Paper Doll

chapter fifteen

THE SEASONS HADN’T changed yet in South Carolina. The weather was still summer. But the earth’s orbit was implacable and despite the temperature; the evening came on earlier than it used to. It was already beginning to darken into the cocktail hour when I left Ferguson in the track office and began to stroll toward the Alton Arms. As I came past the parking lot, I saw the blue Buick pull out of the lot and head out the paved road that ran from the stable area to the highway.

Along the dirt road, under the high pines, the evening had already arrived. The locust hum had vanished, and instead there was the sound of crickets, and occasionally the sound of night birds-which probably fed on the crickets. There was no other sound, except my footsteps in the soft earth. No one else was walking on the road. I could feel the weight of the gun on my hip. It felt nice.

Since Olivia Nelson’s father wasn’t dead, someone had lied to the cops. But there was no way to know whether it was Loudon Tripp; or Olivia who had lied to Loudon; or Jumper Jack himself who had deceived his daughter.

At the hotel, I went up to my room and called Farrell.

“You got anything on that license plate?” I said.

“You’re going to love this,” he said. “South Carolina DMV says the plate’s classified. Information about ownership on a need-to-know basis only.”

“You can’t show a need to know?”

“Because it’s following you, or you think it is? No. If it was in a hit and run and three witnesses saw it, that’s need to know.”

“It’s part of a murder investigation,” I said.

“You say so, South Carolina DMV doesn’t say so. They say I can go fry my Yankee ass. Though they said it in a nice polite Southern way.”

“Classified plate number is usually undercover cops,” I said.

“Un huh.”

“Okay,” I said.

I listened to the faint hollow silence on the wire for a while.

“Okay,” I said again.

Farrell waited.

“I got something you’re going to love too,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Olivia Nelson’s father is alive.”

“Yeah?”

“Control yourself,” I said.

“Tripp said her parents were dead,” Farrell said.

“Right,” I said. “Why would he lie?”

“Maybe he didn’t lie,” I said. “Maybe she told him they were.”

“Why would she lie?”

“Maybe she thought they were dead,” I said.

“Will you fucking stop it,” Farrell said. “If her father’s alive and we were told he died, somebody lied.”

“Yowsah,” I said.

Through the window of my hotel room I could see the blue Buick, motionless under the heavy trees, across the street from the hotel.

“You going to see him?”

“Yowsah.”

“You going to stop talking like the fucking end man in a minstrel show?”

“Sho ‘nuff, Mr. Bones,” I said. “Soon’s ah do sumpin ’bout this guy that’s tailing me.”

“Why don’t you just ignore him?” Farrell said.

“Well, for one thing, it’s an open tail. Unless he’s the worst cop in the old Confederacy, he means me to see him.”

“Which means he’s trying to scare you?” Farrell said.

“Yeah. I want to know why. And who.”

“You find out, let me know,” Farrell said.

“Sure,” I said. “‘Less of course it’s classified.”