Page 9 of Go Alone

“Yes, they did,” Anita confirmed. “They were good friends.”

Kate turned to her. “Are you out here often?”

Anita cracked a smile. “You should’ve passed Homestead Farm on the way here. That’s my place. Or my husband’s rather. One of the last remaining original grants given to the first wave of settlers in the Northwest Territory just after the War of Independence.”

“Wow. Lot of history.”

Anita nodded. “Yeah, I suppose so. No one ever thought much about preserving it, though. We’ve got a framed copy of the original deed somewhere in the attic, but that’s it.”

“That’s more than a lot of people have.”

Anita nodded once more, a polite and patient acknowledgment of a not-particularly-interesting fact.

Kate turned back to the cipher and took pictures. Through the front door, she saw Marcus wave a farewell to Trout Jensen and start the march across the street toward Leonard Odum’s house.

“You think there’s a reason they only wrote the first part of the commandment?”

A chill ran through Kate’s spine. “Come again?”

“The commandment. It’s supposed to read, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.’ Killer only wrote the first part down.”

Kate’s throat clicked as she swallowed. Rather than address the answer to Anita’s question, she deflected, “You know your Bible.”

“Yeah, born and raised Methodist.”

“You still believe?” Kate asked before she could stop herself.

She was about to apologize for the wholly inappropriate personal question, but Anita answered without a whiff of offense, “No, can’t say I do. Never could reconcile a loving God with all the shit His creation does.”

“I can’t blame you,” Kate said.

Marcus’s feet clomped up the steps, allowing Kate another moment to avoid confronting the truth of the curtailed commandment. “Might have something,” he told them.

Both women shifted their focus entirely to Marcus. “What is it?” Kate asked.

“The neighbor said he saw a delivery driver leave something at Greer’s place the other day. Said he stood on Greer’s porch and stared at Odum’s place for a long moment before getting back into his van.”

“What company did he work for?” Anita asked.

“The van was unmarked according to Mr. Jenkins,” Marcus replied. “He said it was a 2000s Ford Econoline in faded robin’s egg blue.”

“Good memory,” Kate opined.

“People notice when something’s out of the ordinary out here,” Anita commented. Her laid-back demeanor was gone, replaced with a sharpness that raised her several degrees in Kate’s estimation. “Did Trout give you a description of the driver?”

“Said he was in his early forties, a few inches shorter than me and him are, and two hundred twenty pounds or thereabout with broad shoulders and a little weight around the midsection.”

Kate breathed a sigh that was half relief, half frustration. That description didn’t match Cox.

“Caucasian?”

Marcus nodded. “That’s what Mr. Jenkins said. He couldn’t see his hair because he had a hat on, but his skin tone was light. He wore a uniform, plain brown, like UPS but without the logos.”

Anita frowned. “Hmm. Not much to go on. No plate for the van?”

“No, he didn’t get the number.”

Anita nodded. “All right, well, I’ll call the station and see if we can find a light-blue delivery van. It’s going to come up abandoned or stolen if it comes up at all, but maybe we can find something from that. In the meantime, you two work on the cipher. I’ll see if I can dig something up in Greer’s past that might make someone want to kill him.”