Feeling oddly better, as if she’d been given a blank check, Olivia rose to her feet and left the chapel.
She had had an idea.
She went over to Manfred’s. He gestured her in and dashed back to his computer and telephone console. He picked up the phone and had it at his ear like lightning. “No, Mandy, I don’t think you need to do that,” he said. “No, I definitely think a more conservative approach . . . Why? Because if you jump ahead of your stars, you’re going to cancel out the advice they’re giving you. Wait to see what the vet has to tell you before . . . Yes, I’m sure. Wait, and you’ll be rewarded with valuable information.” After a few more minutes of reassurances, he hung up. “Wanted to have her dog put to sleep because she found a lump on the dog’s chest,” he said. “No signs, no symptoms of anything wrong. Wanted to spare the dog pain.”
“Speaking of animals,” she said, “I was just over looking at the Rev’s new paintings. And asking his advice.”
He made a face and rubbed his eyes with both hands. “Thanks for letting me know that you don’t give a damn about what I’m doing,” he said. He put his hands down and looked at her. “What’s up?” He sounded tired.
Olivia didn’t understand what he was blathering about. “While I talked to the Rev, I had an idea. Lewis doesn’t know me as Olivia, but there’s a faint chance he might recognize me, and Bertha or the gardener might, too. Despite the wig. Lewis knows you by sight. Fiji’s not good at subterfuge. We ruled out her bespelling someone. But what about the old people?”
“Tommy and the people at the hotel?” Manfred was not too swift today, Olivia thought, because he seemed slow to hop on the bandwagon. “What about them?”
“We’ll take them to the Goldthorpe house,” Olivia said. “They might have known Rachel or her husband. You know how most people think old people all look alike? I’m willing to bet that Lewis won’t know they’re not friends of his mother’s or father’s.”
“They’re way older,” Manfred said. Olivia thought he seemed a little huffy, and she could not think why. “Rachel was in her early sixties. Tommy and his buddies have to be twenty years older, give or take five years.”
“Morton was older than Rachel, right? Maybe they were his friends.”
“Okay, assume we say they were. Assume these old people, whom we hardly know, agree to pretend they knew Morton. So what?”
“We get in in the daytime. No breaking in.” Olivia smiled broadly. “See, we’ve sent a letter ahead of time, telling Lewis that Mr. Quick had loaned some books to his old friend Morton Goldthorpe. He’s heard Morton passed, and he’s coming to collect the books. We take Tommy and one of the other oldies posing as his wife. That way we get into the library and have a look at what’s there.”
“You think Lewis will let us get that far? You’ve met him. Did he seem like a guy who would let in a stranger without a fight?”
“Maybe not, but we’ll have the old people with us, so what can he do about it?”
“He’s crazy bad and rude, Olivia. You can’t count on him to act like a guy with social skills. And especially if I were anywhere near. Lewis wouldn’t piss on me if I were on fire.”
“I had this idea in a church. So it’s got to be a good one, if we just fine-tune it a little.” She was not completely serious, but she could visualize this all falling into place, and she thought it was the beginning of a real plan. She was frustrated that Manfred couldn’t seem to see its promise. “Manfred, it’s all confusion to the enemy!”
He smiled, a bit reluctantly. “That’s true,” he said. “But it sounds kind of sketchy, to say the least. Who will go with them?”
“Do you think we could talk Joe into it?”
“Joe . . . why him?”
“Because he just inspires a feeling of reliability. You trust him. Right?”
“That’s true. He’s the most likable resident of Midnight, with the possible exception of Bobo. What about Bobo?”
“He can’t leave work,” she said. “Let me review the domino effect we have going. Teacher used to take over during the day if Bobo wanted off. But now Teacher’s stuck in the convenience store until the owners find a permanent replacement. Lem isn’t here to keep the pawnshop open at night, so I’ve been filling in for him, though I can’t do it every night. I have my own business to conduct.”
“We should ask Bobo first, though.”
“Why are you being so freaking stubborn?”
“Because I know Bobo better, that’s all.”
