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Bluff, hearty good ole boy Darcy Orchard, for example: I'd worked out with Darcy for years, and seen only the good-natured sportsman. But last night I'd seen him tracking a man, at the head of a pack of hunters. Beneath his yard-dog exterior, Darcy was a wolf.
I'd always known that about Tom David Meicklejohn. He was naturally cruel and sly, naturally an able and remorseless hunter. He was reliable in what he undertook, whether good or bad. But Darcy had kept this facet of his character buried, and something or someone had unearthed it and used it.
For the first time, I allowed myself to imagine what would have happened if the pack had caught Jack.
And I found myself almost sure they would have killed him.
I began work at Mookie's house in a grim mood. Of course her place couldn't be as dirty as it had been the first time I'd cleaned it, but every week she did a grand job of retrashing it. I scrubbed the bathroom in silence, trying to ignore the little questions and comments she tossed to me as she passed by the open door.
Mookie showed me her cuts from the bombing. They'd been caused by flying splinters, and they were healing well. She inquired after my leg. Would the woman never shut up and settle down to her work?
Once I got the bathroom decent again, I moved into the bedroom. This old house had big rooms and high ceilings, and Mookie's low modern bed and chest of drawers looked out of place. The bare wooden floors made a bit of an echo, footsteps clacking u
"You know," Mookie said, making one of her abrupt appearances, "they haven't got a clue who planted that bomb." She'd been reading the papers. I hadn't.
"Is that right?" I asked. I really didn't want to talk.
"The device that started the explosion was a wristwatch, like the one you've got on," Mookie said. She was very angry, very intense. I'd had enough angry and intense already today. "All the chemicals in the bomb were things you could order from any chemical supply house. All you'd have to do is not order everything from one place, so they won't get suspicious."
"I wouldn't know," I said pointedly.
"It's in books you can check out of the library here!" she said, her hands flying up in a gesture of complete exasperation. "It's in books you can buy at the bookstore in Montrose!"
"So it's probably almost as easy to make a bomb as it is to buy a rifle," I said, my voice calm and even.
The rifle was not under her bed any longer.
"A rifle's legal."
"Sure." I was careful not to turn and look her in the eyes. I didn't want any kind of confrontation. That, too, I'd had enough of already today.
After I changed the sheets and dusted the bedroom, I looked around for an empty bag to dump the contents of the plastic garbage pail, which was full of soiled tissues, balls of hair, and gum wrappers. There, next to a Reebok shoe box, was a dark red plastic bag, and it bore the distinctive logo of Winthrop Sporting Goods.
I tried to persuade myself that there was nothing odd about this. People did mostly buy their sports shoes at Winthrop's, because the store carried a great selection and would special-order what they didn't have in stock.
But I'd seen another red plastic bag the week before. And I remembered seeing yet another crammed into the kitchen garbage. Mookie was going to Winthrops' very frequently.
Slowly I dumped the garbage pail into the bag and went to the bathroom to empty another one. Mookie barely glanced at me as I cleared the one by her desk. Her coarse reddish hair was braided today, and she was wearing wind-suit pants and a turtleneck. She was tapping computer keys with great energy. The same charts were taped to the wall behind her.
There was a pile of library books on the desk, studded with slips of paper marking pages she wanted to refer to.
"How does a genealogist work?" I asked.
For once, she'd been engrossed in what she was doing, and she took a minute to focus on my question.
"Mostly by computer these days," she answered. "Which is great for me. I do work for a company that advertises in small specialty magazines, or regional mags, like Southern Living. We trace your ancestry for you if you give us some basic information. The Mormons, oddly enough, have the best records; I think they believe they can baptize their ancestors and get them into heaven that way, or something. Then there are county records, and so on.
"Did you want your folks traced?" she asked me now, a hint of amusement in the set of her mouth.
"I know who my family is," I said, and spoke the truth, for my mother's idea of a great Christmas present was a family tree ready-framed for my wall. For all I knew, she'd hired Mookie Preston's company to do the research.
"Then you're lucky. Most Americans can only name as far back as their great-grandparents. They're shaky after that."
I tried to think of myself as lucky.
I failed.
I wanted to sit in the battered armchair in front of her desk and ask her what I really needed to know. Why was she here? What trouble was she getting into? Would I come to work next week and find her dead, for sticking her nose into a hornet's nest and getting stung?
Mookie laughed uneasily. "You're looking at me fu
Bits of information slid around in my head and rearranged into a pattern. Lanette had come looking for Mookie secretly one night. Mookie had moved to town right after Darnell Glass had been killed. Mookie had an Illinois license plate.
Lanette had returned to Shakespeare after living in Chicago for a time. I studied the round line of Mookie's cheeks and the strong column of her neck, and then I knew why she seemed familiar.
I gave Mookie a brisk nod and went back to work on the kitchen. Mookie was Darnell's half-sister. But there seemed no point in talking to Mookie about it: Strictly speaking, it wasn't my business, and Mookie knew better than anyone who she was and what she had to mourn. I wondered whose idea it had been to keep silent. Had Mookie wanted to do some kind of undercover work on the murder of her brother, or had Lanette been unwilling to admit to the town that she'd had a liaison with a white man?
I wondered if Lanette had left for Chicago pregnant.
I wondered if the father was still alive, still here in Shakespeare. I wondered if he and Mookie had talked.
The rifle, black and brown and deadly, had spooked me. I hadn't seen loose firearms in anyone's house since I began cleaning. I'd polished my share of gun cabinets, but I'd never found one unsecured and its contents easily available; which didn't mean the guns hadn't been there, in night tables and closets, just that they hadn't been quite so ... accessible. I felt I hadn't been meant to see the rifle, that Mookie's carelessness had been a mistake. I had no idea what Arkansas gun laws were, since I'd never wanted to carry a gun myself. Maybe the rifle was locked in Mookie's car trunk.
I remembered the targets. If they were typical of Mookie's marksmanship, she was a good shot.
I thought of the pack of men who'd been after Jack. Darcy knew Mookie's name and address. I thought of him thinking the same thoughts about Mookie that I'd been thinking.
I gathered up my things and told Mookie I was leaving. She was coming outside to check her mailbox at the same time, and after she'd paid me we walked down the driveway together. I thought hard about what to say, if to speak at all.
Almost too late, I made up my mind. "You should go," I said. Her back was to me. I already had one foot in the car.
She twisted halfway around, paused for a moment. "Would you?" She asked.
I considered it. "No," I said finally.
"There, then." She collected her mail and passed me again on her way back into that half-empty echoing house. She acted as though I wasn't there.