Freya’s eyes glint in the sun. “Lascivious,” she says.
“I thought we were being honest,” I say.
Freya pulls up beside a lumberyard. A chain closes off the entrance. “Well, I didn’t mind using you, either,” she says, cutting the engine and turning to face me. “You made me feel young.”
Sunlight streams across her face. She’s beautiful, and in another life, we might have given things a go. We came together when we both needed each other for different reasons, but that night won’t be something I forget anytime soon. “What’s the game plan here?” I ask. “We could ask Vance why he came to Burkehaven this morning.”
Freya’s eyes search my face, as though she might have something else to add about our night together. If she does, she lets it go and returns to the business at hand. “We need more of a strategy, especially if the guy’s keeping secrets. We’ll start by asking about your brother. I’ll take the lead. I have plenty of experience talking to persons of interest.”
“You don’t, though,” I say.
“I have more experience than you.”
We get out of the truck and step over the chain and into the empty yard, where the air smells of split pine and mulch. “It’s Sunday,” Freya says. “They must be closed.”
We take a few steps across an empty parking lot toward a beat-up trailer. The truck that came to Burkehaven is parked beside it. “I wish Ginger were here,” I whisper.
“If it comes down to it, I’m packing,” Freya says.
“You brought a gun?”
She opens her bag, and I flinch. “Pepper spray,” she says, showing me the canister. “Don’t leave home without it. But I have a gun too. It’s locked in the truck.”
The door to the trailer slams open and Vance Moodey emerges, a bottle of Wild Turkey in hand, his eyes red and swollen. He wears a blue flannel coat and a backward baseball cap over his close-cropped hair. “We’re closed,” he says, squinting into the sun.
“We wanted to ask you some questions,” Freya says. “About your relationship with Reid Kilgore.”
“He’s a shithead,” Vance says. “And a liar. What about it?”
I feel myself rising to my brother’s defense and take a step forward, but Freya puts a hand of warning to my arm. “You and Reid,” she says to Vance. “You got into an argument a few weeks back.”
Under my breath, I whisper, “Start with some softballs.”
Vance reaches into the trailer, leaving the bottle of Wild Turkey on the step and retrieving a two-by-four. “I told you I was closed. Come tomorrow when the staff is here, and we can help you then. And I’m not answering any nosy questions.”
Freya stands her ground, hand in her bag, while I step back, ready to run. A shadow passes over Vance’s face as the sun disappears behind a cloud. He slips on a pair of glasses from where they hang from his collar, then focuses in on Freya. “I know you,” he says, his shoulders softening. “You’re the lady from that TV show. Sorry. I had a robbery a few years back on a Sunday. I’ve been jittery ever since.”
“We saw you over at Burkehaven,” Freya says. “You were taking photos.”
“What about it?” Vance says.
“You came to my mother’s funeral,” I say.
Vance turns, as though seeing me for the first time. He smacks the two-by-four against his palm. “Damn,” he says.
He comes at me as Freya fumbles with the pepper spray in her bag. I raise my hands, but the two-by-four clatters to the asphalt, and Vance has his arms out, and he pulls me into a bear hug, and I struggle to free myself until I realize he’s sobbing. “Son,” he says as he swipes at his eyes with a meaty fist, “I didn’t want to intrude. It didn’t seem like the time or the place.”
I stop fighting, as I try to make sense of his words.
“I can’t believe it happened,” Vance says. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
Suddenly, the pieces fall into place as I hear my mother’s voice in my ear:Everything isn’t always about money.
“You and my mother,” I say.
“I miss her,” Vance says. “All the time.”
I’ve been fighting feeling anything since the moment Gilcrest told me my mother died. When Seton came to the reception at Idlewood, I was too withdrawn to lean on her, and even when Freya found me at the dock earlier this afternoon, I wanted to talk about anything butbeing sad. Now, here, with Vance Moodey, this man I’ve barely ever met, I sob, huge ugly tears that won’t stop no matter how much I try.