“All right. Go over there and ask him.” Olivia marched into Manfred’s TV area and sat on the couch. She was obviously prepared to wait until kingdom come.
Manfred glanced at his telephone, and its light was blinking merrily. “I have to work,” he said. “I have bills to pay.”
“Like your lawyer bill? It’s only going to get higher if we don’t close this thing down.”
“I’ll be right back.” Manfred knew when to accept the situation. He was over at the pawnshop in less than a minute.
Though the day outside was bright and cloudless and blindingly hot, the inside of the pawnshop was dark and cool. Bobo was behind the high counter, sitting on a stool and typing on the keyboard.
“Guns,” he explained. “The paperwork on guns. Never ending.”
“Bobo, I have a favor to ask you.”
“I’m kind of stretched thin now, Manfred, but you can ask.”
Now that Manfred’s eyes were accustomed to the dusky light, he could see that Bobo looked tired and that his sleepy goodwill was simply sleepy. Suddenly, Manfred felt selfish. He was asking his landlord and friend to do something that was both an imposition and an inconvenience.
“Never mind,” he said.
Bobo smiled. “Well, okay. Normally I’d bug you to find out what you needed, but having Teacher stuck in place at the convenience store and Lemuel gone at the same time is running me ragged. And of course, this is the time when the shop’s gotten busy, for a reason I can’t even begin to understand.” As if to underline his words, the bell on the door chimed as a burly man came in carrying a guitar case. Bobo glanced at the wall of musical instruments on display and sighed. “Be right with you,” he called.
“It’s cool,” Manfred said. “You’ve got a lot on your plate right now.” He turned to go.
“Hey,” Bobo said abruptly. “Is it true that Fiji is going out with the bouncer from Cartoon Saloon?”
“So she says.”
“But he seems a little . . .” Bobo’s voice trailed off, and he waved a hand to convey what his words could not.
“A little what?” Manfred said, curious to see what Bobo would come up with.
“A little tough,” Bobo said.
This was interesting. “Yeah, well, bouncer,” Manfred said cautiously. “She says he’s also an EMT.”
“I just hope he’s a good guy. He seems all wrong for her.”
“Fiji’s healthy and pretty. You can’t expect her to sit home by herself.”
And this time Manfred left, but he was smiling to himself.
19
Olivia took care to be sitting on the same spot on the couch when she saw Manfred returning, though of course she’d been looking around while he was gone. She could tell from the way he walked that she would get her way.
“All right, we’ll ask Joe,” Manfred said as he came in. “Maybe we can eat at Home Cookin tonight and talk about it. That way I won’t miss any more time off work.”
“So ahead of time, I need to ask the oldies if they’re willing.”
“Go right ahead. Since this whole crazy idea is based on them saying yes for some unknown reason.”
“Unknown reason, hell,” Olivia said. “They’ll do it for money, same as anyone else.”
“And think of something to call them besides the oldies,” Manfred called as she let herself
out.
Olivia, the bit firmly between her teeth, felt purposeful and much more cheerful. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail as she walked to the hotel. She felt the beginning of a trickle of sweat on her back, knew it would roll with an unpleasant ticklish feeling down the crack between her hips. She found she was looking forward to talking to Tommy again. He was a rascal, through and through.
Olivia liked old people. It surprised her to realize this, and she wondered if it had something to do with her relationship with Lemuel, who was the oldest person she’d ever met . . . though perhaps calling him a person was a bit of a stretch.
But then she remembered her father’s mother. She’d liked Grandmother. There had been a few moments in her childhood that hadn’t actually sucked, and the times she’d gotten to stay with her grandmother had contained all those moments. So she walked into the hotel with pleasant anticipation. Two old women were sitting in the lobby, which contained several comfortable chairs and a table or two. One of the women was knitting, and the other was listening to an iPod. They both looked up with interest as she came to a stop in front of them.
“I’m Olivia Charity,” she said. “I met Tommy the other day. I believe you ladies must be Mamie and Suzie?”
