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“If you want to,” Mrs. Jackson says, sounding both surprised and pleased. “The pins are in that mesh bag.”
The two women finish up fast, hanging the last two sheets as a team. Davis thinks about Jalbert parking near Coughlin’s truck. She doesn’t—can’t—believe that Danny Coughlin dreamed the location where a murdered girl was buried, but she is closer than ever to believing that Frank Jalbert, a decorated inspector, planted drugs and then got some cop to stop Danny on the road to Great Bend. She just can’t prove it, any more than they can prove Danny Coughlin killed Yvonne Wicker.
Let it alone, she tells herself as she puts the last pin on the last sheet.
Probably good advice, but she won’t do it. If Jalbert is over the line, she can’t just stand by. And she has someone else to question. It will probably come to nothing, but at least she’ll be able to tell herself she tried.
“You want a glass of iced tea?” Mrs. Jackson asks as she picks up her laundry basket.
“You know, that sounds good,” Ella says, and follows her toward the house.
One thing she’s sure of: This is going to be her last case with Frank. All else aside, Danny is absolutely correct about one thing—that counting business, the arithmomania, is spooky. And it’s getting worse.
44
At ten-thirty on Sunday morning someone knocks on the door of Danny’s trailer. He expects to see Jalbert or Davis, but it’s Bill Dumfries, the retired contractor who put him in touch with Edgar Ball. He looks uncomfortable, arms crossed over his meaty chest, not making eye contact. Danny has a pretty good idea that he hasn’t come to invite him to dinner.
“Hey, Danny.”
“Hey. What can I do for you?”
Dumfries sighs. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna come right out with it. Most of the people in the park think it’d be good if you left.”
Danny is already planning to leave, which should make this all right—sort of all right—but it doesn’t. “You want to come in and have a cup of coffee? Talk about it a little?”
“Better not.” Dumfries glances toward his trailer and Danny sees Althea Dumfries standing on the top step, watching them. Probably wanting to make sure Danny doesn’t whip out his murder-knife and start stabbing on her husband. Which is funny, in a way; Danny thinks if he made a move on Bill, the guy would break him in half.
“There was a kind of meeting last night,” Dumfries says. A flush is creeping up his neck and infecting his cheeks. “People were talking about getting up a petition, but I said screw that, I’ll talk to him. Tell him which way the wind’s blowing.”
Danny thinks of his mother, who had a saying for every occasion. One of them was it’s an ill wind that blows no good. Here was that wind, and he knew the name of the evil sorcerer who had ginned it up. Angry as he was at Jalbert, Danny didn’t want to do the man harm. That would make his situation even worse. All he wanted was to get away from his zone of influence. The sooner the better.
“You tell people not to worry.” Danny gives Althea Dumfries a wave, restraining the urge to flip her the bird. She doesn’t wave back. “I’ll be gone soon. You don’t want me here and I don’t want to stay. My mother would say this just proves that no good deed goes unpunished.”
“You really didn’t kill her.”
“No, Bill. I really didn’t kill her. And the only one who’s close to believing me is the lawyer you recommended. I don’t know if you’d call that irony or not.”
“Where are you going?”
Bill Dumfries doesn’t need to know that Danny still hasn’t nailed that down, but because Bill at least had the guts to face him (without eye contact, it’s true), Danny closes the door of his trailer gently instead of slamming it in Bill’s face.
Back in his living area, he makes a FaceTime call to his brother, knowing Stevie will be on break. Stevie keeps to a regular schedule and gets upset if something happens to knock him off it. In that way, Danny thinks, he’s kind of like a sunnyside version of Jalbert.
Stevie is sitting on a box of Charmin and eating a Twinkie. He brightens when he sees Danny’s face.
“What’s up, Danny-bo-banny?”
“I’m thinking I might move to Colorado,” Danny says. “What would you think about that?”
Stevie looks both pleased and worried. “Well… mayyy-be. But why? Why would you?”
“Tired of Kansas,” Danny says. Which is the absolute truth. Then he understands why Stevie looks worried, and has stopped munching his snack. He’s a creature of routine, is Stevie Coughlin; routine keeps him safe. His motto is: keep the shiny side up, keep the rubber side down. He is the Chief Information Officer at King Soopers, even has a plaque that says so, and he loves his room and his friends in the group home.
“I’m not talking about us moving in together,” Danny says. “I might not even live in Boulder. I looked at some places in Longmont, you know, online…”
Stevie breaks out a relieved grin. “Longmont’s nice!”
Danny doubts if Stevie has even been there. “That’s what I’ve heard, and rents are cheap. Well… cheaper. We could have supper together sometimes… maybe hit a movie… you could take me on one of your hikes…”
