Cry Baby Hollow (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Joe gave her
his best grin and took a drink of his margarita. A smudge of salt stuck to the corner of his mouth and Aubrey fought down the urge to reach over and wipe it off.

“I did my undergrad in microbiology with a minor in anthropology, but my doctorate is in genetics. I’m part of an international group that’s tryin’ to track and date patterns of human migration.”

“Of course you are,” she said with an inward groan.

“Who are you meetin’?” He asked casually, removing his glasses and placing them in his breast pocket.

“An old friend.”

Joe gave her a skeptical look. Her hair was down and curled into a wavy mass that fell down her back, her makeup was perfect, she was wearing a light cotton dress that ended several inches above the knee, and had on high-heeled strappy sandals and a tiny gold chain that held a diamond pendant at the base of her throat. Clearly he wasn’t buying it, but he didn’t say anything, just smiled his slow, easy smile and leaned back in the booth.

“What are you doing here?” She asked him.

“I was headin’ home from the bookstore and I saw you drive past, so I pulled a U-ey and came after you. There are a couple a Mini’s in Knoxville, but I’m guessin’ yours is the only one with DC plates. You should really get those changed out, what with the sheriff havin’ it in for you now and all.”

“Yeah,” Aubrey agreed, but traffic citations were the least of her worries at the moment. She finished her margarita in silence, looking across at Joe as if he were a complete stranger. She glanced longingly at her empty glass.

A tall, lean man in a dark suit walked in the front door and looked around. Even with the mop of dark, curly hair replacing his high and tight, she would have known him anywhere. Aubrey smiled and waved him over, standing to meet him.

He pulled her out of the booth and wrapped her in a bear hug, holding her just a little longer than was strictly proper.

“God, you look great,” he told her. “Jason is a complete idiot.”

Aubrey pulled away and smiled up at him, straightening his lapel where the hug had mussed it.

“It’s so good to see you,” she told him.

Joe scooted out of the booth and swallowed the last of his margarita.

“I’ll leave you two to do your catchin’ up,” he told Aubrey, a touch of worry in his eyes.

“No,” Aubrey grabbed his arm and pushed him back down. “You should stay for this, too. This is Agent Heck, with the FBI field office here in Knoxville. He and Jason were in the Marines together and I thought maybe he could give us some advice.”

She slid back into the booth and motioned Matt in across from her, next to Joe.

“Joe is a neighbor of mine,” she told Matt. “He was witness to the incident I called you about.”

Matt and Joe shook hands and Matt sat down in the booth beside him.

“Tell me your name is Oliver,” Joe said with a grin.

Matt shook his head.

“Oscar?”

“Nope, sorry.”

“Owen?”

“No.”

“Otis?”

“It’s Matthew.”

“Damn. You could a been O. Heck,” Joe said wistfully. He saw Aubrey looking at her empty glass. “Go ahead and order another round,” he told her. “I don’t have class in the morning. I can bring you back here for your car.”

Matt’s eyes narrowed a fraction.

So that’s how it’s going to be, Aubrey thought, and waved the waitress over.

“Class? Are you a student?” Matt asked.

“I teach at UT,” Joe told him.

“Really? I never would have guessed that.”

The waitress came and Aubrey ordered a margarita, Matt got a draft beer, and Joe asked for sweet tea.

“I get that a lot,” Joe admitted after the girl was gone. “I got a grad student on my staff who goes through all my scholarly papers and takes out the ya’lls and ain’ts.”

Aubrey had to press her lips together to keep from laughing. She wondered suddenly how many of the stupid things Joe said were really just jokes she’d missed.

“So what’s this incident you wanted help with?” Matt asked Aubrey, eager to change the subject.

She wanted to start with the deer, since in her mind all of the strange events in the hollow were linked and that was the first, but she stuck to the man on the dock, the finding of Noah’s body, and the sheriff’s possible cover-up. Matt pulled a small pad from his inside pocket and took notes. She told him about the state of the body and Joe’s idea that it had been there longer than they were told, and how Noah had vanished several days before.

“Was the family very religious?” Matt asked.

Joe shrugged.

“His ma’s a widow, raised her two boys alone. She goes to New Star, which I always found a might odd, but I don’t know that the boys ever went.”

“New Star?”

“That’s the Mosley church, back in their cove. Not many outsiders go there,” Joe told him.

“I thought you said that the boy’s name was Mosley?”

Joe explained about the two branches of the family.

“Well, if the mother was religious that would at least explain why finding a stash of pornography would cause such a big fight. You said he was seventeen?”

Aubrey nodded.

“Most mothers would just look the other way at that age,” Matt told them. “What did his shoes look like?” He asked Aubrey. “Did you see them? Running shoes, hiking boots?”

Aubrey closed her eyes and summoned up the picture of Noah’s body that had been haunting her. She saw his t-shirt, shredded. His jeans, torn at the knees. His shoes… Her eyes flew open.