Mamie turned out to be the knitter, and Suzie the listener. Mamie had to use a walker, and Olivia discovered quickly that her conversation tended to wander away from time to time. Mamie’s knit pants hung on her, and her shoes were orthopedic, but she wore makeup, by God, and her hair was white and curly like a lamb’s coat. Suzie was (to Olivia’s surprise) of Asian descent, though her speech was purely American. Her thick gray hair was cut short at her earlobes, and her eyeglasses were decorated with rhinestones. Suzie was wearing a red T-shirt and white crops with red sandals. She looked as if she were about to go on a Golden Age cruise.
“Yeah,” Suzie said, when Olivia introduced herself, “Tommy told us about you. I’ll go get him.” Suzie was able to walk on her own with relative ease.
Left alone with Mamie, Olivia asked her how she liked the hotel.
“It’s safer than the Five Aces,” Mamie said. Her eyes were a faded blue, and her eyelids looked very thin and delicate with their trace of blue eye shadow. “We were going to get murdered in our beds there. Or right out in the street.”
“So you were glad to move?”
“Glad? Well, I don’t think ‘glad’ really covers it . . . I never have liked Texas. I loved Vegas. But I wanted to live, more than I wanted to be in Nevada.” She looked at Olivia with close attention. “I expect you’ll be that way, too.”
“Probably,” Olivia said. But it was a creepy thing to think about, and she was relieved when Tommy and Suzie returned, Tommy moving slowly with his cane and Suzie in possession of a bit of news. “We have asked if we can use what Mrs. Whitefield calls the parlor,” she said. “Mrs. Whitefield said yes.”
Olivia was relieved. The lobby was wide open, and there were several doors behind which could lurk any number of listeners. At the moment, there was no one there besides them and a sleeping man in the chair in the corner of the room, a newspaper half off his lap. He was several decades younger than the people Olivia had come to see. In fact, he seemed to be Olivia’s age.
“That’s Shorty’s grandson,” Tommy said, pointing with his cane. “He came in late, couple of days ago. He jumped out of his car and ran into the hotel like he was on fire.”
“Shush,” said Mamie. “You’ll wake him up. I think Shorty’s having his visit with the nurse.”
“Then this guy ought to be in his own room!” Tommy said. He seemed to be in a grumpy mood. Olivia wondered if Suzie had woken him from his own nap.
The parlor turned out to be a small room leading off the south side of the lobby. Olivia glanced back, and she saw that the younger man’s eyes were wide open and fixed on her. He hadn’t been asleep at all. He hadn’t wanted to talk to the old ladies, so he’d been feigning. He looked faintly amused, and as his eyes met hers, he winked. She almost smiled. His eyes are gorgeous, she thought. Brown and large and emphasized with perfectly arched dark eyebrows, he looked like someone out of an old Spanish painting. And as she thought this, he batted those long eyelashes at her. She smiled and shook her head and followed her old people.
Then she thought, It’s just like he knew what I was thinking. And she frowned. Exactly like he knew.
Exactly.
She put this thought on her mental back burner as she explained Manfred’s problem to Mamie, Suzie, and Tommy. And then she sketched in the plan she’d devised to solve it.
“Seems pretty weak, but I want to get out of this place for a day, so I’ll say yes,” said Tommy. “Girls?”
“He won’t hurt us?” Mamie said cautiously.
“No. If our friend Joe can’t go with you, another one of us will. We won’t let you get hurt.”
“What about stairs?” Mamie was being sure all her obstacles could be overcome.
“There are three steps up to the front door, and a flight of stairs inside. But there’s an elevator.” Olivia remembered seeing what had certainly seemed like an elevator door when she’d gone up the stairs, right beside the library. “I’ll make sure,” she said, though how she was going to do that she couldn’t imagine at the moment.
“So,” said Suzie, after an expectant pause, “what’s in it for us?”
On her walk over, Olivia had anticipated the question. “Two hundred dollars apiece,” she said.
“Two fifty,” Tommy said.
“Two twenty-five.”
