LuAnn trembled. Going to jail over the money or the killing was not her biggest concern. She put her hands together and looked over at Charlie.
“My daddy probably never said one word to me that was true. He did his best to make me feel like the most worthless piece of trash in the world and any time I built up some confidence he’d come along and tear it down. The only thing I was good for according to him was making babies and looking pretty for my man.”
“I know you had it rough, LuAnn—”
“I swore to myself that I would never, ever do that to any child of mine. I swore that to God on a stack of Bibles, said it on my mother’s grave, and whispered it to Lisa while I was carrying her and every night for six months after she was born.” LuAnn swallowed hard and stood up. “And you know what? Everything I’ve told her, everything she knows about herself, you, me, every damned molecule of her existence is a lie. It’s all made up, Charlie. Okay, maybe the statute of limitations is expired, maybe I won’t go to jail because the police don’t care that I killed a drug dealer. But if this man has found out my past and he brings it all out into the open, then Lisa will know. She’ll know that her mother told her more lies than my daddy probably ever thought of in his entire life. I’ll be a hundred times worse than Benny Tyler, and I’ll lose my little girl as certain as the sun comes up. I’ll lose Lisa.” After this outburst, LuAnn shuddered and closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry, LuAnn, I hadn’t thought about it like that.” Charlie looked down at his hands.
LuAnn’s eyes opened and they held a distinctly fatalistic look. “And if that happens, if she finds out, then it’s over for me. Jail will seem like a day in the park, because if I lose my little girl, then I won’t have any reason to be anymore. Despite all this.” She swept her arms around the room. “No reason at all.”
LuAnn sat back down and rubbed at her forehead.
Charlie finally broke the silence. “Riggs got the license plate number. On both cars.” He fiddled with his shirt and added, “Riggs is an ex-cop, LuAnn.”
Her head in her hands, LuAnn looked at him. “Oh God! And I didn’t think it could get any worse.”
“Don’t worry, he runs your plate, he gets nothing except Catherine Savage with this address, legit Social Security number, the works. Your identity has no holes in it. Not after all this time.”
“I think we have a very big hole, Charlie. The guy in the Honda?”
Charlie conceded the point with a quick nod of his head. “Right, right, but I’m talking about Riggs. Your end with him is okay.”
“But if he tracks the other guy down, maybe talks to him?”
“Then maybe we got a big problem.” Charlie finished the thought for her.
“You think Riggs might do that?”
“I don’t know. I do know that he didn’t buy your story about not knowing you were being chased. Under the circumstances, I don’t blame you for not acknowledging it, but an ex-cop? Hell, he’s got to be suspicious. I don’t think we can count on him letting it lie.”
LuAnn rubbed the hair out of her eyes. “So what do we do?”
Charlie gently took one of her hands. “You do nothing. You let old Charlie see what he can find out. We’ve been in tight places before. Right?”
She slowly nodded and then licked her lips nervously. “But this might be the tightest one of them all.”
Matt Riggs walked quickly up the steps of the old Victorian with a wraparound porch that he had meticulously restored over the last year. He had had a few years of carpentry and woodworking experience before coming to Charlottesville. They had been pursuits he had taken up to alleviate the stress that had come with what he used to do for a living. He wasn’t thinking about the graceful lines of his home right now, however.