“White tennis shoes,” she told Matt. “Clean.”

She looked from Matt to Joe.

“Then he couldn’t have gone up there the night before, in the rain,” Matt said.

Aubrey and Joe both shook their heads.

“It had been raining all day. I was muddy up to my knees by the time we got there,” Aubrey assured him. Joe nodded in agreement.

“You guys go ahead and order,” Matt told them, standing up. “I need to go out to my car and get a map and make a few phone calls.”

“You want us to get you somethin’?” Joe asked.

“Aubrey can order for me,” Matt said, already pulling out his cell phone. “She knows what I like.” He winked at her and walked outside.

“So how good a friend is this guy?” Joe asked as soon as Matt was gone. Aubrey was spared answering immediately by the waitress who came over to take their order.

“I finished high school early,” she told Joe after the girl was gone, “and started college at sixteen. After two years I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. None of the things I wanted to study led to very good jobs and my mother said if I didn’t pick something practical she wouldn’t pay for it. I enlisted in the navy mostly to piss her off, but I ended up liking it so I finished school online and became an officer. I met Matt and Jason when we were all stationed together. They’d been roommates at OCS and the three of us were all close…”

Aubrey sighed.

“It really wasn’t as sordid as it sounds. Later, I was stationed in Japan and Jason was in Okinawa. We saw a lot of each other.”

“So he only won by default,” Joe put in.

Aubrey shrugged.

“I know Jason always felt that way. He was never happy when a new duty station put me closer to Matt than to him.”

Joe didn’t look upset exactly, just thoughtful. He sipped his tea and looked around at the slightly cheesy Mexican décor.

Aubrey pulled out her phone, more to have something to do than because she actually wanted to call anyone. She dialed Vina and it was answered on the third ring.

“Hi, this is Vina. I’m not at home tonight. Germaine and I are taking Paloma over to Bybee for a church supper at the Baptist church on account of we heard there are some Mexicans in the congregation and thought she might want somebody to talk to, even if they aren’t Catholic. We tried taking her to Good Shepherd in town, but she seemed real upset that the Mass was in English and everybody looked at Germaine and me real funny on account of we didn’t know when to kneel and stuff and probably crossed ourselves wrong. I was hopin’ they’d let us in to the confessionals cause that always looks kinda fun in the movies, but apparently those things keep worse hours than that Chinese take-out place in Morristown that’s always closed when we go. BEEP!”

Aubrey informed the machine that she was staying in Knoxville overnight, but could still be reached on her cell phone. She hung up, knowing Vina would make all sorts of assumptions about her and Joe based on those few words and not really caring.

Joe smiled across at her. “You know, sometimes when I can’t make it up to the lake for a while, I call her machine just to get the local news.”

Their food came and Matt returned with an iPad in a thick rubberized skin that looked like it could survive a drop off a three story building. He made space for it amid all the plates and casually slid in beside Aubrey.

Joe, content in the knowledge that she’d already agreed to go home with him, didn’t rise to the unspoken challenge. He just shifted a few of the glasses out of the way so he could see and went to work on his enchiladas.    

Aubrey rewarded him for his good behavior by  playing footsie with him for a moment, then snapped to attention as Matt pulled up a topographical map of Tennessee and zoomed in until Cocke County consumed the screen.

“I need you to show me exactly where this happened,” he told her.

Aubrey used the little touchpad to center the map and then zoomed it in even further until the lake was large in the center.

“You need the trails displayed?” Matt asked.

Aubrey nodded and Matt touched a few icons at the edge of the image. The roads vanished and the National Forest was suddenly colored green, with the trails overlaid in dark brown. Aubrey traced her trail from Murder Creek up to where it split off, surprised to find it on this map, even though it wasn’t on the one she’d downloaded. She centered and zoomed again until the little triangle that said ‘Three Caves’ above it was all they could see.

“The body was in those caves?” Matt asked.

Aubrey nodded.

“You’re sure it was those?”

“Positive,” Aubrey assured him. “They’re the only caves I’ve seen up there, and there are three of them right next to each other.”

“Well, that’s good,” Matt told her, “because that’s well within the border of the National Forest. I called my boss and he called around to confirm, the death was never reported to the forest service or our office, which means the sheriff is at least in violation of protocol. That’s federal land. The locals are usually left to investigate, since they have the resources at hand, but they’re required to inform us. It gives me a good excuse to stick my nose in without mentioning you. We just say we saw it in the paper and wondered why we hadn’t been told.”

“Well, that is good news,” Joe agreed around a mouthful of enchilada.

“I need the names of everyone who might be relevant. Who told you he’d been missing? His mother?”

Joe shook his head.

“I only know her to say hi to at the Food Lion. I wasn’t told so much as overheard. A couple of the girls were talkin’ about it at Broad’s. I can give you the names they use there, but they’ll be fakes.”

