Page 90 of High Frequency

“I went to see Shelby at the feedstore this afternoon.”

“You did?”

Her body language tells me the casual curiosity in her question took effort.

“I was cleaning up the lumber at the house and found an empty spray-paint can under the porch. It was red livestock marker paint.”

“Son of a bitch,” she mutters, which is pretty much what my own reaction was.

“Right. I was able to confirm two cans were missing from stock at the feedstore, but it’s not exactly evidence.”

“She had her hand in it,” Sloane concludes firmly.

“Seems likely.”

“Maybe she didn’t do it herself,” she offers. “But she was involved, if not the instigator.”

I don’t disagree with her.

“Didn’t you say she was divorced? Could she have manipulated her ex into doing it?”

I feel like I’ve been zapped with a cattle prod, every synapses firing at the same time.

Of course, her ex.

That’s what’s been niggling at the back of my mind.

“Cedric.”

Sloane looks at me, puzzled.

“Sorry?”

“She mentioned her ex once, told me he was a truck driver and they lived in Eureka before she moved back home. I’m pretty sure she mentioned the name Cedric. Mike Cedric.”

Sloane is off my lap and on her feet in a flash.

“You’re shitting me. Cedric is Shelby’s ex?”

She massages her scalp with her fingertips, as if to help her think.

“I’m pretty sure that was his name,” I state.

In fact, the longer I think about it, the more positive I am. Feeling the need to move, I get up off the couch and grab the empty beer bottles off the table to take to the kitchen.

“That would be wild,” Sloane mutters.

“I’ve gotta admit, it’s making me a tad uneasy,” I confess, leaning over the sink as I stare outside. “That shit that went on right across the river on that mountain was already too close for comfort. This literally puts it in my backyard.”

I feel her hand slide up my back.

“I’m sorry. And I’m sorrier yet to be all business but…”

I turn around to face her.

“What?”

She grimaces.

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