“Done,” Mamie said, in her faint voice.
“Do I have to square this with Mrs. Whitefield?” Olivia asked.
“She ain’t our keeper,” Tommy said. “We can go where we want.”
“Long as we tell her we’re missing a meal,” Suzie said. “By the way, it would be nice to have a lunch or dinner somewhere else, while we’re making this big trip of yours. And not at our own expense.”
“Done,” Olivia said. After all, everyone had to eat. “I’ll come back and let you know, when we’ve finalized our arrangements.”
“And we want to go to the library in Davy,” Mamie said unexpectedly. “We need something to read, and they got the audiobooks there, we called to ask.”
Olivia was not much of a reader herself, but she approved of it as a pastime, so she said, “I’ll see if they have some kind of bookmobile, and if they don’t, I’ll take you myself.”
There were nods all around, and it seemed they’d struck a bargain.
“A real pleasure dealing with you, Olivia,” Tommy said.
When she exited through the lobby, Mr. Big Eyes was nowhere in sight. As Olivia walked back to the pawnshop, she felt well pleased with the day. Forward progress was always a good thing. Even a weak plan was better than no plan. And anything would do to fill in the time until Lemuel returned, especially since she hadn’t had a chance to start working on the proposal she’d received days before.
Olivia took a shower before she walked down to dinner to meet with Joe. Since the Home Cookin restaurant was the only place to eat in Midnight, it was fortunate for the Midnighters that Madonna Reed was an excellent cook of the home-style variety. Tonight, Madonna was experimenting with a chicken potpie, which meant that she’d had a lot of leftover vegetables and chicken. Since the menu at Home Cookin stayed pretty steady, a change was interesting.
Olivia met up with Manfred on the way through the door. Joe was waiting for them, and Chuy with him, which was no surprise. Rasta was sitting in Chuy’s lap. The Peke often came to meals with his humans, though Madonna had forbidden any feeding from the table or plate. Joe and Chuy had pretended to be shocked she’d think such a thing was possible. Instead of sitting at the big table in the center of the little restaurant, the usual spot for all town residents (and until the hotel had reopened they could all fit around it), the four set
tled in one of the booths against the west wall, which signaled they had something to talk about.
A teen boy from one of the ranches to the south of Midnight was working as a combination busboy/waiter. He hurried to bring them water and to take their drink orders. Chuy put Rasta down on the floor and pretended he wasn’t curious when Joe said, “What do you all want to talk about?”
Manfred said, “It’s like this. You know about my situation. With the law and with Lewis Goldthorpe.”
Joe and Chuy nodded.
“And you heard what Rachel said at the séance.” They nodded again.
“So Olivia has come up with a plan.”
Joe listened patiently as Manfred explained. Then Olivia told them about her bargain with Suzie, Mamie, and Tommy. Chuy, after he’d grasped the outline of the proposal, sighed and looked down at his cutlery.
“I can’t do it,” Joe said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go with the old people.”
Whatever Olivia had expected, it wasn’t a flat refusal.
“What—why?” she said, shocked.
“Olivia, we can’t be involved in this. Unless there’s a direct threat to us or our town.”
Olivia opened her mouth to protest. Chuy held up his hand.
“We aren’t what we once were. But we still have rules,” Chuy said.
“This is a direct threat,” Olivia argued.
“Not to us,” Joe said.
“Not to Midnight,” Chuy said.
“How is this different from Connor Lovell?” she asked. She did not raise her voice, but her intensity was laserlike.
Manfred inhaled sharply. He had not wanted to ever hear that name again. He knew Olivia had made a misstep.
“Let it go,” he told her. “Olivia, that’s their right.”
“Okay, then,” she said, struggling to regain her composure.
Manfred noticed uneasily that Joe’s eyes, normally a calm, boring brown, were sort of glowy. Chuy’s, too. Rasta had leaped up beside Chuy. He was relieved to see that the dog’s eyes looked absolutely normal. “We’ll make another plan, guys. No problem,” he said, in a brave attempt at a cheerful voice.