“I heard that,” Sipe said. “Say, he ever take you out to the Big 7, down the road there? They make one hell of a breakfast.”
“I don’t trust roadside cafés,” she said, taking her cigarettes from the pocket of her housedress and clamping one between her dentures. “Got ptomaine in one over Abilene way back in ’74, and like to die. My boy takes over the cookin when he’s here. He ain’t no Emeril, but he ain’t bad. Knows his way around a skillet. Don’t burn the bacon.” She dropped him a wink as she lit up, Sipe smiling and hoping there was a tight seal on her tank and she wasn’t going to blow them both to hell.
“I bet he made you breakfast this morning,” Sipe said.
“You bet he did. Coffee, raisin toast, and scrambled eggs with plenty of butter, just the way I like em.”
“Are you an early riser, ma’am? I only ask because, with the oxygen and all—”
“Him and me both,” she said. “Up with the sun.”
Claude came back out with three glasses of iced tea on a tray, two tall ones and a shortie. Owen Sipe drank his in two gulps, smacked his lips, and said he had to be off. The Boltons watched him go, Lovie in her rocker, Claude sitting on the steps, frowning at the rooster-tail of dust marking the trooper’s progress back to the main road.
“See how much nicer the cops are when you ain’t been doin nothin bad?” Lovie asked.
“Yeah,” Claude said.
“Drove all the way out here just to ask about some belt buckle. Think of that!”
“That wasn’t why he came, Ma.”
“No? Then why?”
“Not sure, but that wasn’t it.” Claude put his glass down on the step and looked at his fingers. At CANT and MUST, the knot he had finally risen above. He stood up. “I better get the rest of those clothes off the line. Then I want to go over to Jorge’s and ask if I can help him out tomorrow. He’s roofin.”
“You’re a good boy, Claude.” He saw tears standing in her eyes, and was moved by them. “You come here and give your ma a big old hug.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Claude said, and did just that.
12
Ralph and Jeannie Anderson were getting ready to go to the meeting at Howie Gold’s office when Ralph’s cell phone rang. It was Horace Kinney. Ralph spoke to him while Jeannie put on her earrings and slipped into her shoes.
“Thank you, Horace. I owe you one.” He ended the call.
Jeannie was looking at him expectantly. “Well?”
“Horace sent a THP trooper out to the Bolton place in Marysville. He had a cover story, but what he was really there for—”
“I know what he was there for.”
“Uh-huh. According to Mrs. Bolton, Claude cooked them breakfast around six o’clock this morning. If you saw Bolton downstairs at four—”
“I saw the clock when I got up to pee,” Jeannie said. “It was 4:06.”
“MapQuest says the distance between Flint City and Marysville is four hundred and thirty miles. He never could have made it from here to there in time to make breakfast at six, honey.”
“The mother could have been lying.” She said it without much conviction.
“Sipe—the trooper Horace sent—said he didn’t pick that up on his radar, and thinks he would’ve.”
“So it’s Terry all over again,” she said. “A man in two places at the same time. Because he was here, Ralph. He was.”
Before he could answer, the doorbell rang. Ralph shrugged on a sportcoat to cover the Glock on his belt and went downstairs. District Attorney Bill Samuels stood on the front stoop, looking strangely unlike himself in jeans and a plain blue tee-shirt.
“Howard called me. Said there was going to be a meeting—‘an informal get-together about the Maitland business,’ is how he put it—at his office, and suggested I might like to come. I thought we could go together, if that’s all right.”
“I guess so,” Ralph said, “but listen, Bill—who else have you told? Chief Geller? Sheriff Doolin?”
“Nobody. I’m no genius, but I didn’t hit my head falling out of the dumb-tree, either.”
Jeannie joined Ralph at the door, checking her purse. “Hello, Bill. I’m surprised to see you here.”
Samuels’s smile was without humor. “To tell you the truth, I’m surprised to be here. This case is like a zombie that won’t stay dead.”
“What does your ex think about all this?” Ralph asked, and when Jeannie gave him a frown: “Just tell me if I’m stepping out of line.”