess so.”
I hop down from the tailgate to let Boone slam it back into place. After throwing my half-eaten popsicle into a nearby trash can, I get back into the truck. As I strap the seat belt across my chest, a thought hits me: Boone and I aren’t the only people at the lake with Tom. He also has a neighbor, who to my knowledge has no idea about any of this.
“Do you think we should tell Eli?” I say.
“About Tom?”
“He lives right next door. He deserves to know what’s going on.”
“I don’t think you should worry,” Boone says. “Eli can take care of himself. Besides, it’s not like Tom is preying on seventy-year-old men. The less Eli knows, the better.”
He starts the truck and pulls out of the parking lot. In the side mirror, I get a glimpse of a battered Toyota Camry parked in a gravel area behind the store. Seeing it makes me wonder if it’s Megan Keene’s car, now being driven by her sister.
And if her sister is walloped with grief every time she gets behind the wheel.
And how long the car was parked there before Megan’s parents realized something was wrong.
And if, when they see it parked there now, they think for a brief, cruel moment that their long-lost daughter has returned.
Those thoughts continue to churn through my mind long after the car and the store it’s parked behind recede in the side mirror, leaving me to wish I was like Eli and didn’t know anything about what’s going on.
But it’s too late for that.
Now I’m afraid I know far too much.
Instead of taking the spur of the road leading to our respective houses, Boone drives a little bit farther to the one that accesses the other side of the lake. He doesn’t explain why, nor does he need to. I know that circling the entire lake will bring us past the Royce house so we can see if Tom’s still there.
It turns out that he is.
And he’s not alone.
When the Royce driveway comes into view, we see Wilma Anson’s car parked close to the portico on the side of the house, effectively blocking Tom’s Bentley. The two of them are outside, having what appears to be a friendly conversation.
Well, as friendly as Detective Anson can get. She doesn’t smile as she talks, but she also doesn’t look too concerned to be conversing with a man she suspects is a serial killer.
Tom, on the other hand, is all charm. Standing at ease in the front yard, he chuckles at something Wilma just said. His eyes sparkle and his teeth shine a bright white behind parted lips.