“Who around here drives a black Plymouth?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Rebecca Cady’s tone was as flat now as it had been during their introductions in the bar. If the idea of a man being incinerated just outside her place of business was a concern, it was hard to tell.
“Well, you might want to be thinking on it,” he said. “I suspect the sheriff is going to have plenty of questions, and that’s only going to be one of them. He’ll also want to know what Sorenson was doing at your place to begin with.”
She was silent. The breeze blew in and fanned her hair back, showing a slender, exquisite neck.
“You own the place?” Arlen asked.
“That’s right.”
“People die out there very often?”
“No.”
“Well, you sure don’t look rattled. And again, if I’m the sheriff, I’m going to be—”
“You’re not the sheriff,” she said, “and if I could offer any advice, it would be that you let me talk to him alone and you two go on your way.”
“Go on our way? That man is dead and—”
“Dead he will stay,” she said. “Whether you talk with the sheriff or not.”
“Hell, no. There’s not a chance, lady. I’ll be talking to the law before I head out of this place.”
He watched her for a long time, but she never looked over at him. They’d left the dirt road for the paved now, but there wasn’t another vehicle in sight. It was isolated country, forested once you got away from the coast. They’d gone at least two miles down the paved stretch of road before a gap showed in the trees and a single gas pump appeared in a square of dusty earth. Rebecca Cady slowed the truck, and then they were past the trees and Arlen could see a service station set well back from the gas pump. There was a two-bay garage and a general store, with crates of oranges stacked beside the front door. Rebecca Cady pulled the truck in next to a delivery van and shut the engine off. Only then did she turn and look at Arlen.
“I’ll go in now and call the sheriff, since that’s what you want me to do.”
“You’re damned right it’s what I want you to do. A man was killed!”
“Yes,” she said. “Welcome to Corridor County, Mr. Wagner.”
* * *
The sheriff told her to return to the Cypress House, and he was waiting on them when they arrived, standing beside the ruins of the Auburn while a young deputy with red hair poured pails of water onto the wreck. The flames were gone, but the metal steamed when the water touched it.
The sheriff had the look and charm of a cinder block—a shade over six feet but 250 at least, with gray hair and small, close-set brown eyes. His hands dangled at his sides beneath thick wrists and sunburned forearms. When they got out of the truck, he didn’t say a word, just watched the three of them approach as the deputy emptied another pail of water onto the car in a hiss of steam. The sheriff didn’t break the silence until they were standing at his side.
“Becky,” he said then, “what in the world happened to your guest?”
“His car blew up,” Rebecca Cady said. She was standing at Paul’s side, facing the sheriff with her arms squeezed tightly across her chest, as if she’d found a cold breeze hiding in the ninety-degree day.
“So it did,” the sheriff said. “So it did.”
Arlen was struck by the man’s voice. He’d expected the heavy southern drawl that seemed common in these parts, but the sheriff’s accent had a touch of the Upper Midwest in it, Chicago or Minnesota or Wisconsin.
“Who are you boys?” the sheriff said, acknowledging their existence for the first time.
Arlen told it. Said they were CCC, had missed a train heading down to the Keys and caught a ride with the dead man.
“You’d never seen him before? Strangers, you say?”
“That’s right. We’d just met him last evening, Mr…. what was your name?”
“Tolliver,” he said after a pause and a darkening of the eyes that suggested he didn’t like Arlen treating the conversation as a two-way street, “but all you need to call me is Sheriff. Do you know Becky?”
“Just met her. Again, we’d come this way only because we hitched the ride. I’ve never set foot in this county before, and neither has Paul.”
Tolliver pursed his lips and looked at his deputy, a freckle-faced kid with a sour scowl. He stared at him for a long time, like he was musing on something, and then he said, “Burt, put them in handcuffs and get them in the car.”
Arlen said, “Whoa. Hold on, there. I just told you—”