“Okay. Did you hear the Clancys’ house burned down?”
“Little Bill done told me. Ain’t had a fire like that for years and years. Lotta house to burn. Pete okay?”
Robie shrugged. “I don’t know. Haven’t seen him. By the way, my father pled not guilty. And he has a lawyer now. Toni Moses.”
“Hear she’s real good. And damn expensive.”
“Well, when you’re fighting for your life, what’s money?” As soon as Robie said it, he regretted his choice of words.
“Guess you right ’bout that.” Billy sank back on the couch and his breathing got a little heavier. “Fightin’ for your life,” he said in a low voice. “Only I’m past fightin’, right? Hell, done is done.” He tried to laugh but it died in his throat.
“What’s the name of your doctor again?”
“Huh, oh, Doc Holloway.”
“Where’s his office?”
Billy stared at him. “Why, you sick?”
“Got a thing on my arm I want him to look at.”
“Oh yeah, he’s real good. He’s on Wright Street. Near the Gulf Coast Diner. You ’member that place? Dollar pitchers and all the shrimp you could eat.”
“I remember. How many times did we get thrown out of there for eating too much?”
“At least five times. But they kept lettin’ us back in.”
“Because we kept winning ball games. The assholes.”
Billy laughed so hard he started choking. Robie rose quickly and got him breathing properly and settled again.
“So you got a problem with your arm?” wheezed Billy.
Robie nodded. “Nothing major. Just getting old.”
“Sounds like a good deal, gettin’ old,” muttered Billy. Then he finished the second beer in one gulp.
Robie left Billy’s an hour later and headed to see Doc Holloway.
He was in his fifties, slightly built, with a crown of graying hair and a bushy mustache. His blue eyes were capped by a pair of wild eyebrows.
Holloway had not been in Cantrell when Robie lived here, but he knew Robie’s father, he told him.
Robie had him examine his arm. Holloway looked over the burn and scar tissue and said, “You’re going to need surgery on this.”
“Know a good one?”
“Not in Cantrell. You’ll need to go over to Biloxi. I can give you a referral. How’d you come by that anyway? That’s a right bad burn.”
“Got too close to a fire.”
Holloway gave him a condescending look. “Well, I figured something like that.”
“I’ve been to see Billy Faulconer. Pretty sad to see him like that.”
Holloway took off his glasses and cleaned them with a paper towel.
“Well, people’s choices do have an impact on their health.”
“So lung cancer then? From smoking?”
“I can’t talk to you about that. Patient privacy.”
“Right, only Billy told me it was lung cancer.”
“Well, if he did I can’t dispute it, but I also can’t talk about it.”
“I guess if he had come in earlier, gotten an X-ray, PET and bone scan, CT scan, and had a biopsy done, you might have caught it. But I suppose it showed up on all those tests confirmed as lung cancer?”
Holloway wrote something down on a piece of paper. “Here are the referrals for surgeons in Biloxi. For now keep it clean and don’t exert yourself. Looks like you partially tore some of the scar tissue already.”
Robie took the paper. “Right, thanks.”
He walked out thinking Holloway was either just following the rules in not discussing Billy’s case, or he hadn’t done the tests he was supposed to have done to confirm the man actually had terminal lung cancer.
Only Robie wasn’t sure what he could do about it.
He drove back to the Willows.
Victoria’s Volvo was there. She must have finished her visit at the jail. He walked inside and looked around. Priscilla came out from the kitchen rubbing her hands on a towel.
“You should keep the front door locked,” said Robie.
“Since when? Ain’t nobody in Cantrell lock their doors. ’Specially durin’ the day. What if you got company comin’?”
“Then they can knock and you can come and unlock the door.”
“I’ll have to ask Ms. Victoria ’bout that.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to her about it. Where is she?”
“In her room.”
He climbed the stairs and knocked on Victoria’s bedroom door.
“Who is it? Priscilla?”
“It’s Will.”
“Oh, come on in.”
He opened the door and stepped inside.
Victoria was lying on the bed, her shoes on the floor next to her. She sat up a bit on a pillow. Her face was puffy with sleep.
“I must have dozed off.”
Robie stood next to the bed.
“How did it go at the jail?”
She propped herself up more and rubbed at her face, then pushed loose strands of hair back into place. “I must look a mess.”
“You look fine. How was Dad?”
“Not too bad. He was mad at me for bringing Ty, but once Ty went over and hugged him all was right with the world.”
“Good.”
“He told me about Pete Clancy and those boys from the casino. My God, Will, you could’a been killed.” She reached out a shaky hand and gripped his arm.
“Which is why I came up to see you.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “You need to start taking some security precautions. For starters, locking the doors so no one can just walk right in.”
“You really think these folks will try something?”
“They saw me in town talking to you. They saw Ty.”
Victoria now sat up straight. “Oh, shit!”
“Yeah. It was bad luck, but we can’t do anything to change that now. It is what it is.”
“If they try to harm one hair on—”
Robie clutched her shoulder. “That won’t happen, Victoria.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Do you own a gun?”
“Everybody in Mississippi owns a gun.”
“Then I would start carrying it with you and keeping it handy around here. But don’t leave it around for Ty to stumble across.”
“As if I would, Will. I’m not stupid or careless.”
“I know. I’m just being overly cautious.”
She took several deep breaths. “I think I’ll go check on Ty.”
“I’m sorry for bringing this down on your head.”
“I’m sorry too, Will,” she said, and her tone was not friendly.
“I can move out of here,” he said, interpreting her unspoken thoughts.
“Well, it’s too late for that now. They saw you with us. They’ll put it all together. Hell, they probably already have. Are they also the source of these credible threats?”
“I don’t know, since I haven’t seen these credible threats. Davis hasn’t shared them with Toni Moses yet.”
She rose, slipped on her shoes, and headed out to check on Ty.
Robie went to his room and sat on the edge of the bed, lost in thought. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but as he looked around he realized that this had been Laura Barksdale’s bedroom.
He should have noted it before. Late at night he had shimmied up to the second-floor verandah and into her bedroom enough times.
Her bed had been set here as well, and with the way the room was configured, it was the most logical place. Her desk had been against the wall facing the front of the house. She’d been an A student, unlike Robie. But he figured his grades were good enough, considering he played sports year-round and had far from a perfect home life.
He rose and went to the window overlooking the front of the house. This had been the same window where he had seen her silhouette.
His mind went back to that night over twenty-two years ago. It had been the biggest shock he had ever received: that she had chosen to stay here instead of go with him. If he had ever bothered to psychoanalyze himself, he might have concluded that his problem getting close to people might stem from that.