Cook stepped into the room, followed by the same uniformed officers who had been peering through the window. “Your husband?” he asked.
“Colin isn’t here right now. He’s disputing a bill with a distributor. He’ll be back before we open for the night. What is this about?” Cook looked over at me, and Claire surmised his thoughts. “It’s fine. She’s family.”
I realized that he viewed me as every bit as much of a bother, an inconvenience, as I saw him. I felt a bit slighted, even though I had no right to. Adam looked at me, curious about how I’d managed to make the leap from a kind of, sort of girlfriend to part of the Tierney clan. We hadn’t made the pregnancy public knowledge, and as yet there were no official wedding plans to relay.
“All right.” He pulled an old Polaroid out of his coat pocket. The picture had been wrapped in a clear evidence bag. “Do you recognize this picture?”
Claire took the bag into her hands and focused on its contents. Her legs collapsed out from under her as she fell heavily into a chair. I took the one next to her and reached out without asking permission and snatched it from her hand. The plastic somewhat obscured the picture, but the image was instantly recognizable. It was a photo of Peter’s father, Colin, and Claire holding a baby. It had to be Peter, but the child looked so scrawny and sickly I found it hard to accept that it could be. I focused on the background and realized that the photo had been taken in the very room where we sat.
Adam reached over and took the picture from me. “Mrs. Tierney?”
“Yes,” she said, regaining her composure. “Obviously. I don’t know who might have taken it, but it’s from when we first brought the baby—I mean, Peter—home. Where did you find it?”
“Are any family or friends visiting you right now?”
“No. No one,” she said, but then repeated, “Where did you find this picture?”
“We got a call this morning reporting that the body of an elderly man was found lying by the side of the road, just off Ogeechee. There was no form of identification on him, but we found this in his pocket. In light of certain unusual circumstances, we have to treat his death as suspicious.”
I felt myself blanching. My eyes were drawn to Claire, who had turned equally white.
“I hate to do this, but I need to ask you to come with me. See if you can identify the body.”
“Yes, of course,” Claire muttered. “I’ll call Colin. Tell him to meet us.”
“I would appreciate that, ma’am.”
As she stepped away from the table, moving over to the phone by the bar, Cook looked me deeply in the eye. “Do you know anything about this?”
“Of course not,” I snapped at him. Too quick. Too defensive. I shook my head. “I have no idea what’s going on.”
The biblical adage “Be sure your sin will find you out” came to mind. Guilt and regret caused a trickle of sweat to roll down my spine.
Adam nodded his head, as if he accepted my words, but I knew he didn’t. He forced his body into a more relaxed stance, and reached into his pocket for his omnipresent little black notepad. I’d witnessed this behavior before when he had come to question me about Ginny’s murder. He used the notepad as a prop, drawing a witness’s attention to it, leading him or her to believe that it contained a list of indisputable facts that pointed to that witness as the prime suspect in the crime being investigated. The pad could be considered an anachronism, but it was an effective tool all the same.
Claire hung up the phone, and Adam slid the pad into his pocket, his attention returning to her. Still, Adam had excellent instincts, and he was nothing if not tenacious. He’d circle back to me. I knew that much for sure.
“He’s on his way,” she said to Cook. “Mercy, will you stay here and help Peter open up if we don’t return in time?”
“Of course,” I said.
Claire leaned in to kiss my cheek as she passed me. “There’s a good girl,” she said. “Officers?”
The four of them left, letting the door bang shut behind them. I felt a sudden wave of panic rush through me, and I forced the door back open, nearly stumbling outside. The fresh air embraced me like a welcoming friend, but then a cloud passed over the sun, leaving me chilled and uneasy.
FIVE
I stood outside the tavern’s door fighting off panic. I drew my arms up around myself, rubbing away at the goose bumps that prickled along them. Who was the old fellow who’d stumbled across my path? How could he possibly be connected to the Tierneys? Why had I been stupid enough to think I could resuscitate him?
“What’s wrong, pretty lady?” a man’s voice startled me. Muscle-bound; taller than me, but still short for a man; clean-shaven head. He wore a rebel-flag T-shirt cut into a tank top that revealed a sleeve of tattoos on his right arm. Even though my conscious mind failed to take in the many pieces that came together in the tattoo’s intricate design, my subconscious registered a few of the symbols and interpreted them as bad news. His accent, the way he moved, everything about him said “backwoods.”
I knew the first instant I laid eyes on him that I didn’t like him or his entire gestalt, but I forced a smile. My instincts told me to be civil. Not to challenge him. “I’m fine, thanks. Just had a bit of a morning.” His eyes—dark, hard, spaced a little too closely together, and shadowed by his brow—twinkled. He took a step closer. The sun glinted off the handle of a hunting knife, the kind you often heard called a “pig sticker,” that he wore strapped to his leg.
A woman, homespun bleach job worn in a braid and makeup spackled over bad skin, stepped up to him and slung her arm around his shoulder. “Looks more like a little bit of morning sickness to me,” she said. She turned her chin down and glared at me through narrowed slits. She was marking her territory. This man, she informed me wordlessly, belonged to her. Lord help her, she could have him, but he shrugged off her arm and drew up closer to me.
“Naw, that can’t be. She ain’t got no ring on her finger. You can tell by looking at her that she ain’t the type to spread her legs just to say howdy. Am I right there, boy?”