The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes

Eighteen

He held off checking his phone until he’d walked the sheriff back to his office, then returned to his car. Once again he’d left the windows all the way up, and he took it out on the highway and ran it at speed with the windows all the way down.

After a couple of miles it was cool enough for the air conditioner to hold its own. By then he was well out of town. He pulled into a rest area, got a Coke from the machine. There were tables and benches, but the county’s site maintenance didn’t extend to cleaning the birdshit off the furniture, so he drank the Coke standing up with his back against a tree.

He checked the Lisa phone, and there were no messages, nothing on his voicemail, no notification of missed calls. He’d told her not to call, and now he couldn’t decide whether to be pleased or disappointed that she’d followed instructions.

On the other phone, there was voicemail from Barb. He played it: “Call me.”

He did, and got her voicemail. “Tag,” he said. “You’re it.”

He was taking the last swig of Coke when the phone rang.

“Whew,” she said. “What a morning! This couple from Michigan, looking for a condo they can use in the winter and rent out in the off-season, or maybe a time share, or maybe this or maybe that, so I’ve got a ton of things to show them, and not much chance of closing anything, because they don’t know what they want. And you know how it always winds up, don’t you? By the time they zero in on what they’re really looking for, they’ve taken up so much of my time that they’re embarrassed. So they don’t call me, they call someone like that cunt Maggie Fitch, pardon my French, and she shows them one property and they offer the asking price, and where does that leave me?”

“High and dry?”

“At the moment,” she said, “I’m neither one of those things. And hearing your voice is making me all wet.”

“I’ve barely said a word. Is it safe to guess that you’re behind closed doors?”

“Uh-huh. Touching myself very lightly through my panties, but I could probably be talked into taking them off.”

“Why don’t you come over?”

“You’re home?”

“I could be,” he said, “in ten minutes or so.”

“You’re not in the mood for conversation, is that what I’m hearing?”

“I think I’d like something a little more hands-on.”

“Well, sugar, I already told you what my hand’s on, and what your hand’s on is strictly up to you.”

“Just think how much better the conversation could be,” he said, “with you touching yourself, same as you’re doing now—”

“And?”

“And something in your ass.”

“Something like what?”

“Something that’s getting harder the more we talk about it.”

She took a deep breath.

“Okay, we’re on the same page,” she said, “and it’s got dirty words written all over it. I can’t come now.”

“Well, don’t. Wait until we’re together.”

“I can’t come over now. Unless I cancel an appointment, and I really don’t want to do that. I could come by around four.”

“Four would work.”

“Four o’clock at your place.”

That was good, four o’clock. That gave him plenty of time to do some work for Gallatin County.

Though not necessarily the work the Sheriff expected him to be doing.

George Otterbein had turned over most of the day-to-day operations of Otterbein Kitchen Supply to his son, Alden. But he kept a suite of offices in Perry, on the second floor of a three-story red-brick building on Court House Square.

There was a café, Grounds for Divorce, two doors down from the court house and diagonally across the street from Otterbein’s building. They had little glass-topped tables on the sidewalk, and Doak took one of them and ordered an iced mocha latte and a cranberry scone. It was, he thought, quite a step for Taylor County, where the greater portion of the population thought grits was one of the four basic food groups.

A phone call earlier had established that Otterbein had gone to lunch, and Doak kept an eye on the entrance.

“Mr. O’s usually back around one,” the woman had said, “but I wouldn’t swear it’ll be like that today.”

“I guess you can’t set your watch by him.”

“Well, no,” she said. “Now that you put it that way, no, I’d have to say you can’t.”

But at five minutes before one, he recognized the man he’d seen in online photos. The face was unmistakable — a big beak of a nose, a jutting chin, overgrown eyebrows — and Otterbein was taller and heavier than his pictures had suggested, dwarfing the younger man walking at his side.

Otterbein clapped his companion on the shoulder, then parted company with him to disappear into the red-brick building. Doak settled his check, walked to his car. He’d left a seersucker jacket folded over the passenger seat. Otterbein had been wearing a suit, so he donned the jacket; Otterbein’s shirt had been open, so he left his own necktie in his jacket pocket.

“J. W. Miller for Mr. Otterbein,” he said, handing over a card. “I called earlier.”

He took a seat while the woman who couldn’t set her clock by her employer took him Doak’s card, coming back shortly to say Mr. Otterbein would see him. He found Otterbein standing in shirtsleeves behind a massive oak desk, his jacket hanging on a walnut hat tree in the corner.

“Mr. Miller,” Otterbein said. “Marcie didn’t say what this is in reference to, but I don’t suppose she asked you, did she?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“She never does. I think she’s afraid of invading your privacy, but I’m not.” He squinted at the card. “Inquiries, it says here. What’s that mean?”

“It means I wanted one card that would cover all the bases,” he said. “I’m a retired police officer from up North, getting along just fine without the cold weather. A little work now and then stretches my pension some and keeps me from rusting out.”

And why did that bring him to Otterbein’s office?

“I might have a few dollars for you,” he said. “If you’re the right Otterbein.”

Back home on Osprey Drive, he hung the seersucker jacket in the closet, took another shower. He started to get dressed, then changed his mind and put on a robe.

He found things to do on the computer, and around three-thirty he took a call from Barb. Were they still on for four?

He said they were, and a few minutes before the hour he heard her car make the turn into his drive. He was at the door when she reached it, and she met him with an open-mouthed kiss and a hand reaching into his robe.

“God, what a day,” she said. “But you’re gonna make me forget all about it, aren’t you?”