Deadline

Lester told him. “…then after she paid for the gas and got directions, she turned around. That’s when I saw her face. It was her, I’m telling you. It was Melanie Burns.”

“How much have you had to drink tonight, De Roach?”

“I told you I’m not drunk.”

“How much?” he demanded.

“A few beers,” he lied. “But I’m nowhere near being drunk. I know what I saw. I saw Melanie Burns.”

“Do you hear yourself, De Roach? Do you have any idea how crazy you sound? You’re telling me you saw a woman who’s been dead for twenty-five years.”

“Don’t you think I know how the fuck it sounds?” Lester fired back, feeling scared and confused, but needing the man to believe him. “But I’m telling you, it was her.”

“What you saw was a woman who reminded you of Melanie.”

“It was her I tell you,” Lester insisted. “I looked right into her eyes. They were Melanie’s eyes. There’s no way I’d ever forget those eyes.” Hell, he’d seen them in his nightmares for more years than he wanted to remember.

He paused again. “All right. Tell me what this woman you saw looked like.”

“I told you. She looked like Melanie.”

He released a breath. “Describe her to me, you moron.”

“She was tall, a little on the skinny side. Her hair was darker than it used to be and shorter, but everything else was the same. One thing I’m sure about, she had those same spooky gray eyes.” He bit back a shudder. “You remember those eyes of hers.”

“Yeah, I remember them.” After a moment, he said, “She must be Burns’s kid.”

“Melanie’s kid?” Lester repeated.

“Yeah. Don’t you remember, you moron? Melanie and Jody Burns had a kid, a little girl. She was sleeping in the next room. And when she woke up, she found Jody Burns standing over his wife’s body. It was her testimony that helped put her old man away.”

“Melanie’s daughter,” Lester repeated more to himself than the other man. Relieved that the woman hadn’t been Melanie after all, he slumped against the cold wall. “Christ almighty, I thought for sure it was Melanie. That she was one of those reincarnations and she’d come back to make us pay just like old woman Burns said she would.”

The other man swore again. “How many times do I have to tell you there’s no such thing as ghosts. Only drunks with shit-for-brains believe in all that voodoo crap.”

Lester didn’t argue. But he knew what he knew. He’d heard the stories about Jody Burns’s mother, how she’d lived for a time in New Orleans in the French Quarter. Sin City, his own momma used to call the place because the people there were wicked. They even messed with black magic and stuff.

“De Roach, did you hear me?” he snapped.

“What?” Lester asked, pulling his attention back.

“I asked if you said anything to her.”

“No. I never said nothing to her,” he said. No reason to admit that he’d told her to stay away from him, he decided. After all, it wasn’t like they’d had a real conversation or anything. “I just got my stuff and got out of there as fast as I could. Then I called you.”

“Okay. Good. That’s good. It’s best if she didn’t notice you. She didn’t, did she?”

“No,” he answered quickly. “Like I said, she was paying for gas and getting directions from the kid behind the register.”

“Directions to where?” he demanded.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying no attention.”

“Try to remember, De Roach,” he insisted.

Lester thought for a moment, tried to recall what the kid had been saying to her. “She wanted to know how to get to one of those guesthouses.”

“Which guesthouse?”

“I don’t know. One with a name like a flower or a tree or something like that.”

“The Magnolia Guesthouse?”

“Yeah. That’s it. That’s the place. The Magnolia Guesthouse,” Lester told him.

“All right. And you’re sure she didn’t say anything else or ask questions about anyone?”

“I already told you what happened. She paid for her gas, got directions and left. And then I got out of there as fast as I could,” Lester repeated. He jammed his fist into his jacket pocket and his fingers brushed against a slip of paper—a gas receipt. He must have picked it up from the floor at the Quick Stop when he’d had to crawl around and pick up the beers he’d dropped. If he were to tell the guy now that the bitch had dropped it when her purse had fallen, it would only piss him off. He wouldn’t understand how scared he’d been and that he’d grabbed the thing in fear.

“All right. Then I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”

“How can you be sure?” Lester asked, not wanting to admit that he was still afraid. “I mean, if she is Burns’s kid, then she’s come back here for a reason. Maybe she knows what we did and she’s here for revenge and—”

“Would you stop saying that shit?”

“But if she knows—”

“She doesn’t know. Nobody does.” He all but spit out the words. “You got it?”

“Yeah. I got it,” Lester muttered grudgingly. Still, he had to ask, “So we aren’t going to do anything? Just sit around and wait?”

“I’m going to do some checking around, confirm she is the Burns kid and then find out why she’s here. And while I’m doing that, you are going to go home, lay off the booze and keep your damn mouth shut. Understand?”

Lester muttered his favorite four-letter word.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Lester grumbled.

“So, do you understand me?” he repeated.

“Yeah, yeah, I understand you.” But he sure as hell didn’t appreciate being given orders by the likes of him. Just who in hell did he think he was? If it wasn’t for him, the son of a bitch wouldn’t be where he was. The bastard owed him. They all did. None of them had had the balls to pull off the gig. They had needed him then, he remembered. They still did. And he’d show them, too.

“Then go home and keep your mouth shut. And, De Roach?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t call me anymore.”