“Broad’s on the River?”

“Yup, you been?”

“No,” Matt said, sounding surprised and a little offended. “We’ve had it under investigation for some time. We get regular complaints about that place. There’s a community action committee trying to shut it down because they say it’s the center of a prostitution ring, and the sheriff won’t do anything about it.”

If he had expected Joe to be shocked, he was in for a rude awakening.

“I don’t know as it’s a ring as such, but the girls will go home with you if you pay their cab fare back after. Course, there aren’t any cabs around and you still have to drive ‘em…”

“We’ve sent in a dozen undercover cops from all over the state and never gotten any evidence.”

“Nope. You wouldn’t. They only cater to locals. You get hikers and tourists stop in every once in a while, but everybody can spot ‘em a mile away and everything just sorta stops when they’re there.”

“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in wearing a wire sometime,” Matt asked eagerly.

Joe laughed.

“The man who helps shut down Broad’s is gonna be despised in three counties. I doubt ya’ll will find a local willing to help you out. Besides, the ladies all know to leave me be. They know who’s there for the beer and who wants company.”

“But they’re exploiting those girls. Prostitution is illegal.”

“If there’s any exploitin’ goin’ on at Broad’s, it’s the girls exploitin’ the drunks. It’s not like they take jobs there not knowin’ what it is.”

“What if it was your daughter?”

“I don’t have one, but if I did I hope I’d raise her well enough not to go home with strange men she met in bars, paid or otherwise.”

“And you’re okay with this?” Matt asked Aubrey.

Aubrey shrugged. “Apparently, they have very cold beer,” she told Matt.

He sighed.

Joe winked at her.

Matt gave up. He got the name of the deputy who’d first joined them at the caves and the girls from Broad’s. Cherry and Divine, he agreed, were probably not their real names. He promised to call Aubrey in the morning and left with his food barely touched.

“We ready too?” Joe asked. “Or do you want another round?”

Aubrey shook her head and finished eating while he paid the check, then followed him out to the parking lot.

“You need anything from your car?” He asked.

Aubrey shook her head and Joe walked over beside it and hit a button on his keychain.

“This is me,” he told her.

Aubrey looked at the little Prius.

“Where’s your truck?”

“I only use it at the lake,” he told her. “I keep meaning to find another driver to take me into the city so I can leave it parked up there and use this one to go back and forth.”

Joe held the door for her and Aubrey climbed in. She spent the drive silently looking out the window. All of her trips to Knoxville had been to the shopping centers on the outskirts, so Joe’s route along back roads and through quaint little neighborhoods was very novel. He headed toward downtown and pulled up in front of an old, carefully restored, craftsman house.

“It’s lovely,” she told him as he pulled into the driveway and parked behind his truck.

“I’ll sell it and move into a condo as soon as I get the place on the lake built. I’m only keepin’ it ‘til then cause otherwise I’d have to store all my extra furniture. Course, I’ll have to find a gay couple to buy it ‘cause the schools are bad in this part of town.”

“How come you haven’t built yet? Vina said you’d been going up there for ten years.”

“About that,” he agreed. “But she only sold me the lot five years ago and I’ve been tryin’ to find a local builder ever since. Cocke County ain’t exactly brimmin’ with folks eager to try their hand at solar, and I plan to stay off the grid.”

“The grid?”

“The power grid. I’m tryin’ to build a house that’s self sufficient in power and water.”

He got out and came around to open her door.

A dog barked nearby.

“Damn it,” Joe swore. “I forgot. I’ve got your birthday present inside. I guess you’ll have to take it early.”

“How did you know it was my birthday coming up?” Aubrey asked.

“Vina.”

“Of course. Well you didn’t have to get me anything.”

Joe looked at her like she was crazy. “’Cause that was gonna happen.”

“You could hide it,” she offered. “I’ll wait here.” She didn’t feel up to feigning excitement over a fishing rod.

“It isn’t really hide-able,” Joe told her mysteriously.

Joe opened the
front door and a huge, white mass hit him square in the chest. Aubrey jumped back, startled, but Joe just reached in and turned on the porch light. The dog was enormous, coming waist high on Aubrey and, with its paws planted firmly on his shoulders, easily looking Joe in the eye. It gave him a big, sloppy lick and Joe reached up and scratched it behind the ears.

“This is Drake,” Joe told her. “He’s a Kuvasz.”

The dog eyed her warily and she reached out her hand, palm down for it to sniff.

“He’s named after Count Dracula because the king of Hungary gave him one as a gift after he was released from prison.”

The dog seemed to find Aubrey acceptable and held its head up to her to be pet. He had a thick, white coat, black eyes and nose, and black skin around his mouth. As soon as Aubrey reached out and stroked his head he looked up at her with an expression of complete devotion.

“I didn’t realize you had a dog,” she said, smiling down at Drake and running her hand through the soft, white fur.