He doesn’t look convinced.
“And restocking the toilet paper,” I quickly add, as though it will make a difference.
“Right, okay.” He taps his sunglasses against the table. “It’s odd, don’t you think, that you and I had that conversation outside my truck right before we end up on either side of this investigation.”
“Investigation?” I don’t recall him saying anything about an investigation before. At the time, it had all seemed very routine. Clearly, something has changed. My eyes slide to the woman in pink slacks, still staring my way. I have got to do better than I’m doing if I want to impress this conclave or venery or whatever the heck it is. Sheriff Brooks is not my only threat at the moment. Leaning forward, I let my hair fall over one shoulder. “You said yourself I wouldn’t be the first to think it was edible. The lack of color and all.”
He inhales, a grin tugging on the corners of his mouth. I can see him wrestling with himself behind those suede-gray eyes, the man and the cop. “That’s true,” he concedes.
I shrug. “They must have pulled off the road before they ever got here and picked it.”
“The wife says they didn’t stop except for gas.”
“She’s lying,” I tell him. “Something like that would take hours to work.”
His eyes narrow ever so slightly. “Work—that’s an interesting choice of word.”
It takes all my self-control not to screech with frustration. “It’s just a word,” I say. “Maybe she did it herself, the wife. Maybe she wanted out after he used her face as a punching bag.” I feel a littleguilty throwing this already battered woman under the bus, but it’s a diversion. Regis can’t get anything on her because there’s nothing to find.
“Maybe,” he says ambivalently, but I can see I’ve got him thinking.
I reach a finger forward, run it smoothly over the gold frames of his sunglasses, let it brush against the skin of his knuckles, electric. “You know, Regis, if you wanted to see me again you could have just come by. Questions or no, I’m always up for a cup of coffee.”
I do it to knock him off his horse, but the moment we touch, I find that I mean it, that I want nothing more than to sit over a cup of coffee with him and stare into those eyes, giving my secrets away.
He breathes deeply, as if steeling himself against something. His eyes find mine over the table, a carefully controlled yearning in them. For a second, we are back at that night by his door, an ocean of feeling between us. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says, slowly withdrawing the sunglasses.
I lean back just as Myrtle comes over. “Sheriff Brooks, you here on official business or to monopolize my pretty niece?”
He grins at me as he stands before cutting his eyes to her. “No, ma’am. Just here for coffee,” he replies, looking down at me.
I look away, flustered by how afraid and how aroused I am, knowing that I am playing at a game I do not yet understand.
“Enjoy your thing,” he tells her before stepping away and striding through the front door.
Myrtle watches him go. “What was all that about?”
I stand as his car drives away. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
I turn around to push in my chair, ready to allow myself a sigh of relief, when the jingle of the door opening plays against my already frayed nerves. Looking over a shoulder, I see that it’sher.She is unmistakable. The venery’s matriarch has finally arrived.
Aunt Bella sits in her tufted leather wheelchair like a queen.A mink hat is wrapped around her powder-white hair, a velvet burn-out shawl pinned over her shoulders by a pearl brooch. In her lap rests a wool blanket and a live hen, whose silky, orange feathers fan around her like a pom-pom. The hen is wearing a cloth diaper, I note. Behind her stands one of the women I recognize from Myrtle’s photo, though she’s far older now, with pale yellow hair combed elegantly back from her face and striking green eyes. She is dressed entirely in black.
I freeze, unsure what to do. But Myrtle kicks into high gear. “That’s it,” she hollers. “Closing time. Everybody out.” She begins shooing people from the café, including Ed and some of the remaining guests.
“But it’s only seven thirty,” complains Amos, the other Drunken Moose regular who likes to come in.
Myrtle shoots him an impatient glare. “Which is already far too long to have put up with you,” she hisses. “Now go on! Get!”
He and Ed scoot out the door with sour expressions, and she locks up behind them. The women who remain—eleven not counting myself and Myrtle and the little girl, Scarlet—look around the room at one another. They are the venery of bane witches, the last of our family, here to decide my fate.
Aunt Bella bends over and sets her hen on the floor, who promptly scurries off. “Rowena needs to stretch her legs,” she croaks. When she sits up, her cold eyes fall on me. “The prodigal returns,” she declares. “Well, let me see you.”
Myrtle pushes me toward her, and I stumble forward, standing awkwardly, unsure if I should curtsy.
“Donna!” she barks, raising a hand over her shoulder. “My glasses.”
The woman in black rustles through a handbag and pulls out a pair of delicately framed granny glasses. She hands them to her mother, who slides them onto her long nose.
