“Thank you,” Crowley said, though it was clear she was peeved that someone had left her interrogation site.
When they were gone, Crowley turned off the mic and looked around the room. “Comments?”
“One,” I said. “He had a crust of mud on his shoe. It was a dress shoe. Fancy. He was in the city. Why mud?”
“Anything particularly odd about the mud?” she asked, as if humoring me.
“Not a thing,” I said, “if he was a farmer. He’d been in a car and a restaurant, not a field.”
“Nell,” T. Laine said.
“What? You think she’s gonna bite me?”
“Speaking of biting, why did you let Ming of Glass go?” Crowley asked smoothly. It was a cop question, slid in when not expected, hoping to get a reaction.
“Because she wasn’t in the restaurant when the firing started. She drove up later. She waited around for a while in case you needed to talk to her, but then she left. I’ve got her number if you need to talk to her.” I held up my cell.
“You have the Master of the—” She stopped. “You have the number of Ming of Glass in your personal cell phone database?”
“Her security guard, actually.” Whose name I didn’t know. Calling her Yummy would be embarrassing, but theSSSAIC didn’t ask for it. “I wouldn’t call in the daytime. That’s like poking a sleeping lion with a stick.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” Crowley stood and gathered her belongings, her face expressionless, her emotions indecipherable. “Include that information in your report,” she said to me. To the others, she said, “You are all dismissed. I expect reports in my e-mail by ten a.m.”
We all filed out of the room and into the cleanup.
There were three wounded and one dead, not counting the officer, lots of rounds fired, and no one had seen anything. I scanned the files being put together by JoJo and recognized none of the victims’ names. Worse, with the exception of the presence of the senator and the expected presence of Ming of Glass, Jo could find nothing that tied any of the dead or wounded to each other or to the people at the Holloways’ party. The worry about assassination or domestic—or paranormal—terrorism was still a very real possibility.
•••
Near dawn, JoJo said into my earpiece, “Nell, I got a vamp calling, saying she needs her taxi driver at University of Tennessee Medical Center. She asked for Maggot.”
“Ha-ha,” I said. But I slid off my chair and jogged to my truck. I gave her my ETA and once again appreciated the superheater in the old Chevy.
•••
Yummy opened the passenger door, looked over the interior, and said, “You have got to be kidding.”
“Nope. You could call an Uber.”
Her face scrunched in distaste; she slid in and closed the door. “Hell, Maggot. Can’t you afford a new car? Doesn’t PsyLED provide you a car? Does it have a radio?” She punched the buttons and twisted the knobs.
“Probably. Eventually. And yes. But it stopped working last week. Buckle up.” I slid her a sideways glance and pulledinto the light five a.m. traffic as she complied. “No working radio. We’ll have to talk,” I said.
“About maggots?”
I laughed. “About life. Tell me about yourself.”
“I’m sure you have a dossier on me. Read it.”
“My time’s valuable.” I let my words glide into church-speak. “You’uns ain’t important enough to me to read it.”
Yummy burst out laughing and twisted around in the seat so her legs were splayed, one knee angled at me. “I like you, Nell.”
“Hmmm.”
“You’re not gonna say you like me?”
“My mama taught me to be polite and to not lie. Those two things aren’t always mutually agreeable.”
