“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Millie.”
“I’M SURE!”
But she squirmed on her stool and wouldn’t look me in the eye.
I decided to change tack. “What did you want to talk to him about?”
“What?”
“Keme. When I showed up, you said he wouldn’t talk to you even though you had something important to tell him.”
The blush intensified in Millie’s face until it was almost neon. Finally, she stammered, “Wh-what I said earlier. About how he’s dumb.”
I gave it some wait time, but even though Millie shifted and wriggled and crossed and uncrossed her arms, that was all I got. Finally, I said, “Yeah. Sure. Listen, Millie, I think there’s something you’re not telling me, and I think that’s a mistake because Keme—or, and I can’t emphasize this enough, I—mightbe in real danger. So, I’m going to ask you one more time: is there anything else you want to tell me?”
Staring at the floor, she shook her head.
“If you see him,” I said, “or if you talk to him, will you please tell him to come home? It’s not safe for him to be out there by himself.”
Millie nodded, but her voice had a strangely unguarded optimism as she said, “But you’re going to make sure he’s okay. You’re going to figure out who the killer is, and Bobby will arrest him, and then Keme will be safe.”
“OrIwill be safe,” I said. And then I sighed. “And it’s kind of hard to solve a murder when most of your suspects are either dead or missing. The deputies are all over the RV park, which means I can’t talk to Foster and September about how they conveniently forgot to tell me they’d been evicted and are now squatting, or whatever the legal term is. And Channelle managed to get herself run over, which—not to be insensitive—put a real damper on my theory that she’d killed her husband to get rich. And this guy from Orange County could be anywhere—”
“Woody?” Millie said. “Woody Vance? He drives a car that says Orange County Sheriff’s Department on it?”
The best word for my silence was stupefied. Finally, I managed to say, “You know his name?”
“Oh sure! He came in here for coffee—you know all the tourists do. I saw it on his credit card.”
“I honestly can’t bring myself to ask the next question, Mildred.”
She made a face. “Stop calling me that. You know how Mrs. Knight owns her dad’s place now, and she says it’s a rental, but, like,nobodywants to stay there because it’s so far out of town and because the lot is so overgrown? Well, when Woody came in—”
“You’re on a first-name basis?”
“—I said, ‘Boy, somebody looks like he could use a coffee,’ andhesaid, ‘More like a shot,’ andIsaid, ‘Make it a double,’ and he laughed because it was so funny—”
No offense to Millie’s potential career as a standup comedian (comedienne?), but I guessed Woody Vance of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department had laughed because she was young and vibrant and beautiful.
“Let’s skip to the important part.”
Millie frowned at me. “AndIsaid ‘Rough night?’ Andhesaid, ‘Long night. Rough morning.’ AndIsaid—”
“Millie.”
“Remember he said he liked your hair,” Aric chimed in.
I turned around to glare at him. Cheeks reddening, he sank behind his e-reader.
Millie, however, was not to be sidetracked. “AndIsaid, ‘Nothing like a hot shower and good coffee after a bad night,’ andhesaid—”
I couldn’t help it. I groaned.
“—‘Don’t talk to me about a hot shower. The place I’m staying only has cold water. How’s that after I hacked my way through a jungle to get to the front door?’”
