Midnight Crossroad

11

Bobo looked over to see that Fiji was staring at Sheriff Smith as though he’d informed her the earth was made of pie crust. He could just hear her speak. “How can you say that?” she asked, and Olivia joined her. The sheriff looked at Olivia, like every man did, but Olivia stood in front of him with her arms crossed over her middle, her face intent. “Let’s hear about this,” Olivia said.

“Mr. Winthrop,” the sheriff called, and Bobo walked over, his feet reluctant to go in the direction he had to. He could tell this was going to be a bad conversation, as if anything could make this day worse.

“Fiji?” he said, when he’d gotten to her. “What’s the matter?” Fiji didn’t speak, but she didn’t leave, and neither did Olivia. Bobo thought the sheriff looked as though he’d like to ask them to.

“I just heard from one of my deputies,” Smith said, looking directly at Bobo. “What did Aubrey Hamilton tell you about her background?”

Whatever Bobo had expected, it wasn’t this. “What do you mean?” he said, floundering around in his thoughts to make sense of Smith’s question. His head felt thick as cotton wool, his grief making him slow and stupid. “She was working in Davy when I met her. She was a waitress at the Lone Star Steakhouse.”

“What did she tell you about her background?”

That was definitely an ominous turn of phrase, but Bobo said, “She told me her parents were dead and that her sister had thrown Aubrey out of the house when she’d turned eighteen . . . and she’d been fending for herself since then.”

“That’s what she had told her coworkers at the steakhouse, too. We talked to them briefly when you reported her missing. However, one of my deputies looked a little deeper after we got the call to come out here, since she’s the only missing person on our books. None of that is true.”

Bobo felt the shock clear down to his bones. “What are you saying?” Bobo asked. He looked at Fiji, whose face was locked down tight, for some enlightenment.

Fiji said, “Sheriff, are you saying that Aubrey kind of made herself up?”

“That’s right. Her name was Aubrey Hamilton, right enough,” Arthur Smith said. “But she’s got living parents. She’s got no sister. She does have a brother. And she’s been married before.”

“But I knew her,” Bobo said, feeling that if he said it often enough, it would erase what the sheriff was saying. “I saw her driver’s license. I met her by chance . . .” And then he remembered the two men who’d come into the pawnshop. He began to let a new idea sink into his brain. “I thought I knew her.”

“How did you make her acquaintance?” the sheriff asked.

“I love the Lone Star Steakhouse,” Bobo said. “I go there at least once every two, three weeks to have steak. I met her there.”

Olivia’s face flushed red with anger. “Son of a fucking bitch,” she snarled, and stomped away.

Bobo watched as the other townspeople gathered around her, and Olivia began to talk, her hands flying upward from time to time in outrage.

“Olivia has no problem at all believing that Aubrey was a liar,” Bobo murmured, the enormity of this revelation about the woman he’d loved beginning to sink in.

“I don’t, either,” said Fiji, almost in a whisper. She put her arm around him, awkwardly, and he could see the unhappiness in her, the unhappiness she felt on his behalf.

The rest of the Midnighters had clustered around Olivia. Even Madonna, who’d been glowering at the crowd while she sat in the pickup with the door open, came closer with Grady in her arms.

Smith gave a loud, exasperated sigh. Bobo figured he hadn’t planned on telling the whole community at once, or this early. But the sheriff must have decided to make the best of the situation, since he raised his voice to a public announcement level. “I might as well tell all of you at the same time. Aubrey Hamilton was not the woman she said she was. More accurately, she was Aubrey Hamilton Lowry.”

The people of Midnight moved closer to Smith, Bobo, and Fiji. Bobo saw that they were all tense and angry, and if he’d had room for any other emotion, he would have felt touched.

“Married?” The Rev looked as though the word had been torn from his throat. He looked even sterner than usual.

“Formerly married,” the sheriff said. “Though she told them at the steakhouse that she’d gotten divorced and was in the process of changing all her legal papers back over to her maiden name. In fact, her husband, Chad Lowry, was shot and killed by police officers in Phoenix, Arizona.”

“Shot? Doing what?” Teacher asked.

“Robbing a bank.”

“He was a career criminal?” Bobo said. He almost hoped that would be the case.

“Not exactly,” the sheriff said. “He was a member of a white supremacist group, Men of Liberty. MOL is based in Arizona, but it has branches in all the southwestern states, including Texas.”

“No,” said Bobo. He turned to face Olivia Charity. “It’s all part of the same thing,” he said.

“What is?” Olivia said. But she narrowed her eyes at Bobo, who caught that warning a second later.

“It’s all part of her pattern of deceiving me,” Bobo said, making a good recovery. “I was a fool to think she loved me.”

That made everyone acutely uncomfortable, and they all looked away. All but Fiji. He looked down into her eyes and saw nothing but steadfastness. “I was a fool,” he repeated softly.

“Never,” Fiji replied. “She was the fool.”

There was a shout from down the slope, and they all turned to look in that direction. A deputy came up, a woman, her black hair pulled back into a tight bun. She was carrying a plastic bag. In it was an old gun. Smith went over to her and held it up to have a good look.

They all stood silent. Bobo didn’t know what anyone else was thinking, but he was back in that land where unpleasant revelations were the norm. He hadn’t lived there in a while, and he hadn’t wanted to return, ever.

Olivia was standing right behind him, he could see from the corner of his eye. She was looking at the gun. “I know that piece,” she said, making sure her voice was low, but of course, Fiji heard her.

“From where?” she asked, equally quietly.

Bobo wanted to tell the truth, if only to Fiji. “It was in the shop,” he said. “It’s been there for years.”

The sheriff told them they could go home. “We’ll come to talk to you individually later,” he said. “Don’t leave town until one of us has interviewed you.”

The trek back to Midnight seemed twice as long as the hike to the river. In silence, they straggled back to town, not talking, lost in their own thoughts. Bobo walked alone, not able to bear the company of anyone else, not even his closest friend, Fiji. When they got to the pawnshop, Bobo had already gotten the keys from his pocket, and he went in the side door and up to his apartment without a word.