Irritation filled Cash. He wasn’t used to waiting for answers. He wasn’t exactly a patient sort of guy.
“Monroe got married in Vegas,” she said. The fact that this was all being said in Batman’s voice should have amused him, but he was well beyond that point. “She’d only just met him. They got married, spent the night together in the casino where she works, but when she woke up the next morning, he was gone. And there was no note or anything.”
“What the fuck?” Butch muttered. “He just walked out after marrying her?”
She nodded. “And, understandably, she wants to get a divorce, but she’s got to show the courts that she’s been searching for him.”
“Not sure that the courts meant that you have to go halfway across the country and into dangerous bars to try and find him,” Cash said to her.
“I know, but Monroe never does anything by halves. He told her that he worked in a bar in Billings. So we’ve been going through them all searching for him. Dotty wanted to hire someone to look for him, and then show the courts the receipts so they’d grant the divorce. But . . .”
“But what?” Brody asked.
“I think that Monroe really wants to find him in order to ask him some questions.”
“Why did she marry him?” Ralen asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Monroe’s always been spontaneous, and she’s always searching for something but never finding it. Maybe she thought she found it in him. I just don’t know. All I know is she was going to come here on her own, and Dotty didn’t like that, so Dotty decided to come with her.”
“And you decided to come too,” Ink asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t like to be on my own and I wanted to help my sister. I’m a bit of a liability, though. It’s not like I can ask many questions. I get too anxious around people I don’t know. I don’t do well in crowds. I don’t do well with people whoare drinking. Basically, going into seedy bars is kind of like my worst nightmare.”
“But you still did it for your sister,” Brody said. “That’s brave.”
“I’m not that helpful,” she told them. “I went to the bathroom, and when I came out, there was a brawl going on. I couldn’t find my sisters anywhere, and that’s when Cash told me to run.”
“So what happened next?” Ink asked her.
“I managed to get out of the bar after a close encounter with another man,” she said.
Ink frownedbut didn’t ask any questions. She could feel that Cash had grown more tense though.
“I went outside, and I was in a back alley. I was trying to get back around to the front to find my sisters, but I had to walk along the back of the next building.”
“It has a parking lot next to it,” Cash added. “That’s where we parked.”
She nodded. “I must have hidden beside Cash’s truck. That’s when I saw it.”
“Saw what?” Ink asked, his eyes narrowing. “Did you see something happen to your sisters?”
Addie shook her head frantically. “No, not my sisters. Oh my God, I don’t think it was them.”
What if it had been? She hadn’t actually seen whose body it was. She just had this weird feeling it was a man. But no, if it had been Dotty or Monroe, she would have recognized their clothing. This person had been dressed all in black just like the man that was carrying him.
“Was that when you saw the man with the body?” Cash asked.
“A man with a body?” Brody said. “Nobody said anything about a man with a body.”
“We only just heard about it on the way here when I told Addie that she was in trouble, and Addie thought I meant because she saw a man with a body.”
“Right. That’s not confusing or anything,” Ink said.
“What is she in trouble for?” Brody asked.
“And that’s not exactly the question to ask, Brody,” Ink added.
“We stopped on the way here so Addie could be sick. Ralen’s a sympathy puker, so he threw up as well, then he walked off to the gas station to get water. While I was helping Addie, this guy stopped his car and got out, demanding the keys to Crystal. When I refused, he and his friends attacked us.”
