“How about some lunch?” she asked.
“Thanks, but I gotta run.”
She gave him a kiss and told him he was still her hero; it was a running gag between them.
Moffitt said, “Yeah, but I’d rather be Tom.”
Which gave JoLayne a melancholy pause. Sometimes she wished she’d fallen for Moffitt the way he’d fallen for her. He was one of the best men she’d ever known.
“Hang in,” she said. “Someday you’ll meet the right one.”
He threw his head back, laughing. “Do you hear yourself? God, you sound like my aunt.”
“Geez, you’re right. I don’t know what got into me.” She slid from the car. “Moffitt, you were sensational, as usual. Thanks for everything.”
He gave a mock salute. “Call anytime. Especially if Mister Thomas Krome turns out to be another sonofabitch.”
“I don’t think he will.”
“Be careful, Jo. You’re a rich girl now.”
Her brow furrowed. “Damn. I guess I am.”
She waved until Moffitt’s car disappeared around the corner. Then she jogged up the sidewalk to the porch, where the mail lay stacked by the front door. JoLayne scooped it up and unlocked the house.
The refrigerator was a disaster—ten days’ worth of congealment and spoilage. One croissant, in particular, had bloomed like a Chia plant. The only item that appeared safe for consumption was a can of ginger ale, which JoLayne cracked open while thumbing through letters and bills. One envelope stood out from the others because it was dusty blue and bore no address, only her name.
Ms. Jo Lane Lucks was how it had been spelled, in ballpoint.
Inside the blue envelope was a card that featured a florid Georgia O’Keeffe watercolor, and tucked inside the card was a piece of paper that caused JoLayne to exclaim, “Oh Lord!”
And truly, devoutly, mean it.
Amber kept the engine running.
“You feel OK about it? Tell the truth.”
Shiner said, “Yeah, I feel pretty good.”
“Didn’t I tell ya?”
“You wanna come in? It don’t look like she’s home.” All the lights were off, including upstairs.
Amber said, “I can’t, hon. Gotta get back to Miami and see if I’ve still got a job. Plus I’ve already missed way too much school.”
Shiner didn’t want to say goodbye; he believed he’d found his true love. They’d spent two more nights together—one at a turnpike rest stop near Fort Drum, and the other parked deep in the woods outside of Grange. Nothing sexual had occurred (Amber sleeping in the back seat of the Crown Victoria, Shiner in the front) but he didn’t mind. It was rapture, being so near to such a woman for so long. He’d become intimate with the scent of her hair and the rhythm of her breathing and a thousand other things, all exotically feminine.
She said, “We did the right thing.”
“Yep.”
“But I still wonder who that was in the other car.”
I don’t know, Shiner thought, but I guess I owe him. He bought me a few more hours with my darling.
The first time they’d cruised past JoLayne Lucks’ place, the other car was idling at the crub, a squat gray Chverolet sedan. The buggy-whip antenna said cop. Shiner had cussed and stomped the accelerator.
They’d tried again later, with Amber at the wheel. This time the watcher had been parked around the corner, by a newspaper rack. Shiner had gotten a pretty good look at him—a clean-cut black guy with glasses. “Don’t stop! Keep driving!” Shiner had urged Amber. He’d been too freaked to go directly home. He feared that the Black Tide (and who else could it be, lurking around JoLayne’s?) would ransack his house and kidnap his mother to the Bahamas. Amber had been anxious, too. To her, the guy in the gray sedan looked like heavy-duty law enforcement—and he could be looking for only one thing.
So she’d kept driving, all the way past the Grange city limits to a stretch of light woods off the main highway. She’d spotted a break in the barbed-wire fence, and that’s where she’d turned. They’d spent a clear chilly night among the pines and palmettos; no big deal, after Pearl Key. Through the wispy fog at dawn they’d seen a herd of white-tailed deer and a red fox.