Day Shift (Midnight, Texas #2) (16 page)

O
livia was in the chapel. She could count on one hand the times she’d entered the old building. She realized now that she hadn’t been missing anything. The chapel had been built from thick planks, perhaps hand-cut, she speculated, looking at them now. It was a very basic rectangular building with a pitched roof and a steeple slapped on top. It was painted white inside and out, but it was just about due another coat. Inside, the wood floors had been painted, too, a dark gray. The benches that served as the pews were sturdy but a bit splintery. There was electricity, of a very basic sort, though the Rev didn’t often turn the bare bulb on. There was an altar. There was no stained glass, no beautiful vestments or altar cloths, no candles or incense. But there were three paintings, the old one above the altar that had always been there, and two Grandma Moses–style oils depicting two stories from the Bible: Daniel in the lions’ den, and Noah and the ark. The new paintings were donations from Bobo. The owner, whom
Bobo had told the Rev was the artist himself, had never redeemed the artworks, and Bobo had thought they would suit the Rev.

Bobo had been right.

The Rev had been gazing at them in a fascinated way when Olivia had entered.

Now the Reverend Emilio Sheehan was sitting on a bench facing Olivia, and they were staring at each other. The Rev, small and dark and wiry, was as tough as shoe leather. Though Olivia considered herself just as formidable, she was a little anxious. She could not remember ever having a one-on-one conversation with the Rev.

But she knew he didn’t do small talk, and she was not good at it, either, so she went straight to the point.

“I know everyone likes Fiji better,” she said. “And I know she’s a better person than me.”

The Rev cocked his head to one side and waited. His dark eyes were bright in the gloomy interior of the chapel.

“But I have my own strengths and weaknesses,” she said.

He nodded. “You’re a fighter,” he said.

She took a deep breath. “My father is one of the richest men in America.”

The Rev’s expression didn’t change. “And?” he said. The syllable came out cracked and harsh, like the croaking of raven.

“And you know what this man did to me when I was a little girl?”

The Rev seemed, almost undetectably, to brace himself to hear something distasteful. “Fucked you?”

“Nope. That would have been straightforward. He let my mom do things with me. Rent me out to her little boyfriends. He pretended he didn’t know.” Her lips twisted in disgust. “She charged them to have sex with me. It was like Monopoly money to her. I was like the little shoe or the iron.” Her shoulders compacted, her body hunched in on itself. She appeared about half her size.

The Monopoly references did not seem to register with the Rev. “She living? Able to pay?”

“Now there’s a question that makes sense,” Olivia said. “No, she’s not. She was the first person I killed.”

“What did you do with her?” The Rev asked this question with an almost professional interest.

“I took her boat out,” she said. “I tossed her in the ocean. I hope the fishes ate her.”

“Something surely did,” the Rev said. He approved of that.

She said, greatly daring, “Is that what you do with the bodies?”

“No,” the Rev said, after a laden pause. “Not unless it’s at the full moon, some instance of self-defense. I’m no cannibal.”

“Gotcha,” she said, puzzled by his words, but getting that he was offended. “My point is—I kill people who need killing, and it doesn’t seem to bother me. I could say my parents made me that way, but that sounds like I think I need an excuse. I don’t.”

“Dead insides,” the Rev said, by way of diagnosis.

“Exactly.” She seemed relieved to find someone who understood. “I have to wonder how you can be a reverend, and yet you do these things?”

“Hide the bodies of killers? Dispense justice to those who threaten the peace of this place?”

In a nutshell,
Olivia thought. She nodded.

“Because that’s why I’m here,” he said. “I can’t say no different than that. The God of Moses and Abraham put me here to preserve and protect Midnight. That’s my job. And I’ll do it to the best of my ability.” He gave her a sharp nod in return, to tell her the subject was closed.

“I’m trying to help Manfred solve his problem,” she said. “But so far, we haven’t gotten anywhere. Do you have any advice?”

“Use every resource available,” he told her. “You haven’t done
that yet. That’s quieter. But if that don’t work, go in strong and hard.” And the way he leaned back after he spoke, Olivia knew that was all he was going to say. She thought of a dozen other questions, but she’d reached his limit.

“All right, then,” she said. “I’m doing the best I can.”

“Then that’s all you need to worry about, Olivia.” The Rev extended his hand, holding it over her head but not touching it. In his creaking, cracking voice, he said, “God over the serpents and animals and creatures of the land and water, bless this thy servant, Olivia. Give her strength and courage to complete her purpose. Amen.”

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.

O
livia 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 settled 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.

There was a lull in the conversation, during which they all took a step back from being upset.

Manfred said, “Olivia, didn’t you tell me that you were looking for a desk for your apartment?”

Olivia took the cue. “Thanks for reminding me. Joe, I do need a desk, if one comes in that’s not too fragile or pricey.”

“I did get a fauxtique desk yesterday,” Joe said, smiling. “Probably from the nineteen sixties and very sturdy. I don’t know if we could get it down the stairs to your place, though. We’d have to come around to the side, take it straight in the east door. . . .”

They embarked on a technical discussion about moving the desk.

“Maybe I can use my high school math skills for once,” Manfred said. “I knew there was a reason I had to take it.”

They were able to have a decent dinner together, though Manfred became distracted by trying to figure out another plan. He yearned to be out from under his situation the way a man in the desert yearns to spot a palm tree.

Olivia elbowed him when he was thinking vaguely about
suing Lewis for slander. Or some other defamation. “What?” he asked her.

There was a stranger inside the doorway.

“That’s Mr. Big Eyes, Shorty Horowitz’s grandson,” she said.

The stranger waited to be seated, and Manfred called, “Just take a seat anywhere. Madonna or the kid will be with you in a second.” He nodded and took one of the tables for two along the front wall. Unfortunately, it was the Rev’s table.