It turned out that Hackbarth had called, but hadn’t said anything about Logan and Dev, just that Diana had left town.
“I figured it was going to happen someday,” Mary said. She was sitting in a cloth-covered recliner, while Logan and Dev sat on the couch. “Diana’s always been kind of the restless sort.”
“How long had she been in Braden?” Logan asked.
“About two years now. She and I, we’ve had our differences on occasion, but she’s a hell of a bartender.”
“Did she work for you the whole time she was here?”
“Yep. I ran an ad in the local paper. She called me up, I tried her out, and that was that.”
“So she was here before she got the job,” Logan said, thinking the woman had misunderstood him.
Mary shook her head. “No. She called me from somewhere in Arizona, I think. Can’t remember exactly. Think she said she found the ad on the paper’s website.”
“She have any friends here you know of?”
“A few different people. Lately she’d been hanging around with Tessie Carter, I think.”
Logan typed the name into a note on his phone, then accessed the picture of Sara. “Have you ever seen this woman before?”
Mary looked at the picture for a second, then glanced around until she spotted a pair of glasses on the coffee table. “Can you hand me those?” she asked Dev.
Dev passed them to her. “Here you go.”
“Thank you. My close-up vision is shot. Growing old sucks sometimes.”
“Tell me about it,” Dev agreed.
She gave him a smile, and looked back at the picture.
“You might have seen her with Diana about two years ago or so,” Logan suggested.
“She is familiar.” She continued to examine the photo. “Wait, wait. There was this…friend who visited her from out of town. What was her name?” She stared at the floor for a moment. “Sandy? Sally. I don’t know. Something like that.”
“Sara?” Logan suggested.
“Maybe.” She pointed at the picture. “That could be her, but I’m not a hundred percent.”
“And you haven’t seen her since then?”
“No. Don’t think so.”
“You see anyone else with them at the time?”
She thought for a moment. “If I did, I don’t remember.”
“Is there anything else about Diana that might help us find her? Something she might have said? Family she might go to?”
“No family that I know of. Certainly none in Braden. She said her mom died a few years ago, but otherwise…” She shrugged. “She’s a pretty private person. Never really talked much about herself.”
Logan hesitated, then said, “If you don’t mind me saying, you don’t seem as mad as I expected, given she just quit on you.”
“Annoyed that I’ll probably have to cover a few shifts myself, yeah, but I can’t be mad at her. Diana’s a good person, but I always felt like there was something missing, you know, like she was looking for something that she would probably never find.”
As they walked to the car, Dev tossed Logan the keys. “You drive.”
Logan gave him an odd look, but said, “Okay,” thinking that maybe Dev was just tired of being behind the wheel.
But as they exited the mobile home park, Dev swiveled in his seat and stared out the rear window.
“What is it?” Logan asked.
Turning back around, Dev seemed to contemplate something. Finally he said, “I think someone might be following us.”
Logan’s gaze flicked to the rearview mirror. “Who?”
“There’s a gray sedan about a block back.”
Logan searched the street behind them. “Okay, I see it. You sure?” The car was too far back for him to see the people inside.
“No, I’m not. Have you seen how many gray sedans there are in this town?”
“Then what makes you think we’re being followed?”
“It looks like the same one I saw when we visited the real estate place, and before that, not long after we left the woman’s house. But I don’t know.”
Logan frowned. He considered making a few quick turns to see if the car was really tailing them, but decided doing that might scare the person off. If they pretended like they hadn’t noticed, and just kept tabs on the other car, there was a better chance they might learn something useful. He told Dev what he wanted to do, and the former Marine nodded as if he’d been thinking the same thing.
Mary Ralston had told them Tessie Carter was working at the Wallace Wash Mini Market out near the interstate. As Logan pulled into the store’s small lot and parked, Dev positioned himself so he could see out the back without seeming too obvious.
“There they go.”
“They?”
“There’re two people inside.”
“Did either of them look this way?” Logan asked.
“No. Kept facing straight.”
“Recognize them?”
Dev shook his head. “Never seen them before. A man and a woman, both white. Her hair’s cut short.” Dev touched his neck about halfway between his head and shoulder. “About to here. Think it’s brown. But she was driving, so harder to see. The guy’s hair was close-cropped, lighter, almost blond.”
“How old?”
“She could be anywhere from thirty to fifty. Sorry, best I can do. The guy’s younger, late twenties at most.”
“Where are they now?”
“They kept going straight through the next intersection, like they were going to get on the freeway.” Dev craned his neck. “Can’t see them anymore.”
Maybe it was nothing. Braden was small, with only so many roads a person could use, and the route they’d just taken had been the logical route to the highway. They’d just have to see if the car showed up again.
The Wallace Wash Mini Market was a kind of low-rent 7-Eleven-older shelves, worse lighting, and fewer choices. Behind the counter was a woman with vibrant auburn hair and too much black eye makeup. Her clothes of choice were a Lady Gaga T-shirt and a short black skirt.
Logan caught Dev’s eye, then subtly motioned to the opening in the counter that allowed whoever was behind it to get out. With a single nod, Dev walked toward it as Logan grabbed a bag of beef jerky and approached the cash register.
The woman took the bag, scanned it, said, “Anything else?”
“Can I ask you something?”
She stared at him, bored.
“Are you Tessie Carter?”
A spark in her eye. “I don’t know you.”
“That’s right. You don’t.”
She pulled back from the counter. “Then how do you know me?”
Logan raised his hands in front of his chest, palms out. “I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“About what?”
“Diana Stockley.”
“Did that bitch send you?” she spat. “You can tell her that if she wants to talk to me, she should have the balls to do it herself.”
She moved toward the opening in the counter, but Dev was there, blocking her path.
“What the hell?” she said. “Get out of my way!”
“Diana didn’t send us,” Logan told her. “We’re trying to find her.”
“Does it look like she’s here? Her place is on Sage Lane. Try there.”
“We did.”
“Well, then wait until she goes to work. The Hideaway. She starts at six.”
“According to her note, she left town and isn’t coming back.”
Logan’s phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it.
The anger on Tessie’s face morphed into disbelief. “What are you talking about? What note?”
“The one she left her landlord. Said he could sell whatever was left in the house.”
“No,” she said. “No, you’re wrong. She’s not gone. She probably just went on a trip.” She paused, her face hardening. “I don’t even know you. You’re probably lying.”
“I wish I was, but I’m not. You can ask Mary Ralston. She’s the one who told us you were a friend of Diana’s.”
“Mary…? No, no, you’ve got to be wrong. Diana wouldn’t leave, not without…”
Suddenly she whipped around and grabbed the cell phone that was sitting on the back counter. She found a number and called it.