Page 85 of Script Swap
“What if I take Fox?And we do it at the theater?”
“Where you were almost killed by a falling wrench?”
“That was an accident.”But when I added, “Probably,” Bobby looked less pleased.
“With Fox,” he said firmly.“And you call me and let me know.”
“Obviously.Of course.Not a problem.”
For some reason, Bobby sighed as he stood.
“Did they get an ID on the body from the theater?”
“The one that had been hidden there for forty years,” Bobby asked dryly, “decomposing inside a roll of plastic?”
“Eww.”
“The dental is a match for Raymond Hatch.”
“So, Nora was right.He didn’t run away with the money from the box office.”
“He didn’t run far, anyway.”
“That means Nora took it.Maybe that’s how we can track her down—with the stolen money.”
Bobby buckled on his utility belt.“How, babe?It was decades ago.Nobody has any records.”
“What about serial numbers?”
“What about them?”
“Can’t you—” I made an elaborate hand gesture.“With a computer?”
“I thought you researched these things,” he said.“I thought this was dinner talk with your parents.”
“Well, tracing forty-year-old stolen cash never came up,” I snipped.“And it works on NCIS.”
“Really?I thought you watched that for the scenes where that mean guy runs on the beach.”
“He’s not—” I had to stop so Bobby could give me a goodbye kiss.“He’s notmean.”
“With Fox,” Bobby said even more firmly this time—apparently, lest I forget.“And you call me and let me know.”
As he headed for the door, I called after him, “He’s been wounded.He’s misunderstood.”
Bobby did not deign to reply.
I liked to think that Bobby had a deep and abiding trust in me, and that’s why we could have this kind of conversation—because he trusted me to do the right thing.
Which was why after I got dressed—inmyclothes, a hoodie printed with the original NES controller, joggers, and my Mexico 66s, with GLASSES, not contacts, and my normal, boring hedgehog hair—I padded downstairs and ate some more of the muffins.
I had a plan.Kind of.I mean,talk to Bettywas a plan.Andget her to confesswas a plan.But this plan—I thought around a mouthful of crumbly, buttery, brown sugary concoction—was lacking in key details.Number one: what was I going to say?And number two: how was I going to get her to confess?
Typically, detectives (real or fictional) elicited confessions from suspects by establishing a bond and gaining trust, on the one hand, and, on the other, using leverage—like physical evidence, an eyewitness testimony, or plain old fear.
In my case, plain old fear was the only option, and I didn’t think it would work.Betty didn’t have any reason to be afraid.Nora—and Betty—had already pulled it off.
But Norahadto have done it.There wasn’t any other way for her to have known about Ray’s body in that storage space.The evidence simply hadn’t been there.I mean, if it had, I would have found it.
