The Game Changer, стр. 65
“Good guess!” I slugged his arm lightly. “But no.”
He ducked away from my punch playfully, but then looked at me more closely. “Wait. Are you being serious right now?”
“The news is always serious.”
“No, I mean it, Hollis, do you know something? Who is it?”
“That, I’m not going to tell you.”
“What? Yes, you are.”
“I just want to check out the house, see if our theory has any merit, then we’ll talk.”
“Talk now. You can’t withhold information from a police officer. Especially information about a murder case. It’s obstruction of justice.”
“Oh, come on, we both know you’re going to follow me there anyway. Besides, If I tell you, you’ll just tell Chief Henderson, and he’ll find a way to keep me out. ”
He sighed in frustration. “I’ll call him after we get there, how about that?”
“No way. What if I’m wrong? It’ll just make him even madder at me. And then he’ll have you casing my house twenty-four/seven.”
“But what if you’re right, Hollis? This could be dangerous. You could be tipping someone off and they’ll bolt before I can arrest them.”
I pulled my keys out of my purse. “I’m pretty sure about this. It will all make sense when you get there. I promise you that.”
Daisy’s van pulled in on two wheels, spraying gravel everywhere. She practically jumped out while it was still moving. She’d changed clothes and was now wearing black yoga pants, a black long-sleeved shirt, a black jacket, and a black stocking cap that pushed the spikes of her hair so that they framed her face adorably.
“What are you wearing?” I asked. “And how did you change so fast?”
“Stakeout clothes,” she said. “And I’m a mother of four. I get precisely nine minutes a day to myself. I can do just about anything in two minutes or less.”
“You look like you’re about to rob a bank.”
“I bought these pants specifically for this purpose. Well, and because they hide cat hair.”
“And to work out in?” I asked.
She snorted a laugh. “Yeah, right, like I ever work out.”
“We’re going to have to start,” I grumbled. “All those sweets are going to the wrong places.” Brooks ducked his head, and I was pretty sure I saw him blush.
She clapped her hands twice. “Come on, now, let’s go get this woman!”
“Woman?” Brooks said curiously. “But Evangeline—”
“No, not Evangeline,” Daisy said, but I clapped my hand over her mouth.
“Brooks is going to follow us there.”
She grinned beneath my palm and I let up. “Of course. Don’t worry, Brooks, we’ll drive slowly so you can keep up.”
With that, we both jumped in the car. I had it halfway out of the parking lot before Brooks could even get his door open. We laughed as we wrapped our seatbelts around us while on the move.
“Look out, Wilma Louise, we’re coming for you,” Daisy cried. “To River Fork!”
Chapter 24
Our drive was a lot shorter than we anticipated. We were only two blocks away when we spotted a very familiar truck. It was parked outside a Dairy Dude walk-up frozen custard shop, dominating the tiny gravel parking lot.
“Look!” Daisy said, discovering it at just the same moment that I did. She pointed out the window. “Isn’t that Farley’s man truck?”
It was. Enormous, polished to a mirror-like shine, gleaming tires, NFL stickers on the back window, MANTRK on the license plate. In the daylight, it was an even more startling and garish sight than usual. Farley had been clear in his statement to the world: I am bigger and better than you.
I guess the world had been even clearer in its statement back to him: Nope.
Or at least, his wife had.
Speaking of, Wilma Louise was toddling away from the window in her high heels, slurping a milkshake while chatting away happily on her cell phone, her designer bag dangling from her arm.
“What do we do?” I asked, blowing right past Dairy Dude in a panic, immediately regretting that decision. Chicago Hollis would have never driven by. Chicago Hollis would have been first on the scene. Chicago Hollis would have been greeting police as they arrived, notebook and pencil in hand, questions at the ready, searching out the rookie cop who wasn’t skilled yet at keeping things under wraps.
Yes, but Chicago Hollis didn’t exist anymore. Parkwood Hollis was still feeling her way. We just did things differently here.
“Go back! Go back!” Daisy shouted, pounding on her window as if that would somehow erase the feet of highway I was putting between us and Wilma Louise.
Parkwood Daisy had things under control for both of us.
I turned into a parking lot, did a quick U-turn, and waited in the driveway for traffic to clear so I could pull back onto the highway. We watched as Wilma Louise opened the truck door and started to climb inside. Even with the little step on the running board, it was too high for her, and she had to lean forward to place her milkshake and purse inside to free up her hands.
“Go, go, go,” Daisy chanted, bouncing in her seat. The traffic had cleared and my tires squealed in my startled hurry to get back to Dairy Dude. Wilma Louise glanced our direction, then went back to the arduous process of getting into the truck.
I pulled up alongside her, nearly bumping into a picnic table where two teens were enjoying cones. They both flinched. The girl dropped her cone and the boy started fussing at me. The screen of the cashier window opened and a tattooed and pierced guy—the Dude behind Dairy Dude, I assumed—stuck his head out.
“Hey! That’s not a parking spot! Hey!”
Wilma Louise paused to watch the scene unfold. Daisy and I glanced at each other nervously, then got out at the same time.
I held up one finger at the guy in the window, flung a dollar bill that I’d dug out of my cup holder to the boy at the picnic table, mumbling, “Sorry,” and made