Strike one.
Next Mary-Gordon joined them. Dance showed her pictures of her own children and the dogs. The agent sipped her coffee and ate the cookies and chatted with the little girl, who meticulously set her place for her own cookie and milk and ate precisely.
With children, deception isn’t uncommon, of course; kids lie about as frequently as adults but their motives are clearer: missing candy, broken lamps. But the main problem with children as witnesses is that they don’t know how to characterize what they observe. Behaviors that seem suspicious to them might not be; and they’ll often miss the most egregious crimes because they don’t know they’re crimes.
Dance slowly shifted the conversation to the drive from the airport. But this talk too was futile. All the little girl remembered was a nice man who told her lots of neat things about the area and really liked her aunt. Her bright blue eyes sparkled as she talked about “Stan,” Edwin Sharp’s pseudonym.
She liked it that he was so helpful in picking out a present for Kayleigh. “He wanted me to get something she’d like. It was really neat! A stuffed tree.”
“Thank you, Mary-Gordon,” Dance said.
“You’re welcome. Will we see that man again, Mr. Stan? I liked him.”
“I don’t know, honey.”
“You can take a cookie with you, if you want. Or two.”
“I think I’ll do that.” Dance wrapped them up in a pink napkin. They were really good.
As they left the den, Suellyn said, “Not much to use, right?”
“Don’t think so but appreciate the help.”
After knocking and being waved in by Sheri, Darthur Morgan walked inside, his own bag in one hand and two books in the other. Mary-Gordon took his suitcase.
“No—”
“I’ll show you your room, Mr. Morgan.”
“You don’t have to get—”
“I’ll take it,” the little girl said and charged off, drawing a look of amused confusion from the huge man.
Dance said goodnight to Bishop and Sheri and then stepped outside. She found Kayleigh on the front porch swing. The two women were alone. Dance sat on a creaking rattan chair next to the swing. The singer lifted her hands, indicating her father’s house. “Look at this,” she said with an edge to her voice. “Look what’s happened. People’re dead, lives’re ruined. I’m hiding out with my father, for God’s sake. My life’s a mess. And we don’t even know for sure he’s behind it. He is, don’t you think?”
Dance sensed that something had happened recently, something Kayleigh did not want to share. She knew Kayleigh’s baseline behavior pretty well and there were now deviations in her eye contact and shoulder position. It would have to do with something internal—thoughts she was having, memories that she didn’t want to share with Dance, something she’d done wrong. And recently.
“I honestly don’t know. We always build cases slowly but generally there’s some definite evidence or clear witness testimony to tell us we’re headed in the right direction, at least. With Edwin, it’s all ambiguous.”
Kayleigh lowered her voice. “It’s all too much, Kathryn. I’m really thinking of canceling the show on Friday. My heart is totally not in it.”
“And your father’s okay with it?” Dance asked, because she’d noted the swivel of her eyes toward Bishop Towne and the decrease in volume when she used the word “canceling.”
“Yes,” she said, but uncertainly. “He seems to agree but then he goes on like I never mentioned anything. ‘Sure, I understand. But if you don’t cancel, when you play “Drifting,” I think you should modulate up to D for the third and fourth verses.’”
She waved her hand, indicating where they sat. “Remember what I was telling you after you recorded the group at Villalobos’s? This is all the stage I’d like, my front porch. Cook big dinners, get fat. Play for the kids and family, have a bunch of Mary-Gordons and Henrys. Don’t know why I picked that name. I don’t know a single Henry in the world.”
“You could have a family and still be a pro.”
“I don’t see how. That kind of life takes its toll.”
“Loretta Lynn did it.”
“Nobody’s Loretta Lynn. She’s one of a kind.”
Dance had to agree.
And yet despite Kayleigh Towne’s protests, she suddenly dug into her pocket and pulled out a pen and small pad of lined paper and jotted words and musical notes.
“A song?”
“‘Just can’t stop.’”
“You have to write your songs, you mean?”
Kayleigh laughed. “Well, that’s true. But what I mean is, that’s a line that just occurred to me. ‘Just can’t stop … spending hours … with you.’ First it was ‘spending time with you,’ but it needed the other syllable in ‘hours.’ I’ll write it up tonight.”
“The whole song?”
“Hank Williams said any song that takes more than twenty minutes to write isn’t going to be any good. Sometimes it takes me a day or two but for that one, it’s pretty much done.”
She hummed a very hummable few bars.
“You record it, I’ll buy it,” Dance said. “You …” Her voice faded as lights appeared through the trees. A car was approaching slowly.
Kayleigh stiffened. She whispered, “It can’t be him. I mean, it can’t. We weren’t followed. I’m sure not. And when we left, Edwin wasn’t at my place. He doesn’t even know I’m not there.”
Though Dance wasn’t so sure about that. It made sense for her to come here largely so she wouldn’t be alone—Bishop always had plenty of his crew around. And they could hope Edwin wouldn’t figure it out but he’d proved persistent, to say the least, when it came to finding Kayleigh’s whereabouts.
The lights seemed to stop, then continue on as if the driver wasn’t sure of the route.
Or didn’t want to be seen.
“Should we get Darthur?” Kayleigh asked.
Not a bad idea, Dance decided.