Elray gave up on engaging them and lapsed into a brooding silence.

Although by now they were on the main highway, there was little to see. When they passed the Plummers’ place, Thatcher looked up toward the shack, but it was barely discernible against the black sky.

The day he’d come upon Laurel wrestling with the wet sheet, the sky had been purely blue behind her. She’d made quite a sight, one engraved on his memory. He figured he would think back on it for the rest of his life.

Under his breath, he cursed her.

* * *

“Dammit, Laurel. Your pacing is making me dizzy.”

“The whiskey is making you dizzy.”

Irv lifted the jar toward her. “You should have a snort. Maybe it would calm you down.”

“I can’t afford to be calmed down.”

Since returning home and waking him up to report what she’d seen—and hadn’t seen—she’d been beside herself, unable even to sit. “You don’t know what it was like, looking down and seeing nothing there. Everything just gone.”

While she had been trying to grasp that her friends, the stills, the tent, everything had vanished, out of the corner of her eye she’d caught headlight beams sweeping across the smooth face of a nearby hill.

Not having had time even to fully regain her breath, she’d turned away from the abandoned site and had begun the return trip to the shack in a flat-out run. Most likely, whoever was in those approaching vehicles would spend more time than she trying to figure out what had happened there, and what the implications were. But that was a supposition, not something she could count on, and it was imperative that she not be caught in the vicinity. Not by anyone.

She’d also been frantic to share this news with Irv, who might possibly have some information unknown to her. Her most earnest hope was that he could provide an explanation for the site having been abandoned.

But, to her dismay, after she’d shaken him awake, he had listened to her breathless recitation of facts with astonishing and infuriating calmness. For the past hour, while she’d been whipping herself into a froth, he had grown increasingly mellow by sipping from a jar of moonshine.

“I’m sure Ernie’s got it under control.”

She spun around to him. “If you say that one more time, I’m going to hit you with something. You can’t be sure of anything. They might have gotten away. They might even have gotten away with most of the equipment. But how far could they have gone carting all that?”

“Ernie’s old truck—”

“Yes, Ernie’s old truck.” She stopped in her tracks and turned to face him, hands fisted at her sides. “Why wasn’t I ever told that Ernie had an old truck?”

“Because we had no call to tell you.”

“Until tonight!” she shouted. “If his truck is so well hidden in the hills, maybe they couldn’t get to it. Carrying all that paraphernalia? How could they possibly?

“If the people in the three vehicles I saw launch a search… God!” She resumed pacing and wringing her hands. “Ernie and Corrine could be in custody. Or worse, dead. And any minute now so could we be.”

“I’m sure Ernie’s got it—”

Her glare silenced him.

He used the jar of moonshine to point at the article lying at the foot of his bed. “I still think that could be a message of some sort.”

She picked up Corrine’s workbook and slapped it against her palm. “Of what sort? It’s squiggles and lines.”

“Then why’d you’d bother going in after it and bringing it back? You must’ve thought those hen scratches the girl made meant something.”

The return jaunt to the shack had seemed more hazardous because it was mostly downhill, and she’d run like the devil was chasing her, which she feared he was. By the time she’d reached the shack, her entire body had been about to give out on her. Muscles, lungs, heart, had been taxed to their limit. She’d collapsed against her Model T, her arms outstretched across its hood, hugging it like a pilgrim at a shrine.

She’d allowed herself one precious minute to slow her heartbeat and breathing. Partially restored, she’d willed herself to move and get into the Model T.

“I was backing into a turn so I could drive out when I remembered seeing this primer on the dresser. I honestly don’t know what urged me to stop and get it.”

She opened the workbook to the page where Corrine had drawn what looked like absentminded scribbles. She realized now that the printing of Ernie’s name seemed beyond Corrine’s present capabilities.

“Is Ernie literate?”

“Yes. He’s no scholar, but he can read good enough to get by.”

“Then maybe this is his doing, and Corrine left the primer where she knew I would see it.”

“Let me take another look.”

She rounded the bed where Irv was semi-reclined and handed him the primer. He studied the crudely drawn etching, tilting both his head and the workbook to various angles. Then a laugh began deep inside his chest before burbling out.

“What? What is it?”

He closed the primer and passed it back to her. “Go to bed, Laurel.”

“Not on your life!”

“Turn out the light. Everything’s fine. I know where they’re at.”

* * *

He refused to talk about it further, saying that morning would come soon enough. Frustrated, but exhausted, Laurel turned out his bedroom light and pulled the door shut on her way out.

Bone-weary as she was, she took a bath before retreating upstairs to her room, where she pulled on a fresh nightgown, took the pins from her hair, and gave it a good brushing. She plaited it loosely into her customary bedtime braid. She was about to extinguish the flame in the lamp when she saw his reflection in her dresser mirror.

Gasping, she spun around, her hand at her throat.

Forty-Three

Don’t raise a ruckus.”

“What do you think you’re doing? Get out of here!”

Thatcher came into the room and quietly closed the door.

“If you don’t leave in two seconds, I’ll shoot you.”

“With what? You keep your pistol in the pocket of your skirt.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve noticed you’re always patting at it.”