Page 22 of Mail Order Bride

“Already had a couple, but I'll take another, sure.” His eyes dart around the diner. “Anyway, he says she's the spook of spooks.”

I peer at him warily, wondering how many beers he means byacouple. “Right.”

He takes a long pull on his cigarette and snuffs it out. I watch as he lights another. “What she does,” he tells me. “She discovers things about you she shouldn't. She sees things in you that aren't there. She has ways of knowing things that are too horrible to contemplate.”

“We've all got our secrets,” I say, trying to reach the core of what he's getting at.

He draws a slow breath and holds up his forefinger. He slowly traces a path around the counter. “My secrets are complicated. But according to this guy, the lady's secrets would fill a book, and her methods are outlandish.”

He looks me square in the eye. “He said she's a very dangerous person.”

As he talks, the air around us both seems to get thicker, warmer. “But I don't know,” he says, raising his eyebrows at me. “Maybe that's just talk. Maybe I'll marry her, anyway.”

“Excuse me,” I say scooting off my chair. “I’ve gotta make a phone call.”

I go outside, cross the parking lot and dial back to Texas, to the Apricot Inn. Layla picks up on the second ring. “Just checking in,” I say.

“No news is good news,” she replies and we both know what that means. It means no new jobs have come in. Also, there’s nothing to worry about. All is clear.

“When you coming home, Cowboy?” she purrs in my ear. “I miss you.”

“Soon,” I say. “A couple of days.”

“It’s lonely here without you.”

Somehow I doubt that, but that’s not what I say. “Listen, I gotta go.”

“Toodaloo.”

I jog back to the diner and take my seat beside the man. “You didn’t happen to travel here on account of an ad, did you? Like a perfect wife sorta thing?”

His eyes widen. “How’d you know?”

Because you look like just the type to be scammed with such nonsense.“Just a hunch.”

He leans in, his voice low and urgent. “Is that what brought you to town?”

“Me?” I shake my head. His question and our meeting seem a little too coincidental, like this is a set up. Like he’s scoping me out. “No. I'm here on business.”

He flops his cigarette into the ashtray and then straightens his back. “Maybe there isn't anything to worry about,” he says.

But he is wrong. Dead wrong.

Chapter Eighteen

Journal Entry

Author Unknown

There are two ways to kill a person. The easy way and the hard way. All depends on the circumstances. It's rather subjective, I'll say.

Will Davenport died like a man in the middle of telling a story. Like the jettisoning of a big secret. His mouth remained open, a story left unspoken, his eyes transfixed, his arms remained outstretched, as if he were still in the very moment of speaking.

The kind of poison that killed him was called “curare.” It is strictly tropical, and it looks like small salt crystals in the light of day, but at night, when moonlight turns it opaque, it looks like small wax candles.

Not the kind of thing that can be easily detected.

Nevertheless, there was the element of surprise in the undertaking. For him, sure. But for me, too. The poison took longer to take hold than I expected. Will Davenport was a large man.

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