If Catfish Had Nine Lives(37)

            “Okay.” She looked at the tombstone one more time, and then at me. “I think I’ll head back over to the parking lot. The cooking demonstrations are interesting. I just couldn’t pass up the chance to look for Charlie. You want to come with me?”

            “Go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute,” I said, being a less-than-perfect host.

            “Sure,” she said before she smiled at me again and then made her way across the cemetery.

            Once she was out of earshot, I looked up at Joe. His focus was still on the tombstone.

            “You’re Charlie or Astin, aren’t you?” I said.

            “I know my name is Joe.”

            I looked into the horse’s eyes. “You know anything else?”

            The horse nodded, but unfortunately still wasn’t talking.





Chapter 11




            “You look better,” I said to Teddy.

            He laughed. “I look like I got the tar kicked out of me.”

            “Okay, you win.” I smiled. I was relieved he was well enough to joke. When the Dutch oven cooking demonstrations ended, I told Gram I had to run a quick errand before we could help Joe with the letter. I could tell she wasn’t pleased about the delay, but she pretended she was okay with it.

            Teddy lived in a cabin right inside the perimeter of the woods that surrounded Broken Rope, the side opposite to where the high school was located. The cabin was made up of one large space on the main level; a space that was filled with a small galley kitchen, a small living room with the most comfortable couch and recliner ever mass-manufactured, and an office-type space that was home to a large, messy desk. The desk was the only part of the cabin that was messy. Teddy was naturally tidy—always had been. When we were kids, our parents had often lamented my paper-, book-, and clothes-strewn room, while holding Teddy’s spotless space up as something I should strive for. I’d figured out how to hang things up and put things away sometime in my early twenties, but I still wasn’t as good at neatness as Teddy was.

            “I’m a little embarrassed, though,” Teddy said. “I can’t believe I let the guy get the best of me.”

            I’d lied to him. He didn’t look better. In fact, he looked a little worse, with the bruises and cuts taking on a wider array of colors and the swelling still very obvious.

            I hadn’t seen Cliff since the day before at the doctor’s office. He’d sent me a brief text last night telling me he was busy and probably wouldn’t be able to get together. I hadn’t been able to ask him for details about his questioning of Teddy. I was curious enough to have tried again to reach him before my morning trek to Teddy’s cabin, but he hadn’t answered his phone. I was sure he was busy attempting to solve a murder, though, so I was willing to cut him some slack.

            “If it wasn’t a fight, Teds, it was an attack, which would make the person—or persons, I suppose—pretty sneaky,” I said.

            Teddy shook his head as his lips pinched. He reached up to them reflexively and then normalized. The pain had been either brief or something he wanted to hide from me.

            “I was stupid, too, if I truly followed someone out to the woods. I know better than to do something like that with a relative stranger. Mom, Dad, and Gram are going to flip.”

            My own lips were sealed for the moment. All three of them would be upset that I didn’t give them the news, but that didn’t change the fact that I was currently too chicken to be the messenger on this one. Teddy would be fine; they could learn the news from him, hopefully in about ten years or so.

            “Well, you’re going to be okay. That’s what matters.”