Vonn lets out a deep sigh of frustration and rubs a hand over his shaved dark blond hair. Muscled arms covered with tattoos flex with the action. “We’ve already been over this. We’re wasting time.”
I arch my eyebrow at him. “And how did going into town to hunt out answers work out for you?”
His mouth flattens, but he doesn’t answer.
On the first day, we spent over an hour searching for Byrdie in the pouring rain. The front gate was opened when it shouldn’t have been. Tire tracks from a large vehicle leading away from the gate showed that whoever had been out there was no longer there.
Nance doesn’t know how the gate came to be open. An older-sounding man pressed the intercom, looking for their wife, and Nance, confused, came to ask me about it. I’d been with Byrdie in the music room when she turned white and rushed upstairs. Then someone shot at me, or near me, when I went out to find out who was missing a wife.
But at no point did Nance open the front gate.
So how did they get onto the property?
Once we’d dried from our thorough soaking, and argued about how we could find Byrdie, Vonn decided the best course of action would be to head into town to see if anyone had seen her.
I warned Vonn that it wasn’t a good idea. This town hates us too much to want to help us with anything, even finding a woman in trouble. He refused to listen, so I went with him, already knowing things were likely to blow up.
At the grocery store, we ignored the stares from the few people standing outside the diner, talking or smoking under umbrellas as the rain continued to fall.
Before Vonn got one question out about Byrdie, Douglas, the owner of the grocery store, was ordering us out. It’s why Nance or Lydia has always picked up the weekly groceries. When one of us goes into town, it always leads to trouble.
Usually, we walk away.
This time, Vonn was stubborn, which led to a standoff and a warning to leave or the sheriff would be called. It was a threat swiftly followed by Vonn reaching for his gun before I convinced him to return to the house.
It was late, and the bus station was closed; otherwise, we’d have gone there instead to ask if any of the staff remembered which bus Byrdie had been coming from the day she arrived in Massey. Even if the bus station had been open, we’d probably have faced the same refusal to help us find Byrdie.
The people in this town hate us, and that will never change.
“The bus station is open now,” Vonn stops scowling at Makhi to say. “We can try there now.”
“No one will tell us shit,” Makhi says, head down and eyes fixed on his boots.
When Makhi leaves the house, he rides his bike. He goes for hours, which pisses Vonn off even more. Makhi says he needs time to think. Vonn snaps at him that he should be doing more to find Byrdie, given that he was responsible for her being gone in the first place. I think if Makhi hadn’t gone on those rides, he and Vonn would be wearing black eyes by now.
Or maybe it’s smoking on the roof that makes it easier for Makhi to deal with the guilt I’ve caught brief glimpses of when he thinks no one is watching.
“Byrdie had to come from the bus station,” Nance says. “She walked up to the house, and she saw the sign we were hiringin the grocery store. She wouldn’t have seen it if she’d been driving.”
Nance burst into tears when she heard Byrdie was missing, and every morning, she asks if we’ve found a way to save her. It feels like a million years ago, not a handful of weeks, since she was pushing me to pay Byrdie to go away when she first turned up asking for a job.
“I still can’t believe he let you put a sign in his shop window,” I say to Nance.
She makes a sound in the back of her throat. “I knew Douglas would have a problem doing anything for you, so I just asked for something from the back of his store, and when he went back to get it, I put up the sign myself.”
I shake my head at my nearly sixty-year-old housekeeper. Sometimes I wonder how well I really know her. “You lied to his face.”
Ithoughtshe had convinced Douglas to put up a sign in his shop, but I had no idea she had it in her to be so deceptive.
She doesn’t look the least bit sorry. In fact, I swear she’s secretly pleased she got away with it. “You needed the help, and it was the only way to get it done. And I didn’t lie. I needed that bottle of lemon Lysol.”
“To go along with the three boxes we have delivered to the house every month?” I ask dryly.
She picks a piece of lint off her skirt and doesn’t say a word.
Makhi would have laughed or joked about her hidden dark side, but he’s quiet. That’s never a good sign. When he’s silent, it usually means something is brewing.
“I could have sworn she said something about New Mexico,” Vonn mutters, rubbing a hand over his stubbled jaw.
