“I’ve got a call in to PD to ask if they saw this tag, or if they even searched the mill at all.”
“Send this one to me,” he said. “Or, better yet, come show it to Ghost yourself.”
She nodded, and accepted the camera back. “I was planning on going by Dartmoor in the morning.”
“Okay,” he said, settling back against the cushions, dinner abandoned. The chase was on, and that was way more exciting than lasagna. “Let’s back up a step. Jimmy Connors tried to deface Bell Bar and his dad gave us a line about high school kids having it out for the Dogs because of Allie’s disappearance. But it wasJimmy’sunsupervised party she left right before, and it wasJimmyshe was publicly, and no doubt embarrassingly, turning down in front of all their friends.”
“I think Jimmy followed her, killed her, and then tried to stir up a buncha shit about the Dogs to cover his ass,” Axelle said. “The little shitstain.”
“Oh, he’s a shitstain alright,” Fox agreed, “but did the father say Jimmy was at the party when he arrived?”
Eden nodded. “Yeah. And wasted, apparently.”
“He could have been pretending,” Axelle said. “He could have left and come back.”
“Thirty minutes isn’t long enough to kill someone, dump a body, dump a car, and get back to your own party.”
“So he had help. He would have needed an accomplice to drop the car, anyway.”
Eden chewed at her lip a moment. “That tag, though. Jimmy may very well be our culprit, he and some of his friends. But that tag feels like a message, and Jimmy isn’t the head of any sort of organization.”
“The tag could be kids playing around with spray paint. It might not mean anything at all,” Fox said.
Eden sent him a quick look, one he returned. They’d both been in the game too long to hang things up to coincidence.
“I want to talk to Jimmy,” she said.
Fox grinned. “I can probably arrange that.”
“That look never bodes well.”
“Not for Jimmy it doesn’t.”
~*~
“Try it again, on the move this time.”
“It’s atrash can.”
“Right, which doesn’t have arms and hands, so it can’t reach and help you out. If you can hit the can, you can hit your receiver. Again. Feet moving.” Carter punctuated the instruction by taking a run at Elijah, who muttered a protest, danced like he’d been pushed out of the pocket, and threw the ball while he was running.
It spiraled up into a perfect arc, the last of the day’s sunlight gleaming on the laces, and dropped into the can so perfectly it didn’t even wobble.
Elijah threw up both hands in celebration, and turned to beam at Carter. “You see that?”
“Yeah, I did. Now tell me the trash can idea is stupid.”
Elijah rolled his eyes – but chuckled.
Carter clapped him on the shoulder as they walked down to retrieve the ball, and set the trash can back on the jogging path where it belonged. “That was good today. You’re already showing a lot of improvement.”
“Coach noticed at practice yesterday,” Elijah said, with the air of confiding a secret. His smile was nearly bashful as he flipped the ball from hand to hand, and they walked across the grass back toward the bench where they’d left their bags. “All he said was, ‘Better,’ but coming from Coach–”
“That’s a huge compliment,” Carter said, knowingly. “Dude, that’s awesome.”
When they reached their gear, they found a group of elementary-age boys with a huge bag of soccer balls held between them, practically bouncing up and down with anticipation. “Are you done with the field?” one asked.
“Yeah, little man, have at it,” Elijah said, offering high fives to all of them before they dashed out onto the grass, whooping in delight.
