“Is my arrival untimely?” He turned to Trapper and scowled. “I hope. I owe you about five more interruptions.”
With no discernible self-consciousness, Trapper buttoned up his fly. “You bring us a car?”
“Isn’t that what you ordered?”
“What kind?”
“You have the audacity to be particular?”
“Well, I’d rather this one not be hot.”
“It isn’t.” Carson turned to Kerra. “I told him I was sorry about the SUV. Ungrateful bastard never accepts an apology.”
Her eyes met Trapper’s. “No, he doesn’t.”
Their gazes held until the tense silence became awkward. Carson chuckled. “I believe I did walk in on a scene. I love it.” He placed the carryout food sacks on the table beneath the window and tossed the shopping bags onto the bed. “There’s everything on the list you texted me. I took a stab at your size,” he said to Kerra. “Hard to tell in that baggy get-up you’re wearing.”
“I’m sure that whatever you got will be fine. Thank you.”
He motioned toward the table. “Y’all eat while it’s hot. I’ll sit here.” He sat down on the end of the bed. “I gotta make this quick. The missus followed so she could drive me back to Fort Worth. She’s waiting in the car.”
“She’s welcome to come in,” Trapper said as he divided the food.
“No way,” Carson said. “She doesn’t like you. Says you’re rude, and bad news, and you didn’t call her bridesmaid like you promised to.”
Kerra looked across the table at Trapper. He avoided looking back, biting into his breakfast sandwich instead.
Carson raised both hands in front of his chest, palms out, as though warding off something. “Really, truly, Trapper, don’t go out of your way to thank me for doing your shopping. Or for the breakfast. Or for driving out across the prairie last night during a snowstorm to rescue your ass. I mean, what are friends for?”
“Thank you. I’ll overlook that you arrived at the shack an hour and a half later than you said you would.”
“It was snow-ing.” Carson paused, then asked, “Do you think the preacher showed up there this morning?”
Trapper nodded. “Yep. With a posse.”
When they’d reached the line shack and Trapper had explained to Kerra how he planned to ditch the stolen vehicle and throw Sheriff Addison off their trail, she’d been flabbergasted.
“You manipulated Hank so well, even I believed you,” she’d told him. “How do you know he’ll tattle?”
“Because he always comes clean. He’ll have been on the phone with Glenn in a matter of seconds.”
He’d explained that Glenn and Hank would judiciously wait till morning to come to the shack and that by that time he and Kerra would be long gone. Through the windshield there had been absolutely nothing to see except for the darkness, dervishes of snow, and the vague outline of an inhospitable looking structure. “Long gone to where?” she’d asked.
That’s when he’d told her the second half of his plan, and they’d begun the seemingly interminable wait for Carson Rime, who’d had to rely on GPS coordinates to locate them. Trapper had kept the SUV’s engine running so they could use the heater. He had urged her to recline her seat and sleep while he kept vigil.
She had leaned her seat back as far as it would go, but she never went to sleep. She had been chilled and tired and plagued with the fear that she was engaging in something doomed to end in disaster.
The lawyer had finally found them. On the way back, he’d talked nonstop, telling anecdotes about his clients, until they’d reached the motel, which he’d designated as “perfect for their purposes.”
Now, Trapper polished off his sandwich, took a sip of coffee, and said to Carson, “Tell me about Thomas Wilcox’s daughter.”
“Name, Tiffany. She came along late in the marriage. He and his wife, Greta, doted on the kid. Which you’d think would make her a spoiled rich brat. But looks like she was everything a parent could hope for. Straight A student. Lots of friends.” He enumerated her achievements and told them she’d excelled at horseback riding. “The English kind. Little saddles, funny hats, fences to jump.”
“Boyfriends?”
“You know how those private all-girl schools get together with all-boy schools for dances? Like that. But no one steady, nobody unsavory, nobody her daddy would disapprove.”
“So no sex scandals, abortions, nothing like that?”
“If there was such, my research assistant didn’t find it.”
Trapper gave him an arch look. “Did your research assistant learn if Tiffany Wilcox was ever in trouble with the police?”
“Un-huh. Not even a traffic ticket.”
“Drugs?”
“Not unless you count the overdose that killed her.”
Trapper exchanged a look with Kerra before he went back to Carson. The attorney shrugged. “The obituary said she died of respiratory ‘complications,’ when it was actually respiratory arrest. Basically she stopped breathing and died of asphyxiation. And she stopped breathing after ingesting a massive amount of heroin. Official ruling was accidental intravenous overdose.”
“Self-administered?”
“That could be what the Wilcoxes wanted hushed up.”
“Could be? Or…?”
“You’re the investigator, Trapper, not me. It’s all foggy.”
“Is this research assistant reliable?”
“Reliably criminal. But I trust the information because he owes me a favor.” Looking at Kerra, he added, “I got his last sentence reduced to time served.”
Trapper ran his hand over his bristly jaw. “Where was she?”
“The Wilcox girl? When she died? Don’t know. My assistant didn’t get that.”
“Who found her?”
“Didn’t get that, either. She was pronounced DOA at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. After the autopsy her body was cremated. No funeral. No nothing. Her horse was donated to a ranch that has riding programs for autistic kids, and this is no nag, it’s a fancy horse.
“The music room at her school has been named after her, but, at the Wilcoxes’ request, there was no big to-do made over it. It’s like Tiffany…” He made a fluttering motion with his fingers to indicate that she’d been dispersed into the air.
A car horn sounded. “My signal.” Carson stood up and divided a look of worry between them, chewing the inside of his cheek. “Wilcox walks in tall cotton. Y’all know what you’re doing?”
Neither answered.
“What are you doing?”
Neither answered.
“Well, if you ever need a lawyer…” He moved toward the door.
Trapper asked him if he’d seen anybody who didn’t belong lurking around their office building.
“Nobody. Guess everybody knew you’d be up in Lodal with your daddy.”
Another horn honk sounded. Trapper opened the door and, despite Mrs. Rime’s dislike, gave her a friendly wave, in response to which she laid down on the horn. Trapper merely laughed.
On his way out, Carson handed him a set of car keys. “Not pretty to look at, but my new brother-in-law swears it runs like a Swiss watch.”